Dr. Ulises Cano Castillo
Instituto Nacional de Electricidad y Energías Limpias, Mexico.
Graduated with honours using electrochemical techniques in the evaluation of steel reinforced building structures, Dr. Cano-Castillo is a Metallurgy Chemical Engineer from the National University of Mexico (1988). He carried out a D.Phil in the University of Oxford studying environmentally assisted cracking of aluminium composites made by spray forming (1991-1995). He joint Instituto de Investigaciones Eléctricas or IIE (now Instituto de Electricidad y Energías Limpias or INEEL) in 1988 where he later founded the Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Group and laboratory (2000-2001).
He was second vicepresident of the Fuelcells Propulsion Institute (2000), an international consortium dedicated to develop fuel cells industrial transportation applications. He is co-founder of the Mexican Hydrogen Society (1999) and one of its former Presidents (2003-2005). Since the year 2003 he represents Mexico in the Executive Committee of the Collaboration Technology Program on Advanced Fuel Cells of the International Energy Agency.
Dr. Cano-Castillo has been a great promoter of real applications of hydrogen fuel cells especially in transportation. Together with his team at INEEL (formerly IIE) and other collaborating institutions a realscale electric utility vehicle based on hydrogen fuel cells was developed and demonstrated. In this development, INEEL collaborated with its own PEMFC technology by designing and manufacturing the FC plant, its balance of plan and its electronic control. Several patents have been granted derived from developing this project.
He has published on different aspects of hydrogen and energy related technologies, from nanotechnology aspects, to modelling and to infrastructure. Dr. Cano has been Chair of various national and international events on hydrogen and fuel cells, and has been reviewer for several specialized journals (Electrochimica Acta, Electroanalytical Chemistry, International Journal of Hydrogen Energy, Journal of Power Sources, Chemical Physics Letters, Applied Energy) and hydrogen congresses.
Since its founding and despite not being INEEL an academic institution, his R&D group has received more than 70 students of all higher education levels including international students. Dr. Cano has been an eager learner of technology transfer and has committed time to enroll in related courses, as he considers that the laboratory work should transcend to the final user and not stay archived in a drawer or in scientific journals only. He has being a visiting researcher in Italy (ITAE) and the USA (University of Nevada at Reno) where he worked with one of the promoters and founders of the California Fuel Cells Partnership. At present he is an academic visitor in the Engineering Sciences Department of the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom, working on Technology-based Context for Decision Making in the Transport Sector. He will reincorporate with INEEL to reassume his responsibilities as head of the institutional Program on Sustainable Transportation, as well as with his Electrochemical Energy Systems Group, to continue his work on efficient, clean and sustainable technologies.