Keynote Speaker

Leveraging the energy transition: Opportunities for mobility, grid, and de-carbonization

Today’s disruptive technologies and digital strategies are driving transitions in the electricity grid, transportation and goals for a decarbonized future. The deployment of cleaner energy sources, global sustainability and climate resilience targets, and emerging consumer demands for personalized energy options is setting the stage for a new energy market landscape. Improvements to electrical energy storage, deployment of grid scale storage, and distributed energy resources are driving transitions to renewables for both electricity generation and transportation. Big data, blockchain technologies, and consumer preferences are ushering the transition to mobility as a service and to personalized energy on demand. Electrification and digitalization of the grid and mobility are accelerating energy transitions and their roles in a decarbonized future. 

This talk will present the role of electrification, disruptive technologies, and digital strategies for transitions to a cleaner and more sustainable energy future for the grid and transportation.

Elizabeth A. Kócs, PhD

Energy Initiative - Director of Programming, Outreach, Research & Education
Urban Planning and Policy - Adjunct Assistant Professor
Honors College - Faculty Fellow
University of Illinois at Chicago
and
MRS Energy & Sustainability - Editor-in-Chief
MRS Bulletin Energy Quarterly – Co-Chair Editorial Board
Materials Research Society

 

Biography

Elizabeth A. Kócs is Director of Programming, Outreach, Research and Education for the Energy Initiative, Adjunct Assistant Professor for Urban Planning and Policy, and Faculty Fellow for the Honors College at the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC), where the focus of her work is to develop and lead the strategic direction of the UIC Energy Initiative. She is an environment-behavior scientist at the intersections of energy, technology, economics, society and urban resilience, and her scholarly work spans environmental research on energy and sustainability perspectives and the built and human environments. As Editor-in-Chief for the Materials Research Society (MRS) Energy & Sustainability journal, Dr. Kócs brings her unique interdisciplinary perspective to the journal’s scope on energy and sustainability as it relates to the impact of materials on society. Dr. Kócs earned her B.Arch. in Architecture from Pratt Institute (New York), and PhD in Environmental Psychology from the City University of New York Graduate Center.