John Bradford received dual BS degrees in Physics and Engineering Physics with a concentration in Chemical Engineering from the University of Kansas in 1994.   He received his PhD in Geophysics from Rice University in 1999.   In 2001 he joined the Center for Geophysical Investigation of the Shallow Subsurface at Boise State University, where he served as director from 2006-2009.  In 2017 he moved to the Colorado School of Mines where he served as the Geophysics Department Head until 2019, Vice Provost and Dean from 2019 – 2020, and is currently Vice President for Global Initiatives and heads the Office of Global Initiatives and Business Development.  He remains active in research and is focused on developing methodologies for quantitative analysis of near-surface seismic and ground-penetrating radar data with emphasis on using these tools to solve interdisciplinary science and engineering problems.  He has published on a diverse array of topics that include hydrocarbon detection as both resource and environmental contaminant, geothermal characterization, hydrogeophysics, glaciology, and archaeology.  In 2015/2016 he served as the President of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists.  In this role, he was Chairman of the Board of a global corporation with four subsidiary corporations and offices in Tulsa, Beijing, and Dubai.

Dimitrios C. Kyritsis is the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs in the College of Technology and Design in Neom U. and the Director of the Hydrogen and e-Fuels Advanced Research Initiative.  Before his current appointment, he was a post-doctoral associate and a lecturer at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Yale University (2000-2002), a faculty member in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (2002-2014), and the Chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering in Khalifa University (2014-2024). In the period 2005-2010 served as the co-PI in the US-Department-of-Energy-funded Graduate Automotive Technology Education Center of Excellence on Automotive Biofuel Combustion Engines in the University of Illinois and from 2020-2023, he served as the Deputy Director of the Research and Innovation Center on CO₂ and Hydrogen (RICH) in Khalifa University.  He is a Fellow of the ASME, an Associate Fellow of the AIAA, an Associate Editor of the Journal of Energy Engineering, a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the Accenture Award for excellence in student advising, as well as the Ralph R. Teetor Award of the Society of Automotive Engineers, and has served in the editorial board of Combustion & Flame and the Proceedings of the Combustion Institute.

Dr. Yaoguo Li is a Professor in the Department of Geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines, where he has been leading the Center for Gravity, Electrical, and Magnetic Studies (CGEM), co-leading the Geo-Multiphysics Research Consortium (GMRC), and co-leading a newly formed consortium on the Potential for Geologic Hydrogen Gas Resources.  He holds a PhD in geophysics from the University of British Columbia. Dr. Li’s research interests include inverse theory, and inversion of gravity, magnetic, electrical, and electromagnetic geophysical data, joint inversion and geology differentiation. Geologic hydrogen exploration, efficient data acquisition in resource exploration, and machine learning-assisted inversion methods are among his newest pursuits. His research covers a broad range of geoscientific problems in geologic hydrogen exploration, mineral exploration, and carbon storage monitoring. He is the instructor of 11th EAGE Education Tour. He is a co-recipient of the 1999 Gerald W. Hohmann Award, and Honorary Member of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). 

Dr. Travis McLing is a Directorate Fellow and Chief Geologist at the Idaho National Laboratory (INL). Dr. McLing has more than 30 years of experience in developing, growing, and leading multi-institutional, interdisciplinary research in geochemistry and water-related fields. Dr. McLing has developed expertise in the fields of rare earth elements, and other critical and strategic minerals, and developing situ tracers to fingerprint geothermal systems. Dr McLing is also a Research Fellow at the Center for Advanced Energy Studies where he leads the Geoenergy research activities. Dr. McLing has authored and co-authored more than 100 peer-reviewed papers and conference proceedings and given more than 125 presentations at national and international meetings and conferences. Dr. McLing holds affiliate faculty positions at Idaho State University, University of Idaho and a Distinguished Affiliate Faulty position at the University of Wyoming’s School of Energy Resources. Through these affiliate faculty positions he regularly advises graduate students and post-doctorates fellows.

Zainub is excited to help innovative early-stage companies accelerate their journey to scale and commercialization with the mission to advance cleaner, affordable energy. As director of Scouting and Innovation at Halliburton Labs, Zainub focuses on identifying and qualifying prospective companies and introducing the industrial scaling capabilities within the Halliburton Labs ecosystem. Zainub believes that new companies will play a critical role in energy of the future with Halliburton Labs providing a unique launching pad for these innovations to commercially scale. Zainub most recently served as Global R&D Head for Reservoir, Production & Economics in Landmark where she led five technology development centers in North America, South America, and Asia, and helped energy operators worldwide in digital transformation to optimize asset development. She serves on the advisory panel for the University of Houston Bauer Business School and received recognition by Hart Energy as 25 Influential Women in Energy and the Petroleum Economist as 100 Global Leaders.

Zainub holds a double Bachelor of Chemical Engineering & Science from Western University, Master of Petroleum Engineering from Texas A&M University and executive certifications in Business & Strategy from Harvard Business School, and Texas A&M.

Dr. Chris San Marchi is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff at Sandia National Laboratories in Livermore CA. Chris and his colleagues are studying the interactions between hydrogen and materials, unraveling the complex nature of hydrogen’s effects on the performance of structural materials, a collection of phenomena commonly referred to as gaseous hydrogen embrittlement. Chris has co-authored over 100 conference and journal publications and several book chapters, providing the scientific and engineering basis for hydrogen-related codes and standards both domestically and internationally, including contributions to the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) as well as the UN’s Global Technical Regulation No. 13 for Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Vehicles. Additionally, Chris is the Sandia PI on the Hydrogen Materials Compatibility Consortium (H-Mat), an Energy Materials Network, sponsored by the US Department of Energy’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy. Chris is also the Sandia PI on the Pipeline Blending CRADA (a DOE HyBlend project), a multi-laboratory partnership with industry exploring the implications of blending hydrogen into natural gas infrastructure.

Dr. Douglas Wicks currently serves as a Program Director at the Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy (ARPA‑E). His focus at ARPA-E is on waste-to-energy, critical mineral mining and geologic hydrogen technologies.   Wicks joined ARPA-E from Imerys a French industrial minerals production and processing company, where he was most recently the Director of Transformational and External Innovation. At Imerys he developed an innovation network comprised of academic, contract research organizations, start-ups and strategic partners. Before joining Imerys Wicks worked in a variety of roles at several start-up companies focused on innovative materials. Dr. Wicks began his career at Bayer Corporation, where he ultimately became Vice President of Research for the Coatings and Colorants division. Wicks earned a B.S. in Chemistry from North Dakota State University and a Ph.D. in Polymer Science and Engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Technical Focus: Critical Materials; Industrial Decarbonization

Dr. Mengli Zhang is a Research Assistant Professor in the Department of Geophysics at the Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Zhang invented ergodic sampling that enables economical geophysical data acquisition and accelerates the process by 2 to 10 times compared to traditional acquisition approaches. She is specialized in integration of seismic, electromagnetic, magnetic, and gravity data, optimizing data interpretation and accelerating discovery cycle through ML and AI. She is the Co-Director of the Center for Gravity, Electrical, and Magnetic Studies (CGEM), and the principal investigator (PI) of Geo-Multiphysics Research Consortium. She is also a co-PI of a joint industry program on geologic hydrogen at Colorado School of Mines. Dr. Zhang is the PI of a stimulated hydrogen project funded by ARPA-E as well as the PI of several other projects funded by US government agencies. Dr. Zhang has 10 years of experience in the oil & gas industry, identified well drilling locations with false-positive and false-negative reduction, reserve estimates, risk mitigation. She has located more than 500 drilled natural gas wells, has expertise in the entire exploration cycle starting from prospecting map generation. Her current research is pursuing geologic hydrogen exploration and critical mineral as well as natural gas exploration.