Special Interviews

As Deputy Director for Hydrogen Technologies at the French Alternative Energies and Atomic Energy Commission (CEA), Dr. Julie Mougin has a confession to make: The study of hydrogen, that most abundant of all elements, was not her first love. “I cannot say that hydrogen was a vocation,” Mougin says with a smile. “I was interested from the very beginning in materials science, and hydrogen technologies implies a lot of materials science at various scale, from nanoscale to macroscale.” Moreover, while doing industrial research on materials related to the automotive market, she had the opportunity to work for four years on a joint research project with Kobe Steel in Japan. This, she says, gave her a taste for working in an international, collaborative environment. Thus, when the opportunity came up in 2005 to work at CEA on European projects related to hydrogen, she took it. The laboratory that she has directed since 2010 focuses on hydrogen technologies along the whole value chain (production, storage and fuel cells).

October 2025 coincides not only with the convening of the 7th RD20 Conference in Tsukuba, Japan, but also the 80th anniversary of one of its member institutions: South Africa’s Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR). Established in 1945, according to CSIR Group Executive Dr. Sandile Malinga, the state-operated research and development institution with its more than 2,000 staff members is perhaps the largest such organization on the African continent. The only African member institution in the RD20 initiative, CSIR is slated to host the 8th RD20 Conference in Pretoria in 2026.

Since its establishment in 1916, Canada’s largest research and technology organization, the National Research Council of Canada (NRC), has supported business innovation and the advancement of science and technology. According to NRC Vice-President of Engineering Dr. Jean-François Houle, the organization continues to fulfill its mandate through the network of specialized facilities it operates across Canada, its pursuit of research excellence, and its Industrial Research Assistance Program, which is now 76 years old and supports innovative Canadian small- and midsize enterprises (SMEs) to increase their innovation capacity and take ideas to market. Houle also emphasized that the NRC pursues its objectives by working with international partners bilaterally and multilaterally, including through such frameworks as the RD20 initiative.

Since its founding in its original incarnation in September 1977, the Korean Institute of Energy Research (KIER) has pursued its core mission of supporting the South Korean economy through achievements in energy-related research. As part of this, KIER also aims to play a role toward securing a global position for the Korean energy sector by actively participating in multilateral initiatives such as RD20 that aim to develop rational energy measures to protect energy security, economic growth and the environment.

Japan’s National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST) has managed the RD20 initiative since its inception in 2019. As one of the largest public research organizations in Japan, AIST focuses on the creation and practical realization of technologies useful to Japanese industry and society and on bridging the gap between innovative technological seeds and commercialization. In April, AIST kicked off its 6th Medium-to-Long-Term Plan. Drawing on the objectives of its predecessor, the plan’s chief goals remain solving social problems and strengthening the competitiveness of Japanese industry, according to AIST Department of Energy and Environment Director General Koichi Matsuoka.