Marcus Fendt studied Industrial Engineering in Munich. He began his professional career in
1994 at Siemens in the USA and then moved to Bosch in the automotive industry. From 1999 to
2004, he worked as a strategy consultant at Accenture in the energy sector. In 2004, Marcus
Fendt took on global responsibility for product management at luxury goods manufacturer
Swarovski, overseeing nearly one billion euros in revenue.

The disruption brought by electromobility and renewable energy led him, together with former
colleagues, to found The Mobility House in 2010. As Managing Director of The Mobility House
Energy, he is responsible for Sales, Business Development, and Marketing.

Together with leading car manufacturers, energy providers, as well as corporate and fleet
customers, he has implemented international collaborations and projects focused on the
intelligent charging of electric vehicles and fleets. These range from reducing grid load and
system-friendly charging for CO₂ reduction, to Vehicle-to-Grid (V2G), and the commercialization
of vehicle batteries and stationary storage systems as flexibility options on energy markets in
Germany, Europe, the USA, and Asia. The biggest milestone to date: In 2024, The Mobility
House Energy, together with Renault’s subsidiary Mobilize, launched the first V2G product for
end customers on the French market.
Marcus Fendt is also Managing Director of Amsterdam Energy ArenA, one of the most
innovative V2G and storage projects using vehicle batteries, as well as of The Mobility House
entities in France and Singapore.

Alexander Funke has worked roughly 10 years in various positions in the energy sector before he joined BMW Group 8 years ago. At BMW Group he is working as an Energy Market Expert focusing on charging related services within the Group Invention department. With his background across both the automotive and energy sector he offers a broad perspective on the current and future development of Vehicle-to-Grid and Smart Charging.

Frank Geerts is director smart charging at ElaadNL where he accelerates the widespread market deployment of smart and bidirectional charging. He leads a team of experts representing the Dutch grid operators. Some examples of Franks’ recent activities are the National Scale-up program for Smart Charging in the Netherlands (Smart Charging for All) and a European Scale-up project for Smart Charging and bi-directional charging (SCALE) Frank has over 25 years’ experience in the energy sector and 15 years’ experience in the eMobility sector. He is a regular speaker on international conferences.

Hussein Al Haj Hassan is responsible for the EV charging team at Vedecom, an institute dedicated to innovation in sustainable mobility and the energy transition. With a PhD in telecommunications and an extensive background in standardization, Hussein leads a team of experts focused on advancing smart and bidirectional charging solutions, ensuring interoperability, and bridging research, testing, and standardization to accelerate the deployment of reliable charging infrastructure.

Hussein also serves as the convener of IEC TC 69 JAG 22, which focuses on the interoperability of standards, and IEC TC 69 JWG 11. In addition, he is an expert within the Sustainable Transport Forum (STF) and an active member of Task 53.

Chris Heron is the Secretary General at E-Mobility Europe, overseeing all activities of the association. A British and Belgian national, Chris has worked in EU trade associations across the electric vehicle supply chain over the last 13 years. He joined E-Mobility Europe after a decade leading the public affairs and communication programme for Eurometaux, Europe’s metals association, where he was an instrumental industry voice in raising Critical Raw Materials up the EU political agenda.

Marco Piffaretti is an entrepreneur with 38 years of experience in the electromobility sector. He is the founder of numerous companies and projects, including Protoscar, the EV Project Mendrisio, Alpiq e-Mobility, EVTEC, GOFAST, sun2wheel, and V2X Suisse. Marco is an advisory board member for electric-wow and LHI and also serves as a member of the SIA2060 commission. Currently, he serves as the Operating Agent for Task 53 (INBID – Interoperability of Bidirectional Charging) within EV-TCP, the “Electric Vehicle Technology Collaboration Programme” by the IEA, which is supported by 12 Countries and aims to harmonize AC, DC, and wireless bidirectional charging on a global scale.

Paula Rey García is Head of the Unit for Renewables and Energy System Integration Policy at the European Commission DG Energy. She joined the European Commission in 2005, with roles first in DG Environment, and later in DG Health and Food Safety. She works in DG Energy since 2012, having held positions in the areas of energy efficiency and financing, and as Deputy Head of unit for buildings and products, and subsequently as Deputy Head of Unit for renewables policy. Prior to joining the European Commission, she worked for the United Nations Environment Programme, and earlier on in the private sector as consultant.

Rolf Riemenschneider drives the research and innovation agenda under the programme Horizon Europe where he coordinates the R&I agenda related to the strategy on Cloud-Edge Computing and Internet of Things. As senior expert, he leads the research, innovation and deployment of the next generation of the IoT with strong computing capacity at the edge exploring features like device virtualisation, interoperability, real-time, and distributed intelligence and in particular the integration of artificial intelligence at the edge. He also contributes to the unit’s implementation strategy of data spaces for farming, mobility and energy.

A strong focus of his work aims at paving the way for an interconnected mobility and energy sector, where he works together with DG ENERGY on the Digitisation of the Energy System with Digitalisation of Energy Action Plan published in 2022 (COM/2022/552). Key actions include an AI roadmap for energy, an energy data space , interoperable data-driven solutions, interfaces, blueprints and standards for orchestrating flexibility across different sectors like home, building, energy, and smart and bidirectional charging through emerging concepts like ‘The AI-powered Digital Spine’.

Dr.-Ing. Harald Scholz received his degrees in engineering from the University of Karlsruhe. Since 2013, he has built up and engages in further developing the Electro-Mobility Laboratories of the Joint Research Centre, a Directorate General of the European Commission. He is a member of the CEN-CENELEC‘s E-Mobility Coordination Group and a Sustainable Transport Forum (STF) Expert upon request of DG MOVE, Brussels. With strong links to JRC’s partners e.g., the U.S. DoE Argonne National Laboratory, and the Automotive Research Association of India (ARAI) in Pune, he is the Project Leader for e-mobility infrastructure research at JRC, coordinating the lab-cluster ‘‘EU Interoperability Centre for Electric Vehicles, Smart Grids and Smart Homes’’ at Ispra (IT) and Petten (NL). Recently he took over to lead the EC’s laboratory participation in the IEA EV Technology Cooperation Programme, Task 53, on Bidirectional Charging. Collaborating with industry, academia, and governments globally, he assures pre-normative tests of EVs, charging infrastructure, and its embedding in smart grids. In 1997, he joined EC’s DG Research and led projects on alternative fuel vehicles in EU’s research framework program (FP) 4 and 5, later managing the communication of FP5‘s energy and environment sectors. He changed to EC’s Directorate General JRC in 2001, where he first worked in PV system monitoring, IEA relations, and later environmental research management and communication. He had been a scholar and is a lifetime member of the German Academic Merit Foundation.

Tzeni Varfi brings over 15 years of experience in EU energy policy, with a track record of shaping strategic conversations at the intersection of regulation, innovation, and digital transformation. As Head of Policy at smartEn, she advocates the Flexible Demand Management Industry (FMDI), championing the role of demand-side flexibility in accelerating the transition to a more efficient and resilient energy system.
Before joining smartEn, Tzeni served as Deputy Secretary General at E.DSO, where she helped position distribution system operators (DSOs) at the heart of EU energy discussions. Her work was instrumental in strengthening the visibility of the distribution grid on the political agenda.

Dr. Ignacio Lacalle (male) is a Researcher and Teaching Assistant at the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV), a public University in the South-East of Spain. Ignacio is a Telecommunications Engineer (2014) from UPV and received his Ph.D. (Dr. Ing.) in 2022. The expertise of Ignacio is mainly rooted in the Internet of Things field, having participated in 10 national and EU research projects such as HE aerOS, MSCA AIAS, HE MISSION, H2020 ASSIST-IoT and others, related mainly to distributed systems, interoperability, added value services, data processing, cybersecurity and manageability, inter alia. Ignacio has performed various roles in those projects (ranging from Developer to Community Manager or Project Manager). In addition, most of those projects focused on applying IoT-related innovations, particularly in the fields of energy, maritime ports, manufacturing, agriculture, and others. Ignacio has authored or co-authored more than 30 publications in relevant journals and conferences.