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).

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

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

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

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.

Dr Eslava leads a cutting-edge research group focused on the development of novel synthesis approaches for (photo)electrochemical and (photo)catalytic materials. His team's work involves exploring a wide range of materials, including transition metal oxides, halide perovskites, organic bulk heterojunctions, oxide perovskites, and graphene derivatives. By conducting comprehensive physicochemical and electrochemical characterizations, they aim to link material properties to practical applications, particularly in the field of energy conversion. Their research has significant interdisciplinary reach, spanning chemical engineering, chemistry, physics, and materials science. Dr Eslava's research contributions have been widely recognized, with over 85 publications in leading journals like Nature Energy, Advanced Materials, Energy & Environmental Science, and Nature Communications. He has been awarded prestigious funding from organizations such as The Royal Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, EPSRC, and Innovate UK. His innovative contributions to the field earned him the Warner Medal from the Institution of Chemical Engineers for his impactful research and dissemination efforts.

Patrik Schmuki studied physical chemistry at the University of Basel (MSc, 1988), and carried out his graduate studies in Materials Science at ETH-Zurich (PhD in 1992). He was a research associate at ETHZ (1992-1994), then worked at Brookhaven National Laboratory, NY, U.S., (1994-95) using synchrotron techniques for thin film studies. From 1995-1997 he was at the Institute for Microstructural Sciences of the National Research Council of Canada, where his research focused on surface phenomena on Si and III-V semiconductors. In 1997 he was elected an associate professor for microstructuring of materials in the Department of Materials Science of EPFL Lausanne. In the fall of 2000 he joined the materials science faculty at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg (Germany) as a full professor and head of the Institute for Surface Science and Corrosion. Professor Schmuki has published more than 360 research papers, edited six books, and he holds six patents. His h-index is 53, and the total number of citations exceeds 10,000. Professor Schmuki is active in various professional societies, among them ECS and the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE). With ECS, he started as a member of the executive committee (2000-2005) of the Corrosion Division, then became Vice- Chair (2005-2006), and Chair (2007-2008). He also served as a Chair of the ECS European Section from 2002-2004. Since 2010, he is the Chair of Division 4 of ISE. From 1999-2009, he was a member of the Executive Committee of the International Corrosion Council. Professor Schmuki a member of the Editorial Board of Electrochemistry Communications, Electrochimica Acta, Acta Biomaterialia, and Corrosion Reviews. Moreover, he has organized more than 15 international symposia and workshops. In the last years, research activities have focused on selforganizing electrochemistry, particularly on the formation, properties, and applications of self-aligned TiO2 nanotubes. Among several honors he has received are the H. H. Uhlig Award of NACE International (2005). In 2008 he was named Fellow of The Electrochemical Society, and in the same year he was awarded with the Alessando Volta Award of the ECS.

Verena Streibel studied Materials Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt (2007-2013). She completed her doctoral studies at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society, focusing on in situ X-ray spectroscopy during electrochemical water splitting (2016). For her postdoctoral studies, she joined the SUNCAT Center for Interface Science and Catalysis at Stanford University (2018-2020), specializing in density functional theory-based microkinetic modeling of heterogeneous catalysis. In 2021, she joined the Walter Schottky Institute of the technical University of Munich, where she has been leading a BMBF Junior Research Group on artificial photosynthesis since 2024.

Verena's research focuses on surface and interface investigations to elucidate dynamic material changes during (photo)electrochemical processes for energy conversion. To this end, she combines (X-ray) spectroscopy methods under reaction conditions with theoretical modeling. With her research group, she develops thin-film photoelectrode materials and couples them to catalyst systems for solar fuels synthesis.