Following its recent Council Meeting, IFRF has announced its Company Secretary as Melissa Ayres and new Executive Director as Greg Kelsall.

Melissa Ayres – Company Secretary

Melissa Ayres is currently Head of Finance and Commercial at the University of Sheffield’s Translational Energy Research Centre (TERC), IFRF’s primary Preferred Research Partner providing the location of IFRF’s office.  Her role also includes financial and commercial responsibility for the University’s new Sustainable Aviation Fuels Innovation Centre (SAF-IC) which will be the first of its kind in Europe with facilities to test, validate and certify new sustainable aviation fuels. 

With previous roles including University Head of Capital Finance and Finance Director and Company Secretary of a manufacturing company, Melissa took on the role of IFRF Company Secretary in January 2022, providing financial and contract support to the IFRF.

I’m sure you will agree that Melissa will be a great asset to the IFRF team!

Greg Kelsall — Executive Director

I became the Deputy Director of IFRF in February 2021 and now take over the helm from Philip Sharman, our previous Executive Director. 

With over 35-years’ experience in the energy industry, I have specialist knowledge in clean energy systems.  As an independent energy consultant, my activities include:

• Principal Associate to the International Centre for Sustainable Carbon, writing reports on ‘CCUS barriers and potential’, ‘Hydrogen production from coal’, ‘The role of LECT in a net zero emission Asian future’ and about to start my next report on ‘Industry resilience as net zero approaches’.   
• Chairman of the Institute of Chemical Engineers Clean Energy Special Interest Group with over 2600 members globally and a linkedin group of over 720 members.  Please feel free to join for information on our free to attend webinars.
• Registered Project Monitoring Officer with Innovate UK, including Monitoring Officer role for Industrial Strategy Challenge Fund, Industrial Decarbonisation, Phase 1 Deployment clusters and Phase 2 Humber and Teesside cluster projects valued at almost £200m gross budget with £86m of external funding.

My previous industrial experience was primarily with the power equipment companies of General Electric and Alstom where I worked on a wide range of technology programmes including fuel flexible gas turbines to burn syngas and hydrogen, carbon capture systems, stationary power fuel cells and renewable power generation.  Prior to this, I worked with the UK’s former state-owned British Coal at their Coal Research Establishment on technologies including PFBC and IGCC.  You can find more on background at linkedin.com/in/greg-kelsall/

I feel honoured to now take on the IFRF Executive Director role and will do my very best to execute on the strategy we have defined for 2022.

Administrative Support Team

We also have administrative support in the shape of Lisa, Rhianne and Siobhan who will be undertaking tasks related to Monday Night Mail, website maintenance, training courses and technical meetings arrangements, etc.    

 So overall, I think we are now in great shape and Melissa, Lisa, Rhianne, Siobhan and myself look forward to working with you all!