GW-SHIFT Seminar Series: Hydrogen safety demystified

GW-SHIFT Seminar Series: Hydrogen safety demystified: key insights for a low-carbon future

21 November 2025, 12:00 – 13:00

Discover what it takes to safely harness hydrogen for your projects, products, or policies.

About the session

As sustainable hydrogen plays an increasingly important role in our transition to a low-carbon future, understanding hydrogen safety is critical.

Join us for this one-hour online session with Professor Joan Cordiner, an expert in process safety, to explore the key considerations around hydrogen and how industries manage its risks across production, storage, transport, and use.

You’ll gain insights into:

• What we need to consider when working with hydrogen safely
• How safety requirements differ across sectors
• Whether hydrogen is less safe than other alternative fuels
• How the industry ensures hydrogen is produced, stored, and transported responsibly

Whether you’re working in hydrogen technologies or considering adopting hydrogen solutions, this session will give you a clearer understanding of the opportunities and challenges associated with hydrogen safety.

Agenda

12:00 – 12:10 Welcome and introduction to Hydrogen Safety12:10 – 12:45 Keynote presentation – Professor Joan Cordiner12:45 – 13:00 Q&A session – your chance to ask questions and discuss practical safety considerations

Meet the speaker

Professor Joan Cordiner, Head of the School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering, University of Sheffield

Professor Joan Cordiner is a distinguished leader in process engineering and external engagement. Since joining the University of Sheffield in 2020, she has served as Professor of Process Engineering and External Engagement, and in 2021, she became Head of the School of Chemical, Materials and Biological Engineering. Before her academic career, Professor Cordiner held several senior global management positions at Syngenta, where she gained extensive experience in active ingredient process design, complex process modelling, formulation engineering, process safety leadership, and global business risk management. Her research focuses on developing novel modelling techniques, including mechanistic, kinetic, and data-driven models, for applications such as predictive maintenance, process safety, and resilience, with a particular emphasis on hydrogen processes and safety. She is also involved in the spin-out company Kausalyze, which aims to help process manufacturers move from reactive firefighting to proactive foresight by combining domain expertise with AI to understand the true causes of process changes.

Who should attend?

This session is ideal for:

• Large enterprises, SMEs, start-ups, and scale-ups working with hydrogen or exploring hydrogen solutions
• Local Authorities, public bodies and policymakers shaping hydrogen-focused initiatives
• Professionals across manufacturing, marine, land transport, aerospace, energy infrastructure, and safety regulation

If you’re developing or adopting hydrogen technologies, this session will provide practical knowledge to support your work and help you stay ahead of regulatory and industry best practices.