 And now it's my honor to introduce Catherine Moeller, Vice Provost and Dean of Research at Stanford. Cam, as she's known by many, is also a professor of physics and applied physics. Cam researches unconventional superconductors and is a principal investigator for the Stanford Institute for Materials and Energy Sciences. If you attended or watched online this symposium in 2018, you may recall Cam presenting the Lifetime Achievement Award to her Aunt Betsy Moeller. It was a really nice moment for the entire C3 family and its personal connections like these that make C3 so special. So without further ado, please welcome Cam Moeller back to C3E. Thank you, Naomi. And thanks everybody for joining us today at the 10th annual US C3E Women in Clean Energy Symposium and Awards. I'm so happy to be here with all of you today. I just wish we could all be in the same room and feel the energy of that room, but I'm imagining it across the Zoom. I can safely say that no challenge in the world today is more important than energy in the environment. It's inspiring to know that so many people are passionate about making the world a better place by transitioning to sustainable energy systems and by increasing the contributions of women to that transition. We need to not only transition to clean energy, we also need to dramatically increase access to energy across the globe. Completely reimagining how we harness and use energy requires many skilled and passionate people. People who research, invent, and scale up sustainable energy technologies. People who create the business models, the financial structures, and the policies that will enable the best solutions to succeed. We need far more people to choose educational and career paths and innovation, especially in science, technology, engineering, and math. We especially need far more girls, women, and minorities to pursue STEM paths if we are to realize our clean energy goals. All of us know of the many studies that show the strong connection between workforce diversity and organizational success. There's no question that more women and minorities in leadership positions across the energy landscape will increase our chances of success in the essential mission of sustainable energy. My own research and career have been in quantum materials. I work in quantum materials because I love physics and quantum materials are a super exciting intellectual challenge. But I also chose this particular field of physics because when I was a physics graduate student, I was highly optimistic that we could discover new materials that would transform the energy landscape and maybe also the information technology landscape. I'm still hopeful of those goals, but the reason why I'm an administrator now as Stanford's Vice Provost and Dean of Research is because in 2018, by 2018, I felt like the energy and climate problem had become so severe for the world and quantum materials had not yet produced those awesome high temperature superconducting cables, some pretty awesome cables, but not awesome enough to solve the whole crisis. And I decided that a good chunk of my time could be best spent creating an environment where other faculty and student researchers could do their best work. It seems to me that everyone here putting in the effort to make the US Clean Energy Education and Empowerment Initiative, C3E, successful, is doing something similar. They're helping to create an environment that empowers all of you to do your best work. So I want to thank all the C3E ambassadors and the many staff members of the Department of Energy, Stanford, MIT, and Texas A&M for making this event and this organization so effective. In particular, a Stanford is the host university this year. I'd like to give special thanks to Stanford's Niki Yu and Naomi Bones for all of their creativity, dedication, and hard work on this year's symposium. Thank you. Stanford is in the process of creating a new school for the first time in 70 years. Relevant to this conference, the school will be focused on climate insustainability. In fact, I, along with Steve Graham, Dean of our School of Earth Energy and Environmental Sciences, are leading the work on the new school, which will open its doors next fall. I'm really excited about the potential we have as a community to do scholarship that will help create solutions for problems both locally and globally around the world. And I look forward to working with people at other universities who are embarked on similar or complementary initiatives. This work by academics will be an important part of creating a better world for all people. The new school has become the centerpiece of Stanford Sustainability Initiative, but I also want to mention that over the past 10 years, we've made a lot of progress in our campus operations. Even before the COVID shutdown, we reduced campus greenhouse gas emissions by 69% slash energy use by a third and cut water use in half, which is really important here in California. By the end of 2022, when the second Stanford Solar Generating Station comes online, our solar power production will meet or exceed our electricity use. Ultimately, Stanford has committed to reaching at least net zero emissions from its operations by 2050. That commitment is a bit of a leap of faith for us and for the many other universities and companies that have made similar pledges. For example, we don't really know yet how to count scope three emissions, let alone eliminate them fully. We will rely on many people at Stanford and beyond, including many of you to help us and everybody else figure out how to get to net zero emissions. This is an all hands on deck situation, and I'm so happy that C3E is already in place, doing so much to make sure that there are as many hands available for the work as possible. The theme of this year's C3E symposium is environmental justice and social equity. That's very appropriate, given the attention focused on racial injustice in the United States the past several years, as well as the current administration's commitment to addressing social equity in all the federal government's initiatives. And in a recent article on the UN climate change conference, Stanford professor Rob Jackson really nailed the issue of equity in climate change at a broad scale. Front and center at COP26 should be, he said, quote, the vulnerability of the poor, whether in poor countries or in poor situations in rich countries. Poor people didn't cause climate change and can't afford to adapt to it without our help. Rob's right. This is truly an issue of justice. Clean energy, gender equality, environmental justice and social equity are a lot to tackle, but these are hugely important and interrelated challenges. The conversations and interactions we will be having today, tomorrow and hopefully beyond, are exactly what we need to do sometimes. Step back and think holistically about very complicated, connected problems in a way that lets everybody contribute to the solution. In addition to these important dialogues, we will honor the achievements of eight mid-career women in energy. To the award winners, I want to say that C3E is privileged to recognize your dedication and your rising leadership in the clean energy sector. The breadth of the mid-career award categories and your amazing inspirational work and potential remind us again that the energy transition requires all hands, law and finance, policy innovation, education and advocacy, government, international, business, technology research and entrepreneurship. We need contributions from all those fields. We will also honor the former commissioner and chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, Cheryl LaFleur, for her lifetime of achievements in clean energy. Our mid-career award winners stand on the shoulders of pioneers like Cheryl. So congratulations to all our award winners this year as well as the past nine years. I hope your stories of achievement inspire your coworkers, colleagues, family and friends to also contribute to the mission of sustainable, affordable, secure energy for all people. This is a critical time for the planet and everyone here has the potential to make important contributions. For all the young women on the Zoom, I strongly encourage you to think of yourselves as the authors of your own careers, your own trajectories, your own growth. Don't just look around and see what everybody else is doing. It's good to know what other people who have been successful are doing, but that's not enough. Think about what you need and what will make it possible for you to do your best work. Really think about what your goals are and what you can do to make sure that your work is the most effective it can be. And I hope to see you, some of you who are here today, getting one of these awards in 10 or 15 years. And whether or not you do win those awards, may you have very meaningful, fulfilling careers. Thank you for being here with us today. You are the future.