Victor Mougel completed his Bachelor's and Master's degree in Chemistry at the ENS of Lyon, and obtained his PhD at the University of Grenoble under the supervision of Prof. Marinella Mazzanti. He then joined ETH Zürich as an ETH/Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellow before starting his independent career as a CNRS associate researcher at Collège de France in 2016. Since December 2018, he is a tenure track assistant professor at the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH Zürich.

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.

Husam Alshareef is a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).  He is also the Director of the newly-established Center of Excellence in Renewable Energy and Storage Technologies at KAUST. He obtained his Ph.D. at NC State University followed by a post-doctoral Fellowship at Sandia National Laboratories, USA. 

He spent over 10 years in the semiconductor industry where he implemented processes in volume production for chip manufacturing.  He joined KAUST in 2009, where he initiated an active research group focusing on the development of nanomaterials for energy and electronics applications.  His work has been recognized by over 25 awards including the SEMATECH Corporate Excellence Award, two Dow Sustainability Awards, the Kuwait Prize for Sustainable and Clean Technologies, and the KAUST Distinguished Teaching Award.  He has published over 600 papers and 80 issued patents. He is a Fellow of several prestigious societies including the American Physical Society (APS), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), US National Academy of Inventors (NAI), Institute of Physics (IoP), Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), and the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining.  He has been a Clarivate Analytics Highly-cited Researcher in Materials Science for several years.

Christina Birkel is an Associate Professor in the School of Molecular Sciences at Arizona State University (ASU) and holds a joint professorship position in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Technische Universität (TU) Darmstadt. In 2024, she was appointed Navrotsky Professor of Materials Research at ASU. Prior to her independent career, she was a Junior Research group leader at TU Darmstadt (Habilitation in 2018), a Postdoctoral Researcher (group of Prof. Galen Stucky) at the University of California, Santa Barbara (Feodor Lynen Research Stipend, Alexander-von-Humboldt Foundation) and completed her PhD thesis (group of Prof. Wolfgang Tremel) at the Johannes Gutenberg-University of Mainz holding a stipend of the Graduate School of Excellence (2010). Her group focuses on the synthesis and structural science of new types of layered solids and two-dimensional materials with a strong focus on carbides and (carbo)nitrides (MAX phases and MXenes), as well as the investigation of their properties including transport (electronic, magnetic), high-temperature and electrochemical behavior.

Hermenegildo García Gómez is a full Professor of the Instituto de Tecnología Química at the Univeristat Politècnica de Valencia. His group has expertise in CO2 utilization developing catalysts for CO2 conversion to methanol and C2+ products. He has published over 800 papers, has received more than 75.000 citations, has an H index of 133 and his name is included continuously since 2015 in the annual list of the most cited Scientists published by the Shanghai-Tomson Reuters. He is the recipient of the Janssen-Cilag award of the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry (2011) and the Rey D. Jaime I award in New technologies (2016). He is doctor honoris causa by the University of Bucharest and Honorary Professor at the King Abdulaziz University since 2015. He was awarded by the Lee Hsun lecturership of the Chinese Academy of Science at Shenyang. He has participated in over 20 EU funded projects and is member of the panel of ERC Consolidator Grant as well as other Comissions and panels. He is President of the international advisory editorial board of ChemCatChem. Several of his publications have constituted research fronts in Chemistry (as defined by Essential Science Indicators) Database, such as Photocatalytic CO2 reduction by non TiO2 photocatalysis, catalysis by MOFs, etc.

Dra. Ana Primo Arnau

Research Group Leader, tenured Scientist. UPV, Valencia

Dr. Ana Primo earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Universidad Politécnica de Valencia (Spain) in 2006. Following her doctoral studies, she undertook a postdoctoral stint at the Institute Charles Gerhardt in Montpellier, France, from 2007 to 2009. Currently, she holds a tenured position as a scientist at the “Instituto de Tecnología Química” (UPV-CSIC). Together with Professor Hermenegildo García, she founded the HG Energy Group, which she currently leads alongside Professor García.

Her research focuses on the synthesis of 2D materials such as graphene and boron nitride, exploring their applications in catalytic and photocatalytic processes. Notable among her investigations are CO2 reduction for methanol production and water splitting for hydrogen generation. With over 100 publications, Dr. Primo’s work has garnered more than 7,000 citations, reflecting her significant contributions to the field of chemistry, and she has an h-index of 44.

Prof. Zdenek Sofer is tenured professor at the University of Chemistry and Technology Prague since 2019. He received his PhD also at University of Chemistry and Technology Prague, Czech Republic, in 2008. During his PhD he spent one year in Forschungszentrum Julich (Peter Grünberg Institute, Germany) and also one postdoctoral stay at University Duisburg-Essen, Germany. Research interests of prof. Sofer concerning on 2D materials, its crystal growth, chemical modifications and derivatisation. His research covers various applications of 2D materials including energy storage and conversion, electronic, catalysis and sensing devices. He is an associated editor of FlatChem journal. He has published over 460 articles, which received over 15000 citations (h-index of 61).

Docent Moyses Araujo received his PhD degree, in Condensed Matter Physics, from Uppsala University (UU). Thereafter, he has held a postdoc position at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm with a distinguished scholarship from the Swedish Research Council (VR). As a recognition of his work in Sweden, he has won three research awards, viz. Benzelius prize (from the Royal Society of Sciences in Uppsala), Ångstrom Premium (UU), and Bjurzon’s Premium (the highest award for PhD thesis at UU). In 2011, he has moved for a postdoc in USA, at Yale University, with a prestigious scholarship from the Yale Climate and Energy Institute (YCEI). In 2012, he has returned to Sweden as researcher at UU and in 2014 he has started his independent research group in the same institution with support from VR through the Young Researcher Grant. In 2018 he has become Docent in Physics at Uppsala University. From September 2020, he has joint Karlstad University as universitetslektor/Associate Professor in condensed matter theory.

My main research interest is development of the novel post Li-ion battery systems with a specific focus on the application of organic materials as cathode materials in different multivalent metal anode batteries and development of new multivalent electrolytes. 

Claudio Gerbaldi got his PhD in Material Science and Technology in 2006 at the Politecnico di Torino, where he is now Full Professor, Chair of Chemistry for Applied Technologies. He leads the Group for Applied Materials and Electrochemistry, developing innovative electrochemical energy storage/conversion systems and related materials, with strong collaboration with academia, industry, and EU. He is co-author of > 175 research articles in ISI journals (h-index 67). He is the President of GISEL, the Italian Group for Electrochemical Energy Storage. Among others, he received the International “Roberto Piontelli” Award by the President of Italian Republic for outstanding contributions in the field of electrochemistry for energy-related applications.

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.

Haegyeom Kim is a Career Staff Scientist at the Materials Sciences Division of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). He received his PhD in 2015 from Seoul National University and was a postdoctoral researcher at the LBNL until early 2019. His research interest lies in the materials design for energy storage and conversion materials based on the fundamental understanding of the synthesis process-structure-property relationship. He has published more than 100 peer-reviewed articles and 6 patents until now. He was selected as a Clarivate’s ‘Highly Cited Researcher (HCR)’, and won several awards, including Berkeley Lab Director’s Exceptional Achievement: Early Scientific Career, 2023 ACS Materials Au Rising Star, Young Scientist Award from the International Society for Solid-State Ionics, ECS Battery Division Postdoctoral Associate Research Award.

Heather is a Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London.

She obtained her PhD in 2017 from Imperial College developing covalent modification strategies on carbon nanomaterials. She was a postdoctoral research associate at Queen Mary University of London and Imperial College, where her research interests shifted to investigating charge storage mechanisms in sodium-ion battery anodes, and later a Faraday Institution Research Fellow, working on the development of engineered carbon hosts for sulfur cathodes in lithium-sulfur batteries.

Heather was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2023, allowing her to establish an independent research team exploring sustainable materials for structural energy storage.

Philipp Adelhelm is a physical chemist and works at the interface between the research disciplines of materials science and electrochemistry. His current main interest is research on sustainable batteries.

After studying materials science at the University of Stuttgart, he moved to the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam (Department of Prof. Antionetti / Smarsly, 2005-2007) for his doctoral project. This was followed by a 2-year postdoctoral stay at the University of Utrecht (Prof. de Jongh) and then a position as a junior research group leader at the Institute of Physical Chemistry of the Justus Liebig University in Giessen (Prof. Janek, 2009-2015). From 2015-2019 he was a professor at the Institute for Technical Chemistry and Environmental Chemistry at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena.

He has been a professor at the Institute for Chemistry at Humboldt-University since 2019 and heads a joint research group on operando battery analysis at the Helmholtz Zentrum Berlin (HZB).

Dr Rosa M. Cuéllar-Franca is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of Chemical Engineering at The University of Manchester. Prior to her appointment, she held a postdoctoral research position at the same institution for 2.5 years, working on the programme grant “A coordinated comprehensive approach to carbon capture and utilisation” led by the University of Sheffield and funded by the UK’s Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council. She received her PhD in Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science in 2013 and her MSc in Environmental Technology in 2008 from The University of Manchester, and her Bachelor’s Degree in Chemical Engineering from the Technological Institute of Tijuana, Mexico in 2007.

Her research focuses on the sustainability assessment of novel technologies for climate change mitigation on a life cycle basis, providing quantitative evidence that enables targeted improvements at various system levels, such as molecular and process design, process operation, and policy making. Her work has centred around developing more environmentally sustainable ionic liquids, catalysts, bio-based chemicals and nanomaterials for cleaner technology development. She is an expert in life cycle assessment (LCA), carbon footprinting, and life cycle costing. She is author of over 30 peer-reviewed papers and her recent article on ionic liquids “A life cycle approach to solvent design: Challenges and opportunities for ionic liquids – application to CO₂ capture” has won the Reaction Chemistry & Engineering 2021 Outstanding Early Career Paper Award in recognition of her potential to influence future directions in the field.

 

Dr. Camélia Matei Ghimbeu is a Research Director at Material Science Institute in Mulhouse (IS2M), CNRS, France. She received in 2007 her PhD from University of Metz, France and TU Delft, The Netherlands and her Habilitation in 2015 from University of Haute Alsace, France. She was awarded in 2017 the CNRS Bronze Medal, in 2018 the Award "Solid-State Chemistry Division" (French Chemistry Society) and in 2019 the award Guy Ourisson (Gutenberg Cercle), for her research works devoted to the design of carbon-based materials with controlled characteristics for energy storage and environmental applications. Author of more than 100 articles and about 150 communications, she is leading the “Carbon and Hybrid Materials” group at IS2M, and she is member of French network of Electrochemical Storage of Energy (RS2E).

Dr. Lathe Jones is a Principal Scientist (Investigador Cientifico) at CSIC-ISQCH in Zaragoza (Spain).

His background is in aplied electrochemistry, inorganic chemistyr, and the recovery of metals from ores and waste. 

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.

Marta Sevilla is a Scientific Investigator at the Institute of Carbon Science and Technology, which belongs to the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC). She obtained her PhD degree from the University of Oviedo/INCAR in 2008 working on the development of novel carbon materials for energy storage (supercapacitors) and energy conversion (electrocatalysts for the anode of fuel cells). After several research stays in the University of Nottingham, Max-Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, and Georgia Institute of Technology, she got a permanent position at INCAR-CSIC.

Since 2012 se has focused her research on the development of advanced carbon-based materials through sustainable routes for their use in energy storage devices, including supercapacitors, Li-S batteries and hybrid ion capacitors, energy conversion (ORR electrocatalysts) and gas storage (CO₂ and H₂). She has co-authored ca. 130 peer-reviewed papers.

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).

Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldán Cuenya is currently the director of the Interface Science Department as well as interims director of Inorganic Chemistry Department at the Fritz Haber Institute in Berlin (Germany). She began her academic career by completing her MSc in Physics in Spain in 1998 and a PhD in Physics in Germany in 2001. Her postdoctoral research took her to the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara (USA). In 2004 she joined the Department of Physics at the University of Central Florida as Assistant Professor becoming a full professor in 2012. In 2013, she moved back to Germany and became a Chair professor of Solid State Physics at the Ruhr-University Bochum. She then joined the FHI in 2017.

Prof. Dr. Beatriz Roldan Cuenya is the author of 245 peer-reviewed publications, 6 book chapters and 6 patents. She has been supervising 74 postdoctoral fellows and 36 PhD students. She serves in the editorial board of the Journal of Catalysis and the Chemical Reviews journal. She is a member of the Academia Europaea as well as of the Germany National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. Recently she received the Manchot Research Professorship from TU Munich (2023), the 2022 Paul H. Emmet Award of the North American Catalysis Society, the Röntgen Medal (2022), the Faraday Medal from The Electrochemistry Division of the UK Royal Society of Chemistry (2022), the AVS Fellow Award (2021) and the International Society of Electrochemistry-Elsevier Prize for Experimental Electrochemistry (2021).

Jan Rossmeisl is Professor of theoretical chemistry at Department of Chemistry and the Nano-Science center at Copenhagen University. Before joining University of Copenhagen in April 2015, Jan was an Associate Professor and group leader for the theoretical catalysis group at Department of Physics at the Technical University of Denmark Jan holds master’s (2000) and Ph.D (2004) degrees in physics from the Technical University of Denmark. Since 2007 supervisor of more than 20 Ph.D and Post docs. Coauthor of more than 110 publications in peer reviewed journals, co-inventor of 4 patents and co-founder of two startup Companies. Research interests includes: electrocatalysis, energy conversion, atomic scale simulations, rational interface design for catalysis.

Sylwin Pawlowski holds a PhD degree in Chemical Engineering from Universidade NOVA de Lisboa (2015). Since February 2011, he has been developing his research at the Laboratory of Membrane Processes, first as a PhD student, followed by a Postdoc position at iBET, a Postdoctoral Research Associate position at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland/UK), and currently as an Assistant Researcher at NOVA, a position earned in a very prestigious CEEC IND call.

His main area of interest is experimental and modelling work on membranes and electromembrane processes, one of the most sustainable chemical processes for power generation, water desalination and resource recovery. His research activities so far comprise recovery/recycling of lithium from brines/end-of-life Li-ion batteries, electrospinning, 3D printing, sustainable power generation by reverse electrodialysis, membrane profiling, membrane fouling, flow capacitive deionisation, brackish water desalination, digital twins, machine learning and computational fluid dynamics (CFD).

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.

Dr. William Tarpeh is an assistant professor of chemical engineering at Stanford University. The Tarpeh Lab uses catalysis and separations to advance wastewater refining, which generates tunable portfolios of products from water pollutants. In addition to improving mechanistic understanding of novel materials and processes, the group also advances wastewater treatment in resource-constrained communities to improve access to water, fertilizers, and chemical commodities. Will completed his B.S. in chemical engineering at Stanford, his M.S. and Ph.D. in environmental engineering at UC Berkeley, and postdoctoral training at the University of Michigan. His recent awards include the NSF CAREER Award, Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, AIChE 35 Under 35 and the Environmental Division Early Career Award, and the Electrochemical Society Young Investigator Fellowship.

Dr. Trócoli got his Ph. D based on developing materials for Li-ion batteries at the University of Cordoba in 2012. He started his postdoctoral career by joining the Bochum Universität (Prof. La Mantia). Firstly, working in aqueous batteries, developing the first Zn-ion battery based on CuHCF; lately, he got involved in other fields, including his first works in Li selective and exclusion electrodes, as well as in an industrial project with Bayer MaterialsScience – reactor design. Dr. Trócoli started a collaboration with Prof. Alfred Ludwig to develop thin-film cathodes by RF-Magnetron sputtering, his first incursion in all-solid-state batteries. In January 2016, he joined the Nanoionics and fuel cell group (IREC, Spain, Prof. Tarancón - H2020 “Sinergy” project), working in thin film deposition methods. He developed a new multi-target technique and fabricated, among others, the first double-ion micro battery based on a Li intercalation cathode and a Zn metal anode. In September 2017, Dr. Trócoli started as a Marie Curie fellow in the group of Prof. Palacín (ICMAB-CSIC). Lately, he joined the FET-H2020 project E-Magic, working on novel cathodes for Mg batteries and nitride materials. In 2020, Dr. Trócoli obtained an EMERGIA project (Junta de Andalucía) and a JIN project (Retos-2020) for the development of new materials for Li extraction starting in November 2021 as a senior researcher at the University of Cordoba. Currently, Dr. Trócoli works as a Ramón y Cajal researcher at the University of Córdoba. He led several national and regional projects on battery recycling and post-lithium ion batteries.

Rosa Arrigo (WoS Researcher ID L-6676-2016) is lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Salford in Manchester (UK) and honorary research scientist at the UK’ s synchrotron facility Diamond Light Source. Her research interests are focused on the design of innovative processes and nanostructured systems for decarbonization technologies in green chemistry and energy storage and conversion. Her research strategy consists of establishing molecular level structure-function relationships through the controlled synthesis of tailored materials, testing and thorough structural characterisation, including but not limited to the extensive use of innovative in situ synchrotron-based techniques such as X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and X-ray absorption fine structure spectroscopy. Current projects focus the conversion of carbon dioxide and H2 production. Recently, she is investigating the host/guest chemistry in metal-organic frameworks for the delivery of Aspergillus derived drugs and in CO2 capture.

 

Selected Publications of Relevance to Catalysis Science.

Dynamics at Polarized Carbon Dioxide–Iron Oxyhydroxide Interfaces Unveil the Origin of Multicarbon Product Formation, R. Arrigo, R. Blume, V. Streibel, C. Genovese, A. Roldan, M. E. Schuster, C. Ampelli, S. Perathoner, J. J. Velasco Vélez, M. Hävecker, A. Knop-Gericke, R. Schlögl, G. Centi , ACS Catal. 2022, 12, 1, 411–430

Elucidating the mechanism of the CO2 methanation reaction over Ni/hydrotalcite-derived catalysts via surface sensitive in situ XPS and NEXAFS, G. Giorgianni, C. Mebrahtu, M. E. Schuster, A. I. Large, G. Held, P. Ferrer, F. Venturini, D. Grinter, R. Palkovits, S. Perathoner, G. Centi, S. Abate, R. Arrigo, Phys. Chem. Chem. Phys. 2020, DOI: 10.1039/D0CP00622J.

Operando X-ray absorption fine structure study of the electrocatalytic reduction of carbon dioxide over Ferrihydrite on nitrogen-doped carbon, C. Genovese, M. E. Schuster, E. K. Gibson, D. Gianolio, V. Posligua, R. Grau-Crespo, G. Cibin, P. P. Wells, D. Garai, V. Solokha, S. Krick Calderon, J. Velasco Velez, C. Ampelli, S. Perathoner, G. Held, G. Centi, R. Arrigo, Nat. Comms. 9, 2018, 935. doi:10.1038/s41467-018-03138-7.

In situ observation of reactive oxygen species forming on oxygen-evolving iridium surfaces, V. Pfeifer, T. E. Jones, J. J. Velasco Vélez, R. Arrigo, S. Piccinin, M. Hävecker, A. Knop-Gericke, R. Schlögl, Chem. Sci. 8, 2017, 2143-2149. DOI: 10.1039/C6SC04622C.

Recent Press Releases

“Take a Tour of the Diamond Light Source” in Chemistry world,

“Carbon Dioxide Conversion to Hydrocarbon: Thinking Big to See Small Things”, Nature Blog and "Beyond the Paper".

Peter Strasser is the chaired professor of �Electrochemistry for energy conversion and storage� at the Chemical Engineering Division of the Department of Chemistry at the Technical University of Berlin. Prior to his appointment, he was Professor at the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Houston. Before moving to Houston, Prof. Strasser served as Senior Member of staff at Symyx Technologies, Inc., Santa Clara, USA. In 1999, Prof. Strasser earned his doctoral degree in Physical Chemistry and Electrochemistry from the �Fritz-Haber-Institute� of the Max-Planck-Society, Berlin, Germany, under the direction of the 2007 Chemistry Nobel Laureate, Professor Gerhard Ertl. In the same year, he was awarded the �Otto-Hahn Research Medal� by the Max-Planck Society. In 1996, Dr. Strasser was visiting scientist with Sony Central Research, Yokohama, Japan. He studied chemistry at Stanford University, the University of Tuebingen, and the University of Pisa, Italy. Professor Strasser is interested in the fundamental Materials Science and Catalysis of electrified liquid solid interfaces, in particular for renewable energy conversion, energy storage, production of fuels and chemicals.

Dr. Beatriz Martín-García received her Ph.D. in Chemical Physics (Cum Laude) from University of Salamanca (Spain) in 2013. Then, she joined Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (Italy) under the Graphene Flagship project working during almost 6 years on the modulation of optoelectronic properties of different materials (nanocrystals, 2D materials and hybrid metal-halide perovskites) by chemical-design and surface-functionalization strategies for their integration in solar cells, photodetectors and memories. She is currently an Ikerbasque researcher and Ramón y Cajal fellow at CIC nanoGUNE BRTA, leading a research line developing tailor-made low-dimensional materials and studying them by Raman and photoluminescence spectroscopy techniques to drive the selection of desired properties for their integration in optoelectronic and spintronic devices.

Juan José Palacios Burgos (Full Professor since 2019, UAM) graduated in Physics at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) in 1989 where he also received his PhD in 1993 for his theoretical work on electronic structure and transport properties of semiconductor quantum dots and on various topics related to the integer and fractional quantum Hall effect (QHE). He continued his professional career as a postdoctoral researcher at the National Research Council (Canada), the Indiana University (USA) as a NATO fellow, and the University of Kentucky (USA), where he explored more in depth the many-body physics of the fractional QHE in collaboration with Allan MacDonald, also doing fundamental work on vortex matter and mesoscopic superconductivity in collaboration with Nobel-prize awardee  Andre Geim. At the Universidad of Alicante (Spain), where he worked for almost 10 years, he started a new research group on Nanophysics, a new master program in Nanoscience, and pioneered one of the first projects worldwide to compute quantum transport from first principles (Alicante NanoTransport, ANT). Since 2009 he works at the department of Condensed Matter Physics (UAM) where he is exploring the physics of two-dimensional and topological materials with focus on spintronics and optoelectronics applications. He has taught courses at all levels, including master studies. He has supervised 8 master students, 12 PhD students, and is currently supervising 6 PhD students more. In the meantime, in 2014, he co-founded SIMUNE Atomistics, the first company in Spain that offers computational services for material science related industrial needs, and was a Fulbright scholar in 2018 at University of Austin, in Texas. He is currently a member of Spanish as well as several international project evaluation committees.

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.

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).

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.

Ivan Scheblykin obtained Ph.D. in 1999 from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Lebedev Physical Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences on exciton dynamics in J-aggregates. After a postdoctoral stay in the KU Leuven, Belgium, he moved to Sweden to start the single molecule spectroscopy group at the Division of Chemical Physics in Lund University where he became a full professor in 2014. His interests cover fundamental photophysics of organic and inorganic semiconductors and, in particular, energy transfer, charge migration and trapping. The general direction of his research is to comprehend fundamental physical and chemical processes beyond ensemble averaging in material science and chemical physics using techniques inspired by single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy and single particle imaging.

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.

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.

Juan P. Martínez-Pastor, Full Prof. at the University of Valencia. PhD in Physics, 1990. Three years of postdoctoral experience at the European Laboratory of Non-Linear Spectroscopy (Florence, Italy) and at the École Normale Supérieure (Paris, France). Prof. Martínez-Pastor is expert in Semiconductor Physics, particularly optical properties and exciton recombination dynamics in quantum wells, wires and dots based on III-V semiconductors and other compounds since 1990. This research line continues nowadays focused on quantum light produced by quantum dot semiconductors and its management for quantum communications. After 2006 he has leaded/co-leaded several research lines in nanoscience and nanotechnology regarding the development of several types of nanomaterials (metal and quantum dots, multi-functional nanocomposites) and applications to photonics and plasmonics. In the last three years, he focuses his research in optical properties, exciton recombination dynamics and applications in photonics of two-dimensional semiconductors and metal halide perovskites. He has supervised 16 PhD theses and is author/co-author of 220 peer-reviewed publications, other than seven patents and promotor of a spin-off company.

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.

 

Thomas Bein received his PhD in Chemistry from the University of Hamburg (Germany) and the Catholic University Leuven (Belgium) in 1984. He continued his studies as Visiting Scientist at the DuPont Central Research and Development Department in Wilmington, DE (USA). From 1986 to 1991 he was Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque (USA). In 1991 he joined Purdue University (Indiana) as Associate Professor, and was promoted to Full Professor of Chemistry in 1995. In 1999 he was appointed Chair of Physical Chemistry at the University of Munich (LMU), where he also served as Director of the Department of Chemistry.

He has recently won an ERC Advanced Grant entitled “Electroactive Donor-Acceptor Covalent Organic Frameworks”. Presently he is LMU-Coordinator of the newly funded Excellence Cluster “e-conversion”. Bibliographic data: Over 500 publications, over 38.000 citations, h=115. Since 2018, Thomas Bein is listed as a Highly Cited Researcher (Clarivate).

His current research interests cover the synthesis and physical properties of functional nanostructures, with an emphasis on porous materials for targeted drug delivery and nanostructured materials for solar energy conversion.

URL: http://bein.cup.uni-muenchen.de/

Dr. Sudip Chakraborty is leading Materials Theory for Energy Scavenging (MATES Lab) group in India’s premier theoretical research Institute Harish-Chandra Research Institute (HRI) Allahabad (Prayagraj), Department of Atomic Energy, Govt. of India. After completing his Ph.D. in collaboration between Bhabha Atomic Research Centre (BARC) and University of Pune, India, he moved to Max Planck Institute, Düsseldorf, Germany in March, 2011 as a Max Planck Postdoctoral Fellow. In February, 2013, he joined Materials Theory Division, Uppsala University, Sweden as a Førskare (Senior Researcher). Since March, 2019, he started leading his group firstly in Department of Physics of IIT Indore and later on in HRI from May, 2021 onwards. He has been awarded the Rising Stars by ACS Materials Au 2021, among 300+ nominations worldwide, while he is the sole recipient from India. He is in the Editorial Board of Journal of Physical Chemistry A/B/C (ACS), Energy Advances (RSC), Electronic Structure (IOP), Chemistry of Inorganic Materials (Elsevier) and Graphene & 2D Materials (Springer). His works are appeared in Nature Materials, PNAS, Materials Today, ACS Energy Letters, JACS, ACS Nano, ACS Catalysis, AngewChemie, Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, Chem.Mat. etc. He has 174 International publications with total 6500 citations and 45 h-index (https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=ybAcs3kAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate)

Dr. Edgardo Saucedo studied Chemical Engineering at the University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay, and received his PhD in Materials Physic at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain in 2007 with a FPU fellowship. In 2007, he joined the Institut de Recherche et Développement sur l’Énergie Photovoltaïque IRDEP (Paris, France), with a CNRS associated Researcher fellowship, working in the development and optoelectronic characterization of CIGS low cost based solar cells. In 2009, he joined NEXCIS, a spin-off created from IRDEP, to further pursue their training in photovoltaic technology. In 2010, he joined the Solar Energy Materials and SystemsGroup at the Catalonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC) under a Juan de la Cierva Fellowship first (2010-2011) and a Ramon y Cajal Fellowship afterwards (2012-2016), with the aim to develop new low cost materials and processes for thin film photovoltaic devices. In 2020 he joined the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) to continuous his scientific and professorhip career.

He holds five patents and has authored or co-authored more than 215 papers in recognized international journals, including: Energy and Environmental Science, Advanced Materials, Adv. Energy Materials, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Chemistry of Materials, Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, NanoEnergy, J. Mater. Chem. A,  J. Phys. Chem. C, etc. He has more than 350 contributions to the most important Congresses in Physics, Chemistry and Materials, and more than 35 invited talks around the world. He has been involved in more than 25 European and Spanish Projects (Scalenano, Inducis, Pvicokest, KestPV, Larcis, etc.), and he was the Coordinator of the ITN Marie Curie network Kestcell (www.kestcells.eu), the research and innovation project STARCELL (www.starcell.eu), and the RISE project INFINITE-CELL (www.infinite-cell.eu), three of the most important initiatives in Europe for the development of Kesterites. In 2019 he was granted with an ERC-Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (SENSATE, 866018, 2020-2025), for the development of low dimensional materials for solar harvesting applications to be developed at UPC. Currently he is also the scientific coordinator of the European project SUSTOM-ART (952982), for the industrialization of kesterite for BIPV/PIPV applications.

He is frequently chairman and invited speakers in the most relevant Conferences in Photovoltaic (E-MRS, MRS, IEEE-PVSC, EUPVSEC, European Kesterite Workshop, etc.). He has supervised 11 PhD Thesis and is currently supervising 5 more. He has an h factor of 38 and more than 5000 citations. In 2020 he has been awarded with the ASEVA-Toyota Award for his contribution to the development of sustainable photovoltaic technologies using vacuum techniques (https://aseva.es/resolucion-de-los-primeros-premios-nacionales-de-ciencia-y-tecnologia-de-vacio-aseva-toyota/).

Dr Stefania Cacovich is currently a CNRS researcher working at IPVF. Her research activity lies in the field of the advanced characterization of hybrid and inorganic materials for photovoltaic applications by employing a multi-scale and multi-technique approach. 

Her research into hybrid devices started during her doctoral studies (2014-2018), carried out at the Department of Materials Science of the University of Cambridge (UK) under the supervision of Prof Caterina Ducati.  Her thesis focused on the study of the chemical, structural and morphological properties of hybrid organic-inorganic thin films and photovoltaic devices using advanced analytical electron microscopy techniques. In 2018, she moved to Paris for a postdoctoral research position at IPVF to work on multidimensional spectrally and time resolved photoluminescence imaging methods. From 2020-2022, she was Marie Curie Individual Post-doctoral fellow in Physics at CNRS (UMR 9006) with a project aimed at exploring the fundamental photophysical processes underlying the operation of advanced optoelectronic devices.

Dr. Tze-Chien Sum is an Associate Professor at the Division of Physics and Applied Physics, School of Physical and Mathematical Sciences (SPMS), Nanyang Technological University (NTU) where he leads the Femtosecond Dynamics Laboratory. He is presently the Associate Dean (Research) at the College of Science. Tze-Chien received his Ph.D. in Physics from the National University of Singapore (NUS) in 2005, for the work in proton beam writing and ion-beam spectroscopy. His present research focuses on investigating light matter interactions; energy and charge transfer mechanisms; and probing carrier and quasi-particle dynamics in a broad range of emergent nanoscale and light harvesting systems. Tze-Chien received a total of 11 teaching awards from NUS and NTU, including the coveted Nanyang Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2006 and the 2010 SPMS Teaching Excellence Honour Roll Award. Most recently, he received the 2013 SPMS Young Researcher Award; the Institute of Physics Singapore 2014 World Scientific Medal and Prize for Outstanding Physics Research; the 2014 Nanyang Award for Research Excellence (Team); and the 2015 Chemical Society of Japan Asian International Symposium Distinguished Lectureship Award. More information can be found at http://www.ntu.edu.sg/home/tzechien/spms/index.html

Hendrik (Henk) Bolink obtained his PhD in Materials Science at the University of Groningen in 1997 under the supervision of Prof. Hadziioannou. After that he worked at DSM as a materials scientist and project manager in the central research and new business development department, respectively. In 2001 he joined Philips, to lead the materials development activity of Philips´s PolyLED project.

Since 2003 he is at the Instituto de Ciencia Molecular (ICMol )of the University of Valencia where he initiated a research line on molecular opto-eletronic devices. His current research interests encompass: inorganic/organic hybrid materials such as transition metal complexes and perovskites and their integration in LEDs and solar cells.

After her PhD degree in Telecommunications and Microelectronics Engineering on flexible dye solar cells, awarded by University of Rome ‘Tor Vergata’ in 2014, Dr De Rossi spent nearly 4 years abroad, working as a Technology Transfer Fellow in SPECIFIC Innovation and Knowledge Centre at Swansea University (UK). She was part of the PV team led by Prof T.M. Watson, focusing on the upscaling of printable perovskite solar cells, and lead of the stability activity within his group.

She is currently a fixed term researcher (RTDa) in the group led by Prof F. Brunetti, working on smart designed, fully printed flexible perovskite solar cells and photocapacitors.

Laura Herz is a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford. She received her PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge in 2002 and was a Research Fellow at St John's College Cambridge from 2001 - 2003 after which she moved to Oxford. Her research interests lie in the area of organic and organic/inorganic hybrid semiconductors including aspects such as self-assembly, nano-scale effects, energy-transfer and light-harvesting for solar energy conversion.

Lorenzo obtained his PhD in Chemistry in 2003 and since 2008 is Assistant Professor at the Chemistry Department of the University of Pavia. In 2021 he was appointed Full Professor in the same department. He was the recipient of the Young Scientist Award for outstanding work in the field of perovskites at the International Conference on Perovskites held in late 2005 in Zürich, of the “Alfredo di Braccio” Prize for Chemistry 2008 of Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei awarded to distinguished under 35-year-old chemists and contributed the Journal Materials Chemistry and Chemical Communications“Emerging Investigator” issues in 2010 and 2011. He is working in several areas of solid state chemistry with particular interest in the investigation of structure–properties correlation in different kinds of functional materials, in particular electrolyte materials for clean energy, hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites and catalysis materials.  He is author of more than 200 papers on international peer-reviewed journals. Since 2018 he is member of Academic Senate and Vice-Director of the Chemistry Department. He is Director of the INSTM Reference Center “PREMIO” devoted to the synthesis of innovative materials and member of the Directive Board of INSTM. Since 2014 he is member of the Academic Board of the PhD in Chemistry of Pavia University. He is Editor of Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids.

Erkan Aydın is leading the “Aydin Group” in the Chemistry Department of LMU Munich. His research group is focusing on the development of “realistic ultra-efficient tandem photovoltaic solutions for earth and space applications“ by currently prioritizing multijunction solar cells, specifically perovskite/silicon tandem solar cells and all-perovskite tandem solar cells. Erkan Aydın obtained his PhD (2016) degree from the Micro and Nanotechnology Program at TOBB ETU (University of Economics and Technology) in 2016 and he pursued his postdoctoral research at the KAUST for seven and half years before establishing his team at LMU Munich. His extensive work at KAUST led to several record-breaking efficiencies in perovskite-silicon tandem solar cells. Erkan Aydın is the principal investigator of the INPERSPACE ERC StG Project. 

Prof. Marina Freitag is a Professor of Energy and a Royal Society University Research Fellow at Newcastle University. She is developing new light-driven technologies that incorporate coordination polymers to solve the most important challenges in the research area, including issues of sustainability, stability and performance of hybrid PV. The development of such highly innovative concepts has given Marina international recognition, including recipient of the prestigious 2022 Royal Society of Chemistry Harrison-Meldola Memorial Prize 2022.

Her research into hybrid molecular devices, began during her doctoral studies (2007-2011, Rutgers University, NJ, USA) where she was awarded an Electrochemical Society Travel Award and Dean Dissertation Fellowship 2011. Dr Freitag moved to Uppsala University (2013-2015) for a postdoctoral research position, which focused on the implementation of alternative redox mediators, leading to a breakthrough today known as “zombie solar cells”. Dr Freitag was invited to further develop this work at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) with Prof. Anders Hagfeldt ( 2015-2016). From 2016-2020 she was appointed as Assistant Professor at Uppsala University, Sweden, where she received the Göran Gustaffsson Young Researcher Award 2019.

Dr. Edgardo Saucedo studied Chemical Engineering at the University of the Republic, Montevideo, Uruguay, and received his PhD in Materials Physic at the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain in 2007 with a FPU fellowship. In 2007, he joined the Institut de Recherche et Développement sur l’Énergie Photovoltaïque IRDEP (Paris, France), with a CNRS associated Researcher fellowship, working in the development and optoelectronic characterization of CIGS low cost based solar cells. In 2009, he joined NEXCIS, a spin-off created from IRDEP, to further pursue their training in photovoltaic technology. In 2010, he joined the Solar Energy Materials and SystemsGroup at the Catalonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC) under a Juan de la Cierva Fellowship first (2010-2011) and a Ramon y Cajal Fellowship afterwards (2012-2016), with the aim to develop new low cost materials and processes for thin film photovoltaic devices. In 2020 he joined the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC) to continuous his scientific and professorhip career.

He holds five patents and has authored or co-authored more than 215 papers in recognized international journals, including: Energy and Environmental Science, Advanced Materials, Adv. Energy Materials, Journal of the American Chemical Society, Chemistry of Materials, Progress in Photovoltaics: Research and Applications, Solar Energy Materials and Solar Cells, NanoEnergy, J. Mater. Chem. A,  J. Phys. Chem. C, etc. He has more than 350 contributions to the most important Congresses in Physics, Chemistry and Materials, and more than 35 invited talks around the world. He has been involved in more than 25 European and Spanish Projects (Scalenano, Inducis, Pvicokest, KestPV, Larcis, etc.), and he was the Coordinator of the ITN Marie Curie network Kestcell (www.kestcells.eu), the research and innovation project STARCELL (www.starcell.eu), and the RISE project INFINITE-CELL (www.infinite-cell.eu), three of the most important initiatives in Europe for the development of Kesterites. In 2019 he was granted with an ERC-Consolidator Grant by the European Research Council (SENSATE, 866018, 2020-2025), for the development of low dimensional materials for solar harvesting applications to be developed at UPC. Currently he is also the scientific coordinator of the European project SUSTOM-ART (952982), for the industrialization of kesterite for BIPV/PIPV applications.

He is frequently chairman and invited speakers in the most relevant Conferences in Photovoltaic (E-MRS, MRS, IEEE-PVSC, EUPVSEC, European Kesterite Workshop, etc.). He has supervised 11 PhD Thesis and is currently supervising 5 more. He has an h factor of 38 and more than 5000 citations. In 2020 he has been awarded with the ASEVA-Toyota Award for his contribution to the development of sustainable photovoltaic technologies using vacuum techniques (https://aseva.es/resolucion-de-los-primeros-premios-nacionales-de-ciencia-y-tecnologia-de-vacio-aseva-toyota/).

Dr. Roberto Speranza is a postoctoral researcher at Politechnic of Turin where he obtained his Ph.d. in Electronic Engineering with a thesis entitled "Integrated Energy Harvesting and Storage Systems for a Sustainable Future". His main research interest are design, fabrication, and characterization of electrochemical technologies for energy harvesting and storage. Third-generation photovoltaic cells, with a focus on photoelectrochemical cells like dye-sensitized solar cells. Characterization and optimization of photovoltaic devices under non-standard illumination conditions (artificial lighting, indoor environments). Supercapacitors and their direct integration with photovoltaic technologies. Fabrication and characterization of photo-capacitors for direct energy harvesting and storage from natural and artificial light sources. Production and characterization of nanostructured materials for electrochemical devices. Polymer electrolytes. 

Professor Uri Banin is the incumbent of the Larisch Memorial Chair at the Institute of Chemistry and the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HU). Dr. Banin was the founding director of the Harvey M. Kreuger Family Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (2001-2010) and led the program of the Israel National Nanotechnology Initiative at HU (2007-2010). He served on the University’s Executive Committee and on its board of managers and was a member of the board of Yissum. He served on the scientific advisory board of Nanosys. In 2009 Banin was the scientific founder of Qlight Nanotech, a start-up company based on his inventions, developing the use of nanocrystals in display and lighting applications. Since 2013, Banin is an Associate Editor of the journal Nano Letters. His distinctions include the Rothschild and Fulbright postdoctoral fellowships (1994-1995), the Alon fellowship for young faculty (1997-2000), the Yoram Ben-Porat prize (2000), the Israel Chemical Society young scientist award (2001), the Michael Bruno Memorial Award (2007-2010), and the Tenne Family prize for nanoscale science (2012). He received two European Research Council (ERC) advanced investigator grant, project DCENSY (2010-2015), and project CoupledNC (2017-2022). Banin’s research focuses on nanoscience and nanotechnology of nanocrystals and he authored over 180 scientific publications in this field that have been extensively cited.

Prof. Z. Hens received his PhD in applied physics from Ghent University in 2000, worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Utrecht University and was appointed professor at the Ghent University department of inorganic and physical chemistry in 2002. His research concerns the synthesis, processing and characterization of colloidal nanocrystals.

Arjan Houtepen obtained his PhD Cum Laude under supervision of prof. Vanmaekelbergh at Utrecht University and subsequently became tenure track assistant professor in Delft. In 2009/2010 he was a visiting scientist in the group of prof. Feldmann in Munich. At present he is associate professor in the optoelectronic materials section at Delft University.

Jonathan Owen received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from CalTech. As a graduate student in the lab of Professor John Bercaw he studied the kinetics and mechanism of methane C-H activation. In 2005 he joined the lab of Professor Paul Alivisatos as a Petroleum Research Fund Alternative Energy Fellow to study the crystallization and derivatization of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals. In 2009 he joined the faculty at Columbia University as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry where his group continues to study the synthesis and surface chemistry of colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals. For this work, he has received early career awards from the Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation, 3M, and DuPont.

Peter Reiss is researcher at the Interdisciplinary Research Institute of Grenoble (IRIG), France, and Head of the Laboratory Synthesis, Structure and Properties of Functional Materials (STEP). He graduated from University of Karlsruhe (Germany), and earned his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Dieter Fenske (2000). His research activities focus on the synthesis and properties of colloidal semiconductor quantum dots and metal halide perovskites (nanoparticles and thin films). The studied applications range from biological imaging / detection over LEDs and displays to new strategies for energy conversion (photovoltaics, thermoelectrics, photocatalysis) and storage. Dr. Reiss acts as Associate Editor for Nanoscale Research Letters and Frontiers in Materials - Energy Materials, and is Editorial Board Member of Scientific Reports. He co-organizes the biennial conference NaNaX – Nanoscience with Nanocrystals (cf. http://nanax.org).

Alex earned his Ph.D. in physics of semiconductors from Chernivtsi National University, Ukraine for his work on electronic properties of nitride semiconductor alloys.

In 2004 he joined the Quantum Semiconductors and Bionanophotonics lab at University of Sherbrooke as a postdoc, working on theoretical modeling of laser-assisted quantum well intermixing and self-assembly processes of organic monolayers on metal and semiconductor surfaces for applications in bio-sensing.

In 2008 he moved to Quantum Theory Group at National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa, where he worked on many-body problems in epitaxial and colloidal semiconductor and graphene quantum dots; in particular, simulations of multi-exciton generation, Auger processes and optical properties of nanocrystals used in hybrid polymer-semiconductor solar cells.

Alex joined Ted Sargent’s Nanomaterials for Energy Group in 2011 and worked on characterization and modeling of the semiconductor nanocrystal surfaces and developing the synthesis methods for nanomaterials with improved optical and transport properties for photovoltaics.

In 2018, Alex joined the Department of Physical and Environmental Sciences at the University of Toronto, Scarborough as an Assistant Professor in Clean Energy. His topics of interest are materials for energy storage and novel materials discovery using high-throughput experiments and machine learning.

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.

Laura Herz is a Professor of Physics at the University of Oxford. She received her PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge in 2002 and was a Research Fellow at St John's College Cambridge from 2001 - 2003 after which she moved to Oxford. Her research interests lie in the area of organic and organic/inorganic hybrid semiconductors including aspects such as self-assembly, nano-scale effects, energy-transfer and light-harvesting for solar energy conversion.

He studied electrical engineering in Stuttgart and started working on Si solar cells in 2004 under the guidance of Uwe Rau at the Institute for Physical Electronics (ipe) in Stuttgart. After finishing his undergraduate studies in 2006, he continued working with Uwe Rau first in Stuttgart and later in Juelich on simulations and electroluminescence spectroscopy of solar cells. After finishing his PhD in 2009 and 1.5 years of postdoc work in Juelich, Thomas Kirchartz started a three year fellowship at Imperial College London working on recombination mechanisms in organic solar cells with Jenny Nelson. In 2013, he returned to Germany and accepted a position as head of a new activity on hybrid and organic solar cells in Juelich and simultaneously as Professor for Photovoltaics with Nanostructured Materials in the department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the University Duisburg-Essen. Kirchartz has published >100 isi-listed papers, has co-edited one book on characterization of thin-film solar cells whose second edition was published in 2016 and currently has an h-index of 38.

Paulina Plochocka, Directrice de recherché de 2e classe (DR2) in Laboratoire National des Champs Magnétiques Intenses (LNCMI), CNRS in Toulouse.

P. Plochocka obtained her PhD cum-laude in 2004 at the University of Warsaw working on the dynamics of many-body interactions between carriers in doped semi-magnetic quantum wells (QW). During her first post doc at Weizmann Institute of science, she started working on the electronic properties of a high mobility 2D electron gas in the fractional and integer quantum Hall Effect regime. She continued this topic during second post doc in LNCMI Grenoble, where she was holding individual Marie Curie scholarship. At the same time, she enlarged her interest of 2D materials towards graphene and other layered materials as TMDCs or black phosphorus. In 2012 she obtained permanent position in LNCMI Toulouse, where she created the Quantum Electronics group, which investigates the electronic and optical properties of emerging materials under extreme conditions of high magnetic field and low temperatures. Examples include semiconducting layer materials such as transition metal dichalcogenides, GaAs/AlAs core shell nanowires and organic inorganic hybrid perovskites.

Sam Stranks is Professor of Optoelectronocs and Royal Society University Research Fellow in the Department of Chemical Engineering & Biotechnology and the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. He obtained his DPhil (PhD) from the University of Oxford in 2012. From 2012-2014, he was a Junior Research Fellow at Worcester College Oxford and from 2014-2016 a Marie Curie Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He established his research group in 2017, with a focus on the optical and electronic properties of emerging semiconductors for low-cost electronics applications.

Sam received the 2016 IUPAP Young Scientist in Semiconductor Physics Prize, the 2017 Early Career Prize from the European Physical Society, the 2018 Henry Moseley Award and Medal from the Institute of Physics, the 2019 Marlow Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry, the 2021 IEEE Stuart Wenham Award and the 2021 Philip Leverhulme Prize in Physics. Sam is also a co-founder of Swift Solar, a startup developing lightweight perovskite PV panels, and an Associate Editor at Science Advances.

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.

Ji-Seon Kim is Professor of Solid State Physics and Director of the Plastic Electronics Centre for Doctoral Training (https://www.imperial.ac.uk/plastic-electronics/) at Imperial College London. She has previously taken up an EPSRC Advanced Research Fellowship at the University of Cambridge, obtained a PhD in Physics in 2000. Her research focuses on the basic science and technology of Nanoscale Functional Materials such as organics, organic/ inorganic hybrids, nanomaterials and their related applications, as well as developing novel Nanometrology for these functional materials (http://www.imperial.ac.uk/nanoanalysis-group).

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

 

Professor of Materials Physics at Karlstad University, Sweden, since 2011. Research interests: morphology of conjugated polymer thin films, photodegradation of OPV materials, energy level allignment in organic and perovskite multilayer structures. Employed at Karlstad university since 2000. Previously Research Scientist at Cambridge Display Technology in Cambridge,UK, and Research Assistant at University of Cambridge. Post-doc at EPFL Lausanne (1996-98) and TU Delft (1995-1996). PhD degree from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. 

Prof. Dieter Neher studied physics at the University of Mainz. In 1990 he gained his PhD with Prof. G. Wegner. From 1990-1992 he was a research associate at the Optical Sciences Centre, Tucson, Arizona and at the Centre for Research in Electrooptics and Lasers, Orlando, Florida with Prof. G. Stegeman. 1992 he joined again Prof. G. Wegner at the MPI-P, heading the group Electrooptical Phenomena in Polymers. Following his habilitation in November 1998, he became Professor of Soft Matter Physics at the Institute for Physics and Astronomy at the University of Potsdam. Current research interests are electrical, optical and optoelectronic processes in conjugated materials.

Thuc-Quyen Nguyen is a professor in the Center for Polymers and Organic Solids and the Chemistry & Biochemistry Department at University of California, Santa Barbara (UCSB). She received her Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from the University of California, Los Angeles, in 2001 under the supervision of Professor Benjamin Schwartz. Her thesis focused on photophysics of conducting polymers. She was a research associate in the Department of Chemistry and the Nanocenter at Columbia University working with Professors Louis Brus and Colin Nuckolls on molecular self-assembly, nanoscale characterization and molecular electronics. She also spent time at IBM Research Center at T. J. Watson (Yorktown Heights, NY) working with Richard Martel and Phaedon Avouris. Her current research interests are structure-function-property relationships in organic semiconductors, sustainable semiconductors, doping in organic semiconductors, interfaces in optoelectronic devices, bioelectronics, and device physics of OPVs, photodetectors, and electrochemical transistors. Recognition for her research includes 2005 Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, 2006 NSF CAREER Award, 2007 Harold Plous Award, 2008 Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award, the 2009 Alfred Sloan Research Fellows, 2010 National Science Foundation American Competitiveness and Innovation Fellows, 2015 Alexander von Humboldt Senior Research Award, 2016 Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2015-2019 World’s Most InfluentialScientific Minds; Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Materials Science by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics, 2019 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), 2023 Wilhelm Exner Medal from Austria, 2023 Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors, 2023 de Gennes Prize in Materials Chemistry from the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2023 Elected Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, 2024 Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences, and 2025 ACS Henry H. Storch Award in Energy Chemistry.

Dr. Galian received her Ph.D in Chemistry at the National University of Cordoba, Argentina in 2001. Then, she was a postdoc researcher at the Polythecnic University of Valencia, University of Valencia and University of Ottawa. During those years, she has studied photosensibilization processes by aromatic ketones using laser flash photolysis techniques and was involved in photonic crystal fiber/semiconductor nanocrystal interaction projects. In 2007, Dr. Galian came back to Spain with a Ramon y Cajal contract to study the surface chemistry of quantum dots and since 2017 she has a permanent position as Scientist Researcher at the University of Valencia. Her main interest is the design, synthesis and characterization of photoactive nanoparticles and multifunctional nanosystems for sensing, electroluminescent applications and photocatalysis.

Lorenzo obtained his PhD in Chemistry in 2003 and since 2008 is Assistant Professor at the Chemistry Department of the University of Pavia. In 2021 he was appointed Full Professor in the same department. He was the recipient of the Young Scientist Award for outstanding work in the field of perovskites at the International Conference on Perovskites held in late 2005 in Zürich, of the “Alfredo di Braccio” Prize for Chemistry 2008 of Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei awarded to distinguished under 35-year-old chemists and contributed the Journal Materials Chemistry and Chemical Communications“Emerging Investigator” issues in 2010 and 2011. He is working in several areas of solid state chemistry with particular interest in the investigation of structure–properties correlation in different kinds of functional materials, in particular electrolyte materials for clean energy, hybrid organic-inorganic perovskites and catalysis materials.  He is author of more than 200 papers on international peer-reviewed journals. Since 2018 he is member of Academic Senate and Vice-Director of the Chemistry Department. He is Director of the INSTM Reference Center “PREMIO” devoted to the synthesis of innovative materials and member of the Directive Board of INSTM. Since 2014 he is member of the Academic Board of the PhD in Chemistry of Pavia University. He is Editor of Journal of Physics and Chemistry of Solids.

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.

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.

Prof. Qing Shen received her Bachelor’s degree in physics from Nanjing University of China in 1987 and earned her Ph.D. degree from the University of Tokyo in 1995. In 1996, she joined the University of Electro-Communications, Japan and became a full professor in 2016. In 1997, she got the Young Scientist Award of the Japan Society of Applied Physics. In 2003, she got the Best Paper Award of the Japan Society of Thermophysical Properties and the Young Scientist Award of the Symposium on Ultrasonic Electronics of Japan. In 2014, she got the Excellent Women Scientist Award of the Japan Society of Applied Physics. She has published nearly 140 peer-reviewed journal papers and book chapters. Her current research interests focus on solution processed nano-materials and nanostructures, semiconductor quantum dot solar cells and perovskite solar cells, and especially the photoexcited carrier dynamics (hot carrier cooling, multiple exciton generation, charge transfer at the interface) in perovskite solar cells, quantum dot and dye sensitized solar cells, organic-inorganic hybrid solar cells.

Dr. Carolina Carrillo Carrión is a Tenured Scientist of the Spanish National Research Council (CSIC) since 2022, working at the Institute for Chemical Research (IIQ, CSIC-University of Seville). In 2023 she started her own group “NanoChemistry with Metal-Organic Frameworks (NanoChemMOFs)” at the IIQ.

Short CV: degree in Chemistry (2006), M.Sc. in Fine Chemistry (2007) and European PhD degree (2011) in the Analytical Chemistry Department of the University of Córdoba (UCO); responsible of the analytical department and R&D projects at Biomedal company (2012-2013); Humboldt postdoc Fellow (2013-2015) in @Parak Biophotonics group (Philipps-University of Marburg); Juan de la Cierva-Incorporación contract (2015-2017) at @CIC biomaGUNE; Marie Curie postdoc Fellow (2018-2020) at the CiQUS@USC; JIN/RETOS-project as PI at the University of Córdoba (09/2020-03/2021); Ramon y Cajal contract (04/2021-12/2021, University of Seville); Tenured Scientist of CSIC at IIQ (since 2022).

Research interests: Her scientific career has been focused at the interface between (bio)analytical chemistry, nanotechnology and material science, and biomedicine. She has expertise in the design, synthesis, and characterization of functional hybrid nanomaterials for (bio)applications. Since 2018 she focused her research on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), including two main research lines: i) the study of the unique characteristic of MOFs, not found in other porous materials, such as the structural changes/transformations upon an external stimulus (e.g., light irradiation, heat treatment, high-pressure, gas/water adsorption), including thermal diffusion, gate-opening phenomena, phase-to-phase transitions; and ii) the development of MOF-based nanoplatforms for specific target applications in different fields. In the biomedical field, the most relevant examples focus on designing MOFs for light-triggered intracellular release of bioactive compounds, bioorthogonal catalysis in living cells, renal therapies (MOF-modified kidney scaffolds or enhanced adsorbents for hemodialysis), and Glyco-MOFs for improved therapies. In other research fields, MOF-based systems have been designed for biomass valorisation, sensing, and energy-related applications.

Publications: https://scholar.google.es/citations?hl=es&user=VCVQqlQAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate

Carlos Martí-Gastaldo was initially trained in Coordination Chemistry and Molecular Magnetism in E. Coronado´s group at the ICMol-University of Valencia (PhD 2009), before shifting focus to apply his training to the design of Metal-Organic Frameworks during my postdoctoral stage as a Marie Curie Fellow in M. J. Rosseinsky's group at the University of Liverpool (2010-2012). He began his independent career in 2013 in Liverpool, with the award of a Royal Society University Research Fellowship. In 2014, he returned to the ICMol with a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship to lead the design of highly stable MOFs, one of the strategic research lines of the 1st ‘María de Maeztu’ Excellence program awarded to the center. With the award of an ERC Starting Grant in 2016, he established his own research group at the ICMol. The Functional Inorganic Materials team (FuniMat; www.icmol.es/funimat) is focused on the design and processing of porous inorganic materials for biological and environmental-related applications. He has founded the start-ups ‘Porous Materials for Advanced Applications’ S. L. (2018) and ‘Porous Materials in Action’ S. L. (2021) (www.porousinaction.com) to accelerate the transfer of research results into socially useful products and services. He received an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2021 and is one of the guarantor investigators of the 2nd ‘María de Maeztu’ Excellence program of ICMol (2021-2024), and main responsible of the implementation of a new research line for the Molecular Design of Biomaterials in the center.

Since the beginning of his independent career, he has built an international reputation for world leading research recognised with awards, Spanish/European fellowships, invited presentations, talented young scientists attracted/supervised and a sustained competitive funding record as PI near to 8 M€.

I earned my PhD in Chemistry from the Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology in 2000, focusing on the activation of carbon-oxygen and carbon-sulfur bonds by low-valent transition metal complexes. Following this, I joined the Université Pierre et Marie Curie as a postdoctoral researcher, where I worked on the design and synthesis of organometallic complexes with non-linear optical (NLO) properties. In 2001, I was honored with a prestigious Humboldt Fellowship, which provided me the opportunity to collaborate with Prof. J. A. Gladysz at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany. There, I conducted research in organometallic chemistry and homogeneous catalysis. In 2003, I transitioned to the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB), where I collaborated with Profs. F. Teixidor and C. Viñas as part of the I3P Postdoctoral Program (2003-2006) on various projects on the synthesis of functional boron cluster based molecular materials. This was followed by a Ramón y Cajal Fellowship (2007-2008), culminating in my appointment as a tenured researcher in 2008.

Since 2024, I have co-led the Inorganic Materials and Catalysis Laboratory (LMI) at ICMAB, where I coordinate research activities centered on boron-cluster-based molecular and polymeric materials, including metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), and their diverse applications. My current work focuses on exploring the limits of boron clusters based polymeric materials in the fields of optics, magnetism, (electro/photo)catalysis and biomedicine, thus bridging various research areas, including chemistry, physics, material science and biomedicine.

Manuel Souto Salom (Valencia, 1988) is an Oportunius Research Professor and Principal Investigator at CIQUS (University of Santiago de Compostela). He is also a Guest/Visiting Professor at the University of Aveiro. He holds a double degree in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from the University of Valencia (Spain) and from the École de Chimie, Polymères et Matériaux (ECPM) de Strasbourg (France), respectively, doing a research internship at PLAPIQUI (Argentina). He also earned a Master’s degree in Molecular and Supramolecular Chemistry (2011) from the University of Strasbourg conducting his Master thesis at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST, Lisbon). He obtained his PhD in Materials Science at Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) with Prof. Jaume Veciana in 2016 conducting two research stays at the National University of Singapore (NUS) and at the University of Antwerp. In 2017, he started to work as a postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Molecular Science (ICMol-UV) with a Juan de la Cierva fellowship. In 2019, he started his independent research career as an Assistant Professor at the Chemistry Department of the University of Aveiro and CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials. In 2022 he was promoted to Principal Researcher (tenure, Permanent Researcher/Assoc. Prof.) at the same institution. His research interests encompass molecular electronics, electroactive polymers and organic batteries. His main current research interest is the design and synthesis of new functional electroactive porous frameworks (e.g., COFs & MOFs) based on redox-active organic building blocks for energy storage applications. In 2021, he was awarded an ERC Starting Grant with the project ELECTROCOFS, which aims to design new redox-active COF-based electrodes for rechargeable batteries. He received, among other distinctions, the NanoMatMol PhD award, the PhD Extraordinary award, and the European Award on Molecular Magnetism Doctoral Thesis. He is member of the RSEQ (GENAM) and SPQ chemical societies and Fellow of the Young Academy of Europe. 

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).

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.

Maksym Kovalenko has been a tenure-track Assistant Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at ETH Zurich since July 2011 and Associate professor from January 2017. His group is also partially hosted by EMPA (Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology) to support his highly interdisciplinary research program. He completed graduate studies at Johannes Kepler University Linz (Austria, 2004-2007, with Prof. Wolfgang Heiss), followed by postdoctoral training at the University of Chicago (USA, 2008-2011, with Prof. Dmitri Talapin). His present scientific focus is on the development of new synthesis methods for inorganic nanomaterials, their surface chemistry engineering, and assembly into macroscopically large solids. His ultimate, practical goal is to provide novel inorganic materials for optoelectronics, rechargeable Li-ion batteries, post-Li-battery materials, and catalysis. He is the recipient of an ERC Consolidator Grant 2018, ERC Starting Grant 2012, Ruzicka Preis 2013 and Werner Prize 2016. He is also a Highly Cited Researcher 2018 (by Clarivate Analytics).

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.

Kaifeng Wu obtained his B.S. degree in materials physics from University of Science and Technology of China (2010) and his PhD degree in physical chemistry from Emory University (2015). After his postdoc training at Los Alamos National Laboratory, he moved to China to start his independent research in 2017. His current work focuses on the ultrafast spectroscopy of carrier and spin dynamics in low-dimensional optoelectronic materials, as well as relevant applications in quantum information and energy conversion technologies. He is the winner of the 2022 Distinguished Lectureship Award by the Chemical Society of Japan, 2021 Future of Chemical Physics Lectureship Award by the American Physical Society, 2020 Chinese Chemical Society Prize for Young Scientists, 2019 Robin Hochstrasser Young Investigator Award by the Chemical Physics journal, and 2018 Victor K. LaMer Award by the American Chemical Society. He also serves as the Editorial Advisory Board of J. Phys. Chem. Lett.

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.

Kai Zhu is currently a senior scientist in the Chemistry and Nanoscience Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He received his PhD degree in physics from Syracuse University in 2003. Before this position, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Basic Science Center at NREL, focusing on fundamental charge carrier conduction and recombination in photoelectrochemical cells, especially dye-sensitized solar cells. Dr. Zhu’s research on dye-sensitized solar cells involves the development of advanced electrode materials/architectures, basic understanding of charge transport and recombination processes in these electrodes, and thin-film solar cell development/characterization/modeling. His recent research has centered on both basic and applied research on perovskite solar cells, including perovskite material development, device fabrication and characterization, and basic understanding of charge carrier dynamics in these cells. In addition to solar conversion applications, his research interests have also included III-Nitride wide-bandgap semiconductors for high-power blue and UV light emitting diodes and ordered nanostructured electrodes for Li-ion batteries and supercapacitors.

Piotr Bujak got his MSc in chemistry from Silesian University of Technology 2004. In 2008, at the University of Silesia he defended his PhD thesis devoted to the NMR investigations of copolymers. Then he started working at the Department of Inorganic and Coordination Chemistry (University of Silesia), where he developed an effective method for the synthesis of new isoxazolines. In 2012 he accepted the position of a research associate at Warsaw University of Technology, joining the group of Professor Adam Pron, where he presently works at the associate professor position, focusing on the colloidal semiconductor nanocrystals, in particular their synthesis and surface functionalization by ligands exchange. He is currently working on the application of colloidal alloyed quaternary nanocrystals as visible light photocatalysts in photocatalytic reduction and  photopolymerization systems such as atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) and reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization.

Federico Rosei has held the Canada Research Chair in Nanostructured Organic and Inorganic Materials since 2003. He is Professor and Director of Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique, Énergie, Matériaux et Télécommunications, Université du Québec, Varennes (QC) Canada. Since January 2014 he holds the UNESCO Chair in Materials and Technologies for Energy Conversion, Saving and Storage. He received MSc and PhD degrees from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” in 1996 and 2001, respectively. Dr. Rosei’s research interests focus on the properties of nanostructured materials, and on how to control their size, shape, composition, stability and positioning when grown on suitable substrates. He has extensive experience in fabricating, processing and characterizing inorganic, organic and biocompatible nanomaterials. He has published over 200 articles in prestigious international journals (including Science, Nature Photonics, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Advanced Materials, Angewandte Chemie Int. Ed., Journal of the American Chemical Society, Advanced Functional Materials, Nanoletters, ACS Nano, Biomaterials, Small, Physical Review Letters, Nanoscale, Chem. Comm., Applied Physics Letters, Physical Review B, etc.), has been invited to speak at over 200 international conferences and has given over 170 seminars and colloquia and 20 public lectures in 42 countries on all inhabited continents. His publications have been cited over 5700 times and his H index is 41. In 2014, he has been elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is Member of the European Academy of Sciences, Fellow of the American Physical Society, Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Fellow of SPIE, Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), Fellow of the Institute of Physics, Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Metallurgy and Mining, Fellow of the Institute of Nanotechnology, Senior Member of the IEEE, Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, Member of the Global Young Academy, Fellow of the Australian Institute of Physics and Member of the Sigma Xi Society. He has received several awards, including the FQRNT Strategic Professorship (2002–2007), the Tan Chin Tuan visiting Fellowship (NTU 2008), the Senior Gledden Visiting Fellowship (UWA 2009), Professor at Large at UWA (2010–2012), a Marie Curie Post-Doctoral Fellowship from the European Union (2001), a Canada Research Chair since 2003 (renewed in 2008 for a second five year term) a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation (2011), the Rutherford Memorial Medal in Chemistry from the Royal Society of Canada (2011), the Herzberg Medal from the Canadian Association of Physics (2013), the Brian Ives lectureship award from ASM international / Canada Council (2013), the Award for Excellence in Materials Chemistry from the Canadian Society for Chemistry (2014), the NSERC EWR Steacie Memorial Fellowship (2014), the José Vasconcelos Award for Education from the World Cultural Council (2014), the IEEE NTC Distinguished Lectureship 2015, the Lash Miller Award from the Canada Section of the Electrochemical Society, the Chang Jiang Scholar Award from the Government of China, the Khwarizmi International Award (2nd Prize) from the Iran Research Organization for Science and Technology (IROST) and the Recognition for Excellence in Leadership from the American Vacuum Society.

 

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Victor I. Klimov is a Fellow of Los Alamos National Laboratory and the Director of the Center for Advanced Solar Photophysics of the U.S. Department of Energy. He received his M.S. (1978), Ph.D. (1981), and D.Sc. (1993) degrees from Moscow State University. He is a Fellow of both the American Physical Society and the Optical Society of America, and a recipient of the Humboldt Research Award. His research interests include optical spectroscopy of semiconductor and metal nanostructures, carrier relaxation processes, strongly confined multiexcitons, energy and charge transfer, and fundamental aspects of photovoltaics.

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.

Debora Pierucci is a CNRS researcher at Sorbonne University, France. She earned her Ph.D. from Université Pierre et Marie Curie in 2013. Her research focuses on exploring the electronic properties of heterostructures composed of low-dimensional materials, using advanced photoemission techniques.