Leadership

Edgar O. Chua, Chief Executive Officer

CEO Edgar O. Chua joined Amber Kinetics in 2016 after retiring as the Country Chairman of the Shell Companies in the Philippines (2003-2016). He had corporate responsibility for the various Shell companies in the exploration, manufacturing and marketing sector of the petroleum business. Outside the Philippines, he held senior positions with Shell in Group Planning (UK) and as General Manager of the Shell Company of Cambodia.

He is currently an independent director of the Integrated Micro Electronics Inc, Metrobank and Energy Development Corporation. He is also in the advisory boards of Mitsubishi Motors Philippines Corporation and Coca Cola FEMSA Philippines. He is the Chairman of the Makati Business Club, De La Salle University Board of Trustees, DLSU Science Foundation and the Philippine Eagle Foundation. He is also a trustee of various Colleges, of civic and business organizations.

Edgar holds a B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the De La Salle University, Manila (1978) and completed a senior leadership course at INSEAD, Fontainbleau France. He has received various awards including the 2014 Outstanding Chemical Engineer Award, Philippine Institute of Chemical Engineers, 2013 Management Association of the Philippines “Management Man of the Year,” and 2005 CEO EXCEL for Excellence in Communication in Organizations.

Ed Chiao, Co-Founder & Chief Commercial Officer

Ed Chiao is co-founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Amber Kinetics. He has led the company through its financings and has secured high-profile financial grants from the U.S. Department of Energy, California Energy Commission, and the Energy Excelerator (funded by Office of Naval Research).

Prior to Amber Kinetics, Ed worked in utility-scale solar development with Cleantech America, which when acquired in 2010 by Meridian Energy was a leading developer of PV farms in California with a pipeline of over 380 MW of utility-scale solar projects throughout the U.S.

Ed received his B.S. in Electrical Engineering from UCLA and has completed additional course work in energy policy and cleantech entrepreneurship at Stanford University. He is the recipient of the Chinese Institute of Engineering Scholarship Award, presented by Dr. Steven Chu, the former U.S. Secretary of Energy.

Dr. Seth Sanders, Co-Founder and Chief Scientist

Dr. Sanders is a co-founder and Chief Scientist of Amber Kinetics and a leading expert in flywheel energy technology, power electronics, and power conversion technologies. He began exploring flywheel energy storage systems in the mid-1990s as a professor of engineering in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Department at the University of California-Berkeley. Publication on this early work received the first prize paper award when presented at the IEEE IAS annual meeting in 1998.

He followed his work with the conception, design, fabrication and test of a fully integrated homopolar motor/generator flywheel system. This system featured a solid steel rotor, but was fabricated solely from high strength alloy steel, similar to that used in the present Amber Kinetics rotor designs.

Dr. Sanders has extensive experience as an electric machine designer and electric machine control system designer. Since his days as an undergraduate and graduate student at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), he has carried out projects centered on induction machines and on permanent magnet machines. These have been as primary research projects and as supporting system components in numerous projects.

Dr. Sanders received his bachelor’s and Master of Science degrees and his PhD in electrical engineering from MIT. He has served as chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Computers in Power Electronics and as a member-at-large of the IEEE PELS Adcom.

Gary Cabalde, Global Vice President of Finance

As Global VP of Finance, Gary Cabalde, CPA, CMA, is responsible for financial oversight, lease financing, corporate governance and other commercial initiatives in support to the company’s objectives. Gary has more than a decade of experience in the oil and gas industry and another 10 years working with multinational companies. Before joining Amber Kinetics, he was Chief Financial Officer for Alliance Select Foods International – a public listed company in the Philippines. Prior to that position, he was general manager, finance, for Isla Petroleum and Gas Corp, Makati, Philippines, a major liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) player in the Philippine market.

Earlier in his career, Gary spent almost 12 years with Shell Philippines in both its downstream and upstream businesses. He was project finance manager of Shell Philippines Exploration B.V for the USD1Bln Malampaya Deepwater Gas-to-Power project, Phase 2 and 3, under the Service Contract 38. He was also the distribution finance manager for the Philippines and North Pacific Islands Cluster. Before leaving Shell Philippines, he served as the special project advisor for liquefied natural gas (LNG). In that role, he was responsible for integrating project costs and opportunities as well as engagement with various internal and external stakeholders to support the LNG implementation in the Philippines.

Gary is a certified public accountant and a certified management accountant, a designation granted by the globally recognized program of the Institute of Certified Management of Australia. He completed the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) strategic finance program; he is a graduate member of the Institute of Corporate Directors and an MBA candidate from De La Salle University. He earned his bachelor’s in science for accountancy degree from University of Sto. Tomas in 1994.

Archie Go, Global Vice President of Operations

Prior to joining Amber Kinetics, Archie worked at Mitsubishi Hitachi Power Systems as Program Director in the power plant service division and as AVP of the project development department at Meralco PowerGen. He started his career as a turbine engineer with Hitachi Ltd. in Japan and has worked in the power generation sector for 18 years. Archie holds a Masters of Engineering and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY.

Matt Senesky, General Manger AKUS & Global VP of Engineering

As Amber Kinetics’ Vice President of Engineering, Matthew Senesky manages all aspects of R&D and product development. As one of the company’s first employees, Dr. Senesky built and now leads a team of world-class engineers who have taken Amber Kinetics’ flywheel technology from its first-generation prototype to commercially available systems. In addition, Dr. Senesky developed the company’s original electronics package and contributed to the architecture and product configuration of the first Amber Kinetics flywheel units. Dr. Senesky collaborated on early flywheel research at the University of California, Berkeley which formed the basis of Amber Kinetics’ technology and is now deployed globally.

Before joining Amber Kinetics, Dr. Senesky was part of Texas Instruments’ Kilby Labs corporate R&D group, with a focus on power electronics for renewable energy and energy storage. From 2007 to 2009, he worked for Tesla Motors as part of the team that released the groundbreaking Tesla Roadster. Dr. Senesky received A.B. and B.E. degrees from Dartmouth College, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California, Berkeley.