Director & Senior Fellow, Precourt Institute for Energy Professor of Materials Science & Engineering, Energy Science & Engineering, and Photon Science

Precourt Family Professor of Energy Science & Engineering

Leo joined STEER in May 2025 and leads its work on carbon capture technologies, including flue gas and ambient air systems. In line with STEER’s core principles, the techno-economic modeling is closely informed by feedback from public and private stakeholders, helping to deliver up-to-date cost benchmarks for emerging energy technologies and hard-to-abate mitigation options. By elevating deep technical analyses to the system and market level, these insights support and unlock strategic investment opportunities. Leo holds degrees in engineering and policy from ETH Zurich and the University of Cambridge. During his PhD, he researched decarbonization and competitiveness strategies for lithium-ion batteries.

Julia Frohmann is a PhD candidate in Energy Science and Engineering, and leads demand-side battery utilization modeling at STEER. Her research focuses on the feasibility of large-scale grid storage deployment in the US by evaluating battery energy storage revenue generation potential. Julia's key areas of interest are electricity market operations, and macro-scale energy systems modeling. Previous work focused on renewable grid penetration effect on electricity exchange variability and modeling optimal integration of power-to-heat-to-power storage. Julia obtained her bachelors in Mechanical Engineering and masters in Energy Engineering from RWTH Aachen, Germany.

Adrian is the Founder and Team Lead of STEER. The mission of STEER is to use deep engineering analysis to overcome economic uncertainties of emerging energy technologies to unlock strategic investments and innovations. Prior to STEER, Adrian spent 8+ years as the Founder and CTO of a Li-ion battery cell manufacturing company, EnPower, Inc., where he still serves as a Board Director. Adrian drove technology development and scale-up at EnPower from 2014-2022, taking the company from its Texas roots through Tennessee, Arizona, and finally Indianapolis, where EnPower acquired a brownfield factory and is now scaling to several hundred MWh/y of high-performance cells for premium markets, spearheading the domestic production of advanced Li-ion batteries. Adrian obtained his B.S. in Material Science & Engineering from Rice University in Houston, TX and is currently simultaneously pursuing his PhD in Materials Science & Engineering at Stanford University.