SAE Sustainable Mobility Solutions

Pascal Thalin is Director, Aerospace Standards, Technology & Innovation at SAE International.  In various leadership positions within Airbus, Safran and Thales, he has gained longstanding experience in R&D, Program Management, and Business Development of Power, Propulsion & Actuation Systems for a wide range of aircraft.  He is committed to optimized solutions from the perspectives of design, operations, and business, allowing reduction of environmental impacts, for the Hybrid-Electric and Electric Aircraft, and Sustainable Aviation in general. Among his areas of focus in the lead-up to global net-zero emissions are alternative energy sources such as Sustainable Aviation Fuels (SAF) and Hydrogen, for airport as well as aircraft operations.

Karine Guenan is Vice-President Zero Emission Ecosystem at AIRBUS. She leads the hydrogen ecosystem deployment for the successful entry into service of the ZEROe Aircraft by 2035. Moreover, she is responsible for developing the new energy business development origination and operations, including Synthetic Fuel and Carbon Capture.  

Previously, Karine was Vice-President Financing & Guarantees, coordinating Airbus’s customer, structure & project financing activities, with a focus on the monitoring of the group’s exposure and supervising Airbus Financial Services in Dublin and Airbus Bank in Munich.

Prior to that, she held various Vice President roles in Commercial and Finance at ATR (joint venture between Airbus & Leonardo).

Before joining AIRBUS, in her long career at AIR LIQUIDE, she was Head of Infrastructure Project Finance and Treasury for the Engineering and Construction division of Air Liquide.

Éric Prades is an engineer. Éric joined Air Liquide in 2003, where he successively served as Supply Chain and Industry Director of the Air Liquide Welding branch, launched the Hydrogen Energy activities in 2008, managed the global Helium and Rare Gas activities, with in particular the development of the first commercial mass storage of helium in a saline cavity.

Since 2017, Éric has been working at the heart of the Energy Transition of the Air Liquide group, where he has developed innovative bulk shipping solution to transport LCO2 in the frame of Carbon Capture and Storage projects, and since mid-2020, Éric leads the development and execution of all key partnerships in the field of the Hydrogen Energy.

At the heart of the Covid19 crisis in 2020, he led the AL-PSA-SchneiderElectric-Valeo industrial Alliance to manufacture 10,000 Respirators in 50 days.

Arnab’s work is at the intersection of strategy, commericalisation and technology development. He is focused on developing the infrastructure business that will be needed to sustainably refuel the aircraft whilst enabling greater renewable power into the energy system and help airports in their journey to net zero. His career has been in the energy and materials transition, having worked over the last 8 years in a range of strategy, commercial and technical leadership positions within Shell's New Energies division, including most recently as the Global Technology Manager, Hydrogen Mobility. Prior to joining Shell, Arnab worked at McKinsey & Co (Calgary) primarily serving energy customers and at Sofinnova Partners (Paris/San Francisco) where he deployed 70M USD into industrial biotechnology/renewable companies at series A level. He went on to work at BioAmber Inc, a portfolio company as Director of Product, and was part of the team that took it to IPO. His early career was at Shell, in innovation, technology and operational roles.

Arnab is a member of the Leadership Council at Cyclotron Road and is an advisor to various climate tech start-ups in the Bay Area and has a degree in Chemistry, a DPhil in Materials Science from Oxford University and an MBA from INSEAD. He lives in London with his wife and daughter.

Mr Tan Kah Han is the Chief Technology Officer and Senior Director (Unmanned Systems Group) of the Civil Aviation Authority of Singapore (CAAS). In his capacity, his responsibilities include developing safety policies, the development of civil aviation and future aviation technology, and safety oversight for the safe operations of unmanned aircraft systems.

Mr Tan joined the CAAS in 2009 and was appointed as Director (Airworthiness / Flight Operations) in October 2010 and Senior Director (Safety Regulation) in January 2017. He assumed Director (Airworthiness Certification & Unmanned Aircraft Systems) in the restructured Safety Regulation Group in 2019. Prior to joining CAAS, Mr. Tan spent 26 years and held many senior appointments in the Republic of Singapore Air Force.

Mr. Tan is Singapore member in the ICAO Committee Aviation Environment Protection and the ICAO Flight Ops Panel.

Paras develops partnerships across the corporate and academic markets as SAE International creates new technical research products and technical training programs to support SAE’s global stakeholder and member base.  Michael works closely with SAE’s Government Affairs team to support SAE’s work with the U.S. Departments of Transportation and Energy. 

Connect with Michael

Founder and CEO of Blue Spirit Aero, an aircraft manufacturer developing a family of light electric aircraft powered by hydrogen fuel cells in a Distributed Electric Propulsion architecture. Savine conducted various collaborative development and demonstration projects for fuel cell applications in aviation.

Connect with Olivier

David Grottenthaler has worked in the hydrogen industry for about 20 years. He is currently the Lead System Engineer for Hydrogen Storage, Europe with Nikola Corporation and Joint Venture partner, Iveco Group, two companies jointly developing and manufacturing heavy-duty zero-emissions trucks for the North American and European markets. David has worked for Nikola since October 2018 on the FCEV programs holding several positions within the engineering and program management offices.

David has previously developed 350 and 700 bar valve and hydrogen storage solutions for hydrogen FCEV vehicles from Toyota and General Motors as a Tier 1 supplier.  In addition, David is a startup veteran, serving in four startups focused on various areas of infrastructure, energy, and transportation.  David has 6 patents.

Myron’s 30 years of experience working in the private and public sectors in North and South America, Asia, and Europe help him to see and implement new and effective approaches to airport business development.

Myron leads EIA's Airport City Sustainability Campus - an ecosystem of companies driving innovation in e-commerce, cargo/logistics, advanced manufacturing, and pharma. His vision and tenacity have attracted over $1.2B USD of private investment to EIA. Myron’s mission is to recast the roles that airports play, evolving beyond utilities into economic engines for cities, regions and countries.

Prior to EIA, Myron built a career focusing on how to drive economic potential of private and government-owned assets to maximize returns for countries by driving national investment and commercial plans.

Myron is an active Director on governing boards across a range of sectors including real estate, healthcare, private industry, and philanthropy.