#2: Hydrogen, Simulation, and High-Impact Teams – Emmanuella Sotiropoulou on Engineering the Future of ICE Fast Artwork

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AVL Simulation Podcast

#2: Hydrogen, Simulation, and High-Impact Teams – Emmanuella Sotiropoulou on Engineering the Future of ICE Fast

November 26, 2025 • AVL Digital • Season 1 • Episode 2

In this episode, we speak with Emmanuella Sotiropoulou, Vice President of Prometheus Applied Technologies.

From early engineering curiosity to leading a niche high-impact company, Emmanuella is driving innovation in hydrogen combustion. We explore how Prometheus transforms diesel engines into hydrogen engines using holistic combustion solutions – combining ignition systems, injection strategies, and advanced CFD methods.

She shares her perspective on the evolving role of simulation: where its untapped potential lies, why mesh and chemical mechanisms remain bottlenecks, and how AI will accelerate predictability and speed in future development workflows.

We also discuss team leadership in a specialized environment, including how small, strengths-based teams collaborate, learn, and stay ahead in a fast-moving industry.

Finally, we hear a personal reflection on purpose, energy, and support, and how meaningful work and the right people around you can fuel long-term performance.

Learn more about AVL's simulation expertise:

https://www.avl.com/en/simulation-solutions

Want to learn more about Emmanuella Sotiropoulou? Follow him on LinkedIn:

https://www.linkedin.com/in/emmanuella-sotiropoulou

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📧Get in touch with the AVL Simulation Podcast team:

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Keep simulating, keep innovating, keep pushing the boundaries!

1:00:00

[MUSIC]Welcome to the AVL simulation podcast where engineering missions take off.Join us as we navigate the evolving universeof digital engineering and simulation in theautomotive and energy industries. Explore theforces shaping the AVL simulation software suiteand hear how pioneers across the globe use it to outpace competition.Strap in. Our mission begins now. Welcome your host to today's episode.Welcome back at the AVL simulation podcast.I'm Mark Zoma and today we're heading straight tothe frontiers of alternative fuels innovation.My guest is Emanuele Soteropoulou, Vice Presidentand Co-Founder of Prometheus AppliedTechnologies. With her background in electrical and mechanicalengineering, Emanuele has helped shapegroundbreaking solutions that convert combustionengines to run on hydrogen, ammonia andmethanol. We'll talk about the engineering philosophybehind Prometheus, her view on simulation as atool for building trust and the pioneering spiritneeded to break new ground. Sometimes literally. Let's dive in.Emanuele, please give our audience a briefdescription of your company and your role in it.Prometheus. We started Prometheus, Luigi and I, who's my business partner in 2010.The idea behind it is to provide combustionsolutions to the industry, to OEMs. Those areour customers. Primarily, we started withpre-chamber spark plugs or pre-combustion chambers.Now it's expanded to a complete combustionsolution. We have about 10 engineers right now.We're a small company, but we are both in Germany and in Munich specifically and inFort Collins, Colorado. I am the Vice Presidentof Prometheus, but in a small company like ours,it just means that I do everything. Frombeing finance to finding and calling and managingminor things for the office to technical lead, coming to conferences like today,and also doing this podcast. Great. We willtouch on many topics throughout this podcast.Now to give an even better understanding, maybeyou can give us an example of a real-world usecase for your customers. How do you helpthem and how would such a project look like?Let's just take an example of a most recentdevelopment. There's quite a bit of push ofusing hydrogen as an alternative fuel. Wehave this new project that we're just startinglast week actually, where we take a dieselengine. This is heavy-duty off-highway type of engine.That's diesel and now converting it to runningon pure hydrogen. We have to consider the mixingof the hydrogen in cylinder, the injectionstrategy, direct injector, PFI. This is directinjection. Designing the nozzle for the injector,designing the injection strategy, the flow dynamicthat needs to take place in cylinder becausewhen you have diesel, you don't care about the flow.You care when you're doing pre-mixed combustionwith the hydrogen. We're designing the pre-chamberspark plug. It's like a holistic solution.It's the newest thing we have been promoting andexplaining how you have a holistic solution whereyou use flame jet ignition with the use of pre-chamberplugs to the use of the proper nozzle design to get the appropriate mixing we need.The ignition system, all these three things gotogether, which is the same cycle spark control.It's new technology to control the energy of thespark within the same cycle to be able to mitigatehot spots. I could talk about that for a longtime, but I will pause now. This is in essence.We're designing the solution to be able to gofrom diesel running engine to a hydrogen engine.So it's the whole combustion system for that.Your customer groups, could you segment them a littlebit? Who are they? Who are you working for? Ourcustomers are engine OEMs and the applicationsthey span from drones to trucks, buses, theseheavy duty on and off highway, power generation,marine applications. So if it can docombustion, it's reciprocating engine, we can do it. Soit's a huge breadth of applications. Beautiful.Let's get to the name of your company. What wasthe inspiration for that? Okay, I have to say itwas not, it was like not original. It's very genericbecause everybody, when it comes to dealingwith combustion, they think Prometheus becausehe was a Titan that stole the fire from theOlympian gods like Zeus and gave it to the humans,which meant technology and advancement. So whenwe were talking with Luigi about starting thiscompany, I said,"Listen, it needs to be namedPrometheus. There will be no other name for thiscompany." So here we are today. And it wasdifficult. He was having a difficult time pronouncing.He wanted to use the Italian version of it.And I said, "Forget it." It's not gonna happen.You're using the original. Very well. So within your company, why do people,what do people come to you for? What makes you the center of your constellation?I like this. I'm gonna use this when they come andvisit me to ask questions. But they, no, usually,besides just managing the latest and greatestfire, no pun intended, they come to ask me forputting together, usually when we do customerpresentations or reports, to just make sure thatthe messaging is clear. And the story that,because in the end, you have a lot of data,and you have to whittle it down and give themessage to the customer of what they're looking for.So in the end, the customer is satisfied. Themessage is clear. There's a clear path forward,and they are confident in our ability to deliver.So as you had a very precise idea of what to nameyour company, what nickname would you give your job if you had to?Okay, so I don't have one, but I can tell you what the guys at the office call me,which I never really picked up on it, butnow I know. They call me Em, because Emmanuel,but they call me Em from James Bond. So yes, Iguess that's what I do. How is this possible?But that is what the going word is. Well, that'sa compliment, I would say. I took it like that.That's pretty cool. Let's stick with your historyand the past. What got you into engineering in thefirst place? So when I was little, back in thedays of corded phones, so not even cordless phones,and VCRs. Well, a corded phone, please say againwhat this actually is to our audience that mightnot know. A cell phone by like a lot bigger with acord that's very, very long, because it has to goto all the different rooms in the house. It'splugged into the wall. Thank you for clarification.For a younger audience. Yes. So that is how weused to talk to our friends is take the phone and goto your room, close the door, and then mybrother would trip on the wire and then I would have tofix it because I needed to talk to my friends. SoI had to do a lot of phone repair and VCR repair.And I thought I was very interested in how thingsworked. So that's what got me intrigued into thesciences aspect and into engineering specifically. I really liked fixing things,or finding out how things work and then puttingthem back together. Okay, so you just disassembledand then put it back together. That was yourhobby. I wouldn't call it a hobby, but whennobody was around, that's what I would do. Icouldn't get in trouble. I see. And everythingworked when you put it back together. Yes, theydid. Because if they didn't, I would get in a lotof trouble. So I always made sure it wouldwork. Very good. And then simulation. When did thatenter your life the first time? Okay, back to theera of the corded phone. Then we go to the era ofwhen Windows appeared on the computers. So that'swhen I went to university. In fact, I think whenI started university, there were no windows.But halfway through there, windows became a thing.There were simulation packages that we wereusing. My school background is electrical engineering.So it was for circuit simulation. So that iswhen I was exposed to it for the first time. And Ireally enjoyed it because you could do so manythings and move so many things like resistors,capacitors, and see what is that doing to theresonance of the circuit, which I know the MEslistening right now are rolling their eyes. Butit's the ability to do something like that a lotfaster than going to the lab and having topower everything, design everything, and measureeverything. So I really enjoyed simulation fromthe early days of possibly having simulations.Great. Sticking with simulation, but movingnow into your core topic, combustion engines,where do you see the potential for simulation?And maybe you can give us an overview. Where did westart with simulation for combustion engines?Where are we today? And where do you think we can betomorrow? So I remember when I was first exposed tocombustion simulations, it wasn't even combustion,it was just flow for an internal combustionengine. It was probably in the early 2000s. And they werequarter models of the cylinder because ofthe computational capability was not there.And we've gone from quarter models, coldsimulations to now full models, combustion simulations,the highest degree of predictability. And thesky's the limit when it comes to being able tocome up with solutions. So I think in the end,with the, let's say the AI introduction in our world,I think it's going to help us advance even morethe ability of these tools to be used by engineerswith innovation to create solutions. So I have high hopes in what can happen.So the simulation methodology that you'rereferring to is CFD, computational fluid dynamics. Andif you want to listen to some doubters of CFD,you sometimes hear the term colors for directors.What would you say to somebody who is approaching you with this statement?Oh, yeah, that's, I mean, it has happened. AndI get a very strong emotional reaction becausePrometheus provides solutions that work in theindustry. I mean, otherwise, we would not be inbusiness based on tools like AVL FIRE™ that weuse for CFD that allow us to check the solutionsand make sure they work before we go to a customer and say, please test this.So what I say to people that think it's color for directors or whatever,your experience is not right. I'm not sure whoyou've been talking to, but come talk to me andI will explain to you how it is not. And indeed,it has value, a tremendous value, especially nowwith all these alternative fuels that we'retrying to get them to work to help the world.How come especially with alternativefuels? What makes it so important in this field?So, I mean, engines have been around formore than 100 years, you know, diesel, gasoline.Now, as we go to alternative fuels, we need to have more, I want to saycomplicated, but they need to be more refined solutions to make these fuels work.I mean, hydrogen is a difficult fuel to keep itin a combustion regime that is safe and stable.So you have to come up with thesesolutions, like I was saying, this holistic solution.This is not possible without CFD. It isabsolutely not possible. We will never have a solution.The ammonia, any kind of alternative fuel needs aslightly more complicated solution to get it to work.And we need to ramp up the time in which we wantto bring it to market. We want to actually use it.And simulation and virtualization is thekey to it. So that's a very strong statement.Have you had a customer say that they don't trust in simulation or did you getpushback when you maybe laid out your projectplan or your customer plan for a certain customer?Have you received pushback towards simulation?So, you know, most of our customers know this is how we do our work.So, of course, it's expected. But within eachOEM, there are what we call the "doubting Thomas's".And you get people that don't believe or have a lot of questions. And we do spendquite a bit of time and effort in whatever projectto bring this person that has doubts along with us.So in the end, you have, you know, expectationsand solutions generated by, you know, the use of CFD.But the proof is at the end when you actually take this harder and you test and youshow the "doubting Thomas" that look, expectation is now metwith real engine data, because that's in the end what matters.But we're able to do this in a shorter time because of the simulation capabilityand arrive to good solutions without having to do trial and error, trial and error,which then will never if you don't understandwhat's happening, you will never get the final solution.You mentioned that you had 10 engineers in your company.What were you looking for when assembling this team or what are you looking forwhen adding somebody to your team from apersonality and the character point of view?Okay, so we are a small team. And what we do is very niche. So the team has to fittogether because we have to spend quite a bitof time and effort in training every engine.Even if they have a lot of experience, theydon't have, let's say, the Prometheus experience.So they need to be, you know, willing to learn and tolerant or accepting of others.We all have our strengths as an individual and where someone is lacking insomething, we have another person that fulfills that aspect.So it's trying to teach them to work as a team and work on their strengths. Likeyou will go, for example, to Matthew, if you wantsomething very special coded or an algorithm made or something.And you would go to Supreeth for some kind of high level approach on a project, butnot necessarily vice versa. So those people need tolearn what their strengths are, what their weaknesses are.And that's why I think it's important to be more of a team. You know, you can alsofix a lot of, you know, self understanding and then useyour team to help you be more than the sum of the parts.So that is key in selecting people for ourteam. And I think it should be for any team.I imagine your daily routines, you have 10 engineers, Iassume you have more than one project at the same time.Hopefully, or maybe. How can we imagine that?How do these engineers work together? How do youorganize your teams? What are these routines?So, you know, there's always room for improvementon, you know, various aspects of our work, but we haveteam meetings two to three times a week where wediscuss all the projects. And the expectation isthat every single engineer is aware of what projects are going on. And they kind ofhave a high level understanding of what the project is about.And we typically have everyone work on every project in some kind of the aspect ofthe project, either as a support role, as a lead role, you know, it depends.And, you know, that way there's a growth that happens from, you know, sharedexperiences, because everything we do is cutting edge.So there's no cookie cutter projects, really, to say, oh, we've done this, justfollow this project and go do it on your own.It's very much a collaborative environment with a lot of ideas and outside the boxideas that are needed to get solutions to work with the alternative fuels.So we've mentioned it before that we live in a very fast paced world and there arenew approaches, new solutions coming up, but also new challenges as they emerge.How do you deal with this ever changing marketand maybe also ever changing customer demands?It's a good question. And what we try not to be is reactive. In a sense,you know, we see an opportunity or we have an idea like the.Well, we're not going to speak for the methanolyet because we haven't published that officially yet.But for the hydrogen that we've published quite a bit about is coming up with thisidea of the same cycle spark control, which is something that has.It doesn't even cross people's minds as possible.And we said, let's do this because this is the only way you can make a hydrogenengine have diesel like performance andneeds to have diesel like combustion stability.So we come up with a technology and we promote it.So you end up leading the customer to say, oh, yes, I do need this.And I didn't know I needed it. And I didn't know I needed it. So trying to break new ground and find solutions toproblems that they have accepted as status quo and they shouldn't.So that's where Prometheus likes to be is leading the pack, so to speak, and not somuch on the reaction of following the industry trends.I mean, we're all a slave to that at some point, you know, when there'selectrification happening and the internal combustion engine isdying slowly and now there's a revival.OK, that's good for business. Now let's find solutions to get there faster.It almost sounds like the romantic engineering spirit is really being lived at.Prometheus, if that's if that's that's what Itake away, you're looking for the next big thing.And I think you mentioned it before that the worst thing you can do to your team isto give them a project that has already been done before.And just repeat it. Maybe you can touch on that.What kind of team do you need? What personalities do you need that are so eager todo something new and something new in thisfield means to learn something new, I would assume.Young and eager. I mean, that is the trend that I have seen in the people that areinterested in pushing the limits and they have to have vision.So, yeah, it is romantic. It is my dream jobwhen I was looking for a job out of school.I wanted to be able to be doing R&D is what I would say.But, you know, in the end, it forms itself in what Prometheus stands for today.So if you have if you're driven by learning, you belong a Prometheus.And that is, you know, if I had to distill it in one thing, that has to be it.That's a very cool statement.If you go back to simulation, this is why this podcastis actually there for to talk about simulation as a whole.Where do you see the most untappedpotential for simulation in your area, obviously?Well, if I had to pick one region or maybe two untapped potential would be someindividual will hate for me saying that, but it would be the mesh.I would like this to be somewhat more efficient than it is today.I understand what we need to have it, but I think we can make it be faster.Computationally speaking, you know, not to take so many hours to run the code tomesh something that would be an improvement.Chemical mechanisms need quite a bit of help because there's no investment in byuniversities on, you know, that's the only people that do chemical mechanisms areuniversity people that don't necessarily understand that our industry,the internal combustion industry, we need differenttemperatures and pressures to be having these mechanisms work.So there's a couple of things to just improve simulation and predictability.But other than that, you know, as time progresses,computational speeds are increasing, so we get results faster.And then there is this big trend of artificialintelligence in the industry and in the software area overall.What's your take on artificial intelligence in simulation?And maybe certainly in CFD.Anyway, I think.Maybe naively so, but I think it's a good thing.I think AI can help us, you know, get better codes faster.With greater predictability, I mean, in the end, that's what we need simulations todo is to help us in understanding and seeing things and then coming up withsolutions that we can test, so to speak, on the,you know, with simulation before we make hardware.So I think AI can help with being able to, you know, find the shortcomings andimprove the code, so to speak, even the speed, those aspects.Well, thank you for this deep dive into your work, the simulation aspect.Now we want to wrap up with some, I wouldsay, personal, professional questions to you.And you are traveling the world, you're spearing your company.How do you keep your work-life balance?Yes, the work-life balance.So I will tell you, I struggled with this for many years, especially having startedPrometheus, which literally takes a lot of time and dedication.And I know Elon Musk is not popular these days, but Iremember when he would say, oh, I sleep in my office.I thought, oh, thank God, someone else is doing this, too.So because I literally had to do that because we had projects and it was just theneed to check the simulation at 2 a.m. or something, whatever.I was like, I'm not going home.So in the end, there is really what you do to recharge yourself.That's my personal perspective.Of course, you need to have family.My husband is very supportive to in your goals and dreams and to be able torecharge yourself with the work that you do.So I think it's up to the individual.Everybody has their own work-life balance.Mine is a work-work balance.So I'm happy with it.And what do you then actually do to recharge the batteries?Because I would assume, like, for any otherperson in the world, maybe you're the chosen one.But I guess also that you get tiredsometimes, not only physically, but also mentally.Oh, sure. Sure, I do.I mean, I get tired a lot, especially with jet lag.But this podcast is very exciting for me.So that definitely I mean, I know I'm going to leave this podcast room today andI'm going to feel like I'm going to be in a room with you.I feel really excited that I did this and presentations and conferences and beingable to interact with, you know, high caliber individuals that really getsimulations, really get our industry, you know, from different aspects of ourindustry to be able to have conversationsto say, how do we move our industry forward?How do we help each other in the world in the best way possible?So that makes me excited and energizes me.I don't ever say, oh, I'm done with the presentation.I feel so tired. Like, I can't say that I get really excited about it.That's very cool to hear. So we areparticipating in your recharging process, which is great.And you owe us basically.You're right.Very cool. So after years on the job, what have you taken away?Is there something you wish you would have never learned?No, no, there is never a lesson to be learned thatyou would say, oh, I'd rather not learn this lesson.That is not something I would ever say.And we have the philosophy at Prometheuswhere we say you never lose when you learn.Because, yeah, of course, we have somecombustion solutions that didn't work exactly as expected.But what did we learn from it? So we don't do it again.So, yeah, it's always a good learning experience. There is no bad ones.And if you could give your 20 year old self some advice for the future and making acareer in this industry, what advice would that be?So I 20, I was still at university and I was very nervousthat I didn't know what engineering was, that I would like it.I mean, I had no clue what I was getting into, really.So I would think I would go back and say,OK, don't worry, you're just going to love it.So stick with it and it will be fine.Beautiful. Thank you so much for your time in this conversation.And I wish you a great rest of your day. Thank you.Thank you, Max.Thanks for joining us on the AVL simulationpodcast where engineering missions take off.We hope today's journey through the world ofsimulation sparked new ideas and perspectives.To keep up with future episodes, subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.And if you're ready to accelerate your digitalengineering mission, visit AVL.com for more insights.Until next time, keep simulating, keep innovating and keep pushing the boundaries.