Stanford Energy Seminar | Yi Cui, Sustainability Accelerator & Charlotte Pera, Sustainability Accelerator

Stanford Energy Seminar | Yi Cui, Sustainability Accelerator & Charlotte Pera, Sustainability Accelerator

Event Details:

Monday, October 20, 2025
4:30pm - 5:20pm PDT

Location

Jen-Hsun Huang Building (School of Engineering)
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This event is open to:

Everyone
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The Stanford Energy Seminar has been a mainstay of energy engagement at Stanford for nearly 20 years and is one of the flagship programs of the Precourt Institute for Energy. We aim to bring a wide variety of perspectives to the Stanford community – academics, entrepreneurs, utilities, non-profits, and more. 

Talk Abstract

This session with the leaders of Stanford's Sustainability Accelerator will showcase the amazing work being undertaken by the Accelerator. The Sustainability Accelerator speeds the translation of Stanford research into scalable technology and policy solutions to address urgent global sustainability challenges. It also serves as a launchpad for catalyzing innovative ideas into transformative solutions that will substantially improve the quality of human life and our planet.

 

Speaker Bios 

Yi Cui is the Founding Director of Sustainability Accelerator, Fortinet Founders Professor of materials science and engineering, and energy science and engineering at Stanford University. As a preeminent researcher of nanotechnologies for better batteries and other sustainability materials technologies, Cui has published more than 580 studies and is one of the world’s most cited scientists. In 2014 he was ranked NO.1 worldwide in Materials Science by Thomas Reuters. He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences, fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, fellow of the Materials Research Society, fellow of the Electrochemical Society, and fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. His selected honors include Global Energy Prize (2021), Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award (2021), Materials Research Society Medal (2020), Electrochemical Society Battery Technology Award (2019) and Blavatnik National Laureate (2017). He has founded five companies to commercialize technologies from his lab.

Charlotte Pera has worked for more than 30 years in clean energy, climate change, and philanthropy. In 2023 she was named one of the 50 most powerful women in U.S. philanthropy by Inside Philanthropy magazine. In July 2024, she became the first Executive Director of the Sustainability Accelerator at the Stanford Doerr School of Sustainability. Previously, she served as Vice President and Deputy CEO at the Bezos Earth Fund, a philanthropic organization created by Jeff Bezos that is spending $10 billion this decade to address climate change and protect and restore nature. Before joining the Earth Fund, Charlotte served for nearly nine years as President & CEO of the ClimateWorks Foundation, a leading philanthropic organization that works globally to advance climate solutions through intelligence services, convening, and grantmaking. Earlier in her career, Charlotte advanced clean energy technology and policy in the U.S. and China at the Energy Foundation and at engineering consulting firm Acurex.
Charlotte serves on the advisory board of the 100X Impact Accelerator at the London School of Economics, the governing board of the International Council for Clean Transportation, and the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Innovating Finance for Climate and Nature. She is a Senior Fellow at the Bezos Earth Fund and a Senior Fellow with the Mission Possible Partnership. She holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in mechanical engineering from Stanford University.

 

Anyone with an interest in energy is welcome to join! You can enjoy seminars in the following ways:

 

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