Board of Directors

The Board of Directors is responsible for the overall governance of the network and as foremost experts in their fields, provide invaluable advice. Its members are from academia, industry, government, and NGOs. Subcommittees of the board include the Audit and Finance Committee, Nominating Committee, Network Development Committee, and Environment Committee.

• + Dan Zilnik

  Interim Board Chair
  President, Oil & Gas Sustainability Ltd.

  Dan Zilnik is the President of Oil and Gas Sustainability Ltd. He has extensive experience in helping leaders in the oil and gas and financial sectors make distinctive, lasting, and substantial improvements in sustainability performance, which strengthen the entire business. His specialties include strategy development and implementation, including helping a Fortune-500 listed oil company develop their global climate strategy and implement the strategy ​in Alberta at one of their oil production facilities.

  As a certified negotiator he has worked extensively in socio-economic impact assessment and stakeholder engagement and supported projects in balancing the needs of project proponent and local community. Dan has a breadth of international experience including working across most of Canada, parts of the United States, Norway, Russia and the Middle East. Dan has an MSc in Environment and Economics from the London School of Economics and is a Harvard trained negotiator.

• + Martin Davies

  Partner, Portfolio Manager
  Brickburn Asset Management Inc.

  Martin Davies is Portfolio Manager, Managing Director, and Chief Compliance Officer with Brickburn Asset Management Inc., a Calgary-based investment firm with extensive expertise in the Canadian energy sector and capital markets. He is also a Co-Portfolio manager for individuals, family groups and financial institutions. Prior to joining Brickburn in 2004, Davies was a Senior Partner in Institutional Sales and Trading with Peters & Co. Limited for 22 years, and specialized in Canadian capital markets; specifically oil and natural gas, midstream, and oilfield service industries. Davies is a ten year member of the Investment Industry Regulatory Organization of Canada (IIROC) judicial panel hearings. From 1997 to 2004, he served as Chairman and member of the Alberta District Council of the Investment Dealers Association. Davies holds a BA (Honours) in Economics from the University of Calgary and is a Fellow of the Canadian Securities Institute.
  

• + Dr. Victor Der

  Principal
  Vicaris Energy & Technology, LLC
  

  Dr. Victor Der was formerly with the Global CCS Institute as general manager for North American operations. Prior to joining the institute, Dr. Der worked at the U.S. Department of Energy (DO E) for over 37 years, retiring as the assistant secretary (acting) for fossil energy. Dr. Der has led the Office of Fossil Energy in the areas of clean coal, carbon capture and storage, oil and gas research and development, and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve. He had served in various prior capacities at DOE including the principal deputy for fossil energy and deputy assistant secretary for clean coal and CCS. Dr. Der is also the former chair of the Carbon Sequestration Leadership Forum (CSLF) Policy Group, and had also served as the Chair of the CSLF Technical Group. Dr. Der’s prior work includes NASA’s Apollo 15 moon mission project and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration program on modelling the upper atmospheric density. He holds a B.Sc., M.Sc. and PhD in mechanical engineering from the University of Maryland and serves on the advisory board of the University of Maryland’s Energy Research Center.

• + Dr. John Grace

  Professor Emeritus, Chemical & Biological Engineering
  University of British Columbia

  Dr. John Grace began his career in 1968 as a professor at McGill University in Montreal. He then moved to the University of British Columbia in Vancouver where he served as department head, Dean of Graduate Studies and Acting Director of the Clean Energy Research Centre. Dr. Grace has served as a consultant for various companies in Canada and abroad. He holds a Canada Research Chair and is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, Canadian Academy of Engineering, Engineering Institute of Canada and Chemical Institute of Canada. He is recipient of numerous awards including the R. S. Jane Award, the major award of the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering. He has more than 450 publications, including six books. Dr. Grace graduated from the University of Western Ontario with a Bachelor of Science degree in chemical engineering. He also graduated from the University of Cambridge with a Doctor of Philosophy degree.

• + Dr. Steve Larter

  Canada Research Chair and Professor of Petroleum Geology
  University of Calgary
  

  Dr. Steve Larter is Canada Research Chair and Professor of Petroleum Geology at the University of Calgary. Prior to joining the University of Calgary in 2004, he worked for the Universities of Newcastle and Oslo and, in the 1980s, for Unocal in California. Dr. Larter has broad research interests which range from understanding the phenomenon of biodegradation and predicting fluid property variations in tar sand and heavy oil reservoirs; biogenic gas generation and shale gas and coupling fluid chemistry as part of reservoir simulator history matches; through to studying the microbial life of subsurface petroleum reservoirs. He is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Sciences, a Fellow of the Royal Society and AAPG distinguished lecturer. He is also CEO of Gushor Inc. and Scientific Director of Profero Energy, two technology companies developing transition technologies to enable society and the oil and gas industry to rapidly migrate to zero carbon emission practices. His degrees are from the universities of Cambridge and Newcastle.

• + Dr. John Loughhead

  Chief Scientific Advisor and Director General
  Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, United Kingdom
  

  Dr. John Loughhead was appointed Chief Science Advisor for the UK’s Department of Energy and Climate Change (DECC) in 2014. When DECC was dismantled in 2016, Loughhead became Chief Scientific Advisor to the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy. Between 2004 and 2014, he was executive director of the UK Energy Research Centre in London. Prior to that, he served as Vice-President Technology with ALSTOM (Paris) where he was responsible for technology strategy and IP management throughout ALSTOM, a substantial international group of energy and transport equipment businesses. He has worked in research with GEC ALSTHOM (Paris) and was head of the Thermofluid & Energy Division for GEC Engineering Research Centre. He has sat on the UK’s Defence Science Advisory Council Technology Board, on numerous university advisory boards, and has been an expert consultant to the governments of Australia and Chile for energy policy development as well as consultant and assessor to EC on Framework 6 and 7 programmes. Loughhead has a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and an M.Sc. in Heat Transfer Engineering, both from Imperial College. He is a Fellow, Royal Academy of Engineering and an Australian Academy of Engineering Chartered Engineer.

• + Dr. Edward McCauley (Ex Officio)

  Vice-President (Research)
  University of Calgary

  Dr. Edward McCauley began his career with the University of Calgary in 1985. He served as a professor of biological science for 24 years. He then served as Director of the National Center for Ecological Analysis and Synthesis at the University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). He was also a professor in the Department of Ecology, Evolution and Marine Biology at UCSB. In 2003, he co-founded the Alberta Ingenuity Centre for Water Research. Dr. McCauley returned to the University of Calgary and became the Vice-President of Research on July 1, 2011. Dr. McCauley is a Fellow of the Royal Society and formerly acted as a Tier 1 Canada Research Chair. He was amongst the first recipients of the NSERC Discovery Accelerator Award. Dr. McCauley graduated from the University of Ottawa with a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Science degree. He is also a graduate of the doctoral degree at McGill University and was a postdoctoral fellow at UCSB.

• + Drew Thomson

  Director of Corporate Services
  The Law Society of Alberta

  Drew Thomson is currently the Director of Corporate Services for the Law Society of Alberta based in Calgary. The Law Society regulates the legal profession in the public interest in Alberta. He is also the Chief Financial Officer of the Law Society’s professional liability insurance program – the Alberta Lawyers Insurance Exchange. As a member of the Law Society’s Executive Leadership Team, Drew’s portfolio of responsibility includes accounting and finance, communications, records and information management and office services. Prior to joining the Law Society, he was Vice President of Business Development with the Certified Management Accountants of Alberta. Drew’s career experience includes senior financial management roles in radio and television broadcasting and the retail fashion clothing industry.

  Drew’s community involvement includes serving as Vice Chair of the board of Goodwill Industries Alberta and recently appointed to the board of the Immigrant Access Fund.

  Drew holds a Bachelor of Commerce degree from the University of Alberta and a MBA from Athabasca University. He is a CMA and a Fellow of the Society of Management Accountants of Canada.