Our consultants


Christophe PILLOT - Partner and Director of AVICENNE Energy

Battery and raw materials expert
Christophe has built up considerable expertise in the area of batteries. He joined AVICENNE 26 years ago and spent 3 years in Japan analyzing the Japanese electronic, mobile & battery market. Christophe has acquired extensive experience in marketing, strategy analysis, technology and financial studies for the battery and power management fields.
He developed the Battery market analysis for AVICENNE, which serves more than 220 customers worldwide. Christophe has published several annual surveys such as "The Rechargeable Battery Market". He is also the founder & chairman of Batteries - an international industry conference held in France since 1999. He is now Director at AVICENNE ENERGY.
Globally, he has been involved in more than 300 projects for 200+ customers in the Battery value chain. Before joining AVICENNE, Christophe held a key position in FRANCE TELECOM's innovation division. He has a degree in Chemistry & an MBA in Innovation Management from Paris IX Dauphine. His mother tongue is French, and he speaks fluent English.

 


Ali MADANI - Managing Partner,
AVICENNE founder

Battery, power electronics and automotive expert
Ali founded AVICENNE in 1992. He holds a Science degree from Université Paris Sud Orsay and École Normale Supérieure de Cachan, followed by an MBA in Innovation Management from Paris Dauphine. Since 1995 he has been working on strategic and marketing studies in the Battery sector. He is fluent in French and English.
He brings a strategic vision to every project. He will discuss the project with the team and ask strategic questions during the project to help provide vision and perspective. He has recently led such assignments as:
• Due diligence for a key battery player
• Development of AVICENNE Automotive Market studies
• He collaborates on the yearly AVICENNE study: The Rechargeable Battery Market
• Li-ion pack makers market and business plan
• Battery pack analysis – Opportunities to include power electronics & chargers in the pack
• ...

 


Michael SANDERS - Senior Advisor

Battery and raw materials expert
Mike has significant energy storage materials value chain understanding with an emphasis on lithium ion batteries and systems with 13 years of market knowledge and relationships. Successful program leadership experience with significant business growth in ventures and existing businesses with a proven track record leading mergers and acquisition team to enter the lithium ion battery materials market.
He joined AVICENNE in May of 2016 as a Senior Advisor. Since joining the AVICENNE team, Mike has been leading the US AVICENNE activity working with many clients holding strategy workshops, validation of growth opportunities, helping clients establish their growth plans in energy storage and establishing M&A targets/diligence.
Before joining AVICENNE, Mike had a very long career with DuPont, his most recent role was the Global Marketing Director – Energy Storage Venture where he developed significant understanding and insights for the energy storage materials market, device manufacturing and systems while leading global marketing and customer interface efforts to establish programs to enter the $20B energy storage materials market. Executed strategic and market planning for opportunity evaluation, research, choices and M&A activity for entry into rapidly growing new market. He has a degree in Chemistry from the University of Delaware and is a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers and Electrochemical Society.


Fabrice RENARD - Senior Advisor

Battery and Advanced materials expert
With more than 25 years of experience in business consultancy and management of chemical and advanced materials business in Belgium, Morocco and China, Fabrice gained strong experience on strategy, M&A, manufacturing, marketing, finance and innovation on high growth new technology business. He joined AVICENNE in 2020. He is responsible for proprietary projects supporting customers growth efforts, completing the interviews, writing the reports and mainly solicited for his knowledge on economical and industrialization of existing and future materials alongside the battery value chain.
Prior AVICENNE, Fabrice was Chief Innovation Officer of the Prayon group. Over 10 years, he was in charge of the global R&D and Innovation strategy based on sustainable major trends and declined on nutrition, water, precision farming, rare elements recovery and energy. He led various up and downstream complex high level international negotiations and partnerships including business or technology acquisitions. One of his core focus was the development of cathode materials. In this field, he earned a strong expertise on the battery value chain and served as COO of Belife, a joint venture with Umicore and as a Director of Prayon Pulead Technology, a Chinese based LFP manufacturer.
Additionally, Fabrice holds different positions in Belgium and Morocco for Eklo, a consulting firm for emerging new business as managing director, for IDCampus, a creative lab as CEO and for Prayon as financial controller, marketing and business development manager, process and plant manager.
He holds a Master in Chemical Engineering, a Postgraduate Diploma in Business Administration, an Executive Degree in Tax Law and an Executive Master in Management. His mother tongue is French and he is fluent in English.

 


Xiaoyu ZHANG - Consultant

Battery expert
Xiaoyu is our Chinese expert in Batteries. He is working at REAL LI, AVICENNE Chinese Partner. He is responsible for completing the interviews, writing the reports and mainly solicited for his knowledge on the Chinese market.
Before joining REAL LI, he held technical position in SAINT GOBAIN R&D Quality Division. He has a PhD in Electrochemistry in Beijing University and a PhD in Materials Science Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France.
His mother tongue is Chinese, and he speaks fluent English and French.

 


Jean-Philippe SALVAT - Analyst

Battery expert
Jean Philippe is our expert in the field of electrochemistry. He is responsible for conducting interviews, writing reports and providing technical input.
Before joining AVICENNE, Jean Philippe worked as an analyst with DL See Consultant and the Research Center Pont à Mousson SAINT GOBAIN. He holds a degree in Material Science. His mother tongue is French, and he speaks fluent English.

 


Amir H. YASSARI - Analyst

Battery expert
Amir joined AVICENNE in 2000. He holds a dual degree in Marketing and International Finance from the Hanze University International Business School (Groningen, The Netherlands) and from the international section at ESSEC. He has worked on many strategic studies in the energy sector. He is responsible for data collection and analysis in Germany, Austria and the Benelux countries. Amir is fluent in English, French, German and Dutch.

Contact our consultants