July 2021

Charles (Chuck) McConnell is the Energy Center Officer of the Center for Carbon Management in Energy at the University of Houston. Prior to joining the CCME, McConnell was the executive director of the Energy and Environment Initiative at Rice University. McConnell served as Assistant Secretary of Energy in the US Department of Energy from 2011-13, and was responsible for the Office of Fossil Energy’s strategic policy leadership, budgets, project management, and research and development of the department’s coal, oil and gas, and advanced technologies programs, as...Read more

Dr. Jim Flatt has led teams responsible for conceiving and translating innovative discoveries into successful commercial products in the nutrition, specialty chemical, and energy industries.  Jim currently is co-founder and CEO of Brightseed, which is making proactive health more accessible through the discovery and development natural product solutions for food, healthcare and agriculture industries through Forager, a powerful AI-powered and system biology-informed technology platform.  Previously, Jim held senior R&D leadership positions at Synthetic Genomics, Martek...Read more