GreenH2@Work Employee Spotlight: Amina SubLaban

What do you get when you combine a jiu jitsu competitor, a chemist, and a Tik Toker whose dog has more than 38 million video views? That’s not a joke, it’s Amina SubLaban, one of Plug’s R&D Engineers whose focus is PEM electrolyzers.

Amina, who has worked at Plug for the last two years, focuses her efforts on current and next generation electrolyzer stacks. She works to improve the way our electrolyzer stacks produce hydrogen by looking at the component parts and their coatings and investigating novel methods for incremental improvement. “I studied chemistry in college, so this is a nice mash up of engineering and chemistry.”

Amina is from Florida and completed her bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Florida State University before moving to Boston to take a job at UMASS Lowell in their green energy & combustion research lab. One of the things she did there involved hands-on experimental work with hydrogen. From there, she found Plug in Concord, MA. “I wanted to make my way from academia to industry. Plug seemed like the perfect job for me, and it has been!”

At Plug, Amina started as an analytical chemist processing samples for all of our branches, but she wanted to work directly in electrolyzer R&D. When a position came open, she jumped at it. The electrolyzer team “is definitely still the startup vibe where everyone is doing crazy amounts of work and really helping each other out. The culture here encourages us to ask questions. We crack jokes a lot and it’s a really fun work culture,” she commented. “The idea of bringing green hydrogen into society as a bridge to get to that ideal planet we want – the importance of hydrogen is immense. That’s something I really didn’t know about until I started working at Plug. That hydrogen is the piece we need to get to the future we’re trying to build.”

Amina is guided by her understanding that any of us could be in someone else’s shoes at any point given the right circumstances. That knowledge removes the burden of having negative perceptions of others and inserts a good dose of compassion. “It gives me more patience and tolerance when I interact with others.” Being born in Miami and growing up with a Muslim father and a Christian mother and many friends who are Jewish has given Amina a great appreciation for the idea that diversity is good for resiliency – for people and ecosystems.

But back to Brazilian Jiu Jitsu – it’s a huge portion of Amina’s life. She joined last June after stumbling upon a gym near home and now participates 7 days a week. “It’s a battle, but it’s empowering.” She competes every three months – the next one is in mid-November.

And Ollie, Amina’s dog, became a superstar on Tik Tok. The black lab mix went viral in 2020 when Amina made a trend video putting butter on Ollie’s head. She continues to make videos of Ollie doing other trends and gets thousands of views, but nothing compares to putting butter on his head.

From work to life, it’s easy to see that diversity plays a key role in Amina’s life. Growing up, her Puerto Rican grandmother would tell her “sin miedo,” which in English means “without fear”. Now working in the nascent hydrogen industry, this perspective is helping Amina make an impact on the Plug team and the market. 

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