Southern Research is again hosting the Southeast Energy Storage Symposium, bringing together an array of speakers and panelists to provide attendees with perspectives, benefits, challenges and trends in energy storage, solar policy and regulation.

Now in its second year, the event is begins today at Southern Research’s Oxmoor location on Tom Martin Drive.

The symposium is the only event of its kind in the region and includes keynote speeches and panel discussions featuring experts and professionals from Southern Research, Southern Company, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Tennessee Valley Authority, NextEra, Avista Utilities, Electric Power Research Institute (EPRI) and DOE’s Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratory, among many others.

Bert Taube, Ph.D., Energy Storage and Renewables Program Manager at Southern Research’s Energy & Environment division, said the symposium is designed to inform key industry stakeholders about the value of innovative energy storage systems in an effort to accelerate the technology’s development, testing and adoption.

Taube said energy storage systems represent a critical technology in the smart electricity grids envisioned for the future because they will support important parts of grid modernization such as the integration of renewables or the coverage of peak demand to help lower costs and cut emissions.

“The symposium provides a collaborative forum for policymakers, regulators, utilities, vendors and technology integrators from the Southeast and across the U.S. Collectively, this group will discuss various aspects of energy storage, including grid interconnection, economic modeling, performance, safety, standards and regulation,” Taube said.

KEY TOPICS

Attendees will participate in a wide breadth of panels and sessions hosted by leaders in the industry.

Keynote presentations will be provided by Alejandro Moreno, DOE’s director of water power technologies; Jeff Burleson, senior vice president of environmental and system planning for Southern Company; and Tim Echols, a commissioner on Georgia’s Public Service Commission.

The symposium will cover topics such as emerging energy storage technologies and its impact on diversification of technologies in the grid infrastructure, regulatory and policy perspectives, project development and finance, economics and valuation, as well as compliance with safety and performance standards.

Panel moderators include:

• Gary Brinkworth, director of technology and innovation at TVA
• Richard Simmons, director of energy policy and innovation center at the Georgia Institute of Technology
• Charlie Vartanian, senior technical advisor at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
• Steve Baxley, R&D manager at Southern Company Services
• Russ Weed, president of CleanTech Strategies
• Michael Starke, energy storage program manager, Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

EVALUATING TECHNOLOGY

Attendees will be able to see the first grid-scale vanadium-redox flow battery test system from Avalon Battery to be tested and researched at Southern Research. Southern Research is partnering with Southern Company, EPRI, DOE and Oak Ridge National Laboratory to comprehensively evaluate the Avalon technology at the new Energy Storage Research Center, located on Southern Research’s Oxmoor campus.

The test system is expected to be integrated into the Southern Company system’s infrastructure after an extended period of grid-connected performance and safety testing in compliance with an industry-wide developed test manual.

“Flow battery systems have been around for years, but their adoption into mission-critical parts of utility infrastructures has been very limited,” Taube said.

“Flow batteries offer longer-duration energy storage, which makes them a potentially valuable option as a technology choice; however, researchers must continue to evaluate how they can be used to support grid-scale transmission and distribution systems.”

ENERGY STORAGE RESEARCH CENTER

This year’s symposium takes place on the heels of Tuesday’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for the Energy Storage Research Center, Alabama’s first industrywide resource to accelerate the development and deployment of energy storage technologies. The center is designed for third-party innovators from the electric utility industry, academia, government and technology companies to research, develop and demonstrate energy storage solutions.

Symposium attendees will learn more about the technologies and innovations under way at the Energy Storage Research Center and at other laboratories and utilities nationwide.

This year’s event will offer detailed perspectives on energy storage overall and with respect to policy and regulation. It will provide participants the opportunity to explore the various factors that impact current and future energy storage efforts in the Southeast and beyond.

Southern Research employees continue to contribute funds to spark research projects that can lead to major discoveries and funding opportunities.

“I’m constantly inspired by the relentless pursuit of discovery that our employees engage in every day. And on top of that, they believe and care so deeply for the mission of Southern Research the they are willing to support it through contributions to the Employee Give Campaign,” said Brynne MacCann, the organization’s development officer.

“Already, the campaign has provided seed funding for significant projects that are on their way to delivering real-world results,” she added. “The campaign perfectly embodies the spirit and mission of our organization.”

Southern Research launched the Employee Give Campaign in June 2016 with the goal of raising $1 million over five years. As of May 2019, nearly $760,000 has been pledged, leaving the Birmingham-based non-profit organization three quarters of the way toward its target.

Funds raised through the Employee Give Campaign provide Southern Research employees the opportunity to pursue novel projects that hold significant promise but may not fit within the organization’s traditional funding structure.

The goal is to drive innovation and collaboration from the bottom up to  foster promising research projects that can attract substantial external funding from sources including the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and other longstanding partners.

FOSTERING INNOVATION

A key element of the Employee Give Campaign is Southern Research’s Innovation Grand Challenge, awarded annually by peer review.

So far, six scientific projects have received seed funding under the Innovation Grand Challenge, allowing researchers to access significant support from the NIH, the National Cancer Institute, and the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.

Winners of Southern Research’s Innovation Grand Challenge for 2018 were:

• Seth Cohen, senior electrical engineer on the Engineering Systems Development team. Cohen launched a project to develop advanced real-time signaling processing technologies with broad applications in the consumer, aerospace and defense industries.
• Nathan Fisher, Ph.D., associate director of Bacteriology Laboratory, is leading a team targeting the development of a new treatment for sepsis caused by antibiotic-resistant bacteria. The team is focusing on novel anticancer therapeutics developed by Southern Research as an immune booster to combat the bacterial infection.
• Susan Schrader, Ph.D., senior scientist in the Infectious Disease Research Laboratory, is working to identify a new therapeutic target that could be key to the discovery and development of new anti-HIV drugs.

Southern Research employees were able to award $150,000 to these projects through the Innovation Grand Challenge.

DRIVING FORCE

The Employee Give Campaign has also generated funds for improvements to Southern Research’s campuses. For 2019, the Wellness Committee is outfitting a workout facility with new equipment for employees on the Southside campus.

Previous projects renovated the Thomas Martin Library on the Southside campus and updated the lobbies at three Southern Research locations.

The Employee Give Campaign is part of a broad-based philanthropic program at Southern Research.

“Philanthropic funding is crucial to the success of early stage scientific research,” MacCann said. “The more we can raise to support our work, the faster we can bring life-saving therapeutics and technologies to those in most need. Our employees are the driving force behind this effort.”

Southern Research’s four operating divisions focus on drug discovery, drug development, engineering, and energy and the environment. Its staff of more than 400 scientists, engineers and researchers work at facilities in Alabama, Georgia, Maryland and Texas.

Elizabeth Scribner thought she knew what was going on at Southern Research. Her father’s solar company helped Southern Research install solar panels at its Solar Research Center, and she’s on the board of a local foundation that has donated money to SR. But last year, when she was invited to serve on SR’s Advisory Board, she realized how much she had yet to learn.

“I didn’t know the half of what Southern Research is doing, as far as scientific research and engineering go,” she said. She was amazed to hear about the telescopes SR designed to photograph the eclipse from NASA’s high-altitude research aircraft and the advances in cancer research she hadn’t known about.

“What really grabbed me was when Dr. Amit Goyal came to speak about some of his green energy research,” Scribner said. “I was amazed to hear that he’s developed technology that turns sugar into acrylonitrile, which is used in cars and planes, and I had to smile when I heard about Legos,” said the mother of three. Learning that SR could replace a product that relied on oil refinery with one that used renewable resources, “I got very excited about that,” she said. “Knowing that, and getting a little more energized about everything Southern Research is doing, inspired me to be a Change Agent.”

SR wasn’t her first introduction to green science. “Before I was a mathematician, or a mom, or a wife, I was an environmentalist,” Scribner said. “As an undergraduate at Princeton, I had a minor in environmental studies. And I started learning about all the damage we’ve done to our planet. But on the other side, I also started learning about all the promise that science holds in terms of helping solve those problems.”

Scribner appreciates the platform the Change Campaign provides to talk about Southern Research. “When I tell people, they’re amazed,” she said. “They say, ‘I had no idea this is here in Birmingham.’ And here Southern Research is creating scientific change to improve the world, but they’re also creating jobs and attracting amazing intellectual talent to our city.” She sees great potential in the acrylonitrile technology to create jobs in poorer regions of Alabama. “If we could use this technology to not only improve the condition of our planet but also improve the economic situation in our state, that would be amazing,” she said.

“I’ve got a lot going on. My life is pretty busy. But I feel like it’s a gift for me to be able to volunteer for a group like Southern Research,” Scribner said. “It helps me to step above the day-to-day ‘What am I going to fix for dinner? Oh, no, we’re out of diapers’ and see the bigger picture. We’re not going to be here forever. But my kids’ kids will have kids who will be here a hundred years from now. It’s important to me that they have the ability to eat fresh food, breathe clean air and drink clean water. There’s a lot of work to be done. And here in Birmingham, I feel like we have someone to advocate for that.”

Key Foster wasn’t unaware of Southern Research’s decades long focus on cancer and the numerous life-saving drugs to SR’s credit. But that wasn’t the main reason he chose to support cancer research as part of the Change Campaign. “Cancer is very meaningful to me,” he said. “My wife is a breast cancer survivor, and my father lost his battle with kidney cancer in May. It’s a very personal issue.”

He found out that it was a very personal issue for a lot of people. “Cancer is a topic that, if you intersect with it, it’s a big deal,” Foster said. “And it’s shocking how many people have, either personally or through their families, intersected with it.” When he opened up to others in the community about his experiences with cancer, he was surprised at the number of people who were inspired to share not only their money but their own personal stories. “Hearing all that, it’s not surprising that people are so willing to participate,” he said.

One thing Foster appreciated was the significance of the funds he was raising through the Change Campaign—funds that would go directly to research scientists just down the street who had the potential to move mountains, if given the right resources. The money will support earlier-stage, higher-risk research that hasn’t progressed enough to qualify for federal grants. “It’s like venture capital for scientists,” he said.

“It gives ideas a chance,” Foster said. “I assume there’s a good number of really bright ideas that never make it to the surface, never get a chance to come to fruition or evolve into something, because of that funding gap. This money gives these scientists a chance to incubate those ideas and get them to the point where they can get those government grants to continue the research that could one day birth new drugs and therapies for cancer.”

“It can truly move the needle with smaller amounts of money. It just makes the whole thing make sense,” Foster said. “It would be thrilling to contribute, even in our small way, in support of a major breakthrough by one of these brilliant scientists.”

Because those ideas are being created and nurtured here in Birmingham, Foster was able to meet—and be amazed by—the research scientists who would be turning those donations into discoveries. He was particularly inspired by the work of oncology researcher Rebecca Boohaker, Ph.D., much of whose research focuses on immunotherapy.

“These are therapies that enable the immune system to recognize, target and eliminate cancer cells wherever they are in the body,” he said. “This is potentially a universal answer to cancer.” Boohaker’s research could one day mean happy endings for all the stories he heard during the Change Campaign, “and I get to know the real players who have dedicated their careers and lives to solving these really tough problems,” he said.

When, during the leadup to the Change Campaign, David Powell was asked if he knew anything about what Southern Research does, his answer was no. “I’ve driven past it a million times and had no idea what was really going on here,” he said. When he was invited to tour the campus instead of just driving past, he was amazed at the discoveries being made right in the middle of Birmingham.

SR’s focus on neurodegenerative disease, in particular, stood out sharply to him because of the harsh introduction he’d had to the subject the previous year. Last December, Powell’s mother died of ovarian cancer. But her cancer diagnosis came nine months after her Alzheimer’s diagnosis—and he was shocked to learn that she saw the cancer as a blessing. “Her mother had a protracted battle with Alzheimer’s,” he said. “And to my mom, cancer seemed like the better option.” SR’s research, he realized, had the potential to make the disease less terrifying.

“Southern Research is a part of Birmingham that needs to be told,” he said. “There weren’t enough people spreading that message.”

Powell was happy to do that, sharing his enthusiasm not just with old friends in Birmingham but with new friends made on dozens of business trips. “By the time you get to dinner, people are tired of talking about business,” he said. “You’re looking for interesting things to talk about.”

He even has a surefire opening line. “I’ll say, ‘Tell me about your city. What’s going on here?’ And that usually invites the question, ‘Well, what about where you’re from? What’s going on there?’” What’s going on in Birmingham is groundbreaking discovery at Southern Research.

That kind of awareness is crucial, he said, when working with diseases like Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. “Unfortunately, I think the neurodegenerative things are something people see and just say, ‘Aw, that’s sad,’ as opposed to, ‘Aw, that’s something we should do something about,’” he said. The diseases are lengthy and devastating for both the patient and family, “but they aren’t necessarily as attractive for investment. Or they’ve been forgotten while we spend money on something that seems more current.” Or, he said, less insurmountable.

“Insurmountable” isn’t a concept Powell believes in. He prefers the tech industry concept of “zero to one”—“Something didn’t exist, then it exists,” he said. He wants to see that kind of energy directed toward medical discovery. “How can we take a disease that was incurable and make it curable? How do we take something that was an impossible problem to solve and then solve that problem?”

Powell noted that in 1900, the two leading causes of death were flu and gastrointestinal distress. “We’d laugh,” he said. “‘People in 1900 died of flu and diarrhea? Who dies like that?’ I’d like to think that in 2018, we could flash forward 40 years and people would say, ‘People died of ovarian cancer? Who dies of ovarian cancer? Who dies of Alzheimer’s? That’s ridiculous!’”

Southern Research announced today that Stacey S. Kelpke, Ph.D., an experienced biomedical/bioengineering researcher, has been named program manager of its medical device technologies initiative, AIMTech.

In her new role, Kelpke oversees a program that aims to accelerate the development of early-stage medical device technologies as potential commercial products through prototyping, market validation, and other forms of assistance.

“The AIMTech initiative harnesses the power of Birmingham’s world-class medical knowledge, precision engineering and manufacturing expertise to move ideas toward the medical device marketplace,” said Mark J. Suto, Ph.D., vice president of Drug Discovery at Southern Research.

“Stacey has a strong background in biomedical engineering, and she possesses the talents to move AIMTech forward on its important mission.”

Southern Research formed AIMTech in 2014 to combine the research and discovery capabilities of the Birmingham-based non-profit organization’s scientists and engineers with entrepreneurs and clinicians. The program’s goal is to facilitate the development of new medical devices to improve healthcare in the U.S. and around the world.

“We’re really focusing on medical technologies, which encompasses medical devices but also big data, artificial intelligence, robotics and personal management apps,” Kelpke said.

“We’re exploring where Southern Research fits into this space and how we can actually make an impact for the patient. That is what this is all about – impacting patient care.”

AIMTech PIPELINE

Kelpke said AIMTech is well positioned to help establish the Birmingham area as a center for medical device business formation by capitalizing on the region’s rich heritage in manufacturing and its dynamic healthcare sector.

She said AIMTech operates on a solid foundation, with projects in its pipeline poised to move forward. One of those is ResistX, a unique force-induced treadmill that allows people recovering from neurological or physical disorders to exercise. The device, developed with a team from the University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), debuted in 2017.

Kelpke arrives at AIMTech at a time when global demand for medical device technologies is expanding at a compound annual growth rate projected to top 5 percent over the next few years. The U.S. remains the world’s largest single medical device market, valued at around $156 billion, or nearly 40 percent of the global market in 2017, according to data from the U.S. Commerce Department.

Kelpke previously worked at UAB, most recently serving as licensing manager for medical devices for the university’s Harbert Institute for Innovation and Entrepreneurship. Between 2013 and 2018, she negotiated license agreements with biotech and medical companies that generated more than $1.5 million in revenue.

Prior to that, she was an instructor and researcher at UAB, where she secured funding for four R&D projects and authored 11 peer-reviewed papers.

Kelpke earned a master’s degree and a doctorate in biomedical engineering from UAB, as well as a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Auburn University.

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