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.