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.