The urgent need to address climate change is recognised globally with Australia adopting a net zero emissions target by 2050 and commitments to reduce carbon emissions by 2030. The adoption of hydrogen as a substitute for carbon-containing fossil fuels would prevent emissions of greenhouse gases. However, hydrogen is itself an indirect greenhouse gas and any leakage of hydrogen in the atmosphere because of fugitive emissions from a hydrogen economy will impact the climate, partially offsetting the climate benefits of a reduction in CO2. Hydrogen is a volatile, and odorless gas with relatively small molecular size and low viscosity; thus, hydrogen systems are highly prone to leakage. As such, there is an urgent need to build capacity to detect and minimise fugitive hydrogen emissions to the environment. To address the risk of hydrogen fugitive emissions and leaks, robust, reliable, real-time, power efficient, and scalable sensing and leak detection technologies, including advanced hydrogen gas sensors should be employed. Currently many different types of hydrogen sensor are commercially available or in development. However, to meet the demands of an evolving future hydrogen economy, ongoing research has focused on continuously enhancing sensitivity, selectivity, response time, low detection limit and reliability in addition to reducing sensor size, cost, and power consumption. We have developed innovative gas sensing technologies via synthesising hybrid photoactive nanomaterials using facile chemical methods. These nanomaterials include Pd-TiO2 hollow nanospheres, rGO-Pd-TiO2 and Pd-TiO2 solid nanospheres that have shown promising results to detect hydrogen gas at room or low operating temperature (i.e., low power requirements) with high sensitivity and selectivity and fast response (within seconds) by using photoexcitation. This talk discusses benefits of nanomaterial hybridisation and photoexcitation to hydrogen gas sensing, the underlying sensing mechanisms, and strategies to overcome current limitations. Speaker(s): Mahnaz Room: 10704, Bldg: Applied Sciences Building, ASB 10704, Simon Fraser Unviersity – Burnaby, Burnaby, British Columbia, Canada, V5A 0A7, Virtual: https://events.vtools.ieee.org/m/420119