Sridhar Kanuri | Deploying Fuel Cells and Electrolyzers at Scale
In this episode of Hydrogen Innovators, co-hosts Emma Kerr and Melania Rojas Mendoza sit down with Sridhar Kanuri, Global Chief Technology Officer for both HyAxiom and Doosan Fuel Cell corporation. With decades of experience in hydrogen and electrochemical systems, Sridhar shares his insights on deploying fuel cell and electrolyzer technologies at scale—from hospital microgrids to hydrogen-powered AI data centers. The conversation covers everything from the challenges of scaling lab innovations to the importance of service infrastructure, global collaboration, and building the right team. Sridhar also offers thoughtful advice for early-career scientists and engineers and reflects on the global momentum driving the energy transition.
Listen on Spotify and Apple.
This article is part of the series: Hydrogen Innovators Podcast
Transcript
[00:00:00.50] [MUSIC PLAYING]
[00:00:03.00] SRIDHAR KANURI: I think we deploy impactful products that are paving the way for a future of hydrogen energy. What sets us apart, in my mind, with us compared to the rest of the folks, is our decades of experience making these electrochemical products, servicing them, and also the backing of our parent company, Doosan. I'm really hoping that AI data centers and the amount of power needs for AI data centers will really push hydrogen into mainstream.
[00:01:03.58] EMMA KERR: Welcome back to Hydrogen Innovators, a podcast produced by the Stanford Hydrogen Initiative, where we spotlight bold innovators shaping the future of hydrogen across academia, industry, and policy. You can find Hydrogen Innovators on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Emma Kerr, and I'm joined today by my cohost, Milenia Rojas Mendoza. Both of us are PhD students here at Stanford working on hydrogen technologies.
[00:01:31.82] MILENIA ROJAS MENDOZA: Thanks, Emma. We're thrilled to be joined today by Sridhar Kanuri. Sridhar, welcome to the podcast. Great to have you with us.
[00:01:38.98] SRIDHAR KANURI: Great, thank you, guys. Thank you both for having me here. I think before we start off, I just wanted to say that you guys are doing a great job with this podcast, bringing awareness to various applications of hydrogen.
[00:01:53.74] EMMA KERR: Thank you so much for joining us. And thank you for your kind words. We're really happy to have you on the podcast. Sridhar is the Global Chief Technology Officer for both HyAxiom and Doosan Fuel Cell Corporation. At HyAxiom, Sridhar leads global R&D and engineering as well as service and installation.
[00:02:11.61] MILENIA ROJAS MENDOZA: He's also an elected member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, a testament to his leadership in the field.
[00:02:18.29] EMMA KERR: So thank you, Sridhar, for joining us today. And we're really excited to pick your brain on your vast experiences in the hydrogen economy and in the landscape. So let's start with just your position now at HyAxiom. And HyAxiom combines two different words, hydrogen and axiom, which is referring to a self-evident truth.
[00:02:39.73] And you've described hydrogen's role in the energy transition as just that, self-evident, from our conversations prior. And I'm just curious, how does HyAxiom embody and advance this belief in technology and strategy?
[00:02:53.57] SRIDHAR KANURI: Maybe let me touch on the point about HyAxiom and how it advances the self-evident truth, and then we can get into the details. So I think HyAxiom advances the self-evident truth by innovating and deploying advanced electrochemical technologies that enable clean, efficient, and reliable power generation and also hydrogen production.
[00:03:18.03] On the power generation side, I think we enable customers to transition towards sustainable energy by integrating hydrogen into practical applications, and thereby lowering carbon emissions, or, in some cases, eliminating them. I can also give you a few examples as we go through this whole thing. We have units at universities, data centers, hospitals, et cetera, where we have integrated our PureCell Model 400, which is based on phosphoric acid fuel cell technology, into the customer's energy systems. And they have been able to achieve, in some cases, up to 90% CHP efficiency.
[00:04:02.93] What this means is that they can relatively reduce their emissions compared to getting energy from the grid or from other sources by quite a significant amount, and also cut emissions. In addition to this, we also have a few more applications running on hydrogen. And in this case, customers can generate power with no emissions whatsoever. There will be no NOx, no SOx, or no carbon emissions that come out of the fuel cell power plant. Another aspect of our product is also integrating carbon capture for some customers that can either utilize the carbon dioxide or sequester it. And so with this wide variety of applications, I think we enable customers to achieve lowering emissions or eliminating emissions. And I think that fits aptly with the name HyAxiom.
[00:05:02.51] So, in addition, I think that's been our core technology till now, but we are also launching some new products. The first one is a 300-kilowatt solid oxide fuel cell. And it has higher efficiency compared to incumbent sources. So automatically, you have less emissions compared to incumbent sources. In addition, we are also getting into electrolysis. We are in the midst of launching our 1-megawatt PEM electrolyzer, or also a multimegawatt PEM electrolyzer.
[00:05:40.03] So what sets us apart in my mind, with us compared to the rest of the folks, is our decades of experience making these electrochemical products, servicing them, and also the backing of our parent company, Doosan. With the parent company's help, we have been able to provide financial solutions and guarantees to customers that enable them to deploy these products confidently. So coming back to your original question on how does HyAxiom further this self-evident truth, I think we deploy impactful products that are paving the way for a future of hydrogen energy. That's how I would state it.
[00:06:26.62] EMMA KERR: That's awesome to see this structure kind of play out from a larger corporation into a new technology that's emerging, and finding that support in order to make something realized. So it's great to hear that you're expanding and exploring different technologies as well. And I think Milenia and I, both working on PEM electrolysis, are also extremely excited to hear about that point as well.
[00:06:48.70] MILENIA ROJAS MENDOZA: Yes, super exciting. I work on electrolyzers and green hydrogen production, so seeing it actually being used in real applications like just gets me super excited. But another question that I have is looking ahead, hydrogen demand is projected to grow in the near future like 1.5 times by 2030, with much of that growth coming from new applications. Do you envision a future of power generation running 100% hydrogen? And if you do, what would that roadmap look like?
[00:07:21.88] SRIDHAR KANURI: Yeah. I think if you'd asked me this question 10 years ago, I probably would have been very skeptical about using hydrogen for power generation. In the past five years, I think we've been able to find opportunities for using hydrogen that would have been otherwise rented or sold off at very low prices. We are specifically seeing these opportunities in petrochemical complexes and oil refineries which use natural gas as their primary energy source.
[00:07:54.54] A couple of examples. Our first project is Daeson Green Energy in South Korea, where we were able to install 50 megawatts, or 114 of our units, at a Hanwha Total Petrochemical complex. The customer upgraded their processes and they were left with excess hydrogen. We were able to work with the customer to deploy our fuel cells there and generate power for them. And in this case, because the hydrogen was available, there are no emissions again, whatsoever. The fuel cell itself does not produce any emissions.
[00:08:29.94] So the customer was able to generate clean power using this. And we've had this site operational for almost five years, and it's been operational at like 98% capacity, providing roughly 400 gigawatt hours of energy annually to the customers. I just want to put this in context, that this amount of energy is equivalent to powering roughly 40,000 US homes, or approximately 40% of Napa County in California. So that's a lot of power [LAUGHS] that we're generating that's completely clean, no emissions whatsoever.
[00:09:11.17] We also have another 18 and 1/2 megawatts, or 42 units, that are operating on byproduct hydrogen from naphtha cracking. Again, this hydrogen would have been sold off at very low prices, or, in some cases, could have been vented, that now we are able to use for power generation. Similar to this, we have another 20 megawatts that will be coming online by the middle of this year, and another 60 megawatts that will be coming online sometime by middle of next year.
[00:09:46.09] In addition to all of this, we are doing our very first project on blue hydrogen in California. It's at Kern Energy complex in California. And this is a 3.2 megawatt installation that will be coming online early 2027. So in total, by end of next year, early 2027, we'll have roughly 150 megawatts of baseloaded power generation that is going to be operating on pure hydrogen. So now I see these kinds of projects paving the way for using hydrogen in power generation. And then eventually, when there is green hydrogen and blue hydrogen and all forms of hydrogen that are available, we can use those for power generation also.
[00:10:39.39] In the more recent days, we've been hearing from gas companies, the big gas companies that exist today, supply blue hydrogen. They've been approaching us to see how we can use the blue hydrogen for power generation, specifically for the AI data centers that are coming up. And hyperscalers are interested in generating large amounts of power, and they also want to generate it sustainably. So they've been reaching out to gas companies and asking for solutions. And we have, I think, the perfect product that can meet those challenges and provide power immediately for these customers.
[00:11:20.79] So I see with the abundant natural gas that we have in our country, a lot of blue hydrogen projects coming up that can meet the power demand. And then eventually, when renewables proliferate and green hydrogen comes up, it can be added to the mix to generate power also. So that's how I see the transition towards generating power with hydrogen happening in the near future and in the long term.
[00:11:49.09] MILENIA ROJAS MENDOZA: No, that is super exciting. It's crazy how much the hydrogen technology and economy has grown over the years.
[00:11:57.28] EMMA KERR: Yeah, it's also great to hear that you're involved in so many different industries, and people are excited about building this technology into their structure that they have currently. So I'm curious, from your perspective, do you see one of those applications really succeeding above others in being a point where the transition to hydrogen really makes the most sense?
[00:12:19.80] SRIDHAR KANURI: Yeah, I'm really hoping that AI data centers and the amount of power needs for AI data centers will really push hydrogen into mainstream and allow for the transition of using hydrogen as an energy. I know today it is very difficult to make economics work with hydrogen as energy carrier and competing with natural gas, or even the incumbent oil. But over the course of long term, I think everybody still has their eyes set on sustainability. And like I said before, blue hydrogen and then transitioning to green hydrogen is how I see these industries using hydrogen for power generation. And I truly think that AI data centers will be the catalyst to push this change through.
[00:13:19.66] EMMA KERR: Yeah, I think we'll see a lot in the next 5 to 10 years to see if this is something that will push it forward. I really agree with everything that you said.
[00:13:29.26] MILENIA ROJAS MENDOZA: My next question was, we do a lot of lab stuff, and we work with very controlled systems. I work with 1-centimeter squares, which I'm sure is nothing compared to the type of systems you work with. When you were deploying this type of technology, have there been moments when you had to pivot due to problems that happened that you previously did not see from pilot to scale up? And then how did you overcome that, and what advice would you have for people that just like are trying to go from lab scale to pilot to industrial?
[00:14:03.44] SRIDHAR KANURI: Yeah, I think that's a very good question. I think we've had instances where we had to pivot from deploying a technology or a component into our product. And in some cases, we've had tremendous success going from lab scale into a product incorporation. So maybe let me answer your question with two specific examples, one where we had to pivot and not use it, and one where we actually were able to use it.
[00:14:33.72] So the first one is an example where we wanted to reduce the thickness of the electrolyte layer in our fuel cell. So we coat our electrodes with a 25-micron matrix coating. It's a silicon carbide coating. And we imbibe it with electrolyte and then sandwich the electrodes together to make the electrode pair for the fuel cell. And the total thickness is now 50 microns.
[00:15:05.70] Our target was to reduce the total thickness to half or even less than half of it. So we were coating thin coatings in the lab, similar to what you do in your lab. And we were coating 10-micron thick coatings onto those electrodes. And we took it through all kinds of lab testing where we wanted to evaluate like leakage across the cell and understand if it can hold the pressure differential between the cathode and anode and so on.
[00:15:38.14] All of those lab-scale testings were successful. We thought, OK, great. Let's move forward towards incorporating it into production. And when we started making production batches of these parts, we started seeing defects like pinholes and so on. And we tried to tweak the process, upgrade the process, and did a lot of stuff to overcome these challenges, these defects.
[00:16:05.77] But at the end of the day, we were not successful with the technology we had. And we had to abandon this project because the cost-benefit analysis of having an electrode leak during operation versus the small performance loss is acceptable. So we pivoted from it, even though the technology was capable of working, and we left it for future-- as someone in future, like you, to come in and fix those coating challenges. So that's an example where we think the technology works, but we could not make it in the manufacturing process.
[00:16:48.31] Another example is a case where we tweaked our catalyst to improve the performance. And what ended up happening is the beginning of life performance took a little bit of a hit, but over the course of the 10-year life of the fuel cell, it showed an improvement in average efficiency by roughly three points, which is a significant deal. And so we went through our rigorous process of lab-scale testing, doing production batches at our suppliers, then making pilot-scale parts, incorporating it into our product, testing it for a certain amount of time, and then released it for production.
[00:17:33.85] So it's a long and hard process, but the implications of any failures at that scale is quite large. So we had to go through a rigorous process and make sure that it works. So hopefully that gives you a flavor of how we need to look at new technologies. And in some cases, they can work. And in some cases, they won't work. But a cost-benefit analysis or a business case analysis is typically a good framework to use and make sure that you can incorporate a technology into the product.
[00:18:15.17] EMMA KERR: I'm curious-- when we talk about these different systems that you're implementing and seeing these technologies that sometimes fail and sometimes are successful, can you give us a little bit more of an idea of what implementing a fuel cell system looks like regarding, What's the lifetime of these systems? What's kind of the age of some of the systems that you've already-- been put into place?
[00:18:39.87] And then you mentioned earlier that one of the benefits of having a parent company that experienced in these sorts of technologies is also developing those service routines, which I think, coming into a new technology, is something that can be a challenge, is how do you get your service providers and just your general, whether it's emergency services or your community, to adapt to a new technology and all of the challenges that come with that? So I'm curious, can you just talk a little bit more about the reality of how these engineering decisions play out?
[00:19:15.40] SRIDHAR KANURI: Yeah. So let's talk about product development and go from there into how these things operate in the field. So when we talk about product development, you go through a typical product development process, which includes concept phase, detailed design phase where you are putting together the entire system design and making sure that it meets the product requirements. But once you've finished those design phases, now comes the real part where you're actually building the components, you're putting the prototype together, and once the prototype is together, you then need to do testing.
[00:19:55.20] And that testing typically has to encompass what this product would experience in the field, not just lab-scale assessments. So that real-world testing comes from a lot of field experience that we've gathered over the years. Simple things such as grid disturbances that can impact how a fuel cell operates to more complicated things, where you could have a fuel valve that has to ramp up or down with the changes of load on the fuel cell from the customer. In some cases, when the valve is opening, it has one type of behavior, versus a valve, when it is closing, it can have another type of behavior because of hysteresis.
[00:20:47.28] All of these things need to be taken into account as you're designing your control systems, and make sure that your fuel cell meets the durability and reliability targets that have been set for it. So that means bringing field experience into verification testing, and make sure that you have really tested the unit at all the operational boundary conditions is key. Even then, when you deploy this product into the field, you will still see something new. And we, even till today, see something new that we haven't experienced at all. And that opens your eyes to all the things that you can envision and how your service team needs to react to something that is unanticipated from the field.
[00:21:41.48] So to address this, I think the way we do it is we gather a lot of data from each of our units, whether it is a fuel cell system or an electrolyzer system. We gather roughly 600 data points every second. And that amount of data, we use-- we do a lot of analytics on it. Simple analytics are, let's say, your water treatment system resin bed needs to change because the conductivity of water is going up inside an electrolyzer or a fuel cell. We get a signal from our unit in the field, and the service technician goes and changes the resin band.
[00:22:28.42] Similarly, if an air filter is clogging up, you get a signal related to pressure drop across the air filter from the field. And your service technician can go change it before the pressure drop becomes too high, cuts off the airflow, and shuts down the system. So those are some of the simple things that we've been doing for a long time. We are now transitioning towards harnessing the power of that data even more. We're doing more analytics on this data to understand the behaviors of various components under various operating conditions, whether it is negative 20, 30 degrees C in North Dakota, or whether it is in sunny conditions. We gather information and we use it to make decisions.
[00:23:25.45] So that kind of experience and being able to harness the data and put it to use really helps you with optimizing your service schedules and then optimizing your service costs, which are a big deal for both electrolyzers and fuel cells. If you consider levelized cost of electricity or levelized cost of hydrogen, you would see the cost of fuel as the very top one. The second one is the cost of service. And finally, the cost of capital equipment comes in.
[00:24:03.31] So we typically tend to talk about capital costs, reducing the capital cost of the unit, reducing the stack cost, and so on. But it's very important to understand there is a big chunk in the middle that captures a lot of costs for customers, which is the service cost. And being able to reduce that is absolutely critical for making these electrochemical technologies commercial.
[00:24:28.63] MILENIA ROJAS MENDOZA: Yeah, no, there's so many intricate costs that come once you scale it up. And then just like a can of worms is opened up. My question for you is, How do you see each region playing its part? With the US having an abundance of renewables, and maybe we can make the hydrogen, but then other places like Europe and Japan not having so much access to renewables, and then we can make the hydrogen. And then also seeing how does the Global South? How do you see each region playing a role in this energy transition?
[00:25:02.01] SRIDHAR KANURI: I think that's a very deep question. [LAUGHS] But let me try to answer it. From my perspective, based on what I have seen is various regions are going to have resources that are rich in a certain category.
[00:25:20.45] Like you said, US is going to have a strong position in natural gas and then eventually transition towards blue hydrogen and then green hydrogen. In the case of Mideast and India, you see those countries having a vast amount of solar available at all times. And especially countries like India don't have natural resources like oil and gas. So they would want to become energy independent. And their path is going to be install a lot of solar, generate green hydrogen, and use that hydrogen in hard to abate sectors like ammonia making, steel making, and whatnot, and transition that way.
[00:26:13.32] In the case of Mideast, they have access to vast amounts of solar, but they also have a vast amount of oil and gas. And Mideast is looking at this energy transition for the long term. That's what I've experienced over the course of past year traveling to Mideast extensively, meeting with people. I've experienced that, yes, they have access to oil and gas, but they are also focused on long term, 50-years, 100-years horizon.
[00:26:44.98] And they're looking at how they can harness solar that they have available and create networks where they can use that solar to make hydrogen or other valuable products like ammonia and transfer it to other places that don't have access to it, especially countries like South Korea and Japan that have limited land mass and have these energy needs. They would be procuring stuff from other places and incorporating it into their energy mix.
[00:27:19.34] So we've touched about Mideast, India, we've touched about Japan, South Korea, and also the US. I think various regions are going to transition at different rates using different technologies. But at the end of the day, what I've seen is everybody is still focused on sustainability. So being able to cut those emissions and transition responsibly has been a key aspect of all my discussions that have happened in these various regions over the course of the past few years.
[00:27:54.28] MILENIA ROJAS MENDOZA: Thank you so much for your answer. No, that's a really great perspective. And it's comforting to know that everybody's taking it seriously and everybody's working on it. So, thank you.
[00:28:05.08] EMMA KERR: And it's also great as a global company of Doosan that you're able to see this perspective from many different regions, many different parts of the globe. And I think also moving into your position in HyAxiom and the way that you're working on a team that is so global and with people of a lot of different backgrounds, I'm curious, as you develop your own network of your leaders that are moving forward with these engineering innovations, and you're overseeing both technical deployment as well as just team deployment for these solutions, how do you approach talent development and building your right team in order to support your ambitious goals?
[00:28:54.50] MILENIA ROJAS MENDOZA: Yeah. I think that's always a tough question. And for us and our team, the way we look at it is we need to hire the right people first. And the couple of key ingredients that make our right team, from our perspective, are, one, whatever discipline it is, you need to have strong fundamentals. Whether it is a chemical engineer, electrical engineer, mechanical engineer, manufacturing engineer, or even a supply chain person, you really need to have strong fundamentals and understanding of your discipline.
[00:29:31.74] And then the second element is meeting your commitments. So when you say you're going to do something, put in the effort and make sure that you are mindful of the commitments that you've made. And that goes a long way in establishing yourself as a leader and making sure that the rest of the team also values you as a leader when you start meeting those commitments. And finally, teamwork, being able to work across different cross-functional teams and, in our case, not just one team in one location, but a global team working between the US team members and also the Korea team is key for us.
[00:30:16.37] So those are the three elements for us that make a right team from the perspective of meeting our business objectives. Once we have that team in place, there are a lot of activities that we do with regards to training them. I'll give you a very specific example.
[00:30:36.15] Entry-level folks that join our company typically start in our testing area. And by doing so, they get access to the entire power plant from day one. They are now able to understand the control system. They're now able to understand how the cell stack works, BOP components, and so on.
[00:31:01.43] So by testing that power plant and having access to the overall view, you have gained experience in all of the power plant. And then you also have your specific interests. And then within a year or two, people transition towards our functional groups. Whether it is systems engineering or cell stack engineering or electrical engineering, they move into various departments and then start contributing towards either cost reduction, new product development, or, even in some cases, transitioning towards business development.
[00:31:36.81] So I think that's how we've structured, and that's how we operate. And I think it's been a good model for us so far.
[00:31:44.57] EMMA KERR: I think as both myself and Milenia are building our own technical background through our PhDs, that's great to hear. And I fully agree. I think in order to solve a problem all the way through, you need to understand it from sometimes even the most minute details and minute problems, so.
[00:32:01.49] SRIDHAR KANURI: Yeah. Just to give an example, I think one of our successful engineers that I worked a long time ago was actually a PhD in, I think, geophysics. [LAUGHS]
[00:32:17.61] EMMA KERR: I think, yeah, just building the method of solving problems and approaching them with a creative mindset, laying out what needs to be done. And at the end of the day, that's one of the greatest points of growth in a PhD, is assessing a problem and then developing the right steps forward to make that solution. And that sort of framework is something you can apply to truly anything, even if you study geophysics.
[00:32:44.04] SRIDHAR KANURI: Yes.
[00:32:44.84] MILENIA ROJAS MENDOZA: And the resiliency when your projects don't work out and you're like, you have to keep going. And then being creative about how to fix it. So as a grad student myself, getting to interview leaders like you is incredibly inspiring. I feel like when you start your career and you go-- and then you went and you look at where you are now, and maybe it didn't seem so linear, or maybe it did. But if you could go back, what piece of advice would you give to your younger self at the start of your career?
[00:33:14.80] SRIDHAR KANURI: What piece of advice I would give to my younger self. I think I really wouldn't change a whole lot. The key piece of advice that I would give myself is be curious, be involved in any opportunities you get as you start your career, and take on various tasks. Be open to taking on new tasks. Even though they might sometimes seem foreign, be open to taking on new tasks, and that really helps broaden your knowledge and brings perspectives that you would otherwise not get.
[00:33:52.84] Experience is a very, very critical thing in terms of how you can manage your growth over the course of your career. And I would say be open and be curious.
[00:34:06.54] MILENIA ROJAS MENDOZA: That's one of the biggest things, just broadening your horizon and expanding it, because how can you really get-- How can you grow if you're not trying new things and making yourself like-- not uncomfortable, but to a certain extent, to just proving that, I can do this, even if at first, didn't think you could.
[00:34:23.22] SRIDHAR KANURI: I agree.
[00:34:24.26] EMMA KERR: Thank you for the advice. And it seems like not only are you applying that in your own personal career, but also just in the work that you do at HyAxiom. I think pushing beyond the comfort zone is something that your corporation really embodies, and it's great to see all the solutions that you're able to find by not being afraid of the problems, and really going and seeing what can be done. So we appreciate all of the amazing work that HyAxiom and, Sridhar, that you are doing.
[00:34:54.72] SRIDHAR KANURI: I want to say one thing in this context, that when we started as part of Doosan, HyAxiom, we started with one product that operated on natural gas and provided baseloaded power to customers. Today, we have a product that can operate on multiple fuels. It can operate on natural gas, hydrogen, or LPG.
[00:35:21.36] It can work in tandem with other energy generation sources like solar, energy storage, and also the grid, and can move up or down depending on what the grid is saying. We are launching our solid oxide fuel cell product that can be used for stationary fuel cells. Or on ships, we are going to be deploying our solid oxide fuel cell on a Shell LNG carrier soon. And our engineers are going to be traveling on that ship for a few months testing that unit out. [LAUGHS]
[00:36:04.35] And finally, we're also working on electrolyzers, like I said, a 1-megawatt containerized module or a multimegawatt module. So we've seen a lot of opportunities for tinkering with new technologies and bringing them into products. And that fits into being curious and being able to work on a variety of things. So that's been my experience with Doosan, and it's been very rewarding.
[00:36:37.81] EMMA KERR: That's amazing to hear the portfolio that you're moving towards. And I think we're all excited to see what happens with Doosan and HyAxiom, and excited to cheer you on as you continue to solve really hard problems, but in sustainable and innovative ways. So, Sridhar, I would like to end our podcast with a question that we ask all of our interviewees. As Isaac Newton once said, we see further by standing on the shoulders of giants. Who are the people, past or present, that inspire you the most, and why?
[00:37:11.61] SRIDHAR KANURI: Yeah, I've thought about who inspired me for a bit. But I think I've come down to this. It's not one person or one thing. It's been a culmination of stuff over the course of my career.
[00:37:28.29] So at the forefront are my parents. My father, a math professor, taught me to think analytically and work hard. My mother, on the other hand, emphasized empathy, and that's helped a lot in terms of how I lead my team.
[00:37:44.79] In my professional journey, my supervisor, my first supervisor, Bob Fredley, he was very instrumental in laying the foundation for my knowledge in electrochemistry. When tackling design constraints during automotive fuel cell development days, Bob would give me thoughtful suggestions rather than direct answers, even though he often knew the eventual outcome of what I was doing. That instilled in me the ability to think critically and also become independent in terms of my analysis.
[00:38:21.27] My colleagues also have been an ongoing source of growth and learning. Our discussion on design issues, sales issues, field issues, or even supplier issues have not only expanded my knowledge, but also helped me better support my team. And finally, I think the books I read, a habit which my wife has inculcated in me.
[00:38:47.45] The most impactful ones that I've read are Shoe Dog, by Nike cofounder Phil Knight, Code Breaker, about Jennifer Doudna, the Nobel Prize winner in gene editing, CRISPR technique. And more recently, A New Kind of Diversity, which talks about how you work across different generations and different groups of people. So I see this as a combination of stuff that has shaped me and helped me grow over the course of my career.
[00:39:22.37] MILENIA ROJAS MENDOZA: That's so lovely. I know your parents must be extremely proud. I know family, it's like--
[00:39:29.00] SRIDHAR KANURI: Thank you.
[00:39:29.76] MILENIA ROJAS MENDOZA: --around you. You're inspiring us and the world.
[00:39:33.56] SRIDHAR KANURI: Thank you.
[00:39:34.64] EMMA KERR: Thank you so much, Sridhar, for your time. We really appreciate this conversation. And we're excited to, as I said earlier, cheer you on in everything that you do. You are truly an inspiration, and in many different aspects as well. So I think the hydrogen community is very blessed to have you as a progressive member. So thank you for that.
[00:39:56.90] SRIDHAR KANURI: Thank you so much. And I wish both of you guys really strong success in the area of hydrogen.
[00:40:03.58] [MUSIC PLAYING]
