Israel Zelalem
Bekalu

Advancing sustainable battery manufacturing and the research capabilities needed to build resilient African battery value chains.

Israel Zelalem Bekalu is an Ethiopian engineering academic and researcher and a PhD candidate in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Science and Technology (UST), South Korea, with research conducted in collaboration with the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM). She is also a Faculty Member at Addis Ababa Science and Technology University (AASTU), Ethiopia.

Her research focuses on advanced and sustainable lithium-ion battery manufacturing, particularly fluorine-free dry-electrode technologies and scalable manufacturing approaches for high-performance batteries. With a background in Manufacturing Engineering and Leadership and Management, she brings an interdisciplinary perspective combining engineering, manufacturing and technology development.

Her wider professional interests include the policy, industrial and infrastructure dimensions of emerging technologies, particularly the translation of scientific and engineering advances into sustainable industrial development.

At the Nordic–Africa EV Summit, Israel brings an African research perspective on sustainable battery manufacturing, industrial development and the opportunities for building resilient battery value chains across the continent.