Meet the Organizers

Eric D. Wachsman

Dr. Eric D. Wachsman, Director of the Maryland Energy Innovation Institute, is a Distinguished University Professor and the William L. Crentz Centennial Chair in Energy Research with appointments in both the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Maryland. He received his PhD in Materials Science & Engineering from Stanford University, and his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of California at Berkeley.

Dr. Wachsman is Past President of The Electrochemical Society (ECS) and Editor-inChief of Ionics. He is a Fellow of both ECS and the American Ceramic Society; elected fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and member of the World Academy of Ceramics; recipient of the 2017 ECS Carl Wagner Award; 2014 Sir William Grove Award from the International Association for Hydrogen Energy; 2014 Pfeil Award from The Institute of Materials, Minerals, and Mining; Outstanding Invention of 2013 award from the University of Maryland Office of Technology Licensing; 2012 Fuel Cell Seminar & Exposition Award; and 2012 ECS High-Temperature Energy, Materials, & Processes Division Outstanding Achievement Award.

His research is focused on solid ionconducting materials and electrocatalysts, and includes the development of solidstate batteries, solid oxide fuel cells, ion-transport membrane reactors, and solid-state gas sensors, using advanced ion conducting materials. He has more than 280 publications and 40 patents/ patent applications on ionic and electronic transport in materials, and their catalytic properties, and device performance. To date four companies have been founded based on these technologies.

Teruhisa Horita

Teruhisa Horita is a Director of Research Institute for Energy Conservation (iECO), National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Tsukuba, Japan. In 1992, he joined the National Chemical Laboratory for Industry in Japan (former AIST) as research scientist. Since then, he has been working on the materials research and analyses of electrochemical reactions of solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs). He has published more than 200 original papers and contributed to the improvement of durability of SOFCs. From 2018-2019, he was the project leader of the SOFC durability project of NEDO Japanese national project. From 2013-2015, he tentatively worked at the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI), as a project manager for energy-related projects (such as hydrogen, power electronics, etc.) and established several projects. Since 2020, he has lead the NEDO project “Development of advanced evaluation and analysis technologies for the durability of SOFC stacks”.

Dr. Horita is a Vice President of The SOFC Society of Japan, and serves many academic meetings including the SOFC symposium series, such as the Chairperson of SOFC-XVII (2021). He has served as the Secretary/Treasurer of the ECS H-TEMP Division since 2021.

Dr. Horita has received many awards including the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT) in Japan in 2021, Richard M. Fulrath Award from The American Ceramic Society in 2005, and Oronzio DeNora Foundation Prize on Electrochemical Energy Conversion from The International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) in 2001.