HyFlux's World-Class Team

Jean-Christophe Saint-Genies

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Chris has thirty years’ experience in Aerospace, Defence, Naval &  markets, leading Strategy with an MBA from Cranfield University, and Supply Chain Director, IT Transformation Programme Director and Naval Architect.

‍With a dual business/engineering background, Chris has over 30 years of experience building and managing multi-national teams to successfully deliver complex manufacturing and digital transformation programs with global footprints.

A Chartered Engineer and Naval Architect, Chris has been a key contributor to major capital platform programs within the European defense sector. For the past 11 years, Chris has lived in the USA, leading large projects on behalf of major commercial aerospace firms.

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Dr Gareth Smith

Gareth has a Phd in Synthetic Organic Chemistry and has successfully run and been a Diretor of several companies since 1997.

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Gareth was born and raised in Wales bar a one-year period in the USA during childhood.  From an early age Gareth would annoy his parents by dismantling anything he could get hold of, starting with escaping from his cot as a baby.  This love of working out how things worked led him into science and engineering.  

He eventually studied Chemistry at Warwick University and the earned a PhD in Synthetic Organic Chemistry from Swansea University. After his academic studies, Gareth went on to establish his first Business in IT.  Swan CD LTD flourished and is now in its 27th year of trading.  

He has subsequently founded two other companies including myMaskFit. In his spare time, Gareth is addicted to adventure and actively pursues sports such as mountaineering, caving and climbing amongst others.  His sports led to a love of travel, and he has visited many remote regions around the world including sailing to Greenland, exploring and mapping remote areas of the coastline whilst achieving a few first ascents of mountains on the way. Gareth also has been involved in helping on medical trips to developing countries including Haiti and Honduras.

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Paul Perera

Paul has thirty years’ experience in Aerospace, Defence, Naval & Energy markets

Paul has worked in Airbus, BAE Systems, Rolls-Royce, and GKN Aerospace in leadership roles in Technology, Engineering and General Management, and also developed start-ups including the Ventilator Challenge UK, myMaskFit scaling up manufacturing.

Working in leading technology including Liquefaction, development of cryogenic test methods, and regulatory sectors with inspection and digital manufacturing Paul is also working as an advisory board member in GW-SHIFT (leading Universities in South West of England and Wales) to develop research into products, and on the Aerospace and Aviation Sub-board of Hydrogen South West.

Rob has 40 years experience in Airbus, Siemens, and most recently Fly Zero, spanning roles including Future Projects, A380, A350 for Airbus, Tidal Turbines for Siemens and Systems and Certification for Flyzero

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Bjorn Fehrm

Advisor to Fluxart.aero

'The key realization over the last year was the battery as an energy store for airliners didn’t cut it. Not today, not tomorrow, and probably not in the foreseeable future.
The alternative energy store that was continuously looked at was Hydrogen, H2. It was the fuel the world’s first jet engine used (H. von Ohain’s He S-1 engine in 1937) and it was the fuel used in the Russian Tu-155 hydrogen research airliner in 1988.

It has some very attractive features like three times higher energy density than jet fuel (batteries have 70 times worse) but also challenges like four times worse volume density and a non-existent production ecosystem for air transport.

Figure 1. The Russian Tu-155 hydrogen fuel research aircraft that flew in 1988. Source: Tupolev

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