Raffaella Buonsanti obtained her PhD in Nanochemistry in 2010 at the National Nanotechnology Laboratory, University of Salento. Then, she moved to the US where she spent over five years at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, first as a postdoc and project scientist at the Molecular Foundry and after as a tenure-track staff scientist in the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis. In October 2015 she started as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at EPFL. She is passionate about materials chemistry, nanocrystals, understanding nucleation and growth mechanisms, energy, chemical transformations.

Dr. Deutsch has been studying photoelectrochemical (PEC) water splitting since interning in Dr. John A. Turner’s lab at NREL in 1999 and 2000. He performed his graduate studies on III-V semiconductor water-splitting systems under the joint guidance of Dr. Turner and Prof. Carl A. Koval in the Chemistry Department at the University of Colorado Boulder.

Todd officially joined NREL as a postdoctoral scholar in Dr. Turner’s group in August 2006 and became a staff scientist two years later. He works on identifying and characterizing appropriate materials for generating hydrogen fuel from water using sunlight as the only energy input. Recently, his work has focused on inverted metamorphic multijunction III-V semiconductors and corrosion remediation strategies for high-efficiency water-splitting photoelectrodes. Todd has been honored as an Outstanding Mentor by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science nine times in recognition of his work as an advisor to more than 30 students in the Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internship (SULI) program at NREL.

Professor Adélio Mendes (born 1964) received his PhD degree from the University of Porto in 1993.

Full Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering of the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto. Coordinates a large research team with research interests mainly in dye sensitized solar cells and perovskite solar cells, photoelectrochemical cells including water splitting and solar redox flow batteries, photocatalysis, redox flow batteries, electrochemical membrane reactors (PEMFC, H-SOFC, chemical synthesis), methanol steam reforming, membrane and adsorbent-based gas separations and carbon molecular sieve membranes synthesis and characterization.

Professor Mendes authored or co-authored more than 300 articles in peer-review international journals, filled 23 families of patents and is the author of a textbook; received an Advanced Research Grant from the ERC on dye-sensitized solar cells for building integrated of ca. 2 MEuros and since 2013 he is partner in 4 more EU projects and leads one EU project. Presently he is the leader of a FET Open project, GOTSolar, on perovskite solar cells. He received the Air Products Faculty Excellence 2011 Award (USA) for developments in gas separation and Solvay & Hovione Innovation Challenge 2011 prize, the Prize of Coimbra University of 2016, and the prize of Technology Innovation - 2017 by the University of Porto. Presently, he is the Coordinator of CEner-FEUP, the Competence Center for Energy of the Faculty of Engineering at the University of Porto.

Daniel G. Nocera is the Patterson Rockwood Professor of Energy at Harvard University. He is widely recognized in the world as a leading researcher in renewable energy. His group has pioneered studies of the basic mechanisms of energy conversion in biology and chemistry with a particular focus on multielectron transformations and the coupling of protons to electron transfer (i.e., proton-coupled electron transfer). A recent focus in the group has been to exploit this mechanistic knowledge for the generation of solar fuels.He has accomplished the solar process of photosynthesis – the splitting of water to hydrogen and oxygen using light from neutral water, at atmospheric pressure and room temperature at efficiencies of greater than 10%. This discovery, called artificial leaf, was named by Time magazine as Innovation of the Year for 2011. He has since elaborated this invention to accomplish a complete artificial photosynthetic cycle. To do so, he created the bionic leaf, which is a bio-engineered bacterium that uses the hydrogen from that artificial leaf and carbon dioxide from air to make biomass and liquid fuels. The bionic leaf, which was named by the World Economic Forum as the Breakthrough Technology for 2017, performs an artificial photosynthesis that is ten times more efficient than natural photosynthesis. Extending this approach, Nocera has achieved a renewable and distributed synthesis of ammonia (and fertilizer) at ambient conditions by coupling solar-based water splitting to a nitrogen fixing bioorganism, which is powered by the hydrogen produced from water splitting. These science discoveries set the stage for a storage mechanism for the large scale, distributed, deployment of solar energy and distributed food production and thus are particularly useful to the poor of the world, where large infrastructures for fuel and food production are not tenable.Other areas of interest in the group include the development of proton-coupled electron transfer and its application to radical enzymology, the development of new cancer therapies by creating nanocrystal chemosensors for metabolic tumor profiling, the creation of spin frustrated materials, which has culminated in the discovery of the quantum spin liquid, and the invention of molecular tagging velocimetry technique for the measurement of highly turbulent fluid flows.

Marc Robert was educated at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (Cachan, France) and gained his Ph.D. in 1995 from Paris Diderot University under the guidance of Claude Andrieux and Jean-Michel Savéant. After one year as a postdoctoral fellow at Ohio State University (USA), working alongside Matt Platz, he joined the faculty at Paris Diderot University as Associate Professor. He was promoted to full Professor in 2004, and distinguished Professor in 2019 at Université de Paris. He became a junior Fellow of the University Institute of France (IUF) in 2007 and a senior Fellow in 2017. He was a JSPS (Japan Society for the Promotion of Science) research Fellow (2015). Among various distinctions, Marc Robert received the first International Prize Essential Molecules Challenge from Air Liquide (2016) and the Chemistry and Energy Research Prize from the French Chemical Society (2019). His interests include electrochemical, photochemical, and theoretical approaches of electron transfer reactions and reactivity in chemistry, as well as catalytic activation of small molecules, mainly CO2 and N2.

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

Emily Weiss is an Associate Professor and the Irving M. Klotz Research Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Northwesern University. Emily earned her PhD from Northwestern in 2005, advised by Mark Ratner and Michael Wasielewski. Her graduate work focused on magnetic superexchange interactions of radical ion pairs created by electron transfer within organic donor-acceptor systems. Emily did postdoctoral research at Harvard under George M. Whitesides from 2005-2008 as a Petroleum Research Fund Postdoctoral Energy Fellow, and started her independent career at Northwestern in Fall 2008. Emily’s group studies electronic processes at organic-inorganic interfaces within colloidal and semiconductor and metal nanoparticles. The objectives of this research are to understand the mechanisms of conversion of energy from one class to another (light, heat, chemical potential, electrical potential) at interfaces, to understand the behavior of quantum confined systems far from equilibrium, and to design and synthesize nanostructures that are new combinations of organic and inorganic components.

Jenny started her independent research career as a David Phillips Fellow at the University of Cambridge in 2018. Currently she is tailoring photoelectrochemical platforms to rewire photosystem II both in vitro and in vivo for solar fuel and electricity generation. Her work extends into biophotovoltaic and microbial fuel cell studies.

Joel W. Ager III is a Senior Staff Scientist in the Materials and Chemical Sciences Divisions of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) and an Adjunct Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department, UC Berkeley. He is a Principal Investigator in the Electronic Materials Program and the Program Lead for the Liquid Sunshine Alliance (LiSA) at LBNL. He graduated from Harvard College in 1982 with an A.B in Chemistry and from the University of Colorado in 1986 with a PhD in Chemical Physics. After a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of Heidelberg, he joined Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in 1989. His research interests include the discovery of new photoelectrochemical and electrochemical catalysts for solar to chemical energy conversion, fundamental electronic and transport properties of semiconducting materials, and the development of new types of transparent conductors. Professor Ager is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and is a frequent invited speaker at international conferences and has published over 400 papers in refereed journals. His work is highly cited, with over 46,000 citations and an h-index of 111 (Google Scholar).

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).

Professor Erwin Reisner received his education and professional training at the University of Vienna (PhD in 2005), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (postdoc from 2005-2007) and the University of Oxford (postdoc from 2008-2009). He joined the University of Cambridge as a University Lecturer in the Department of Chemistry in 2010, became a Fellow of St. John’s College in 2011, was appointed to Reader in 2015 and to his current position of Professor of Energy and Sustainability in 2017. He started his independent research programme on artificial photosynthesis (solar fuels) with the support of an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship (2009-2015), which also received substantial early support by the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Sustainable SynGas Chemistry (2012-2019). In 2016, he received a European Research Council (ERC) Consolidator Grant to develop the field of semi-artificial photosynthesis (biohybrid systems for solar fuel synthesis) and has recently been awarded an ERC Advanced Grant (now funded by the UKRI underwrite scheme) on semi-biological domino catalysis for solar chemical production. He is the academic lead (PI) of the Cambridge Circular Plastics Centre (CirPlas; since 2019), where his team develops solar-powered valorisation technologies for the conversion of solid waste streams (biomass and plastics) to fuels and chemicals. He has acted as the academic lead of the UK Solar Fuels Network, which coordinates the national activities in artificial photosynthesis (2017-2021) and is currently a co-director of the Centre for Doctoral Training in Integrated Functional Nano (nanoCDT) in Cambridge as well as a member of the European research consortia ‘Sofia’ and ‘solar2chem'.

Prof. Beatriz Roldán Cuenya is currently Director of the Interface Science Department at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin (Germany). She is an Honorary Professor at the Technische Universität Berlin, at the Freie Universität Berlin, and at the Ruhr-University Bochum, all in Germany. Also, she serves as a Distinguished Research Professor at the University of Central Florida (USA).

Prof. Roldán Cuenya began her academic career by completing her M.S./B.S. in Physics with a minor in Materials Science at the University of Oviedo, Spain in 1998. Afterwards she moved to Germany and obtained her Ph.D. from the Department of Physics of the University of Duisburg-Essen with summa cum laude in 2001. Subsequently, she carried out her postdoctoral research in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara (USA) until 2003.

In 2004, she joined the Department of Physics at the University of Central Florida (UCF) as Assistant Professor where she moved through the ranks to become a full professor in 2012. In 2013 Prof. Roldan Cuenya, moved to Germany to become Chair Professor of Solid State Physics in the Department of Physics at Ruhr-University Bochum until 2017.

During her academic career, Prof. Roldan Cuenya received an Early CAREER Award from the US National Science Foundation (2005) and the international Peter Mark Memorial award from the American Vacuum Society (2009). In 2016 she became Fellow of the Max Planck Society in Germany and also received the prestigious Consolidator Award from the European Research Council. In 2020, she became a member of the Academia Europaea (Academy of Europe). She received the AVS Fellow Award (2021), the International Society of Electrochemistry-Elsevier Prize for Experimental Electrochemistry (2021), the 2022 Paul H. Emmet Award of the North American Catalysis Society, and the Röntgen Medal of the City of Remscheid (2022).

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 has given 245 invited talks, with 13 plenary talks and 33 keynote lectures since 2017. Her H-factor is 74 (Google Scholar) and her work has received over 21,500 citations.

She presently serves on the editorial advisory boards of the Journal of Catalysis and Chemical Reviews. In addition, she also contributes to a number of advisory committees, including the Liquid Sunlight Alliance (USA), the Advanced Research Center Chemical Building Blocks Consortium (Utrecht, the Netherlands), the Spanish Synchrotron Facility ALBA (Barcelona, Spain), the German Synchrotron DESY (Hamburg, Germany), the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin for the strategic development of BESSY II (Berlin, Germany), the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ in Tarragona, Spain), the UK Catalysis Hub and the Ertl Center for Electrochemistry & Catalysis (South Korea).

Prof. Roldan Cuenya’s research program explores physical and chemical properties of nanostructures, with emphasis on advancements in nanocatalysis based on operando microscopic and spectroscopic characterization.

 

 

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.

Ifan is a Professor in Electrochemistry at the Department of Materials at Imperial College: he leads the Interfacial Electrochemistry Group there and is also Atoms to Devices Research Area Lead at the Henry Royce Institute.

Ifan joined Imperial College in July 2017. Prior to Imperial, he was at the Department of Physics at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU); he was first employed as a postdoctoral researcher, then  as assistant professor and finally as associate professor and leader of the Electrocatalysis Group there. In 2015, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) appointed Ifan as the Peabody Visiting Associate Professor. He taught and conducted research at the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT for a whole semester.

Ifan’s research aims to enable the large-scale electrochemical conversion of renewable energy to fuels and valuable chemicals and vice versa. Such processes will be critical in order to allow the increased uptake of renewable energy. His focus is on the catalyst at the electrode, i.e. the electrocatalyst. It turns out that the electrocatalyst material defines the efficiency of several important electrochemical processes, including:(i) electrolysis for the storage of renewable electricity — which is inherently intermittent — in the form of fuels, such as hydrogen or alcohols.(ii) fuel cells as a potentially zero emission source of power for automotive vehicles. (iii) the green synthesis of valuable chemicals, such as ammonia and H2O2. (iv) batteries, which tend to degrade by gas evolution at the electrode-electrolyte interface. Hence the reactions that need to be accelerated in electrolysers and fuel cells — such as CO2, CO, O2 and H2 evolution — are precisely those that need to be inhibited in batteries.

Ifan has discovered or co-discovered several new catalysts for the oxygen reduction reaction, which exhibited significant improvements in performance over the prior state-of-the-art. In particular, his research on hydrogen peroxide production led to the establishment of the spinout company, HP Now.

Ifan is the recipient of RSC's Geoffrey Barker Medal (2024), the RSC's John Jeyes Award (2021). He also currently holds an European Resarch Council Consolidator Grant (2021-2025). Since 2022, he has been a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher.

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.

Gerd Bacher actually holds the chair of electronic materials and nanostructures at the Faculty of Engineering at Duisburg-Essen University. His research career started at Stuttgart University in the 1990s working on optical spectroscopy on epitaxially grown quantum wells, which was then extended to nanotechnology and nanodevice fabrication for optoelectronic applications at Würzburg University and Tokyo Institute of Technology. Being full professor since 2003, he is currently working on a wide diversity of nanomaterials, including 2D materials and nanocrystals, for applications in optoelectronics, information science and energy science. He is author or co-author of more than 250 articles in peer-reviewed journals.

Andres Castellanos-Gomez is a Tenured Scientist in the Spanish National Research Council. He explores novel 2D materials and studies their mechanical, electrical and optical properties with special interest on the application of these materials in nanomechanical and optoelectronic devices. He is author of more than 100 articles in international peer review journals and 6 book chapters. He was awarded an ERC Starting Grant in 2017 and has been selected as one of the Top Ten Spanish Talents of 2017 by the MIT Technology Reviews. He has been also recognized with the Young Researcher Award (experimental physics) of the Royal Physical Society of Spain (2016).

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

Eduardo C Marino graduated as a Bachelor in Physics in 1975. He has got a MSc and a PhD degrees, respectively in 1978 and 1980, both in Quantum Field Theory (QFT). He was a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Harvard University, from 1981 to 1983. By this time he became interested in applicatiions of QFT in Condensed Matter Physics (CMP) and, subsequently, introduced this new area of research in Brazil. He was a visiting Professor at Princeton Universty from 1991 to 1993 and again from 2007 to 2008. He was awarded the State Academic Prize for students graduating in the year of 1975 with the 10 best academic records in all areas of knowledge. In 2000 he became an elected member of the Brazilian National Academy of Sciences. In 2005 he was awarded the National Order of Scientific Merit by the President of Brazil. He has been invited to deliver talks in International Conferences, as well as colloquia and seminars in more than 15 countries. He is Profesor of Physics at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, since 1994 and his research interests are still in applications of QFT to CMP, more specifically in graphene, Transition Metal Dichalcogenides, High-Tc Superconductivity, Topological Insulators, Weyl semi-metals, Topological Quantum Computation, Topological effects in CMP, among other subjects.

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.

Prof. Anna Rodina is Senior Scientific Researcher in the laboratory of Optics of Semiconductors at Ioffe Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences (St.-Petersburg, Russia). She received her Ph.D. (1993) and Habilitation (2016) degrees in Physics from Ioffe Institute and became the Professor of Russian Academy of Sciences in 2018. The expertise of Prof. Rodina is in the theory of semiconductors and semiconductor nanostructures. The current research interests are focused on the magneto-optical properties and spin-dependent phenomena in colloidal nanocrystals.  

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

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

Xiaoyang Zhu is the Howard Family Professor of Nanoscience and a Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University. He received a BS degree from Fudan University in 1984 and a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989. After postdoctoral research with Gerhard Ertl at the Fritz-Haber-Institute, he joined the faculty at Southern Illinois University as an Assistant Professor in 1993. In 1997, he moved to the University of Minnesota as a tenured Associate Professor, later a Full Professor, and a Merck endowed professor. In 2009, he returned to the University of Texas at Austin as the Vauquelin Regents Professor and served as directors of the DOE Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) and the Center for Materials Chemistry. In 2013, he moved to Columbia University. His honors include a Dreyfus New Faculty Award from Dreyfus Foundation, a Cottrell Scholar Award from Research Corporation, a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award from the Humboldt Foundation, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow Award from DOD, and an Ahmed Zewail Award from the American Chemical Society. Among his professional activities, he serves on the editorial/advisory boards of Accounts of Chemical Research, Science Advances, Chemical Physics, and Progress in Surface Science, and as a scientific advisor to the Fritz-Haber-Institute of the Max-Planck Society and ShanghaiTech University

Luis M. Campos is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Columbia University. He was born on this planet, just like you. Luis grew up in Guadalajara, Mexico, and moved at the age of eleven to Los Angeles, California. He received a B.Sc. in Chemistry from CSU Dominguez Hills in 2001, and a Ph.D. from the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry at UCLA in 2006 working under the supervision of M. A. Garcia-Garibay and K. N. Houk. At UCLA, he was awarded the NSF Predoctoral Fellowship, Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship, and the Saul & Silvia Winstein Award for his graduate research in solid-state photochemistry. Switching to materials chemistry, he went to UCSB as a UC President's Postdoctoral Fellow to work under the supervision of C. J. Hawker at the Materials Research Laboratory. At Columbia, his group’s research interests lie in physical macromolecular chemistry. To date, he has co-authored over 100 articles and 13 patents; and he has received various awards, including the ACS Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award, ONR Young Investigator Award,NSF CAREER Award, 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award, I-APS Young Faculty Award, the Journal of Physical Organic ChemistryAward for Early Excellence, and the Polymers Young Investigator Award. In addition to these research accolades, Luis has been recognized for his pedagogical contributions by the Cottrell Scholar Award, Columbia University Presidential Teaching Award, and the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award.

Felix (Phil) Castellano earned a B.A. in Chemistry from Clark University in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Johns Hopkins University in 1996. Following an NIH Postdoctoral Fellowship at the University of Maryland, School of Medicine, he accepted a position as Assistant Professor at Bowling Green State University in 1998. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2004, to Professor in 2006, and was appointed Director of the Center for Photochemical Sciences in 2011. In 2013, he moved his research program to North Carolina State University where he is currently the Goodnight Innovation Distinguished Chair. He was appointed as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in 2015. His current research focuses on metal-organic chromophore photophysics and energy transfer, photochemical upconversion phenomena, solar fuels photocatalysis, energy transduction at semiconductor/molecular interfaces, photoredox catalysis, and excited state electron transfer processes.     

Richard Friend holds the Cavendish Professorship of Physics at the University of Cambridge. His research encompasses the physics, materials science and engineering of semiconductor devices made with carbon-based semiconductors, particularly polymers. His research advances have shown that carbon-based semiconductors have significant applications in LEDs, solar cells, lasers, and electronics. His current research interests are directed to novel schemes – including ideas inspired by recent insights into Nature’s light harvesting – that seek to improve the performance and cost of solar cells.

Xiaoyang Zhu is the Howard Family Professor of Nanoscience and a Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University. He received a BS degree from Fudan University in 1984 and a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989. After postdoctoral research with Gerhard Ertl at the Fritz-Haber-Institute, he joined the faculty at Southern Illinois University as an Assistant Professor in 1993. In 1997, he moved to the University of Minnesota as a tenured Associate Professor, later a Full Professor, and a Merck endowed professor. In 2009, he returned to the University of Texas at Austin as the Vauquelin Regents Professor and served as directors of the DOE Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) and the Center for Materials Chemistry. In 2013, he moved to Columbia University. His honors include a Dreyfus New Faculty Award from Dreyfus Foundation, a Cottrell Scholar Award from Research Corporation, a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award from the Humboldt Foundation, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow Award from DOD, and an Ahmed Zewail Award from the American Chemical Society. Among his professional activities, he serves on the editorial/advisory boards of Accounts of Chemical Research, Science Advances, Chemical Physics, and Progress in Surface Science, and as a scientific advisor to the Fritz-Haber-Institute of the Max-Planck Society and ShanghaiTech University

Education and Professional Positions 2012-Present: Assistant Professor University of Washington Department of Chemistry 2010-2012: NIH NRSA Postdoctoral Fellow Columbia University 2010: PhD Inorganic Chemistry Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2006: BS Chemistry California Institute of Technology Awards 2015: Sloan Research Fellowship 2015: 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award 2015: Seattle Association for Women in Science Award for Early Career Achievement 2014: University of Washington Innovation Award 2010: Ruth L. Kirschstein National Research Service Award Postdoctoral Fellowship, National Institutes of Health 2010: Alan Davison Ph.D. Thesis Prize, Massachusetts Institute of Technology 2009: Young Investigator Award, Division of Inorganic Chemistry, American Chemical Society

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.

Daniel R. Gamelin received his B.A. in chemistry from Reed College, spent a year as a visiting scientist at the Max-Planck-Institut für Strahlenchemie, and earned his Ph.D. in chemistry from Stanford University working with Edward I. Solomon in the fields of inorganic and bioinorganic spectroscopies. Following a postdoctoral appointment working with Hans U. Güdel (University of Bern) studying luminescent inorganic materials, he joined the chemistry faculty at the University of Washington, Seattle (2000), where he presently holds the Harry and Catherine Jaynne Boand Endowed Professorship in Chemistry. His research involves the development of new inorganic materials with unusual electronic structures that give rise to desirable photophysical, photochemical, magnetic, or magneto-optical properties. He is presently an Associate Editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Chemical Communications.

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.

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.

Nate Neale received his B.A. degree in chemistry from Middlebury College in 1998, where he studied radical substitution reactions at activated arenes and the binding mode of cisplatin, a common commercial anti-cancer drug, to a model DNA fragment. His scientific training continued as a graduate student under Prof. T. Don Tilley at the University of California, Berkeley, investigating the mechanism by which a transition-metal catalyst facilitates the polymerization of stannanes to polystannanes, a class of inorganic polymers with unique optical and electronic properties. As a postdoctoral researcher at NREL, he worked on controlling the synthesis and surface chemistry of TiO2 nanostructures for dye-sensitized solar cells in the laboratories of Dr. Arthur J. Frank. After a brief stint at the University of Colorado, Boulder, during which time he worked in collaboration with Dr. Frank, Dr. Arthur J. Nozik, and Prof. David Jonas on photoelectrodes for photoelectrochemical water splitting, he returned to NREL as a staff scientist in 2008. His current research interests are focused on tailoring the chemical structure and photophysics of nanostructured inorganic semiconductors and catalysts for photovoltaics, solar fuels, batteries, and related energy conversion and storage concepts.

Dmitri Talapin is a Professor of Chemistry at University of Chicago. His research interests revolve around inorganic nanomaterials, spanning from synthetic methodology to device fabrication, with the desire of turning colloidal nanostructures into competitive materials for electronics and optoelectronics. He received his doctorate degree from University of Hamburg, Germany in 2002 under supervision of Horst Weller. In 2003 he joined IBM Research Division at T. J. Watson Research Center as a postdoctoral fellow to work with Chris Murray on synthesis and self-assembly of semiconductor nanostructures. In 2005 he moved to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a staff scientist at the Molecular Foundry and finally joined faculty at the University of Chicago in 2007. His recent recognitions include MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award (2011); Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award (2010); David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (2009); NSF CAREER Award (2009) and Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2009).

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.

Born in the Netherlands,David Cahen studied chemistry & physics at the Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem (HUJ), Materials Research and Phys. Chem. at Northwestern Univ, and biophysics of photosynthesis (postdoc) at HUJ and the Weizmann Institute of Science, WIS. After joining the WIS faculty he focused on alternative sustainable energy resources, in particular various types of solar cells. In parallel he researches hybrid molecular/non-molecular systems, focusing on understanding and controlling electronic transport across (bio)molecules. He is a fellow of the AVS and the MRS. He heads WIS' Alternative, sustainable energy research initiative.

Maria Ibáñez was born in La Sénia (Spain). She graduated in physics at the University of Barcelona, where she also obtained her PhD in 2013, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Cabot and Prof. Dr. Morante. Her PhD thesis was qualified Excellent Cum Laude and awarded with the Honors Doctorate by the University of Barcelona. Her PhD research was funded by a Spanish competitive grant (FPU) which supported her to conduct short-term research stays in cutting-edge laboratories. In particular she worked at CEA Grenoble (2009), the University of Chicago (2010), the California Institute of Technology (2011), the Cornell University (2012) and the Northwestern University (2013). In 2014, she joined the group of Prof. Dr. Kovalenko at ETH Zürich and EMPA as a research fellow where in 2017 she received the Ružička Prize. In September 2018 she became an Assistant Professor (tenure-track) at IST Austria and started the Functional Nanomaterials group.

Grigorios Itskos obtained a B.Sc. in Physics in 1997 from University of Thessaloniki, Greece and carried out his PhD studies at SUNY at Buffalo, USA (Ph.D. in Physics 2003), under the supervision of Prof. Athos Petrou within the newly-born field of semiconductor spintronics. He worked as postdoctoral researcher (Imperial College London, 2003-2007) under the supervision of Profs. Donal Bradely and Ray Murray, focusing on photophysical studies of hybrid organic-inorganic semiconductors. In September 2007 he was hired as a faculty member at the Department of Physics, University of Cyprus (Lecturer 2007-2011, Assistant Professor 2011- 2017, Associate Professor 2017- now). His group research activities focus on optical studies of inorganic, organic and hybrid solution-processed semiconductors, with recent emphasis on the characterization and optoelectronic applications of semiconductor nanocrystals.  

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.

Emmanuel Lhuillier has been undergraduate student at ESPCI in Paris and then followed a master in condensed matter physics from university Pierre and Marie Curie. He was then PhD student under the mentorship of Emmanuel Rosencher at Onera in the optics department, where he work on transport in quantum well heterostructure. As post doc he moved to the group of Philippe Guyot-Sionnest in the university of Chicago, and start working on infrared nanocrystal. Then he moved back to ESPCI for a second post in the group of Benoit Dubertret working on optoelectronic properties of colloidal nanoplatelets. Since 2015 he is a CNRS researcher at Institute for nanoscience of Paris at Sorbinne université. His research activities are focused on optoelectronic properties of confined Nanomaterial with a special interest on infrared system. He receive in 2017 an ERC starting grant to investigate infrared colloidal materials.

I obtained my PhD degree in applied physics at Ghent University in 2009, studying near-infrared lead salt quantum dots. This was followed by a postdoc on quantum dot emission dynamics at Ghent University in collaboration with the IBM Zurich research lab. In 2012 I joined the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia, where I led the Nanocrystal Photonics Lab in the Nanochemistry Department. In 2017 I returned to Ghent University as associate professor, focusing mostly on 2D and strained nanocrystals. The research in our group ranges from the synthesis of novel fluorescent nanocrystals to optical spectroscopy and photonic applications.

Jenny Nelson is a Professor of Physics at Imperial College London, where she has researched novel varieties of material for use in solar cells since 1989. Her current research is focussed on understanding the properties of molecular semiconductor materials and their application to organic solar cells. This work combines fundamental electrical, spectroscopic and structural studies of molecular electronic materials with numerical modelling and device studies, with the aim of optimising the performance of plastic solar cells. She has published around 200 articles in peer reviewed journals, several book chapters and a book on the physics of solar cells.

Dmitri Talapin is a Professor of Chemistry at University of Chicago. His research interests revolve around inorganic nanomaterials, spanning from synthetic methodology to device fabrication, with the desire of turning colloidal nanostructures into competitive materials for electronics and optoelectronics. He received his doctorate degree from University of Hamburg, Germany in 2002 under supervision of Horst Weller. In 2003 he joined IBM Research Division at T. J. Watson Research Center as a postdoctoral fellow to work with Chris Murray on synthesis and self-assembly of semiconductor nanostructures. In 2005 he moved to Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a staff scientist at the Molecular Foundry and finally joined faculty at the University of Chicago in 2007. His recent recognitions include MRS Outstanding Young Investigator Award (2011); Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar Award (2010); David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (2009); NSF CAREER Award (2009) and Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2009).

Will Tisdale joined the Department of Chemical Engineering at MIT in January, 2012, where he holds the rank of Associate Professor and is currently the ARCO Career Development Professor in Energy Studies.  He earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Delaware in 2005, his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 2010, and was a postdoc in the Research Laboratory of Electronics at MIT before joining the faculty in 2012. Will is a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the DOE Early Career Award, the NSF CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, the AIChE Nanoscale Science & Engineering Forum Young Investigator Award, and MIT’s Everett Moore Baker Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching.

Matthias Wuttig received his Ph.D. in Physics in 1988 from RWTH Aachen/ Forschungszentrum Jülich. From 1995 to 1997 he worked with a Feodor-Lynen stipend at Bell Labs, Murray Hill, New Jersey. He was a visiting professor at several institutions including Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Stanford University, Hangzhou University, IBM Almaden, Bell Labs, DSI in Singapore, CiNAM in Marseilles and the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai. In 1997, he was appointed Full Professor at RWTH Aachen, where his work focusses on the design of novel functional materials. From 2009 to 2018, he was the speaker of the strategy board of RWTH. Since 2011, he heads a collaborative research centre on resistively switching chalcogenides (SFB 917), funded by the German Science Foundation DFG. In 2013, he received an ERC Advanced Grant to realize novel functionalities by disorder control. He is a member of Acatech and the North Rhine-Westphalian Academy of Sciences and has written about 330 publications (~17.000 citations). In 2019 he was selected as an MRS Fellow for path-breaking contributions to the advancement of phase-change materials, including unraveling their unique bonding mechanism, unconventional transport properties and unusual kinetics.

Born in the Netherlands,David Cahen studied chemistry & physics at the Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem (HUJ), Materials Research and Phys. Chem. at Northwestern Univ, and biophysics of photosynthesis (postdoc) at HUJ and the Weizmann Institute of Science, WIS. After joining the WIS faculty he focused on alternative sustainable energy resources, in particular various types of solar cells. In parallel he researches hybrid molecular/non-molecular systems, focusing on understanding and controlling electronic transport across (bio)molecules. He is a fellow of the AVS and the MRS. He heads WIS' Alternative, sustainable energy research initiative.

Germà Garcia-Belmonte (1964) received his Ph.D. degree at UNED, 1996. He worked (1988-1992) at CIEMAT, Madrid, on experimental and theoretical research in the area of digital processing of nuclear signal. He joined the Universitat Jaume I, Castelló, in 1992 and currently works as a Full Professor of Applied Physics (2010) at the Institute of Advanced Materials. He published 198 papers in research journals, and has 12.000 citations and h-index 54 (WOS). He is recognized as 2018 Highly Cited Research (Clarivate Analytics) in the cross-field category. He studied intercalation processes in oxides and polymer films by impedance methods. He follows researches in various areas within the field of Organic Electronics and photovoltaics as electronic mechanisms in organic light-emitting diodes, organic photovoltaics, and plastic and thin-film solar cells. He is currently conducting researches in the topic of perovskite-based solar cells. Also of interest is the electrochemical kinetics of electrodes for batteries. Device physics using impedance spectroscopy (including modeling and measuring) is his main subject.

Selina Olthof studied physics at the University of Stuttgart (Germany) and completed her master's thesis at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research. In 2010, she earned her Ph.D. from the University of Dresden under Karl Leo, followed by a two-year postdoctoral stay at Princeton University with Antoine Kahn. From 2012 to 2024, she led the Surface Science Research Group in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cologne. Recently, she was appointed Full Professor at the University of Wuppertal, where she established the Chair of Material and Surface Analysis. Her research focuses on advancing the understanding of the electronic structure of novel semiconducting materials, particularly organic semiconductors and hybrid perovskites.

Annamaria Petrozza received her PhD in Physics from the University of Cambridge (UK) in 2008 with a thesis on the study of optoelectronic processes at organic and hybrid semiconductors interfaces under the supervision of Dr. J.S. Kim and Prof Sir R.H. Friend. From July 2008 to December 2009 she worked as research scientist at the Sharp Laboratories of Europe, Ltd on the development of new market competitive solar cell technologies (Dye Sensitized Solar cells/Colloidal Quantum Dots Sensitized Solar cells). Since January 2010 she has a Team Leader position at the Center for Nano Science and Technology -IIT@POLIMI. She is in charge of the development of photovoltaic devices and their characterization by time-resolved and cw Photoinduced Absorption Spectroscopy, Time-resolved Photoluminescence and electrical measurements. Her research work mainly aims to shed light on interfacial optoelectronic mechanisms, which are fundamental for the optimization of operational processes, with the goal of improving device efficiency and stability.

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.

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

 

Piers studied for his first degree in Physics at the University of Bristol, graduating in 1998. For his PhD (2002) he investigated the physics of polycrystalline ice at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. After two Antarctic field seasons (2000/2001 and 2002/2003) drilling and measuring the world�s oldest ice core record recovered from Dome C he moved to the University of New South Wales in Australia. In 2004 he made a change in research direction to develop photoelectrodes for solar water splitting after winning a post-doctoral fellowship with the CSIRO. In 2006 he was awarded an Ig Nobel prize for �calculating the number of photographs that must be taken to (almost) ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed�. Piers returned to the UK (2007) to work as a Research Associate at Imperial College London on interpreting loss mechanisms in dye sensitised solar cells where developed new approaches to simulating and characterising behaviour in this class of devices. In October 2011 he began an EPSRC fellowship at Imperial to measure model and exploit molecular wiring in hybrid optoelectronic devices.

Kylie Catchpole is Professor in the Research School of Engineering at the Australian National University.  She has over 100 scientific publications, with a focus on using new materials and nanotechnology to improve solar cells.  She completed her PhD at ANU and was a postdoctoral fellow at the University of New South Wales and the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in Amsterdam before returning to ANU in 2008.  In 2013 she was awarded a Future Fellowship from the Australian Research Council and in 2015 she was awarded the John Booker Medal for Engineering Science from the Australian Academy of Science. 

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).

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

Dr. Evelyne Knapp is a research associate at the Institute of Computational Physics at the Zurich University of Applied Sciences in Winterthur, Switzerland. She holds a Diploma and Ph.D. degree in Computational Science and Engineering from ETH Zurich.

David Mitzi received a B.S.E. in Electrical Engineering from Princeton University in 1985 and a Ph.D. in Applied Physics from Stanford University in 1990. In 1990, he joined the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center and initiated a program examining structure-property relationships, low-cost thin-film deposition techniques and device applications for a variety of electronic materials (e.g., oxides, halides, chalcogenides, organic-inorganic hybrids). Between 2009 and 2014 he managed the Photovoltaic Science and Technology department at IBM, with a focus on developing solution-processed high-performance inorganic semiconductors for thin-film photovoltaic (PV) devices. In July 2015, Dr. Mitzi moved to the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Duke University as a professor. He holds a number of patents and has authored or coauthored more than 250 papers and book chapters.

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.

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.

Xiaoyang Zhu is the Howard Family Professor of Nanoscience and a Professor of Chemistry at Columbia University. He received a BS degree from Fudan University in 1984 and a PhD from the University of Texas at Austin in 1989. After postdoctoral research with Gerhard Ertl at the Fritz-Haber-Institute, he joined the faculty at Southern Illinois University as an Assistant Professor in 1993. In 1997, he moved to the University of Minnesota as a tenured Associate Professor, later a Full Professor, and a Merck endowed professor. In 2009, he returned to the University of Texas at Austin as the Vauquelin Regents Professor and served as directors of the DOE Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) and the Center for Materials Chemistry. In 2013, he moved to Columbia University. His honors include a Dreyfus New Faculty Award from Dreyfus Foundation, a Cottrell Scholar Award from Research Corporation, a Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Award from the Humboldt Foundation, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellow Award from DOD, and an Ahmed Zewail Award from the American Chemical Society. Among his professional activities, he serves on the editorial/advisory boards of Accounts of Chemical Research, Science Advances, Chemical Physics, and Progress in Surface Science, and as a scientific advisor to the Fritz-Haber-Institute of the Max-Planck Society and ShanghaiTech University

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.

Wouter Maes got his PhD in Chemistry with Professor Wim Dehaen at the Katholieke Universiteit (KU) Leuven (Belgium) in 2005. After post-doctoral stays at the KU Leuven (postdoc of the Research Foundation – Flanders, FWO; with Professor Wim Dehaen), the Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris (with Professor Eric Rose) and Oxford University (with Professor Harry Anderson), he became Assistant Professor at Hasselt University in 2009, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2014, Professor (Hoogleraar) in 2018, and Full Professor (Gewoon Hoogleraar) in 2021. His research activities deal with the design and synthesis of organic semiconducting materials (with an emphasis on conjugated polymers) and their application in organic electronic devices (organic solar cells, photodetectors, transistors, light-emitting diodes) and advanced healthcare, pursuing rational structure-property relations (see https://www.uhasselt.be/DSOS). These activities are generally combined with more in-depth materials and device physics studies within the framework of the Institute for Materials Research (imo-imomec) of Hasselt University.

Jenny Nelson is a Professor of Physics at Imperial College London, where she has researched novel varieties of material for use in solar cells since 1989. Her current research is focussed on understanding the properties of molecular semiconductor materials and their application to organic solar cells. This work combines fundamental electrical, spectroscopic and structural studies of molecular electronic materials with numerical modelling and device studies, with the aim of optimising the performance of plastic solar cells. She has published around 200 articles in peer reviewed journals, several book chapters and a book on the physics of solar cells.

Dr. Mahshid Ahmadi received her Ph.D. from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore in 2013. She then worked as a research technology consultant in a start-up solar cell company (HEE) in Dallas, Texas, USA. She is currently working as an assistant professor at Joint Institute for Advanced Materials (JIAM), Department of Materials Science, University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her research interest includes materials development and electronic device fabrication. Specially, her current research focuses on organic-inorganic halide perovskite photovoltaics and
high energy radiation detectors.

- PhD in Physics, University of Basel, Switzerland - Post-Doctoral Research Assistant, BASF AG, Ludwigshafen, Germany: Molecular Science - Maitre d’Enseignement et de Recherche, Univ. Geneva, Switzerland - Biological Molecules - Team-leader, Institute of Quantum Electronics, ETH Zurich, Switzerland - Habilitation & vein legendi in Physics, University of Basel, Switzerland, 1998 - Since 1998: Full Professor in Photophysics / Nano-Optics / Nano-Physics at TU Dresden, School of Science Profile: Nanoscale research of quantum nanostructures: magnetic, optical. electronic, molecular; application to magnetic textures, charged domain walls, near-field metamaterials, etc.

Dr. Yunseok Kim is an associate professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering, Sungkyunkwan University (SKKU), Korea. He received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea, in, respectively, 2004 and 2007. From 2008 to 2010, he was awarded the Humboldt research fellowship from the Alexander von Humboldt foundation which allowed him to work as a postdoctoral researcher at Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics, Germany. Then, from 2011 to 2012, he was a postdoctoral researcher at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA. In 2012, he joined the School of Materials Science and Engineering, SKKU, Korea. His research interests include scanning probe microscopy studies of electromechanical, ferroelectric, transport, and ionic phenomena at the nanoscale.

Dr. Lei R. Cao is Professor in the Nuclear Engineering Program at The Ohio State University (OSU) and the Director of OSU-Nuclear Reactor Lab. Dr. Cao received his BS in Experimental Nuclear Physics from Lanzhou University in 1994, MS degree in Nuclear and Particle Physics in 2002, and PhD degree in Nuclear and Radiation Engineering Program, the Department of Mechanical Engineering at University of Texas at Austin in 2007. Prior to joining OSU, Dr. Cao was a research associate at the Center for Neutron Research, U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and also received a short-term training at the Positron Emission Tomography Laboratory at Harvard Medical School. At OSU, Dr. Cao founded the Nuclear Analysis and Radiation Sensor laboratory (NARS) in 2010.  

Dr. Cao's major research interests focus on applied nuclear physics and radiation science, including nuclear instrumentation and radiation detection, sensor development, radiation effects, and nuclear methods (PGAA, NDP, neutron radiography/tomography) for advanced materials characterization. Dr. Cao has published 110+ peer-reviewed journal articles and conference proceedings. Dr. Cao serves as Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science.

is currently a professor of Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, the University of Hong Kong (HKU). Dr. Choy has published over 175 internationally peer-reviewed journal papers, contributed to one book and five book chapters, as well as a number of US and China patents. Among his publications, 12 papers have been featured as cover-story articles such as Adv. Mater., Adv Energy Mater., and Chem Comm., and 14 articles have been highlighted in research new/scholarly articles. Details of publication can be found in http://scholar.google.com.hk/citations?user=GEJf9dAAAAAJ. He was the recipient of the Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellowship, the Croucher Foundation Fellowship, and the Outstanding Achievement Award from National Research Council of Canada and HKU Research Output Prize. He received overseas visiting fellowships from HKU to take a sabbatical leave at George Malliaras’s Group, Cornell University in 2008, a visit to Prof. Yang Yang, UCLA in summers of 2009 and 2011, Prof. Karl Leo, Institut fuer Angewandte Photophysik (IAPP), Technische Universitaet Dresden, Germany in the summer of 2010, and Prof./Sir Richard Friend, Cavendish Lab, Cambridge University, UK.

Wallace Choy is a fellow of OSA and senior member of IEEE. He has been recognized as Top 1% of most-cited scientists in Thomson Reuter’s Essential Science Indicators (ESI) three years in a row 2014, 2015 and 2016. He has been recognized as prolific researcher on organic solar cells in the index (WFC in physical sciences) in Nature Index 2014 Hong Kong published by Nature. He has been serving a technical consultant of HK-Ulvac (a member of stock-listed Ulvac Corp) since 2005. He has served as editorial board member for Nature Publishing Group of Scientific Reports and IOP Journal of Physics D, senior editor of IEEE Photonics Journal, topical editor of OSA Journal of the Optical Society of America B (JOSA founded in 1917), and guest editor of OSA Journal of Photonic Research, and Journal of Optical Quantum Electronics. He has delivered over 60 invited talks and served as a committee member in internationally industrial and academic conferences organized by various organizations such as IEEE, OSA and Plastic Electronics Foundation.

Dr. Mao-Hua Du is a Senior R&D Staff in the Materials Sciences and Technology Division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He received his B.S. in Physics at Fudan University, China, in 1998 and Ph. D in Physics at the University of Florida in 2003. He was a postdoctoral associate at National Renewable Energy Laboratory (Golden, Colorado, 2004-2006) and a National Research Council Research Associate at Naval Research Laboratory (Washington, DC, 2006-2007). He joined Oak Ridge National Laboratory in 2007. His research focuses on electronic structure, optical properties, and defect physics in electronic and optical materials (with applications in photovoltaics, energy efficient lighting, radiation detection,  etc.). 

Dr. Eric Lukosi received hi PhD in Nuclear Engineering in 2012 from the University of Missouri. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Nuclear Engineering Department at the University of Tennessee and is affiliated with the Joint Institute for Advanced Materials. Dr. Lukosi's expertise is in radiation sensor development and application in fields ranging from high energy physics to nuclear security. Dr. Lukosi specializes in the development of semiconductor detectors, such as lithium indium diselenide, diamond, and methylammonium lead tribromide.

-2005, Ph.D LIOS (Linz institute for organic solarcells), J. Kepler University,Linz, Austria. Head: Prof. N.S. Sariciftci 2006-10, Post-doc, Institute for Semiconductor and Solid-State Physics, J. Kepler University, Austria, Head: Prof. G. Bauer 2011- Senior researcher, I-Meet, Erlangen, Germany. Head. Prof. C.J. Brabec.

Dr. R. Radhakrishnan Sumathi is a Vice-head of volume crystals department at Leibnitz-Institute for Crystal Growth (IKZ), Berlin.  She is leading and responsible for the semiconductor section, which focuses its niche research and development in elemental and compound semiconductor materials (Si, Ge, III-Vs, II-VIs) for various applications.  Dr. Sumathi holds a Ph.D degree (Anna University, Chennai/Madras, India) and also has received a “habilitation” title from Ludwig-Maximilans University (LMU, Munich, Germany), where she is also a faculty at Materials Science and Crystallography institute.  She has about 25 years of expertise in crystal growth/materials sciences field and specialised experience in semiconductor materials and devices.  Her research interest also covers advanced functional materials. She is very active in many professional societies (IACG, DGKK) and has received many awards (Young Scientist, Young Researcher), the recent one being, Young Achiever Award by Indian Science and Technology Association in 2018.  She has over 75 papers in internal journals (peer-reviewed, high impact factor)  and/or conferences and has given invited talks in more than 25 meetings.  She is a guest editor of Results in Materials (Elsevier publications) and serving as a international committee member in many national/international scientific conferences.

Dr. Yadong XU received his PhD in School of Materials Science & Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2010 and is currently a Professor in State Key Laboratory of Solidification Processing and Key Laboratory of Radiation Detection Materials and Devices, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China. Dr. XU has received many prestigious awards including “Second-class of National Technological Invention”, P.R. China, 2013, “First- class of Scientific and Technical Awards”, Shaanxi Province,2012, “Youth outstanding talent support program" in Shaanxi, China, (2017), Excellent Talents project in Shaanxi Province, China, 2016. His research interests cover development of new semiconductor materials for X/γ-ray detectors, growth of electro-optical crystals for THz application, optical and electrical properties of the semiconductor materials and defect engineering. Dr XU has published more than 70 SCI papers and documented 16 patents.

Obtained PhD degree from National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in 2007. 2008 - 2013 years Sergii is a PostDoc in JKU Linz, Austria in Prof. Wolfgang Heiss group. In 2013 he joined the group of Prof. Maksym Kovalenko group in ETH Zurich, Switzerland where he is a Senior Research Associate (Oberassistent)  since 2018. 

The main achievements are for the discovering of perovskite hard radiation and full-colour photo-detectors, optical gain and lasing in perovskite nanocrystal films.