Patrick Brennan is the CFO of WattAnyWhere, which develops a 300kW mobile generator that converts renewable ethanol from biomass into clean electricity

He is a highly accomplished senior executive, driving operations and profitability within finance, marketing, sales and business development in premier fortune 100 companies.

Patrick has proven experience in identifying revenue opportunities and developing growth strategies through the use digital tools and actionable data. He also excels in building consensus among multiple divisions of large organizations and stakeholders while maintaining productive relationships with all levels of staff and management.

Yasmine Calisesi is the Executive Director of the EPFL Energy Center CEN since June 2019. Her role is to catalyze energy research led by EPFL laboratories, notably in collaboration with industrial and institutional partners, and enhance EPFL’s impact and image as a world leading research and education institution. From 2007 to 2019, she worked as the Head of the Pilot and Demonstration Program of the Swiss Federal Office of Energy SFOE. As such, she supported the development and implementation of energy-relevant innovation projects at the interface of research and market deployment. Prior to that, Yasmine was active in the fields of atmospheric physics and space science, establishing Earth observation from space as a discipline of the International Space Science Institute (ISSI) in Bern. As a post-doctoral fellow of the University of Bern and the Swiss Federal Office of Meteorology and Climatology MeteoSwiss, she participated in the validation of ESA’s ENVISAT satellite. Yasmine received her PhD from the University of Bern and holds an MSc in Physics from the University of Geneva. In 2006, she was awarded the Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics Award by the Swiss Commission for Atmospheric Chemistry and Physics. She is fluent in French, German, Italian and English.

Lan Zuo Gillet is the Deputy Managing Director of EPFL Innovation Park and an Expert of Innosuisse – the Swiss Innovation Agency.  She has 23 years of hands-on professional experience in industry as well as in the ecosystem of innovation & entrepreneurship.

Lan started her career at R&D department of Rolex, in charge of creating new computer aided design and optimisation tools in the product development process. She was later appointed as Head of Operational Planning at Pictet, working closely with a startup to design, develop and implement a management information system for group operation control. As the Managing Director of Geneva Creativity Center, she connected large corporations, SMEs, startups and researchers to initiate innovative joint R&D projects. 

Currently at EPFL Innovation Park, she is leading entrepreneurship training and acceleration programs and is helping startups to establish business partnership with large corporations. Lan has a PhD degree from EPFL, an MBA from HEC Lausanne and postdoctoral applied research experience at Stanford University.  

Jean-Christophe Hadorn is director of engineering offices in energy, head of research program in solar thermal energy, president of solar photovoltaic company, partner of start-up, finance coaching and business strategy.

Andreea is a Strategic Financing and Venture Business Development Director at Eaton, a 20bn USD power management company, doing business in more than 175 countries.

Her main focus is to leverage financial services in order to support and accelerate the Energy Transition and Digitalization.

In her previous role, she led a global team of specialist on risk management topics (FX and Commodities).

Prior to joining Eaton, Andreea has worked in France, UK, Switzerland and Romania in various roles, especially in Investment banking where she held various technical roles.

Andreea holds a Master degree in Finance from the Sorbonne University in Paris and a double Bachelor in International Economics from Toulouse University and in Financial Markets from the Academy of Economic Studies of Bucharest.

Nicolas Loeillot is a senior technology entrepreneur and investor. Back in 2003, he founded a computer vision company in Japan. Pioneering in A.I. applications, his company served hundreds of projects with large companies in Japan, Asia and the US before being acquired by a GAFA in 2017.

Since 2010, he chairs the Tokyo Interaction Center, a privately-owned incubator in central Tokyo, focused on early stage deep technology start-ups. In 2018, Nicolas Loeillot joined the Swiss health insurer Groupe Mutuel as Chief Innovation Officer to setup an innovation strategy, accelerate deployments of A.I. and craft a data-driven, prevention-focused future of the company. In 2021 he joins InnoSuisse as Expert for a 4-year mandate.

François Marechal is a Professor of EPFL heading the Industrial Process and Energy Systems Engineering group
He is ranked by research.com in the top 10 of the Swiss researchers in the field of engineering and technology. He is conducting research in the field of computer aided decision support for process and energy systems engineering. His activities are focussing on integrating rational use of energy, renewable energy resources and circular economy concepts in industrial processes and energy systems. François Marechal is the editor in chief of the process and energy systems engineering specialty of the open access journal Frontiers in Energy Research, the founding member and the co-chair of the energy section of the European Federation of Chemical Engineering, and the president of the scientific committee of the industry decarbonization research initiative of the French Government, in addition to many other professional activities in the sector of Energy.

Aris is the founder and CEO of Neology, currently developing ammonia-cracking solutions unlocking the hydrogen economy and starting with applications in commercial transportation.

He obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees from EPFL in Electrical Engineering in 2008 and 2010 respectively. He spent his career in the automotive industry, starting as a R&D system engineer in JTEKT in Japan, and was responsible for the development and validation of innovative mechatronic systems through the creation of advanced modelling, simulation, and testing tools.

He later advanced to become Senior Manager of the Systems Engineering department at Toyota Gazoo Racing Europe in Germany, leading 75 engineers and technicians in Chassis & Powertrain development, and overseeing the engineering processes within the company. Since 2021, he continues to assist Toyota’s executive teams through consulting activities.

Thomas is a co-founder of Datapred, the digital twin for industrial energy and raw material buyers.
Thomas has 10 years of experience in tech M&A and 12 years in start-up management.
He is a graduate of Sciences Po Paris and ESSEC Business School.

Raphael Rollier develops and promotes digital innovation and transformation. He is currently in charge of Innovation and Product Management at Swisstopo, working on topics such as geolocalisation and data science in the field of geoinformation. Previously, in co-creation with several cities, he created a “Smart Data” tool, which turns billions of data generated by the mobile phone network into anonymized and aggregated traffic indicators. Raphael has 13 years of international marketing&sales and general management experience, having worked for Nokia. Member of the Venture Kick jury, Raphael has developed a mentoring program for start-ups at the EPFL, where he obtained a master’s in micro engineering. He also writes about the digital economy at LeTemps webpage

Luca Schenk is the CEO of Helvoil SA and member of board of Swisspower Renewables AG.

He is an experienced leader dedicated to improving access to financial markets and to making the circular economy happen.

He has a unique know-how in matching business models with compliance and digitalization (traditional and blockchain) and driving ESG. Sound track record in the financial services and renewable energy sectors.

Georg Schumacher holfs a Master in Business Administration from Stockholm School of Economics.

He is now Senior Manager, Partnering and Investing at Axpo Group. The company is focused on renewable energy sources and is one of the biggest European energy traders.

Before working at Axpo Group, he worked as Senior Project Manager M&A at TX Markets AG and as Head Of Business Development at autoricardo AG.

Vincent Trouche has 15 years of experience in developing companies and products first in the commodity trading industry (business development, M&A, strategic consulting) and then in the high-tech sector (leveraging VR, IoT, blockchain or cleantech technologies).

Over the past 8 years in the high-tech industry, he performed strategic analyses, launched new product offerings, managed teams & projects, rose private & public funds, and developed commercial relationships & partnerships.

He holds an Industrial Engineering degree from INSA of Lyon, and an MBA from INSEAD. He has also worked abroad (US and China in particular) and appreciate multicultural environments and team diversity.

Peter van Giessel is an experienced professional in venture capital, corporate governance, technology commercialization and business development within the energy sector. Having started within R&D at Philips Electronics in the early nineties, Peter complemented his skill set as a management consultant before joining Shell in 2000. Since, Peter has taken on roles in marketing strategy, upstream M&A, technology commercialization and in 2012 was one of the founding fathers of Shell Ventures back in 2012. 

In addition to being a non-executive member on several boards across the world, he has more than 20 years of experience in the Gas & Oil industry. Peter graduated from Eindhoven University of Technology with a MSc in Mechanical Engineering and completed his MBA at London Business School.