What is the role of chief scientist at Shell and how does it support the company’s business aims?
Shell has always been a technology-enabled company. Technology is a big competitive advantage when you use it properly. Over the years, when oil was low in price, we kind of lost our focus on technology in Shell. There was a need to renew that. A few years back, our CEO [Jeroen van der Veer] asked, “How can we get it more visible? How do we energise technical people in the company? How do we create the differentiator that we need?” He wanted a group of people that would act as the technology conscience of the organisation and make sure that the health of technology was what it needed to be, and that the enthusiasm of the technical people was there. The chief scientist and chief technology officer positions were created as leadership roles in the company to highlight the importance of technology. My specific area is separations. All the manufacturing processes in the chemical and refining industries involve a great deal of need to separate, purify, refine, extract, and clean up things.
