Gerasimos Konstantatos received the Diploma from the University of Patras, Patras, Greece, in 2001 and the M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, in 2004 and 2008, respectively, all in electrical and computer engineering.He is currently a Group Leader with ICFO - the Institute of Photonic Sciences, Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spain. His work has been published in over 25 journal articles, 7 of them in Nature-family journals, in the field of colloidal quantum dot optoelectonics. He is also an inventor of 5 granted patents licensed to Invisage Technologies and a recipient of the TR35 Spain 2012 award for his contributions on colloidal quantum dot photodetectors. His current research interests lie in the field of solution processed functional nanomaterials for solar cell and optical sensor applications.

Dr. Annalisa Bruno is a Principal Scientist at the Energy ResearchInstitute at Nanyang Technological University (ERI@N) coordinating a team working on perovskite high-efficiency solar cells and modules by thermal evaporation. Annalisa is also a tenured Scientist at Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy, and Sustainable Economic Development (ENEA). Previously Annalisa was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate at Imperial College London. Annalisa received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. Degrees in Physics from the University of Naples Federico II. Her research interests include perovskite light-harvesting and charge generation properties and their implementation in solar cells and optoelectronic devices.

Frédéric Laquai received his doctoral degree in Physical Chemistry from the University of Mainz in 2006. Thereafter, he was as a Research Fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge. In 2008 he became Head of the Max Planck Research Group for Organic Optoelectronics at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz. Since 2015 he is also Associate Professor at the King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) and affiliated with the Solar and Photovoltaics Engineering Research Center (SPERC) at KAUST. His current research interest is focused on photonenergy conversion processes, specifically the photophysics of organic solar cells.

Sascha is a Tenure-Track Assistant Professor in Physical Chemistry and Head of the Laboratory for Energy Materials at EPFL (Switzerland), while he is also maintaining strong ties with the Harvard community and in particular Winthrop House which he regularly visits as NRT and SCR member.

His team employs light-matter interactions to understand the next generation of soft semiconductors with the overarching goal of maximizing energy efficiency for a sustainable future by unlocking applications ranging from flexible light-weight solar cells & displays all the way to entirely new applications in quantum information processing.

Previously, he was a research group leader and Rowland Fellow at Harvard University’s Rowland Institute. Before starting his lab at Harvard, Sascha studied Chemistry at Heidelberg University (Germany) and completed a PhD in Physics at the University of Cambridge (UK), where he subsequently worked as EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow.

Alicia Forment-Aliaga (Valencia, 1976) is a researcher at the Molecular Science Institute (ICMol) and a senior lecturer in the School of Chemistry at the University of Valencia (UVEG), Spain. She graduated in Chemistry and carried out her PhD on molecular magnetism at the UVEG, supervised by Prof. E. Coronado and Prof. F.M. Romero. Between 2004-2008 she joined Prof. K. Kern’s group as a postdoctoral researcher at Max-Planck Institute for Solid Sate Research in Stuttgart, Germany. During this period, she was awarded with different competitive postdoctoral grants for developing her research on molecular electronics. Since July 2008 she works at ICMol at the UVEG, in Prof. E. Coronado’s group. This period comprises a postdoctoral Juan de la Cierva contract and a tenure-track Ramón y Cajal contract, both competitive contracts granted by the Spanish Government, and her current position as senior lecturer. At the ICMol she has developed a line of research in molecular surface engineering and in the last years, she has also started working on 2D materials. Particularly, she has driven her research into four specific goals: (1) Non-conventional lithographies for the organization of molecular systems; (2) formation of self-assembled monolayers for molecular spintronics; (3) scanning force microscopies for surface modification and characterization and (4) 2D materials, targeting their exfoliation, molecular functionalization and application in different areas.

Prof. R. Robinson received his PhD in Applied Physics from Columbia University. After his PhD, Prof. Robinson was awarded a postdoctoral fellowship at University of California, Berkeley/LBNL in the research group of Paul Alivisatos.  There, he worked on nanoparticle synthesis, chemical transformations of nanoparticles, and advanced property characterizations of nanoparticles.  In 2008 Richard began a faculty position at Cornell University in the Materials Science Department, and is currently an associate professor. His primary research interests are: (I) Synthesis and chemical transformations in nanocrystals, (II) Nanocrystals in energy applications, and (III) Synchrotron x-ray characterization of nanomaterials.

therobinsongroup.org/

Sara Skrabalak received her B.A. in chemistry from Washington University in St. Louis in 2002 where she conducted research with Professor William E. Buhro. She then moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where she completed her Ph.D. in chemistry in fall of 2006 under the tutelage of Professor Kenneth S. Suslick. After conducting postdoctoral research at the University of Washington – Seattle with Professors Younan Xia and Xingde Li, she began on the faculty at Indiana University – Bloomington in 2008. She is currently a James H. Rudy Professor at Indiana University. She was appointed Editor-in-Chief for the ACS journals Chemistry of Materials and ACS Materials Letters ​in 2020.

She is a recipient of both NSF CAREER and DOE Early Career Awards. She is a 2012 Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar, a 2013 Sloan Research Fellow, a 2014 Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar and 2017 Guggenheim and Fulbright Fellows. In 2014, she received the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry and in 2017 was the recipient of the Frontiers in Research Excellence & Discovery Award from Research Corporation. She served as an Associate Editor for the RSC journals Nanoscale from 2017-2020 and Nanoscale Horizons from 2018-2020. Her group is developing new synthetic methods to solid materials with defined shapes and architecture then studying the properties of the materials as they are applied to applications in energy science, chemical sensing, and secured electronics.

Alessandro Stroppa (July 14^th 1976) is a Research Director of the CNR-SPIN Institute (Italy) and deputy director of the research unit in L’Aquila (Italy). He received his PhD in Theoretical Condensed Matter Physics from University of Trieste (Italy) in 2006 and he continued his research in computational materials science at University of Vienna in the group of Prof. Georg Kresse (VASP Team). After 2009, he joined the CNR in Italy where he became permanent staff in 2012. He is contract professor at University of L’Aquila (Italy), and invited professor at Shanghai and South East University (China).

His current research areas deal with solid-state physics and materials science. Specifically, he is interested in 3D and 2D hybrid inorganic-organic perovskites, non-magnetic and magnetic 2D systems with special focus on photo-ferroic, multiferroic, magnetoelectric, twistronic, topological, magneto-optical and non-linear optical properties, skyrmions, etc.  He has great experience with Density Functional Theory (DFT) methods for the study of the structural, electronic and magnetic properties using all-electrons as well as pseudopotential approaches implemented in numerical codes. He has published about 138 peer-reviewed papers (h-index=43, Total citations 6744) in theoretical condensed matter also in collaboration with experimentalists. In 2017, 5 of his papers were Highly Cited (Source: Web of Science). He is on the World’s top 2% scientists lists published by Stanford University since 2019. He received honors such as the ‘Best 2008 New Journal of Physics Collection’; Research Highlight talk at EUROMAT 2013; Best oral talks at Italian Physical Society conferences in 2005 and 2011; Certificate of appreciation for “his important contributions to the theoretical understanding of microscopic mechanisms of multiferroicity and magnetoelectricity in perovskite metal-organic frameworks” by Nature Conference (Nankai University, 2019). He is carrying out an intense outreach activity for primary schools. [Last update Sept 04^th 2023]

Selected papers

1. A. Stroppa, et al.“Electric Control of Magnetization and Interplay between Orbital Ordering and Ferroelectricity in a Multiferroic Metal-Organic Framework”, Angew. Chem. Int. Ed. Engl., 2011, 50, 5847-5850. Times cited:192.

2. A. Stroppa, et al. “Hybrid Improper Ferroelectricity in a Multiferroic and Magnetoelectric Metal-Organic Framework”, Adv. Mat., 2013, 25, 2284-2290. Times cited:215.

3. A. Stroppa, et al. “Tuning the Ferroelectric Polarization in a Multiferroic Metal-Organic Framework”, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2013, 135, 18126-18130. Times cited:190.

4. A. Stroppa, et al. “Electric-Magneto-Optical Kerr Effect in a Hybrid Organic-Inorganic Perovskite”, J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2017, 139, 12883-12886. Times cited:23.

5. A. Stroppa, et al.”Tunable ferroelectric polarization and its interplay with spin-orbit coupling in tin iodide perovskites”, Nat. Commun., 2014, 5, 5900. Times cited:175 (Highly Cited Paper)

6. A. Stroppa, “Cross coupling between electric and magnetic orders in a multiferroic metal-organic framework”, Sci. Rep., 2014, 4, 6062. Times cited:134.

7. A. Stroppa, et al. “Magneto-Optical Kerr Switching Properties of (CrI3)2 and (CrBr3/CrI3) Bilayers”, ACS Appl. Electron. Mater. 2020, 2, 5, 1380-1373. Times cited:1.

8. A. Stroppa et al. “Activating magnetoelectric optical properties by twisting antiferromagnetic bilayers”, Phys. Rev. B, 106, 184408 (2022). Times cited: 0

Selected links (Outreach)

https://www.spin.cnr.it/outreach-and-t-t/events/item/240-spin-at-maker-faire-2023

https://outreach.cnr.it/risorsa/231/giocando-con-la-geometria

https://outreach.cnr.it/risorsa/79/dalla-geometria-alla-geo-materia-un-affascinante-percorso-didattico

Mariano Campoy Quiles´s research is devoted to the understanding and development of solution processed semiconductors for energy and optoelectronic applications. He and his team have built substantial research efforts in two application areas, solar photovoltaic (light to electric) and thermoelectric (heat to electric) energy conversion based on organic and hybrid materials. He studied physics at the Univesity of Santiago de Compostela, obtained his PhD in experimental physics from Imperial College London, and since 2008 he leads his team at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona.

Stelios A. Choulis is Professor of Material Science and Engineering at the Cyprus University of Technology (2008-present). He was the Organic Photovoltaic Device group leader of Konarka Technologies (2006-2008) and research and development (R&D) engineer of the Osram Opto-Semiconductors Inc, Organic Light Emitting Diode R&D team (2004-2006). During his PhD and first post-doc research associate (PDRA) position at Advanced Technology Institute (1999-2002, University of Surrey) he investigated the optical properties of quantum electronic materials and opto-electronic devices. In 2002 he joined the center of electronic materials and devices (Imperial College London, UK) as PDRA and work on the transport and recombination dynamics properties of molecular semiconductors (2002-2004). His current research interest focuses on the development of functional materials and devices for advanced optoelectronic applications.

Morten Madsen, Professor wsr at the University of Southern Denmark, SDU NanoSYD.

My field of expertise is thin-film growth, integration and devices for energy conversion and storage applications. In 2010-2011, I worked with high performance transistors from III-V nanoscale membranes at the Javey research lab, UC Berkeley, California. In 2011, I established the OPV group at SDU NanoSYD, where we work on improving the performance and stability of organic and hybrid solar cells, including thin film synthesis, metal oxide interlayers and interfaces, organic and hybrid active layers as well as film and device degradation. Since 2016, we also have a focus on device up-scaling through Roll-to-Roll (R2R) printing technology at the SDU R2R facility. Vist out site for more details:

https://www.sdu.dk/en/om_sdu/institutter_centre/c_nanosyd/forskningsomrader/organic+solar+cells

 

Jie Min obtained his PhD degree from the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nurnberg in 2015. After obtaining his PhD degree, he worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Institute of Materials for Electronics and Energy Technology, Erlangen, Germany (2016–2017). In 2017, he joined Wuhan University as a full professor. His current research interests relate to the reduction of the efficiency-stability-cost gap of organic photovoltaics. He also aimed to explore the emerging applications of building integrated photovoltaics. For more information, please see the lab website: http://jie min.whu.edu.cn/.

RnD manager at Epishine AB

www.epishine.com

Seiichiro Izawa is an associate professor in Tokyo Institute of Technology in Japan, since 2023. He received his Ph.D. from Department of Applied Chemistry in the University of Tokyo in 2015 and worked at RIKEN in Japan and University of California, Santa Barbara as a postdoctoral fellow, and  Institute for Molecular Science in Japan as an assistant professor. His research interests are optoelectronic properties at organic semiconductor interface for efficient organic electronics devices such as photovoltaics and light-emitting diodes.

From 2019, A.M. serves as Associate Professor in Condensed Matter Physics at Department of Materials Science. His research is focused on the development of advanced hybrid functional nanomaterials for applications in photonics and theranostics in collaboration with several national and international universities and research institutes. He started his research by working on hybrid organic/inorganic light NIR emitters based on lanthanides ions and photonic crystals for lighting and telecom, in the framework of several national and international project and networks. The topic of the current research is the design and study of advanced materials and nanostructured materials for photon managing and scintillation applications. The experimental activity is centered on CW and ultrafast TRPL photoluminescence spectroscopy, transient absorption spectroscopy, confocal imaging, IR and FT-IR spectroscopy to tackle both fundamental and applicative aspects aimed at the development of materials to implemented real-world technologies.

Haowei Huang graduated and received his Ph.D. in Bioscience Engineering from the Centre for Membrane Separations, Adsorption, Catalysis and Spectroscopy for Sustainable Solutions, KU Leuven (Belgium), in 2020, where he studied metal halide perovskite photocatalysis. After that, he continued his postdoctoral research with financial support from the Belgium government (FWO) with Prof.Maarten Roeffaers at KU Leuven and Prof. Peidong Yang at UC Berkeley. His research focuses on the development of optically active materials and their application on photo(electro)catalysis.

Volker Blum is an Associate Professor in the Thomas Lord Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University, Durham, NC. He obtained his doctoral degree from University of Erlangen, Germany in 2001 and then pursued his post-doctoral research at National Renewable Energy Laboratory in Golden, CO, from 2002-2004. From 2004-2013, he was a scientist and group leader at the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin, Germany. He develops computational methods and software for electronic structure simulations, data analysis and data sharing in materials science and in computational chemistry, including as the lead developer of the FHI-aims electronic structure code. His current applied research focuses on novel semiconductor materials as well as molecular spectroscopy. In particular, his group is working on hybrid perovskite materials and chalcogenide semiconductors.

Giulia is Associate Professor at Physical Chemistry Unit at University of Pavia, leading the PVsquared2 team, and running the European Grant ERCStG Project “HYNANO”aiming at the development of advanced hybrid perovskites materials and innovative functional interfaces for efficient, cheap and stable photovoltaics. Within this field, Giulia contributed to reveal the fundamental lightinduced dynamical processes underlying the operation of such advanced optoelectronic devices whose understanding is paramount for a smart device development and for contributing to the transition of a green economy.

Giulia received an MS in Physical Engineering in 2008 and obtained her PhD in Physics cum laude in 2012 at the Politecnico of Milan. Her experimental thesis focused on the realisation of a new femtosecond-microscope for mapping the ultrafast phenomena at organic interfaces. During her PhD, she worked for one year at the Physics Department of Oxford University where she pioneered new concepts within polymer/oxide solar cell technology. From 2012-2015, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology in Milan. In 2015, she joined the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) with a Co-Funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship. From 2016 to 2019, she has been awarded by the Swiss Ambizione Energy Grant providing a platform to lead her independent research group at EPFL focused on the developemnt of new generation hybrid perovskite solar cells.

She is author of 90 peer-reviewed scientific papers bringing her h-index to 44 (>13’000 citations), focused on developement and understanding of the interface physics which governs the operation of new generation solar cells.

Recently, she received the USERN prize in Physical Science, the Swiss Physical Society Award in 2018 for Young Researcher and the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Optics. She is currently USERN Ambassador for Italy and board member of the Young Academy of Europe.

More can be found at https://pvsquared2.unipv.it.

Weblink: https://people.epfl.ch/giulia.grancini?lang=en

Dr. Jovana V. Milić obtained her PhD in the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH Zurich in July 2017. Her research interests encompass (supra)molecular engineering of bioinspired organic materials with the aim of developing functional nanotechnologies. Since October 2017, she has worked as a scientist with Prof. Michael Graetzel in the Laboratory for Photonics and Interfaces at EPFL in Switzerland on the development of novel photovoltaic materials, with the focus on dye-sensitized and hybrid perovskite solar cells. In September 2020, she has taken on a position of a Group Leader in the Soft Matter Physics Group of the Adolphe Merkle Institute at the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. For more information, refer to her LinkedIn profile (linkedin.com/in/jovanavmilic), ORCID 0000-0002-9965-3460, and Twitter (@jovana_v_milic).

Julian obtained his B.S. in chemical engineering from the University of New Mexico and his M.Phil. in chemistry from the University of Cambridge, where he studied electrocatalytic materials. He recieved his Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Stanford University under the supervision of Profs. Hemamala Karunadasa and Michael Toney, focusing on synthesis, defect chemistry, and X-ray characterization of halide perovskite semiconductors. Julian is currently a Schmidt Science Fellow at the Unviersity of California, Berkeley; his present research concerns applying chemical design principles to next-generation electronics.

Juan Bisquert (pHD Universitat de València, 1991) is a Professor of applied physics at Universitat Jaume I de Castelló, Spain. He is the director of the Institute of Advanced Materials at UJI. He authored 360 peer reviewed papers, and a series of books including . Physics of Solar Cells: Perovskites, Organics, and Photovoltaics Fundamentals (CRC Press).  His h-index 95, and is currently a Senior Editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. He conducts experimental and theoretical research on materials and devices for production and storage of clean energies. His main topics of interest are materials and processes in perovskite solar cells and solar fuel production. He has developed the application of measurement techniques and physical modeling of nanostructured energy devices, that relate the device operation with the elementary steps that take place at the nanoscale dimension: charge transfer, carrier transport, chemical reaction, etc., especially in the field of impedance spectroscopy, as well as general device models. He has been distinguished in the 2014-2019 list of ISI Highly Cited Researchers.

 

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Antonio Guerrero is Associate Professor in Applied Physics at the Institute of Advanced Materials (Spain). His background includes synthesis of organic and inorganic materials (PhD in Chemistry). He worked 4 years at Cambridge Dispaly Technology  fabricating materiales for organic light emitting diodes and joined University Jaume I in 2010 to lead the fabrication laboratory of electronic devices. His expertise includes chemical and electrical characterization of several types of electronic devices. In the last years he has focused in solar cells, memristors, electrochemical cells and batteries.

Do Hwan Kim is currently a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Hanyang University, South Korea. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Pohang University of Science and Technology in 2005. From 2006 to 2010, he worked at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology as a senior researcher. He also worked at Stanford University, United States, as a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering (2011–2012) and worked as an Assistant Professor at Soongsil University, South Korea (2012–2017). His research interests are in the field of organic optoelectronics, electronic skins, and multimodal synaptic devices.

Tae-Woo Lee is an associate professor in Materials Science and Engineering at the Seoul National University, Korea. He received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the KAIST, Korea in 2002. He joined Bell Laboratories, USA as a postdoctoral researcher and worked at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology as (2003-2008). He was an associate professor in Materials Science and Engineering at the Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Korea until August 2016. His research focuses on printed flexible electronics based on organic, carbon, and organic-inorganic hybrid perovskite materials for displays, solar cells, and bio-inspired neuromorphic electronics.

Yong-Young Noh is Chair Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH), Pohang, Republic of Korea. He received his PhD in 2005 from GIST, Republic of Korea, and then worked at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge, UK, as a postdoctoral associate. Afterwards, he worked at ETRI as a senior researcher, Hanbat National University as assistant professor, Dongguk University-Seoul as associate professor. He has won Merck Young Scientist Award (2013), Korea President Award (2014), IEEE George E. Smith Award (2014), and as selected this month Scientist from Korea Government (September. 2016). He has published over 360 papers in international journals in the field of materials for electronics and optoelectric devices, in particular, OFETs, OLEDs, Metal Halide, perovskites, carbon nanotube 2D layered materials and oxide TFTs.

 

Joon Hak OH is a professor of School of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Seoul National University, Korea. He received his B.S, M.S, Ph.D degrees from Seoul National University. He worked as a senior engineer at Samsung Electronics. He then continued his postdoctoral research at Stanford University. He was a faculty at Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST, 2010-2014) and Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH, 2014-2018), before moving to Seoul National University in 2018. His research focuses on synthesis of organic and polymeric nanomaterials and carbon nanomaterials, enhancement of their electrical and optical functions by controlling the physical and chemical features, and applications to flexible electronic devices and energy devices, such as organic field-effect transistors, chemical/bio/physical sensors, and organic solar cells.

Dr. Fan Fu is a group leader at Empa-Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology. He received his bachelor's and master's degrees in materials science from the Wuhan University of Technology in 2010 and 2013, respectively. He joined Prof. Ayodhya N. Tiwari's group as a Ph.D. student in 2014 and earned his Ph.D. degree from ETH Zürich with distinction in 2017. His doctoral thesis on perovskite-CIGS thin-film tandem solar cells was awarded ETH Medal. From January 2018 to May 2019, he worked as a postdoc researcher in Prof. Christophe Ballif's group at EPFL. In June 2019, he joined Empa as a group leader. He is currently leading a research team investigating novel perovskite semiconductors for energy and optoelectronics applications. In particular, his group's recent research efforts focus on upscaling high-performance perovskite-based tandem solar cells and mini-modules on flexible substrates.

 

René Janssen is university professor at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e). He received his Ph.D. in 1987 from the TU/e for a thesis on electron spin resonance and quantum chemical calculations of organic radicals in single crystals. He was lecturer at the TU/e since 1984, and a senior lecturer in physical organic chemistry since 1991. In 1993 and 1994 he joined the group of Professor Alan J. Heeger (Nobel laureate in 2000) at the University of California Santa Barbara as associate researcher to work on the photophysical properties of conjugated polymers. Presently the research of his group focuses on functional conjugated molecules and macromolecules as well as hybrid semiconductor materials that may find application in advanced technological applications. The synthesis of new materials is combined with time-resolved optical spectroscopy, electrochemistry, morphological characterization and the preparation of prototype devices to accomplish these goals. René Janssen has co-authored more than 600 scientific papers. He is co-recipient of the René Descartes Prize from the European Commission for outstanding collaborative research, and received the Research Prize of The Royal Institute of Engineers and in The Netherlands for his work. In 2015 René Janssen was awarded with the Spinoza Prize of The Dutch Research Council.

 

Luisa De Marco received her PhD in Nanoscience from Università del Salento in 2010 working on nanostructured semiconductors for photovoltaics. Since 2016 she is researcher at CNR NANOTEC leading a 6-person team working on the development of low-dimensional inorganic and hybrid nanomaterials. She is author of more than 70 papers that collectively have received more than 2600 citations, with an h-index of 31. Among the publications stand out Advanced Materials, Nature Nanotechnology, Energy & Environmental Science, ACS Nano and Science Advances.

Her research interests focus on the development and engineering of hybrid and inorganic low-dimensional semiconductors having specifically tailored functional properties and on design and fabrication of optoelectronic devices.

 

Jacky Even was born in Rennes, France, in 1964. He received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Paris VI, Paris, France, in 1992. He was a Research and Teaching Assistant with the University of Rennes I, Rennes, from 1992 to 1999. He has been a Full Professor of optoelectronics with the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées, Rennes,since 1999. He was the head of the Materials and Nanotechnology from 2006 to 2009, and Director of Education of Insa Rennes from 2010 to 2012. He created the FOTON Laboratory Simulation Group in 1999. His main field of activity is the theoretical study of the electronic, optical, and nonlinear properties of semiconductor QW and QD structures, hybrid perovskite materials, and the simulation of optoelectronic and photovoltaic devices. He is a senior member of Institut Universitaire de France (IUF).

Bio Professional Preparation M.S. in Chemistry, with Honours, University of Bari, Italy, 1996 Ph.D. in Chemistry, University of Bari, Italy, 2001 Research interests Prof. L. Manna is an expert of synthesis and assembly of colloidal nanocrystals. His research interests span the advanced synthesis, structural characterization and assembly of inorganic nanostructures for applications in energy-related areas, in photonics, electronics and biology.

Barbara Piętka received a doctorate at the University of Warsaw in Poland and at the Université Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, France as part of international co-tutelle. She gained professional experience working in France, Switzerland and Germany. She has built a research group focused on the study of non-equilibrium Bose-Einstein condensates of exciton-polaritons at the Faculty of Physics, University of Warsaw in Poland, where she has been working since 2010. 

The main topic of her interests are quantum phenomena occurring in the regime of nonlinear light-matter coupled systems. She is concentrated on semiconductor materials, two-dimensional layered materials, perovskites and dielectric structures. The most important recent success is the demonstration of a device composed of a dielectric cavity filled with liquid crystal and perovskite demonstrating a tunable non-zero Berry curvature and chiral lasing. She is looking for efficient, room-temperature solutions for non-linear information processing, single-photon computing, and photonic accelerators.

Dr. Thilo Stöferle has been a permanent Research Staff Member at the IBM Research – Zurich Laboratory since August 2007. His current research interests are quantum simulation and quantum fluids, Bose-Einstein condensates with exciton-polaritons, integrated high Q/V cavities, nanophotonic lasers and switches. Another focus is on hybrid nanocomposite quantum materials for strong-light matter interaction and opto-electronic applications.

Juan Bisquert (pHD Universitat de València, 1991) is a Professor of applied physics at Universitat Jaume I de Castelló, Spain. He is the director of the Institute of Advanced Materials at UJI. He authored 360 peer reviewed papers, and a series of books including . Physics of Solar Cells: Perovskites, Organics, and Photovoltaics Fundamentals (CRC Press).  His h-index 95, and is currently a Senior Editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. He conducts experimental and theoretical research on materials and devices for production and storage of clean energies. His main topics of interest are materials and processes in perovskite solar cells and solar fuel production. He has developed the application of measurement techniques and physical modeling of nanostructured energy devices, that relate the device operation with the elementary steps that take place at the nanoscale dimension: charge transfer, carrier transport, chemical reaction, etc., especially in the field of impedance spectroscopy, as well as general device models. He has been distinguished in the 2014-2019 list of ISI Highly Cited Researchers.

 

Silvia Colella is a researcher at the National research council, CNR-NANOTEC, in Bari, Italy. She received her PhD in “Nanoscience” at National Nanotechnology Laboratory in Lecce (Italy), in 2010. She has been visiting student in the group of professor Luisa De Cola at the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität of Münster (Germany), where she dealt with the synthesis and photophysical characterization of electroluminescent metal complexes. In 2010 she joined BASF – The Chemical Company (Strasbourg) with a Marie Curie fellowship as experienced researcher in the frame of the EU project ITN SUPERIOR, working on Dye Sensitized Solar Cells. She continued as post-doc researcher at the Institut de science et ingénierie supramoléculaires (ISIS) in Strasbourg, France. In 2012 she started her independent research in Lecce (Italy) at the University of Salento in collaboration with CNR-NANOTEC, the team focused on the conception and optoelectronic characterization of innovative optoelectronic devices based on hybrid halide perovskites. Many high impact publication were produced in this time interval, among them one of the first report in halide perovskite for PV exploitation (Colella et al, Chemistry of Materials, 2013 25, 4613-4618).

Silvia Colella is author of >70 peer-reviewed publications in renowned international journals (including Energy and Environmental Science, Advanced Materials, ACS Energy Letters).

Her scientific production led to >3000 total citations and a h-index of 28 (https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=S2TZd_4AAAAJ&hl=it; https://www.scopus.com/authid/detail.uri?authorId=24170650100).

Lioz Etgar obtained his Ph.D. (2009) at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology and completed post-doctoral research with Prof. Michael Grätzel at EPFL, Switzerland.  In his post-doctoral research, he received a Marie Curie Fellowship and won the Wolf Prize for young scientists. Since 2012, he has been a senior lecturer in the Institute of Chemistry at the Hebrew University. On 2017 he received an Associate Professor position. Prof. Etgar was the first to demonstrate the possibility to work with the perovskite as light harvester and hole conductor in the solar cell which result in one of the pioneer publication in this field. Recently Prof. Etgar won the prestigious Krill prize by the Wolf foundation. Etgar’s research group focuses on the development of innovative solar cells. Prof. Etgar is researching new excitonic solar cells structures/architectures while designing and controlling the inorganic light harvester structure and properties to improve the photovoltaic parameters.

Prof. Mónica Lira-Cantú is Group Leader of the Nanostructured Materials for Photovoltaic Energy Group at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (www.icn.cat located in Barcelona (Spain). She obtained a Bachelor in Chemistry at the Monterrey Institute of Technology and Higher Education, ITESM Mexico (1992), obtained a Master and PhD in Materials Science at the Materials Science Institute of Barcelona (ICMAB) & Autonoma University of Barcelona (1995/1997) and completed a postdoctoral work under a contract with the company Schneider Electric/ICMAB (1998). From 1999 to 2001 she worked as Senior Staff Chemist at ExxonMobil Research & Engineering (formerly Mobil Technology Co) in New Jersey (USA) initiating a laboratory on energy related applications (fuel cells and membranes). She moved back to ICMAB in Barcelona, Spain in 2002. She received different awards/fellowships as a visiting scientist to the following laboratories: University of Oslo, Norway (2003), Riso National Laboratory, Denmark (2004/2005) and the Center for Advanced Science and Innovation, Japan (2006). In parallel to her duties as Group Leader at ICN2 (Spain), she is currently visiting scientist at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, CH). Her research interests are the synthesis and application of nanostructured materials for Next-generation solar cells: Dye sensitized, hybrid, organic, all-oxide and perovskite solar cells. Monica Lira-Cantu has more than 85 published papers, 8 patents and 10 book chapters and 1 edited book (in preparation).

Gerasimos Konstantatos received the Diploma from the University of Patras, Patras, Greece, in 2001 and the M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada, in 2004 and 2008, respectively, all in electrical and computer engineering.He is currently a Group Leader with ICFO - the Institute of Photonic Sciences, Castelldefels, Barcelona, Spain. His work has been published in over 25 journal articles, 7 of them in Nature-family journals, in the field of colloidal quantum dot optoelectonics. He is also an inventor of 5 granted patents licensed to Invisage Technologies and a recipient of the TR35 Spain 2012 award for his contributions on colloidal quantum dot photodetectors. His current research interests lie in the field of solution processed functional nanomaterials for solar cell and optical sensor applications.

James Durrant is Professor of Photochemistry in the Department of Chemistry, Imperial College London and Ser Cymru Solar Professor, University of Swansea. His research addresses the photochemistry of new materials for solar energy conversion targeting both solar cells (photovoltaics) and solar to fuel (i.e.: artificial photosynthesis. It is based around employing transient optical and optoelectronic techniques to address materials function, and thereby elucidate design principles which enable technological development. His group is currently addressing the development and functional characterisation of organic and perovskite solar cells and photoelectrodes for solar fuel generation. More widely, he leads Imperial's Centre for Processable Electronics, founded the UK�s Solar Fuels Network and led the Welsh government funded S�r Cymru Solar initiative. He has published over 500 research papers and 5 patents, and was recently elected a Fellow of the Royal Society

Our group focus on physical chemistry, materials science, and the application of materials for energy production, studying the synthesis-structure-property relationship of functional materials for energy production. We emphasize developing novel syntheses for advanced materials and devices for solar energy into useful forms of sustainable energy & fuels. Our research lies at the intersection between innovative approaches, fundamental studies, and applying advanced materials for solar energy conversion.

Sophia Haussener is a Professor heading the Laboratory of Renewable Energy Science and Engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL). Her current research is focused on providing design guidelines for thermal, thermochemical, and photoelectrochemical energy conversion reactors through multi-physics modelling and experimentation. Her research interests include: thermal sciences, fluid dynamics, charge transfer, electro-magnetism, and thermo/electro/photochemistry in complex multi-phase media on multiple scales. She received her MSc (2007) and PhD (2010) in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Joint Center of Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) between 2011 and 2012. She has published over 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and 2 books. She has been awarded the ETH medal (2011), the Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation award (2011), the ABB Forschungspreis (2012), the Prix Zonta (2015), the Global Change Award (2017), and the Raymond Viskanta Award (2019), and is a recipient of a Starting Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation (2014).

Kevin Sivula obtained a PhD in chemical engineering from UC Berkeley in 2007. In 2011, after leading a research group in the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces at EPFL, he was appointed tenure track assistant professor. He now heads the Laboratory for Molecular Engineering of Optoelectronic Nanomaterials (http://limno.epfl.ch) at EPFL.

Roel van de Krol is head of the Insitute for Solar Fuels at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin fuer Materialien und Energie (HZB), and professor at the Chemistry Department of TU Berlin. After earning his PhD from TU Delft in 2000 and a postdoctoral stay at M.I.T. (USA), he returned to TU Delft where he was an assistant professor until 2012. At HZB, his research focuses on the development of materials and devices for the photoelectrochemical conversion of sunlight to chemical fuels. Understanding how surface and bulk defects in thin films and nanomaterials affect light absorption, charge transport, recombination and catalytic activity is at the heart of these efforts.

Christophe Aucher holds a doctorate in Energy and Material Sciences from both the University of Québec at Montréal (Canada, UQAM) and the Material Institute of Nantes (France, IMN). He is developing his career in the LEITAT R&D department since 2011. LEITAT is a private Technological Centre based in Barcelona and dedicated to R&D activities in the areas of biomedicine, biotechnologies, environment, surface treatments, material science, nanotechnology and energies with deep knowledge and experience in technological transfers to several industrial sectors. Christophe is leading the Energy Storage team working on solid state, lithium sulfur, metal air and lithium recovery. His team is currently involved in National and European initiatives for electrical mobility, stationary, printed electronic and batteries recycling.

Dr Jordi Jacas obtained his PhD in Materials at Sheffield University, working on the electrical and electrochemical characterisation of electrode materials for Li-ion batteries.  During his postdoc at ISIS neutron spallation source and Stockholm University, he developed new tools to characterise batteries in-situ using neutron diffraction. Dr Jacas is currently a leading researcher for the battery section at the Catalonia Institute for Energy Research. His research aims to develop new electrode materials for next-generation batteries, including Co-free, Li-S and solid-state batteries. Since 2020, he has been the coordinator of the COBRA project (H2020-875568) devoted to fabricating generation 3b Li-ion batteries for electric vehicles.

Giulia Pezzin graduated from Politecnico di Torino, Italy, with a Master’s Degree in Environmental and Land Engineering (2022). 
Currently, she is a Research Fellow at Politecnico di Torino (Turin, Italy), where she is part of the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) research group. 

The Nanotechnology  Research Group at the Bernal Institute is led by Professor Kevin M. Ryan who holds a Personal Chair in Chemical Nanotechnology and is Course Director of the Pharmaceutical and Industrial Chemistry  Degree at the Department of Chemical and Environmental Sciences (CES), University of Limerick.  Previous affiliations included Marie Curie Fellowship positions at the University of California, Berkeley, USA and Merck Chemicals Southampton, UK following  BSc and PhD degrees at University College Cork. The group research Interests are in Semiconductor Nanocrystals and Nanowires with emphasis on Synthesis, Assembly and Device Applications in Energy Storage and Energy Conversion Applications. The group also studies nucleation and growth in both hard (metal, semiconductor) and soft (pharmaceutical) nanocrystal materials with emphasis on size, shape and crystal phase control.

Marc Walter received his PhD in Chemistry from ETH Zurich in 2016. From 2016 to 2021, he worked as R&D and Application Manager at Wacker Chemie, mostly focusing on silicon-based anode materials for Li-ion batteries. Since 2021 he is a Senior Manager for Technology at BASF Stationary Energy Storage pursuing the joint development of sodium-sulfur (NAS^®) batteries with NGK Insulators.

Dr. Zhang Chaoqi graduated with a Ph.D. in Nanoscience from the University of Barcelona, Spain, and is currently an Associate Professor at the College of Materials Science and Engineering at Fuzhou University, China. His research interests are primarily in the electrochemical energy storage applications of functionalized nanomaterials. In his studies related to lithium-sulfur batteries, he has developed a range of functionalized nanomaterials to serve as cathode hosts in lithium-sulfur batteries, which have led to rapid lithium-sulfur reaction kinetics and suppression of the shuttle effect. To date, he has published over 30 academic papers in this field and has garnered more than 1,400 citations.

i

Christian Klinke studied physics at the University of Karlsruhe (Germany) where he also obtained his diploma degree in the group of Thomas Schimmel. In March 2000 he joined the group of Klaus Kern at the Institute of Experimental Physics of the EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland). Then from 2003 on he worked as Post-Doc at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center (Yorktown Heights, USA) in the group of Phaedon Avouris. In 2006 then he became member of the Horst Weller group at the Universitiy of Hamburg (Germany). In 2007 he started as assistant professor at the University of Hamburg. In 2009 he received the German Nanotech Prize (Nanowissenschaftspreis, AGeNT-D/BMBF). His research was supported by an ERC Starting Grant and a Heisenberg fellowship of the German Funding Agency DFG. Since 2017 he is an associate professor at the Swansea University and since 2019 full professor at the University of Rostock.

David J. Norris received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry from the University of Chicago (1990) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1995), respectively. After an NSF postdoctoral fellowship with W. E. Moerner at the University of California, San Diego, he led a small independent research group at the NEC Research Institute in Princeton (1997). He then became an Associate Professor (2001–2006) and Professor (2006–2010) of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota, where he also served as Director of Graduate Studies in Chemical Engineering (2004–2010). In 2010, he moved to ETH Zurich where he is currently Professor of Materials Engineering. From 2016 to 2019 he served as the Head of the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering. He has received the Credit Suisse Award for Best Teacher at ETH, twice the Golden Owl Award for Best Teacher in his department, the Max Rössler Research Prize, an ERC Advanced Grant, and the ACS Nano Lectureship Award. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and an editorial board member for ACS Photonics and Nano Letters. His research focuses on how materials can be engineered to create new and useful optical properties.

Laurens Siebbeles (1963) is leader of the Opto-Electronic Materials Section and deputy head of the Dept. of Chemical Engineering at the Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands. His research involves studies of the motion of electrons in novel nanostructured materials that have potential applications in e.g. solar cells, light-emitting diodes and nanoelectronics. Materials of interest include organic nanostructured materials, semiconductor quantum dots, nanorods and two-dimensional materials. Studies on charge and exciton dynamics are carried out using ultrafast time-resolved laser techniques and high-energy electron pulses in combination with quantum theoretical modeling.

Vanmaekelbergh's research started in the field of semiconductor electrochemistry in the 1980s; this later evolved into the electrochemical fabrication of macroporous semiconductors as the strongest light scatterers for visible light, and the study of electron transport in disordered (particulate) semiconductors. In the last decade, Vanmaekelbergh's interest shifted to the field of nanoscience: the synthesis of colloidal semiconductor quantum dots and self-assembled quantum-dot solids, the study of their opto-electronic properties with optical spectroscopy and UHV cryogenic Scanning Tunneling Microscopy and Spectroscopy, and electron transport in electrochemically-gated quantum-dot solids. Scanning tunnelling spectroscopy is also used to study the electronic states in graphene quantum dots. More recently, the focus of the research has shifted to 2-D nano structured semiconductors, e.g. honeycomb semiconductors with Dirac-type electronic bands.

The author was graduated from Osaka University in 1978 and received Ph.D from Osaka University in 1983. He joined R&D Center in Toshiba from 1978 to 2000, during which the author was engaged in development of ULSI lithography, solar cells direct methanol fuel cells, and polysilane. He joined polysilane research in Robert West group of Wisconsin University (US) from 1988 to 1990. He was a professor of Kyushu Institute of Technology (National Institute) since 2001. From 2019, the author is a professor in The University of Electro-Communications in Japan. His research interest is printable solar cells.

Since 2019, Yana Vaynzof holds the Chair for Emerging Electronic Technologies at the Technical University of Dresden. Prior to that (2014-2019), she was a juniorprofessor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy, Heidelberg University (Germany). She received a B.Sc degree (summa cum laude) in electrical engineering from the Technion - Israel Institute of Technology (Israel) in 2006, and a M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University, (USA) in 2008. She pursued a Ph.D. degree in physics under the supervision of Prof. Sir. Richard Friend at the Optoelectronics Group, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge (UK), and investigated the development of hybrid polymer solar cells and the improvement of their efficiency and stability. Upon completing her PhD in 2011, she joined the Microelectronics group at the University of Cambridge as a Postdoctoral Research Associate focusing on the research of surfaces and interfaces in organic and hybrid optoelectronics. Yana Vaynzof was the recipient of a number of fellowships and awards, including the ERC Starting Grant, Gordon Y. Wu Fellowship, Henry Kressel Fellowship, Fulbright-Cottrell Award and the Walter Kalkhof-Rose Memorial Prize.

Senol Öz obtained his diploma in chemistry in 2013 at the University of Cologne
(Germany). Completing his PhD under supervision of Prof. Sanjay Mathur in 2018 at
University of Cologne (Merck KGaA PhD scholarship). In 2019 he joined Prof.
Tsutomu Miyasaka`s group as a post-doctoral fellow at Toin University of Yokohama
under a JSPS scholarship. His research interests include the synthesis, chemical
engineering, and solution processing of inorganic-organic hybrid metal halide
perovskite materials for photovoltaic application. He is currently a senior R&D project
leader at Saule Technologies and managing director of Solaveni GmbH.

Corina Andronescu received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. from the University Politehnica of Bucharest (Romania) in 2009 and 2011, respectively. Her Ph.D. title she received from the same university in 2014. In 2016 she joined the group of Prof. W. Schuhmann (Ruhr University Bochum, Germany) first as postdoctoral researcher and later as group leader. December 2018, she was appointed Junior Professor at the University of Duisburg-Essen, where she is currently leading the group of Electrochemical Catalysis in the Faculty of Chemistry. Her research interests include development of hybrid electrocatalysts for the CO2 electroreduction reaction, alcohol electrooxidation as well as investigation of electrocatalysts at nanoscale using Scanning Electrochemical Cell Microscopy.

Marta Hatzell is an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to starting at Georgia Tech in August of 2015, she was a Post-Doctoral researcher in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois - Urbana-Campaign. During her post doc, she worked in the Braun Research group on research at the interface between colloid science and electrochemistry. She completed her PhD at Penn state University in the Logan Research Group. Her PhD explored environmental technology for energy generation and water treatment. During graduate school she was an NSF and PEO Graduate Research Fellow.

Currently her research group focuses on exploring the role photochemistry and electrochemistry may play in future sustainable systems. She is an active member of the American Chemical Society, the Electrochemical Society, ASEEP, AICHE, and ASME. Dr. Hatzell has also been awarded the NSF Early CAREER award in 2019, the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship in Chemistry in 2020, the ONR Young Investigator Award in 2020, the ECS Toyota Young Investigator award in 2021, and the Moore Inventor Fellow in 2021.

Marc T.M. Koper is Professor of Surface Chemistry and Catalysis at Leiden University, The Netherlands. He received his PhD degree (1994) from Utrecht University (The Netherlands) in the field of electrochemistry. He was an EU Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the University of Ulm (Germany) and a Fellow of Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) at Eindhoven University of Technology, before moving to Leiden University in 2005. His main research interests are in fundamental aspects of electrocatalysis, proton-coupled electron transfer, theoretical electrochemistry, and electrochemical surface science.

I am currently an Full Professor at the University of Bonn (Germany), Department of Chemistry. My overarching motivation is to discover and implement the chemistry necessary to transition to a sustainable energy-based society. Specifically, I am developing materials to convert electrical energy to fuels and chemicals.

Dr. Samira Siahrostami is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Chemistry at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Prior to that, she was an associate professor (2022-2023) and assistant professor (2018-2022) in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Calgary.  Prior to that, she was a research engineer (2016–2018) and postdoctoral researcher (2014–2016) at Stanford University's Department of Chemical Engineering. She also worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Denmark from 2011 to 2013. Her work uses computational techniques such as density functional theory to model reactions at (electro)catalyst surfaces. Her goal is to develop more efficient catalysts for fuel cells, electrolyzers, and batteries by comprehending the kinetics and thermodynamics of reactions occurring at the surface of (electro)catalysts. Dr. Siahrostami has written more than 100 peer-reviewed articles with an h-index of 47 and over 13,000 citations. She has received numerous invitations to give talks at universities, conferences, and workshops around the world on various topics related to catalysis science and technology. Dr. Siahrostami is the recipient of the Environmental, Sustainability, and Energy Division Horizon Prize: John Jeyes Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in 2021. She received the Tom Zeigler Award and the Waterloo Institute in Nanotechnology Rising Star award in 2023. She has been named as an emerging investigator by the RSC in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Dr. Siahrostami's contribution to energy research was recognized in the most recent Virtual Issue of ACS Energy Letters as one of the Women at the forefront of energy research in 2023. She is currently the board member of the Canadian Catalysis Foundation and editor of Chemical Engineering Journal (CEJ) and APL Energy journal (AIP Publishing).

Ifan is Professor in Electrocat Imperial College London.  Prior to Ifan's appointment at Imperial in 2017, he was Asssociate Professor and Leader of the Electrocatalysis Group at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU).In 2015, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) appointed Ifan as the Peabody Visiting Associate Professor.

Ifan leverages the insight from fundamental electrochemistry experiments to discover new catalyst materials with unprecedented performance. Ifan’s research ultimately aims to enable the large-scale electrochemical conversion of renewable energy to fuels and valuable chemicals and vice versa. He has 62 peer reviewed publications, 2 patents, 4 patent applicaitons and is cofounder of the spinout company, HPNow.

Doing my BSc/MSc in Physics and PhD in an interdisciplinary program crossing the disciplines like Chemical Engineering, Nanotechnology, and Electrochemistry made me who I am today – a scientist who enjoys the challenge of multifaceted research.

I enjoy doing basic research in order to solve applied tasks. This explains my research interest in fundamental physical chemistry, e.g. oxidation and dissolution of metals and semiconductors, electrocatalysis, and electrochemistry at modified interfaces but also electrochemical engineering, e.g. development and optimization of catalyst layers in fuel cells and water electrolyzes.

Progress in basic research is often a direct outcome of previous achievements in experimental instrumentation. Hence, a significant part of my interest is in the development of new tools, e.g. electrochemical on-line mass spectrometry, gas diffusion electrode approaches, and high-throughput screening methods.

Prof. Magalí Lingenfelder is a PI with an excellent track record and a passion for atomically controlled interfaces. Her work contributes to the design of new materials by elucidating chemical processes by Scanning Probe Microscopies and Surface Sensitive Spectroscopies, including dynamic (bio) molecular recognition processes at the liquid/solid interface.

She created and led for over 10 years the Max Planck-EPFL laboratory for Molecular Nanoscience at EPFL campus in Switzerland, and is currently leading the Helvetia Institute for Science and Innovation.

She studied physical and biological chemistry at the National University of Córdoba in Argentina. In 2003, she finished her MSc thesis at the Max Planck Institute for the Solid State Research (MPI-FKF in Stuttgart, Germany) with seminal contributions to the field of metal-organic coordination networks on solid surfaces. She continued with her doctoral studies in Physics, and received the Otto Hahn medal of the Max Planck Society in 2008 for the microscopic understanding of the chiral recognition process with submolecular resolution. In her quest to study molecular recognition going from 2D to 3D complex systems, she made postdoctoral stays at the Institute of Materials Sciences in Barcelona, and at the Molecular Foundry of the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab in the US.

She is a committed mentor who directed 4 MSc theses, 5 PhD theses, and 5 postdocs. She advocates for problem-oriented interdisciplinary research, by pioneering the emerging field of BioNanoarchitectonics. She led 5 international research consortiums, delivered over 50 invited presentations, and organized 9 conferences and 4 doctoral schools.  She and her team had received multiple awards and international recognitions for their creative and rigurous work on molecular recognition, chirality and operando studies at catalytic interfaces. In 2018, the Royal Society of Chemistry included her work in the first collection “Celebrating Excellence in Research: 100 Women of Chemistry”.

 

Vincent Artero was born in 1973. He is a graduate of the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Ulm; D/S 93) and of the University Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris 6). He received the Ph.D. degree in 2000 under the supervision of Prof. A. Proust. His doctoral work dealt with organometallic derivatives of polyoxometalates. After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Aachen (Aix la Chapelle) with Prof. U. Kölle, he joined in 2001 the group of Prof. M. Fontecave in Grenoble with a junior scientist position in the Life  Science Division of CEA. Since 2016, he is Research Director at CEA and leads the SolHyCat group. His current research interests are in bio-inspired chemistry including catalysis related to hydrogen energy and artificial photosynthesis.

Vincent Artero received the "Grand Prix Mergier-Bourdeix de l'Académie des Sciences" in 2011 and has been  granted with a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council (ERC, photocatH2ode project 2012-2017). He's a member of the Young academy of Europe (YAE). He currently acts as Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the ARCANE Excellence Laboratory Network  (LABEX) for bio-driven chemistry in Grenoble and as co-head of the French network (CNRS-Groupement de recherche) on Solar Fuels. Since 2016, Vincent Artero is associate editor of the Royal Society of Chemistry journal "Sustainable Energy and Fuels". From January 2018 onward, he actsas associate editor of the Royal Society of Chemistry  flagship journal "Chemical Science"

Sophia Haussener is a Professor heading the Laboratory of Renewable Energy Science and Engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL). Her current research is focused on providing design guidelines for thermal, thermochemical, and photoelectrochemical energy conversion reactors through multi-physics modelling and experimentation. Her research interests include: thermal sciences, fluid dynamics, charge transfer, electro-magnetism, and thermo/electro/photochemistry in complex multi-phase media on multiple scales. She received her MSc (2007) and PhD (2010) in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Joint Center of Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) between 2011 and 2012. She has published over 70 articles in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and 2 books. She has been awarded the ETH medal (2011), the Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation award (2011), the ABB Forschungspreis (2012), the Prix Zonta (2015), the Global Change Award (2017), and the Raymond Viskanta Award (2019), and is a recipient of a Starting Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation (2014).

Roel van de Krol is head of the Insitute for Solar Fuels at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin fuer Materialien und Energie (HZB), and professor at the Chemistry Department of TU Berlin. After earning his PhD from TU Delft in 2000 and a postdoctoral stay at M.I.T. (USA), he returned to TU Delft where he was an assistant professor until 2012. At HZB, his research focuses on the development of materials and devices for the photoelectrochemical conversion of sunlight to chemical fuels. Understanding how surface and bulk defects in thin films and nanomaterials affect light absorption, charge transport, recombination and catalytic activity is at the heart of these efforts.

Jacky Even was born in Rennes, France, in 1964. He received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Paris VI, Paris, France, in 1992. He was a Research and Teaching Assistant with the University of Rennes I, Rennes, from 1992 to 1999. He has been a Full Professor of optoelectronics with the Institut National des Sciences Appliquées, Rennes,since 1999. He was the head of the Materials and Nanotechnology from 2006 to 2009, and Director of Education of Insa Rennes from 2010 to 2012. He created the FOTON Laboratory Simulation Group in 1999. His main field of activity is the theoretical study of the electronic, optical, and nonlinear properties of semiconductor QW and QD structures, hybrid perovskite materials, and the simulation of optoelectronic and photovoltaic devices. He is a senior member of Institut Universitaire de France (IUF).

Our group focus on physical chemistry, materials science, and the application of materials for energy production, studying the synthesis-structure-property relationship of functional materials for energy production. We emphasize developing novel syntheses for advanced materials and devices for solar energy into useful forms of sustainable energy & fuels. Our research lies at the intersection between innovative approaches, fundamental studies, and applying advanced materials for solar energy conversion.

Giulia is Associate Professor at Physical Chemistry Unit at University of Pavia, leading the PVsquared2 team, and running the European Grant ERCStG Project “HYNANO”aiming at the development of advanced hybrid perovskites materials and innovative functional interfaces for efficient, cheap and stable photovoltaics. Within this field, Giulia contributed to reveal the fundamental lightinduced dynamical processes underlying the operation of such advanced optoelectronic devices whose understanding is paramount for a smart device development and for contributing to the transition of a green economy.

Giulia received an MS in Physical Engineering in 2008 and obtained her PhD in Physics cum laude in 2012 at the Politecnico of Milan. Her experimental thesis focused on the realisation of a new femtosecond-microscope for mapping the ultrafast phenomena at organic interfaces. During her PhD, she worked for one year at the Physics Department of Oxford University where she pioneered new concepts within polymer/oxide solar cell technology. From 2012-2015, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology in Milan. In 2015, she joined the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) with a Co-Funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship. From 2016 to 2019, she has been awarded by the Swiss Ambizione Energy Grant providing a platform to lead her independent research group at EPFL focused on the developemnt of new generation hybrid perovskite solar cells.

She is author of 90 peer-reviewed scientific papers bringing her h-index to 44 (>13’000 citations), focused on developement and understanding of the interface physics which governs the operation of new generation solar cells.

Recently, she received the USERN prize in Physical Science, the Swiss Physical Society Award in 2018 for Young Researcher and the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Optics. She is currently USERN Ambassador for Italy and board member of the Young Academy of Europe.

More can be found at https://pvsquared2.unipv.it.

Weblink: https://people.epfl.ch/giulia.grancini?lang=en

We are a multidisciplinary and collaborative research team with the overarching goal to establish structure-function relationships by understanding and advancing the fundamental knowledge rooted in the physics, chemistry and engineering of next generation materials for optoelectronics, sustainable, energy conversion, quantum computing, sensing and environmental preservation. Our philosophy is to develop creative and out-of-the-box approaches to solve fundamental scientific problems and apply this knowledge to demonstrate technologically relevant performance in devices.

Iván Mora-Seró (1974, M. Sc. Physics 1997, Ph. D. Physics 2004) is researcher at Universitat Jaume I de Castelló (Spain). His research during the Ph.D. at Universitat de València (Spain) was centered in the crystal growth of semiconductors II-VI with narrow gap. On February 2002 he joined the University Jaume I. From this date until nowadays his research work has been developed in: electronic transport in nanostructured devices, photovoltaics, photocatalysis, making both experimental and theoretical work. Currently he is associate professor at University Jaume I and he is Principal Researcher (Research Division F4) of the Institute of Advanced Materials (INAM). Recent research activity was focused on new concepts for photovoltaic conversion and light emission based on nanoscaled devices and semiconductor materials following two mean lines: quantum dot solar cells with especial attention to sensitized devices and lead halide perovskite solar cells and LEDs, been this last line probably the current hottest topic in the development of new solar cells.

Pablo P. Boix, Ph.D. in Nanoscience, is a Research Scientist at Instituto de Tecnologia Química (CSIC). He led a pioneer perovskite research team at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore (2012-2016) with relevant contributions to materials and devices’ development (such as the first use of formamidinium cation in perovskite solar cells). His track record has more than 100 publications, which resulted in his selection as a Highly Cited Researcher in 2020 (Cross-Field) by Clarivate Web of Science, with an h index of 57. Dr. Boix is the co-inventor of 3 patents in the field of perovskite optoelectronics. Prior to his current position, he worked as a research group leader in a perovskite solar cell company (Dyesol Ltd, Switzerland), focusing on product R&D, and at Universitat de València. Currently, he is the PI of 2 research projects and the coPI of 3, including regional, national, and European funding.

Dr. Habil. Martin Brinkmann (07.10.1971 in Mulhouse, France)

Directeur de Recherche CNRS

Institut Charles Sadron

CNRS Université de Strasbourg

23 rue du loess

67034 Strasbourg – France

h=45, 137 publications

 

Scientific Career

Since 2013          Director of Research CNRS

2002.                   Invited Researcher EPFL, group of L. Zuppiroli  

2000 -2013          Senior Scientist CNRS     

1999-2000           Postdoctoral researcher MIT, Cambridge, USA

1997-1999           Postdoctoral researcher at CNR Bologna, Italy

1994-1997           PhD, University Louis Pasteur, Strasbourg

 

Scientific Focus

Structure and morphology in thin organic films,

Organic semiconductors,

Transmission Electron Microscopy,

Crystallization and orientation of polymer and molecular materials,

Growth control in organic thin films. Polymer Thermoelectric Materials.

 

Scientific Awards

 

2007                    CNRS Bronze Medal

2011                    Prize of Groupe Français des Polymères – Société Française de Physique

 

Management activities

2013-2020      SYCOMMOR Group leader, ICS

2018-now      Deputy-director of Doctoral School of Physics and Chemical Physics             

                      ED182, Strasbourg

2017-now.      IC FRC and GFP member

2018-now: Coordinator ANR ANISOTHERM

Supervision:

12 PhD students  (Bruno Schmaltz, Christelle Vergnat, Navaphun Kayunkid, Lucia Hartmann, Alexandru Sarbu, Amer Hamidi-Sakr, Morgane Diebold, Vishnu Vijajakumar, Marion Brosset, Yuhan Zong, Shubhradip Guchait),

7 postdocs (Jean-François Moulin, Sirapat Pratontep, Navaphun Kayunkid, Uttiya Sureeporn, Nicolas Crespo-Monteiro, Maria Girleanu, Laure Biniek)

Teaching “Structure and Growth of Conjugated Polymer and Molecular Materials” , Master polymer Science (2010-2012), Strasbourg.

 

Reviewing: Macromolecules, Chemistry of Materials, JACS, Advanced Functional Materials,  Advanced Materials, J. Mater. Chem. C

Project reviewer for ANR, DFG, NSF, Swiss national Science foundation

 

Five most important publications

 

1) M. Brinkmann, J.-C. Wittmann: Orientation of regio-regular poly(3-hexylthiophene) by directional solidification: a simple method to reveal the semi-crystalline structure of a conjugated polymer, Adv. Mat. 2006, 18, 860.

2) N. Kayunkid, S. Uttiya and M. Brinkmann: Structural model of regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) obtained by electron diffraction analysis, Macromolecules 2010, 43, 4961.

3) M. Brinkmann, E. Gonthier, S. Bogen, K. Tremmel, S. Ludwigs, M. Hufnagel, M. Sommer: Segregated versus mixed stacking of bithiophene and naphthalene bisimide units in highly oriented films of an n-type polymeric semiconductor, ACS Nano, 2012, 6, 10319.

4) A. Hamidi Sakr, L. Biniek, S. Fall, M. Brinkmann: Precise control of crystal size in highly oriented regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) thin films prepared by high temperature rubbing: correlations with optical properties and charge transport, Adv. Funct. Mat. 2016, 26, 408.

5) Vijayakumar, V.; Zhong, Y.; Untilova, V.; Bahri, M.; Herrmann, L.; Biniek, L.; Leclerc, N.; Brinkmann, M. Bringing Conducting Polymers to High Order: Toward Conductivities beyond 10⁵ S cm⁻¹ and Thermoelectric Power Factors of 2 mW m⁻¹ K⁻². Advanced Energy Materials 2019, 9, 1900266.

Dr. Cheng Wang is a Physicist Staff Scientist at the ALS, LBNL. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in physics from Jilin University, China in 2002, and received his Ph.D. in physics in North Carolina State University advised by Prof. Harald Ade in 2008. After graduation, he joined the ALS, LBNL where he led the development of Resonant Soft X-ray Scattering for soft materials and led the construction of the world’s first RSoXS beamline at ALS beamline 11.0.1.2. He is a leading expert on the development of soft X-ray metrology and utilize advanced synchrotron x-ray probes such as X-ray scattering, microscopy and spectroscopy to elucidate the morphology, chemistry, and interfacial structure of broad range of complex materials. 

Guillaume Wantz graduated from the School of Chemistry and Physics of Bordeaux (ENSCPB) in 2001 including a thesis work at Philips Research (Eindhoven, NL) on ink-jet printing. He received his Ph.D. in Electronics Engineering from the University of Bordeaux in 2004 working on Polymer Light Emitting Diodes. He was Assistant Professor at the University of Bordeaux working on Organic Field Effect Transistors with research stays at Queen’s University (Kingston, Canada). In 2006, he was appointed as tenure Associate Professor at the Bordeaux Institute of Technology (Bordeaux INP). He is Professeur des Universités since 2021. His research interest is on Organic Electronics with a focus on polymer photovoltaic solar cells (OPV). He was invited-professor at Queen’s University (Kingston, Ontario, Canada) in Spring 2012 and at Univ. of Massachusetts (Amherst, USA) in Fall 2014. He has been appointed at the “Institut Universitaire de France” (IUF Paris) in 2016. Since 2017, he is Associate Editor for the journal “Materials Chemistry Frontiers” (RSC). He is co-founder of Héole, a company developing flexible OPV products including solar-powered sails for yachting, a solar zeppelin and some BIPV flexible OPV products. To date, he has published 125 research papers in peer-reviewed international journals and issued 7 patents (h = 37 – 6000 citations – source Google Scholar).

Benjamin Watts is a beamline scientist at the PolLux scanning transmission soft X-ray spectro-microscope (STXM) specialising in the materials analysis of soft matter. He obtained a BSc (Professional) in Physics, with Honours, and a PhD in Physics from the University of Newcastle, Australia, before working as a post-doctoral researcher with North Carolina State University (permanently stationed at the Advanced Light Source, Berkeley) in the USA and then moving to PSI. Details of the interactions between soft X-ray light and organic materials has been a continuing theme throughout both his university research and later career.

Stefania Zappia is a researcher at the "Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie Chimiche “Giulio Natta” (SCITEC)" of "Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR)" in Milano (taly) since 2018. She obtained her Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences and Technologies from the University of Genova (Italy) in 2013, working on synthesis and characterization of organic and metal-organic hybrid materials for sensoric and photovoltaic applications. She then worked as a Research Fellow at "Istituto per lo Studio delle Macromolecole" of CNR in Milan from 2013 to 2018. She works on the synthesis of low band gap conjugated polymers for optoelectronic applications through bulk and flow synthesis, and on the synthesis of advanced polymeric and hybrid materials for CO₂ recovery. She developed a strong expertise in the design and synthesis of amphiphilic rod-coil block copolymers for the functionalization of inorganic nanoparticles and/or for the preparation of polymeric nanoparticles processable from aqueous media for photovoltaic and/or biological applications.

Dr. Quentin Jeangros received a PhD in Materials Science from EPFL in 2014 for his work on solid oxide fuel cells degradation pathways. After a postdoc between the University of Basel and the Photovoltaics and Thin Film Electronics Laboratory (PV-Lab) of EPFL on transparent conductive oxides, Quentin has overseen the "Perovskite Cells for Tandem Applications" activities at EPFL PV-Lab since early 2018. Within the laboratory headed by Prof. C. Ballif, his team consists of 6 PhD students and postdocs dedicated to the development of high-efficiency perovskite/silicon solar cells. His research activities focus on the use and development of advanced electron microscopy characterisation methods to understand and optimise the nanostructure of solar materials materials, with the aim of improving efficiency and reliability.

Sjoerd Veenstra -  Program Manager Perovskite Solar Cells and Modules at TNO, partner in Solliance.

Sjoerd has a passion for photovoltaics (PV). He received his PhD from the University of Groningen (2002). Sjoerd stayed at UCSB (intern) and Cornell University (visiting scientist). He started as a researcher working on organic solar cells at the Energy research Center of the Netherlands (ECN, 2002). In 2011 he moved to Eindhoven (NL) when ECN joined the thin film PV activities of Solliance. He started working on perovskite solar cells in 2014. In 2018 ECN and TNO merged and since he works for TNO and leads the perovskite team. 

Dr. Marine Reynaud is a Chemical Engineer from Chimie ParisTech (France) and Doctor in Materials Sciences. She completed her PhD in 2013 under the direction of Prof. Tarascon, Dr. Chotard and Dr. Rousse. Then, she joined the group of Dr. Montse Casas-Cabanas at CIC energiGUNE, where she is has recently been appointed Research Team Leader. Her research is focused on the design and development of electrode materials for Li-ion and Na-ion batteries. She is expert in inorganic syntheses and materials characterizations, looking for determining correlation between compositions, (micro)structure and electrochemical properties. For the last few years, she has been developing innovative strategies to accelerate the discovery of new battery materials.

She is author of c.a. 40 scientific publications in peer reviewed journals. She has been PI of several industrial projects and competitive national and European research projects. She has supervised 5 PhD students and currently leads a team of 12 researchers. She has recently received the first BRTA award from the Basque Research and Technology Alliance, recognizing young researchers’ passion, talent and ambition.  

Robert Dominko is a Research Professor at the National Institute of Chemistry and a Professor at the University of Ljubljana. He is the head of the battery group at the National Institute of Chemistry and deputy director of the ALISTORE-ERI network. He obtained his Ph.D. in Materials sciences in 2002 from the University of Ljubljana. Since his Ph.D. study, his research interests are in the field of materials science and electrochemical systems for energy storage, with main activities in the field of modern battery systems. Between 2009 and 2010 he worked in UPJV, Amiens, where he started the development of Li-S batteries. He was the coordinator of two large-scale EU projects focused on the development of Li-S batteries. His current research interests are focused on different types of multivalent batteries and the implementation of smart functionalities in battery cells. He is strongly connected with the Battery 2030+ initiative and with Batteries Europe, where he is one of the co-leaders of the task force preparing a strategy on the education level. He is involved in the MESC master program (https://mesc-plus.eu/) and in the doctoral school DESTINY (https://www.destiny-phd.eu/). He is a member of the Slovenian Academy of Engineering.

Since the 1^st of October 2023, Sonia Dsoke holds a Professorship for “Electrochemical Energy Carriers and Storage” at the department of sustainable systems engineering (INATECH), University of Freiburg, she leads a group “Innovative Battery Materials” at Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE) and she is member of the Freiburger material center (FMF).

At international level, she is “chair elected” for Division 3 (electrochemical energy conversion and storage) of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE) one of the largest electrochemical community in the world.

From 2017 until September 2023 Sonia Dsoke was the leader of a multidisciplinary group at the Institute for Applied Materials – Energy Storage Systems (KIT, Germany). In the same period, she was the deputy director of the platform CELEST and a spokesperson for Research Unit A (electrode materials) in the Cluster of Excellence POLiS dealing with “post-lithium” battery research. Previously she led an independent young research group focused on designing novel electrodes for Hydrid Battery-Supercapacitors at ZSW-Ulm (Germany). She also had industrial experience at an Italian battery manufacturing company FAAM (in 2009) and she was a researcher at the University of Camerino (Italy), where she also obtained her PhD in the field of Li-ion batteries.

Sonia Dsoke was honoured with the Brigitte-Schlieben-Lange Programm Grant (2017-2019, Ministry of Science and Culture, Baden-Württemberg) and a Young Investigator Group Grant (2012-2016, Federal Ministry of Education and Research) within the framework “Energy Storage Initiative” she is author of more than 80 peer-reviewed papers (h-index:26, according to Google scholar) 1 patent and 2 book chapters.

Her actual main research subjects are the development of novel advanced functional materials for supercapacitors, lithium and post-lithium ion batteries, with special focus on tackling challenges of novel battery concepts such as Na, K, Mg, Ca and Al batteries.  

Dr. Fellinger is Head of the Division 3.6 Electrochemical Energy Materials at the German Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM). He is a nanostructure and molecular scientist by training (diploma at University of Kassel, DE), who received his PhD in colloid chemistry (with summa cum laude) at the University of Potsdam/DE under the direct supervision of Prof. Markus Antonietti in 2011. After a short postdoctoral stays at the Tokyo Institute of Technology (Prof. Ichiro Yamanaka) he was a research group leader at the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam-Golm (2012-2017). In 2016/17 he was an awarded Researcher-in-Residence at Chalmers Institute of Technology in Gothenburg (Prof. Anders Palmqvist), followed by one term as W2-substitute professor for inorganic chemistry at the University of Applied Science Zittau/Görlitz. Afterwards until 2020 he joined Prof. Hubert Gasteiger´s Chair for Technical Electrochemistry (Technical University Munich) with a fuel cell project. In 2020 Dr. Fellinger´s group joined the Federal Institute for Materials Research and Testing (BAM) in Berlin. Dr. Fellinger received the Donald-Ulrich Award 2017 of the International Sol-Gel Society and the Ernst-Haage Award for Chemistry of the Max-Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion. His research interests are the synthetic chemistry of novel materials and their usage in energy-related applications with a focus on different carbon-based materials like nitrogen-doped carbons, M-N-C catalysts or hard carbon anodes. He has published ~60 articles in peer-reviewed journals (>6000 citations, H-index: 41).

Professor Maria Forsyth AM  is an elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Sciences and the  Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering. She is an Alfred Deakin Professo at Deakin University and an Ikerbasque Visiting Professorial Fellow at the University of the Basque Country, Spain. She has worked at the forefront of energy materials research since her Fulbright Research Fellowship in 1990 and has consistently made breakthrough discoveries in next-generation lithium and sodium battery technologies. Recognising a critical need for facilities to test new energy materials, Forsyth led the establishment of Deakin University’s Battery Research and Innovation Hub, a unique pre-commercial battery prototyping facility that supports over $20M R&D across a range of local and international industries.  She has supervised over 100 PhD students and is a co-author of over 900 journal and conference publications that attracted more than 40000 citations.

Lee Johnson received his first degree from Newcastle University, after which he completed a PhD and post-PhD Fellowship in physical chemistry and electrochemistry at the University of Nottingham. He then joined the research group of Prof Sir P.G. Bruce FRS at the University of Oxford, where he studied the elementary processes taking place within the lithium-O₂ battery. In 2017, he was awarded a Nottingham Research Fellowship, University of Nottingham, followed by an EPSRC Fellowship in 2018, both to support study of next-generation batteries. In 2019 he was promoted to Associate Professor in the School of Chemistry. His current research interests focus on understanding interfacial reactions, degradation, and charge transfer, in electrochemical energy devices.

Professor Emma Kendrick, CChem FIMMM FRSC FIMMM - Chair of Energy Materials, School of Metallurgy and Materials, University of Birmingham.

Prof Kendrick’s career to date has included industrial and academic roles leading to her current role as Chair of Energy Materials, where in addition to group lead of the energy materials group (EMG), she is co-director of the Centre for Energy Storage (BCES) and part of Birmingham Energy institute (BEI) and Birmingham Centre for Strategic Elements and Critical Materials (BCSECM). The EMG investigates sustainability in novel battery technologies from materials, manufacturing, performance and parameterisation, and recycling. Her recent work has led to a 2021 joint UoB - Imperial College London (ICL) spin out company, based around the methods of experimental parameterisation of applied multi-physics cell models, called About:Energy, for which she is founder and director.

Prior to UoB, she spent two years as Reader in WMG, University of Warwick. Before academia, she led innovations in the battery industry, latterly as Chief Technologist in Energy Storage at SHARP Laboratories of Europe Ltd (SLE) and prior to that for two lithium-ion battery SMEs, Fife Batteries Ltd and Surion Energy Ltd.

She is fellow of the Royal Society of chemistry (RSC) and Institute of Metals, Mining and Materials (IoM3). Recently, she has been recognised through several awards; 2021 Faraday Institution (FI) Researcher Development Champion, RSC 2021 Environment, Sustainability and Energy Division Mid-Career Award, and the 2019 Hothersall Memorial Award for outstanding services to Metal Finishing.

Prof Kendrick holds a PhD from Keele University, obtained as part of a postgraduate transfer partnership (PTP) scheme with CERAM Research, a MSc in new materials from the University of Aberdeen and a BSc in chemistry from the University of Manchester.

Dr. Nagore Ortiz-Vitoriano (https://cicenergigune.com/en/nagore-ortiz-vitoriano) is an Ikerbasque Research Associate, who has been spearheading metal-air research at CIC energiGUNE (Spain) since 2016, of which she became research line manager in 2018.

She obtained her doctorate in 2011 for her work on solid oxide fuel cells (University of the Basque Country, UPV/EHU, Spain), during the course of which she undertook research stays at Risø DTU (Denmark) and Imperial College London (UK). In 2013 she was awarded a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship from the European Union, enabling her to join the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge (USA) where she worked with both lithium and sodium-air batteries. In 2015, she continued this fellowship at CIC energiGUNE, where she conducted research stays at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (USA), Deakin University (Australia) and Chalmers University (Sweden). Recently, she has been promoted to Ikerbasque Research Associate and granted the Ramon y Cajal fellowship financed by the European Commission's European Social Fund through the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation.

Dr. Ortiz-Vitoriano has focused on both rational design of electrode and electrolyte materials for energy storage (e.g., solid oxide fuel cells, electrocatalysis, Na-ion and metal-air batteries), as well as fundamental research focused on elucidating key processes (by establishing relevant physiochemical models) in order to facilitate rapid future developments at both the material and system levels.

Dr. Minghao Yu, PI, holds an independent research group (Electrochemistry for Sustainable Energy Storage) at Technische Universität Dresden. His research interest includes 1) the development of novel organic and inorganic 2D layered materials, 2) the investigation of advanced artificial interphases and electrolytes for next-generation batteries, 3) fundamental charge and ion dynamics during electrochemical energy storage processes, and 4) sustainable energy storage device fabrication, including supercapacitors, hybrid-ion capacitors, aqueous batteries, dual-ion batteries, and multivalent metal (Zn, Mg, Al) batteries. He has published more than 120 scientific articles which have attracted more than 20,000 citations with an H-index of 69 (Web of Science). Besides, he is also an associated member of the Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (cfaed), an associated group leader at Max-Planck-Institut für Mikrostrukturphysik, a highly cited researcher (Clarivate Analytics, 2018-now), 2023 ERC Starting Grant winner, and a Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe.

I am an energetic, creative, female scientist with a solid expertise in Material Science and Technology.  I have successfully implemented an engineering approach to guide the development of functional nanohybrids through general and simple routes. Throughout my work, I have introduced important mechanisms on the cooperative coupling of dissimilar materials in single structures, which represents a fundamental knowledge for the creation of a new-generation of nano and macro hybrid materials. 

Leite is an Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at UC Davis. Her group investigates materials for energy harvesting and storage, from their nano-scale structural, electrical, and optical properties to their implementation in devices. Before joining UC Davis, Leite was an associate professor at the University of Maryland, she worked for two years at NIST and was a post-doctoral scholar at Caltech (Department of Applied Physics and Materials Science). She received her PhD in physics from Campinas State University in Brazil and the Synchrotron Light Source Laboratory. Leite's work has been recognized on the cover of ~30 scientific journals, by the presentation of >140 invited talks, by the 2016 APS Ovshinsky Sustainable Energy Fellowship from the American Physical Society (APS) and the 2014 Maryland Academy of Sciences Outstanding Young Scientist Award. Leite’s research has been funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Army Research Office (ARO), the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), etc.

Kangming Li is a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at University of Toronto. He received his PhD in Physics from Université Paris-Saclay, where he was a CEA-NUMERICS Fellow funded under the Marie Curie Actions. He was awarded the Dalla Torre Medal by the French Society for Metallurgy and Materials for his PhD work on finite-temperature magnetic effects in concentrated alloys. Currently he is using machine learning and high-throughput first principles calculations to accelerate the discovery of novel inorganic materials.

Dr. Samira Siahrostami is an Associate Professor and Canada Research Chair in the Department of Chemistry at Simon Fraser University in Canada. Prior to that, she was an associate professor (2022-2023) and assistant professor (2018-2022) in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Calgary.  Prior to that, she was a research engineer (2016–2018) and postdoctoral researcher (2014–2016) at Stanford University's Department of Chemical Engineering. She also worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Denmark from 2011 to 2013. Her work uses computational techniques such as density functional theory to model reactions at (electro)catalyst surfaces. Her goal is to develop more efficient catalysts for fuel cells, electrolyzers, and batteries by comprehending the kinetics and thermodynamics of reactions occurring at the surface of (electro)catalysts. Dr. Siahrostami has written more than 100 peer-reviewed articles with an h-index of 47 and over 13,000 citations. She has received numerous invitations to give talks at universities, conferences, and workshops around the world on various topics related to catalysis science and technology. Dr. Siahrostami is the recipient of the Environmental, Sustainability, and Energy Division Horizon Prize: John Jeyes Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) in 2021. She received the Tom Zeigler Award and the Waterloo Institute in Nanotechnology Rising Star award in 2023. She has been named as an emerging investigator by the RSC in 2020, 2021 and 2022. Dr. Siahrostami's contribution to energy research was recognized in the most recent Virtual Issue of ACS Energy Letters as one of the Women at the forefront of energy research in 2023. She is currently the board member of the Canadian Catalysis Foundation and editor of Chemical Engineering Journal (CEJ) and APL Energy journal (AIP Publishing).

Born June 23, 1966 in Meppel, The Netherlands

Professor in Theoretical Chemistry, Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Ph. D. (cum laude) University of Groningen (1993), postdoctoral stays at NASA Ames (1994-1995) and at the University of Odense (1996-1997). Professor at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (1998-present). Visiting professor stays at University of Strasbourg and at Pacific Northwest Laboratories. Awards: KNCV Clemens Roothaan Prize (1996), NWO vici (2005), WATOC Dirac Medal (2006).

Main research Interests

1. Subsystem electronic structure methods

2. Reducing the time-to-solution of computational models

3. Development and application of  relativistic computational chemistry techniques

Director of Strategic Projects at APRIA Systems SL & Part time Assistant Professor at the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department from the University of Cantabria (UC), Spain. After concluding her doctoral thesis, E. Santos spent a period of two years at the UC as postdoctoral researcher until she joins the private company APRIA Systems SL with a Torres Quevedo Grant in 2016. She has worked  as project manager on different projects including the valorization of CO₂ streams, obtaining green H₂ as an energy vector applied to the sustainable mobility sector or the recovery of fluorinated gases from the refrigeration industry, among others. In 2023 she is promoted to Director of Strategic Projects.

As a result of her scientific activity, E. Santos has reported a total of 22 publications, of which 9 are in high-impact international journals indexed in JCR and 13 contributions to conference books with ISBN. Her work has received a total of 615 citations, with an h index of 9 (Scopus) in a short period of time and taking into account the work dedication to the world of private business where the dissemination of knowledge through the publication of scientific papers is not usual practice. The results have been disseminated in 30 international conferences (2 keynote and 15 oral communications defended by E. Santos). E. Santos has worked on 30 research projects (11 European projects, 12 national and 7 regional. E. Santos has supervised 2 Doctoral thesis (Industrial Doctorate) and 1 Master's thesis in the field of chemical engineering.

Juan A. Anta is Full Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University Pablo de Olavide, Seville, Spain. He obtained a BA in Chemistry in the Universidad Complutense of Madrid (Spain) and carried out his PhD research at the Physical Chemistry Institut of the National Research Council of Spain. His research focuses on fundamental studies of energy photoconversion processes, especially on dye and perovskite solar cells, using numerical simulation and modelling tools, as well as advanced optoelectronic characterization techniques such as impedance spectroscopy and other small perturbation techniques.

M. Ibrahim Dar is a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge. From 2018 to 2020, he was an Advanced Swiss National Science Foundation Post-Doctoral Fellow in the group of Professor Sir Richard Friend, University of Cambridge. Prior to this, he worked as a Post-Doctoral Scientist with Professor Michael Graetzel at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Switzerland (2014-2018). For his postdoctoral research at EPFL, he was awarded the prestigious Zeno Karl Schindler-EPFL Prize for particular excellence in the field of sustainability and was twice awarded a special prize by the School of Basic Sciences, EPFL, Switzerland. During his PhD, he was awarded the Swiss Government Excellence Research Scholarships for two consecutive years (2012-2014), which allowed him to work in Professor Graetzel’s group as a guest PhD student. Ibrahim’s interdisciplinary research combines solid-state chemistry, physics, and materials science to design and understand new functional materials with desired structural and optoelectronic properties for energy-oriented applications.

Fabrice Odobel (1966) received his Ph.D. in 1994 at Strasbourg University under the supervision of Prof. Jean-Pierre Sauvage. After postdoctoral research with Prof. Ronald Breslow, Columbia University (New York, USA), he joined CNRS as a full-time researcher in 1995. He currently leads the research group in CEISAM laboratory at Nantes University. His research interests include the development of new materials for photovoltaic devices and artificial photosynthesis.

Mary Pryce is a Professor at the School of Cehmical Sciences at Dublin City Universirty, Ireland. Prior to joining DCU in 1997, she was employed as a postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Milan, Italy. She obtained her PhD from Dublin City University in the area of organometallic photochemistry (in 1995). Current research projects within her research group focus on designing new materials (polymers, organometallic compounds or organic dyes) for energy applications such as hydrogen generation, or CO2 conversion. Another aspect of research focuses on antimicrobial materials. Central to both of these research areas is understanding the photophysical properties using time resolved techniques.

Ludmilla is an Associate Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the Univeristy of Oxford. She obtained her B.Sc and M.Sc. degrees from the University of Siegen (Germany). During her undergraduate studies she developed an interest in electrochemistry and semiconductor physics driving her to pursue a M.Sc. project on dye-sensitized solar cells in the group of Professor Michael Grätzel at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL, Switzerland). Staying in the same group, Ludmilla worked on oxide thin film photoelectrodes applied in photoelectrochemical water splitting and perovskite solar cells during her Ph.D. degree which she obtained in 2016. She then joined the group of Professor James Durrant at Imperial College London to study photochemical and photophysical processes in semiconductors using time-resolved spectroscopy and shortly after was awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship (2017-2019). Ludmilla began her independent research career as Imperial College Research Fellow (2019-2021) before moving to Oxford in October 2021. Her research at Oxford aims at the design of atomically defined photo- and electrocatalysts that convert CO2, water and other “waste products” to energy-rich fuels and chemicals with high conversion efficiency, selectivity and long operational stability.