Andreu Cabot received his PhD from the University of Barcelona in 2003. From 2004 to 2007, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in Prof. A. Paul Alivisatos group in the University of California at Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2009 he joined the Catalonia Institute for Energy Research – IREC, where he is currently ICREA Research Professor. His research interests include the design and preparation of nanomaterials, the characterization of their functional properties and their use in energy technologies.

Professor Mirabbos Hojamberdiev is leading a CatMatX research group at the Masd Clausen Institute, University of Southern Denmark. His research group is developing next-generation catalytic materials based on mixed-anion compounds for various applications, including solar and electrocatalytic water splitting, ammonia decomposition, environmental remediation, etc. He has published more than 240 research articles and 5 patents.  He received various international recognitions, including the RECRUIT Grant funded by the Novo Nordisk Foundation, Atta-ur-Rahman Prize from the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS), the Georg Forster Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the 2018 IUPAC CHEMRAWN VII Prize for Green Chemistry and 2023 IUPAC-Zhejiang NHU International Award for Advancements in Green Chemistry from the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (IUPAC), Fulbright Visiting Scholarship, postdoctoral fellowships from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, European Commission’s Marie-Curie Fellowship, etc.

Daniel Prochowicz earned his Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the Warsaw University of Technology in 2013. He conducted postdoctoral research at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne. Currently, he is working as an Associate Professor at the Institute of Physical Chemistry, Polish Academy of Sciences (IPC PAS, Warsaw), where he serves as head of “Semiconducting Materials and Optoelectronic Devices” research group. His current research interests are in the development of efficient procedures for the preparation of stable and efficient perovskite-based optoelectronic devices including solar cells, LED and photodetectors.

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

therobinsongroup.org/

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.

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.