Rice to host Oct. 25 workshop showcasing ARPA-E gas technologies

David Ruth
713-348-6327
david@rice.edu

Jade Boyd
713-348-6778
jadeboyd@rice.edu

Rice to host Oct. 25 workshop showcasing ARPA-E gas technologies

More than 230 expected for ‘Natural Gas Industry Day’

HOUSTON — (Oct. 20, 2016) — Rice University’s Advanced Biomanufacturing Initiative (iBIO) will host a one-day workshop for the natural gas industry Oct. 25 to highlight the public investment by the Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) in more than 50 transformational natural gas technologies over the past six years.

More than 230 industry leaders have registered for the workshop, which will include invited presentations, panel discussions and an exhibit where teams from universities and private companies will showcase technologies they have developed with ARPA-E support. ARPA-E furthers the commercialization and continued financing efforts for these early stage energy technologies with resources that include market techno-economic analyses, customer discovery and intellectual property strategy.

Who: Speakers include Ramon Gonzalez, founding director of iBIO and former program director at ARPA-E; Ellen Williams, ARPA-E director and former chief scientist for BP; Cindy Yielding, senior vice president of BP; and Scott Tinker, state geologist of Texas and the Allday Endowed Chair in the Jackson School of Geosciences at the University of Texas at Austin.

Invited panelists include Alex Rozenfeld, general partner and founder of Climate Impact Partners; Jared Ciferno, director of the Strategic Center for Natural Gas & Oil at the Department of Energy’s National Energy Technology Laboratory; Kevin Todd, production director for methanol and air separation at BASF; Maurice Gunderson, managing director of Earth Energy Ventures; David Greeson, vice president of development at NRG Energy; Nigel Jenvey, manager of carbon solutions at BP Group Technology; Jack Belcher, executive vice president of HBW Resources and director of business development at the Research Partnership to Secure Energy for America; Donald “Chip” Stoicovy, vice president of Air Liquide Advanced Technologies; Joe King, program director of ARPA-E; and James Unterreiner, GameChanger at Shell. Panel moderators will be David Dankworth, distinguished scientific advisor at ExxonMobil, and Steven Kloos, partner at True North Ventures.

For more information, view the workshop program.

What: “Natural Gas Industry Day: U.S. Investments in Natural Gas Technologies”

When: Tuesday, Oct. 25, 8 a.m.-6:30 p.m.

Where: Rice University, McNair Hall’s Shell Auditorium and Rice Memorial Center’s Grand Hall, 6100 Main St.

Members of the news media who want to attend should RSVP to Jade Boyd, associate director of news and media relations at Rice, at jadeboyd@rice.edu or 713-348-6778.

For a map of Rice University’s campus, go to www.rice.edu/maps/maps.html.

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Rice’s iBIO Initiative: http://ibio.rice.edu/

Located on a 300-acre forested campus in Houston, Rice University is consistently ranked among the nation’s top 20 universities by U.S. News & World Report. Rice has highly respected schools of Architecture, Business, Continuing Studies, Engineering, Humanities, Music, Natural Sciences and Social Sciences and is home to the Baker Institute for Public Policy. With 3,910 undergraduates and 2,809 graduate students, Rice’s undergraduate student-to-faculty ratio is 6-to-1. Its residential college system builds close-knit communities and lifelong friendships, just one reason why Rice is ranked No. 1 for happiest students and for lots of race/class interaction by the Princeton Review. Rice is also rated as a best value among private universities by Kiplinger’s Personal Finance. To read “What they’re saying about Rice,” go to http://tinyurl.com/RiceUniversityoverview.