Bio
Jim Szybist is the head of the Propulsion Science Section at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is focused on developing decarbonized solutions for all parts of the transportation sector. The three groups in his section are focused on advancing power electronics, charging, and electric machine solutions for on-road transportation, as well as developing fuel and engine solutions for the hard-to-electrify parts of the transportation sector. This is focused on large engine applications used in off-road, rail, and marine largely, with the fuels of the hydrogen economy, including hydrogen, methanol, and ammonia. Jim has had leadership roles multiple U.S. Department of Energy consortia involving numerous labs. As an individual contributor, he has had impactful research on autoignition processes that result in knock in spark ignited engines and autoignition in low temperature combustion engines, and using kinetics to develop an improved conceptual understanding of the phenomenon. He is a Fellow of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) and the 2015 recipient of the SAE Harry L. Horning Award. He received his Ph.D. from Penn State University in Fuel Science in in 2005 and then joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory.