Phil De Luna is currently the youngest-ever Director at the National Research Council of Canada where he leads a world-class $57M research program on Canada-made clean energy technology. His mandate is to develop transformative technologies to help Canada achieve net-zero GHG emissions by 2050.
De Luna is a carbontech innovator with experience spanning cutting-edge topics such as carbon capture and conversion technologies, clean hydrogen, and artificial intelligence for materials discovery. His research has been published in high-impact journals such as Nature and Science (>6000 citations in 5 years) and has been covered by mainstream media such as Newsweek, CBC, Forbes, Popular Science, and more. He holds a PhD from the University of Toronto in Materials Science & Engineering where he was a Governor General Gold Medalist.
De Luna was a candidate for the Green Party in Toronto-St. Paul’s in the 2021 Federal Election where he ran to bring more diversity to parliament and more science to politics. He raised the most money ever of any Green Party candidate ever in the riding.
De Luna was named to the 2019 Forbes Top 30 Under 30 – Energy list and was a finalist (1 of 10 worldwide) in the $20M Carbon XPRIZE. He is Vice Chair of the board of directors of CMC Research Institutes, a carbontech non-profit, a member of the OECD Advanced Materials steering committee, and a member of the Working Group on AI Ethics and Sustainable Development Goals at the Canadian Commission for UNESCO. He is also a Mission Innovation Champion for Canada, an Action Canada Fellow, and a Creative Destruction Lab Mentor and a 2x TEDx Speaker. In his spare time Phil hosts and produces the podcast “What’s Next In…” about the rapidly changing world and how we can get ahead of it.