Ruud Kempener, Policy Officer, Directorate General for Energy (ENER) Renewables & CCS Policy European Commission

Ruud Kempener is a policy officer in the renewables unit of DG Energy since 2016, where he works on Europe's international cooperation activities, the industrial competitiveness of renewables, and the Commission’s strategies on hydrogen and energy system integration. Before that, Ruud was the Power Sector Transformation Strategies Analyst at International Renewable Energy Agency (IRENA) and he was responsible for the initial development of IRENA's global renewable energy roadmap. From 2007 to 2011, Ruud spend two years as a Research Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government and two years as a postdoctoral fellow at the Science Policy Research Unit (SPRU) at the University of Sussex, UK. Ruud received his PhD in Chemical Engineering at the University of Sydney, Australia and an MSc in Technology & Society from Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands.

Philip Julien, Managing Director, NewGen Energy

Philip Julien was born and raised in Trinidad, and continued his tertiary education in Canada, graduating in 1993 from McGill University in Montreal Canada, with a Bachelor’s in Chemical Engineering and a Minor in Environmental Engineering. After working in the Canadian engineering consulting sector, he returned to Trinidad in 2001, and has been integrally involved in project development and consulting activities in the local energy sector since then. After serving for five years as the Location Director for WorleyParsons in Trinidad, he assumed the role as Managing Director of Kenesjay Systems Limited. He is also the Founder and Chairman of the Heroes Foundation – a registered not-for-profit non-governmental organization which was established in 2002, to “Create the Next Generation of Heroes”.