Solar fuels are an ever-growing need for society, driven by climate change and the growing need of sustainable energy sources. A broad range of strategies are currently envisioned to store solar energy in the form of chemical bonds.
The aim of this symposium is to provide an opportunity for the growing solar-fuel research community to present, listen to and discuss the latest advances in this very interdisciplinary field. It intends gathering experts from a broad range of topic, from surface and operando spectroscopic techniques to the synthesis of materials and their interfacing with biological systems.
Discover more
- Catalysts design
- Artificial photosynthesis
- Computation studies
- Electrochemistry
- Spectroscopy and transient spectroscopy
Associate Professor, Chemistry Department, University of Colorado, Boulder
Adjunct Professor, National Renewable Energy Laboratory
Victor Mougel has been a tenure track assistant professor of Inorganic Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH Zürich since December 2018. He completed his Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Chemistry at the ENS of Lyon, and carried out his PhD at the University of Grenoble under the supervision of Prof. Marinella Mazzanti. He then joined ETH Zürich as an ETH Fellow before starting his independent career as a CNRS associate researcher at Collège de France in Paris in 2016. His present scientific focus is on the electrochemical activation of small molecules notably following a bio-inspired approach. An ultimate goal of his research group is to establish a practical system for the electroreduction of N2 to ammonia inspired by the nitrogenase enzyme, for which he recently received support via an ERC starting grant.
Harry Atwater is the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology. Atwater’s scientific interests span light-matter interactions from quantum nanophotonics, two-dimensional materials and metasurfaces to solar photovoltaics and artificial photosynthesis. Atwater is an early pioneer in nanophotonics and plasmonics; he gave the name to the field of plasmonics in 2001. He currently serves as Director of the Liquid Sunlight Alliance, a DOE Solar Fuels Hub project, and was the founding Director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute at Caltech. He also chairs the Breakthrough Starshot Lightsail Committee and is a PI of the Caltech Space Solar Power Project.
Atwater has laid the foundations for plasmonic and negative index metamaterials, as well as tunable nanophotonic materials and metasurfaces. He has pioneered principles for light management and high efficiency solar cell design. He was the co-founder of Alta Devices, a solar photovoltaics company in Santa Clara, CA that holds the current world records for 1 Sun single and dual junction solar cell efficiency as well as solar module efficiency.
As of October 2020, he has authored or co-authored more than 500 publications and 60 patents cited in aggregate > 70,000 times and marked by citation metrics: h index = 95 (Web of Science) and h = 118 (Google Scholar), and he is an ISI Highly Cited Researcher (2014-2019). His group’s advances in the solar energy and plasmonics field have been reported in Scientific American, Science, Nature Materials, Nature Photonics and Advanced Materials.
Harry Atwater is a Member of US National Academy of Engineering and is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society, SPIE and the National Academy of Inventors. Atwater has been honored by awards including: Kavli Innovations in Chemistry Lecture Award, American Chemical Society (2018); APS David Adler Lectureship for Advances in Materials Physics (2016); Julius Springer Prize in Applied Physics (2014); Fellowship from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (2013); ENI Prize for Renewable and Nonconventional Energy (2012); SPIE Green Photonics Award (2012); MRS Kavli Lecturer in Nanoscience (2010); and the Popular Mechanics Breakthrough Award (2010). He also received the Joop Los Fellowship from the Dutch Society for Fundamental Research on Matter (2005), the A.T.&T. Foundation Award (1990), the NSF Presidential Young Investigator Award (1989) and the IBM Faculty Development Award in 1989-1990.
He is the founding Editor in Chief for the journal ACS Photonics, and is Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics. In 2006 he founded the Gordon Research Conference on Plasmonics, for which he served as chair in 2008. Professor Atwater has worked extensively as a consultant for industry and government and has actively served the materials community in a variety of roles, including President of the Materials Research Society in 2000, MRS Meeting Chair in 1997, and a member of the Board of Trustees of the Gordon Research Conferences. He also teaches graduate level Applied Physics classes at Caltech in nanophotonics, solid-state physics and device physics.
Professor Atwater received his B. S., M. S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1981, 1983 and 1987, respectively. He held the IBM Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University from 1987-88 and has been a member of the Caltech faculty since 1988.


Jun Cheng received his PhD in Chemistry at the Queen’s University Belfast, UK in 2008, and the subject was simulating surface catalysis using density functional theory. He then moved to the University of Cambridge, first as a postdoc for two years developing ab initio molecular dynamics based method for calculation of redox potentials and acidity constants. In 2010-2013, he was awarded a junior research fellowship by Emmanuel College at Cambridge, which granted him freedom to pursue his interest in interfacial electrochemistry. He became a university lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, UK in 2013, and was soon rewarded the major national start-up program fund and took up a full professorship in Xiamen University, China. Over years, his research has shifted from computational surface science and heterogeneous catalysis, to method development in redox and acid-base chemistry, and to ab inito electrochemistry. His recent research interest is combining electronic structure, sampling and machine learning methods for studying chemical dynamics in catalysis and electrochemistry.
Professor Gu's research focuses on designing novel solid-state and hybrid electrocatalysts for fuel generation, along with investigating and tailoring charge transfer mechanisms at the semiconductor-catalyst interface for solar energy conversion reactions, such as CO2 reduction, water oxidation, and water reduction.
Thomas E. Mallouk received his bachelor’s degree from Brown University and was a Ph.D. student with Neil Bartlett at the University of California, Berkeley. Following postdoctoral work with Mark Wrighton at MIT he held faculty positions at the University of Texas at Austin and at Penn State University. He is currently Vagelos Professor in Energy Research in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Pennsylvania. His research focuses on the synthesis of inorganic materials and their application to solar energy conversion, energy storage, catalysis and electrocatalysis, nano- and microscale motors, low dimensional physical phenomena, and environmental remediation. He is the author of 450+ publications, including a few good ones. He is a member of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Chemical Society.

Erwin Reisner received his education and professional training at the University of Vienna (with Prof Bernhard K. Keppler), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (with Prof Stephen J. Lippard) and the University of Oxford (with Prof Fraser A. Armstrong) before starting his independent career as a University Lecturer at Cambridge and Fellow of St. John’s College in 2010. He holds an EPSRC Career Acceleration Fellowship and heads the Christian Doppler Laboratory for Sustainable SynGas Chemistry. His group develops artificial photosynthesis by combining chemical biology, synthetic chemistry and materials chemistry.
Since 2017 Beatriz Roldan Cuenya has been a Director at the Fritz Haber Institute of the Max Planck Society in Berlin (Germany). There she heads the Department of Interface Science. She moved from the Ruhr-University Bochum (Germany), where she became a professor of Physics in 2013. Prior to that, Beatriz Roldan Cuenya was a professor of Physics at University of Central Florida (USA).
She carried out her postdoctoral research in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara (2001-2003). Prof. Roldan obtained her PhD in Physics from the University of Duisburg-Essen (Germany) summa cum laude in 2001. She completed her M.S./B.S. in Physics with a minor in Materials Science at the University of Oviedo, Spain in 1998. During her academic career Prof. Roldan 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). She is the author of more than 110 peer-reviewed publications and 3 book chapters and has given over 100 invited talks. She presently serves as Associate Editor of ACS Catalysis, in the editorial advisory board of the Surface Science journal and in the Advisory Committee of the Office of Basic Energy Sciences of the US Department of Energy.
Prof. Roldan’s research program explores the novel physical and chemical properties of size and shape-selected nanostructured materials, with emphasis on advancing the field of nanocatalysis through in situ and operando characterization of catalysts at work.


One of main issues associated to perovskite solar cells is the presence of lead. This is particularly worrisome if we consider that perovskite photovoltaics is suitable for a broad range of applications, including indoor PV and building-integrated PV. Tin is the most promising replacement for lead, owing to its similar size and its belonging to the same chemical group. Moreover, tin iodide perovskites have a band-gap which is closer to the Shockley-Queisser optimum and could potentially achieve even higher efficiency than lead perovskites. The main drawback of tin is its strong sensitivity to air, due to the facile oxidation of Sn(II) to Sn(IV), which leads to device degradation already during the fabrication. Nonetheless, efficiencies above 10%, with a record PCE above 13%, have been demonstrated in the last 2 years.
This symposium aims to cover the most important advances in tin halide perovskite solar cells, focusing on the processing of tin halide perovskites and on novel passivation strategies.
- Tin halide perovskites
- Sn(II) oxidation
- Self p-doping in tin halide perovskites
- Additives and passivating agents
- Selective contacts for tin halide perovskites
The author was graduated from Osaka University in 1978 and received Ph.D from Osaka University in 1983. He joined R&D Center in Toshiba from 1978 to 2000, during which the author was engaged in development of ULSI lithography, solar cells direct methanol fuel cells, and polysilane. He joined polysilane research in Robert West group of Wisconsin University (US) from 1988 to 1990. He was a professor of Kyushu Institute of Technology (National Institute) since 2001. From 2019, the author is a professor in The University of Electro-Communications in Japan. His research interest is printable solar cells.
Maria Antonietta Loi studied physics at the University of Cagliari in Italy where she received the PhD in 2001. In the same year she joined the Linz Institute for Organic Solar cells, of the University of Linz, Austria as a post doctoral fellow. Later she worked as researcher at the Institute for Nanostructured Materials of the Italian National Research Council in Bologna Italy. In 2006 she became assistant professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. She is now full professor in the same institution and chair of the Photophysics and OptoElectronics group. She has published more than 130 peer review articles in photophysics and optoelectronics of nanomaterials. In 2012 she has received an ERC starting grant.


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.
Impedance spectroscopy has become a fundamental tool to characterize electrical and optoelectrical systems. Optoelectronic devices in general, and photovoltaic solar cells as a paradigmatic case, represent a particularly interesting field for these techniques, since the need for a comprehensive model usually results in a deep understanding of the system’s working mechanisms.
This symposium aims to provide a forum to discuss the challenges presented by impedance spectroscopy (and related techniques) characterization and modeling of new generation optoelectronic devices, in which the main physical processes determining their performance are currently under debate.
- Impedance spectroscopy
- Capacitance spectroscopy
- Solar cell characterization and modeling
- LED cell characterization and modeling
- Small perturbation techniques
- Perovskite optoelectronics
- Organic optoelectronics
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.
Pablo P. Boix received his PhD. in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology from the Universitat Jaume I (2012, Castelló, Spain), with the focus on unveiling the physical processes governing optoelectronic devices such as dye sensitized, quantum dots and organic solar cells; as well as solar fuel systems. In 2012, he joined the Energy Research Institute (at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore), where he led a research line on hybrid lead halide perovskites for photovoltaic and light emission applications. As industrial R&D experience, in 2016, he worked on perovskite solar cells development (Dyesol Ltd., Lausanne, Switzerland). After that, Pablo joined ICMol (Universitat de València) as a Ramon y Cajal fellow. His research has contributed to the implementation of new materials and device concepts. As a result, his scientific production includes more than 70 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals, with h-index: 39 (Web of Science) and 2 patents among others.
Elizabeth von Hauff received her BSc in honours Physics from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada in 2000, and an MSc in Physics (2001) from the University of Oldenburg, Germany. She completed her PhD in 2005 on charge carrier transport in organic semiconductors. After post doc research from 2006 – 2011 she completed her habilitation in experimental physics. In 2011 Elizabeth accepted a joint appointment as Associated Professor between the Institute of Physics at the University of Freiburg and the Fraunhofer Institute for Solar Energy Systems (ISE). In 2013 Elizabeth relocated to Amsterdam, the Netherlands with an appointment as Associate Professor at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her research interests are the investigation of fundamental questions in organic and hybrid solar energy material systems within the context of real applications.
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.
Marc T.M. Koper is Professor of Surface Chemistry and Catalysis at Leiden University, The Netherlands. He received his PhD degree (1994) from Utrecht University (The Netherlands) in the field of electrochemistry. He was an EU Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the University of Ulm (Germany) and a Fellow of Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW) at Eindhoven University of Technology, before moving to Leiden University in 2005. His main research interests are in fundamental aspects of electrocatalysis, proton-coupled electron transfer, theoretical electrochemistry, and electrochemical surface science.
Marina Leite is an Associate Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at UC Davis. Her group is engaged in fundamental and applied research in hybrid perovskites for optoelectronics, functional imaging of devices through advanced scanning probe microscopy methods, and optical materials. She has delivered >130 invited talks at conferences and research institutions around the globe. Leite is the awardee of the 2016 APS Ovshinsky Sustainable Energy Fellowship from the American Physical Society (APS) and of the 2014 Maryland Academy of Sciences Outstanding Young Scientist Award. Before joining UC Davis, Leite was an Associate Professor at the University of Maryland. She also worked for two years at NIST and was a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech.
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.
Sandheep Ravishankar completed his PhD on the electrical modelling of physical mechanisms of operation of perovskite solar cells at the institute of advanced materials (INAM), Universitat Jaume I, Castellon, Spain. He is currently a researcher at IEK-5, Forschungszentrum Juelich, Germany, in the department of analytics and simulation. His primary research interest is the characterization of loss mechanisms in perovskite solar cells using a mixture of capacitance and luminescence-based techniques, supplemented by simulations. His secondary research interest is the characterization of kinetics and physical processes occurring in photoelectrochemical devices for water splitting.


This symposium focuses on layered organo-metal halide compounds, commonly referred-to as twodimensional perovskites.
We invite contributions – both theoretical and experimental – regarding the basic characterization of single crystals and thin films, their synthesis, and the character of quasi-2D structures, such as Ruddlesden-Popper or Dion-Jacobson compounds.
The symposium will furthermore highlight fundamental (photo)physical aspects, such as excitonic properties, charge carrier dynamics, and the role of organic spacer cations that are relevant for optoelectronic applications. A particular emphasis will lie on novel concepts and future applications beyond established ideas.
Discover more
- Synthesis Routes and Structural Aspects
- Quasi-2D Compounds
- Thin Film Growth and Morphology
- Novel Concepts for Spacer Cations
- Photophysics and Fundamental Properties
- (Opto)Electronic Applications (LEDs, Solar Cells, FETs)
Giulia is Associate Professor at Physical Chemistry Unit at University of Pavia, leading the PVsquared2 team, and running the European Grant ERCStG Project “HYNANO”aiming at the development of advanced hybrid perovskites materials and innovative functional interfaces for efficient, cheap and stable photovoltaics. Within this field, Giulia contributed to reveal the fundamental lightinduced dynamical processes underlying the operation of such advanced optoelectronic devices whose understanding is paramount for a smart device development and for contributing to the transition of a green economy.
Giulia received an MS in Physical Engineering in 2008 and obtained her PhD in Physics cum laude in 2012 at the Politecnico of Milan. Her experimental thesis focused on the realisation of a new femtosecond-microscope for mapping the ultrafast phenomena at organic interfaces. During her PhD, she worked for one year at the Physics Department of Oxford University where she pioneered new concepts within polymer/oxide solar cell technology. From 2012-2015, she was a post-doctoral researcher at the Italian Institute of Technology in Milan. In 2015, she joined the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) with a Co-Funded Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship. From 2016 to 2019, she has been awarded by the Swiss Ambizione Energy Grant providing a platform to lead her independent research group at EPFL focused on the developemnt of new generation hybrid perovskite solar cells.
She is author of 90 peer-reviewed scientific papers bringing her h-index to 44 (>13’000 citations), focused on developement and understanding of the interface physics which governs the operation of new generation solar cells.
Recently, she received the USERN prize in Physical Science, the Swiss Physical Society Award in 2018 for Young Researcher and the IUPAP Young Scientist Prize in Optics. She is currently USERN Ambassador for Italy and board member of the Young Academy of Europe.
More can be found at https://pvsquared2.unipv.it.
Weblink: https://people.epfl.ch/giulia.grancini?lang=en
Maria Antonietta Loi studied physics at the University of Cagliari in Italy where she received the PhD in 2001. In the same year she joined the Linz Institute for Organic Solar cells, of the University of Linz, Austria as a post doctoral fellow. Later she worked as researcher at the Institute for Nanostructured Materials of the Italian National Research Council in Bologna Italy. In 2006 she became assistant professor and Rosalind Franklin Fellow at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials of the University of Groningen, The Netherlands. She is now full professor in the same institution and chair of the Photophysics and OptoElectronics group. She has published more than 130 peer review articles in photophysics and optoelectronics of nanomaterials. In 2012 she has received an ERC starting grant.


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 180 papers and book chapters.
Bachelor in Chemistry from University of São Paulo (USP) in 1996, Master's Degree in Chemistry from University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in 1998 and Doctorate in Chemistry from UNICAMP in 2001 under the guidance of Prof. Marco-Aurelio De Paoli. Performed an internship during the Doctorate at Imperial College in London under the supervision of Prof. James R. Durrant. After completing his doctorate he also held a post-doctorate position at Imperial College in the same research group. In 2003, he held another postdoctoral program at USP under the supervision of Prof. Henrique Toma. He is currently Professor of the Chemistry Institute of UNICAMP. He has experience in the field of Chemistry, with emphasis in the application of nanomaterials in Solar Energy Conversion, working mainly in the following subjects: inorganic nanoparticles of chalcogenides and perovskite (quantum dots) in light emitting diodes (LED); photocatalytic oxide / graphene nanocomposites for the generation of hydrogen and direct conversion of CO2 into solar fuels; emerging solar cells (in particular TiO2 / dye cells and perovskite solar cells). In 2017 he held a sabbatical at SLAC-Stanford in the field of application of Synchrotron light in the characterization of materials for energy conversion. Published more than 115 papers, 3 patents, 1 book and 7 book chapters. She is the leader of the reserach on emerging photovoltaics in Latin America.
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.
Carlos Silva earned a PhD in chemical physics from the University of Minnesota, with the late Professor Paul Barbara. His graduate research focused on ultrafast polar solvation dynamics, probed by transient absorption spectroscopy on the solvated electron and transition-metal mixed-valence complexes. Following his graduate degree in 1998, he was Postdoctoral Research Fellow with Professor Sir Richard Friend at the Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, where he developed an ultrafast spectroscopy laboratory to investigate the photophysics of conjugated polymers and related organic semiconductors. In 2001, he began his independent academic career as Advanced Research Fellow of the UK Engineering and Physical Science Research Council at the Cavendish Laboratory, and simultaneously became Research Fellow in Darwin College, University of Cambridge. He moved to the Université de Montréal with a Canada Research Chair in 2005, where he developed an ultrafast spectroscopy laboratory for the study of electronic processes in organic semiconductor materials. In recognition of his rising international leadership, he was awarded the 2010 Herzberg Medal and the 2016 Brockhouse Medal by the Canadian Association of Physicists. Since 2017, Carlos’s research career at Georgia Tech has built on his previous research experiences to bring innovative optical probes of organic and hybrid organic-inorganic semiconductor materials. His research program exploits a range of spectroscopic techniques, including nonlinear ultrafast spectroscopies such as two-dimensional coherent excitation spectroscopies, and quantum spectroscopy, in which quantum properties of light are exploited to unravel light-matter interactions with intricate detail. These techniques are applied to understand key electronic processes in a wide range of materials, with many target applications in optoelectronics, on timescales ranging from femtoseconds to milliseconds. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.





This symposium invites contributions on overcoming challenges to enhance the performance of single junction and multi-junction perovskite solar cells such as new absorber materials, novel methods of bulk passivations and interface engineering, and new cell architectures. Submissions that elucidate underlying mechanisms limiting efficiency or improving material properties, optical and electrical performance are welcome.
- Single Junction Solar Cells – strategies towards new records
- Perovskites for Tandem Solar Cells – including narrow bandgap and wide bandgap
- Cell Design Optimization – efficiency limit calculations and optical management
- Perovskite Growth Methods – for large area and for flexible substrates
- Reducing Defects - bulk passivations and/or interface engineering
- New Cell Architectures – bridging the efficiency gap between n-i-p and p-i-n
Anita Ho-Baillie is the John Hooke Chair of Nanoscience at the University of Sydney. She completed her Bachelor of Engineering degree on a Co-op scholarship in 2001 and her PhD at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in 2005. Anita has worked at British Aerospace, Alcatel Australia, Pacific Solar and Solar Sailor. She is also an Adjunct Professor at UNSW. Her research interest is to engineer materials and devices at nanoscale for integrating solar cells onto all kinds of surfaces generating clean energy. A highly cited researcher, she is well known in her achievements in setting solar cell energy efficiency world records in various categories and has been identified as one of the leaders in advancing perovskite solar cells.
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.
Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) Michael Graetzel, PhD, directs there the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces. He pioneered research on energy and electron transfer reactions in mesoscopic systems and their use to generate electricity and fuels from sunlight. He invented mesoscopic injection solar cells, one key embodiment of which is the dye-sensitized solar cell (DSC). DSCs are meanwhile commercially produced at the multi-MW-scale and created a number of new applications in particular as lightweight power supplies for portable electronic devices and in photovoltaic glazings. They engendered the field of perovskite solar cells (PSCs) that turned our to be the most exciting break-through in the recent history of photovoltaics. He received a number of prestigious awards, of which the most recent ones include the RusNANO Prize, the Zewail Prize in Molecular Science, the Global Energy Prize, the Millennium Technology Grand Prize, the Samson Prime Minister’s Prize for Innovation in Alternative Fuels, the Marcel Benoist Prize, the King Faisal International Science Prize, the Einstein World Award of Science and the Balzan Prize. He is a Fellow of several learned societies and holds eleven honorary doctor’s degrees from European and Asian Universities. According to the ISI-Web of Science, his over 1500 publications have received some 230’000 citations with an h-factor of 219 demonstrating the strong impact of his scientific work.


Professor Shengzhong (Frank) Liu received his PhD from Northwestern University in 1992. Upon completing his postdoctoral research at Argonne National Laboratory in 1994, he joined high-tech industrial research, most notably on solar cells with Solarex/BP Solar and United Solar Ovonic. His research focuses on perovskite solar cells, optoelectronic devices, single-crystalline perovskite materials, high efficiency HIT solar cells, nanoscale thin film materials and photocatalyst for photoelectrochemical water splitting. He has published more than 100 papers in peer-reviewed journals including Science, Nature, Nature Communications, Energy & Environ. Sci., Adv. Mater., Sci. Adv., Phys. Rev. X. He was recruited into the Chinese National “1000-Talent Program”in 2011 and now he is a professor at Shaanxi Normal University and Dalian Institute of Chemical Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
Michael D. McGehee is a Professor in the Chemical and Biological Engineering Department at the University of Colorado Boulder. He is the Associate Director of the Materials Science and Engineering Program and has a joint appointment at the National Renewable Energy Lab. He was a professor in the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Stanford University for 18 years and a Senior Fellow of the Precourt Institute for Energy. His current research interests are developing new materials for smart windows and solar cells. He has previously done research on polymer lasers, light-emitting diodes and transistors as well as transparent electrodes made from carbon nanotubes and silver nanowires. His group makes materials and devices, performs a wide variety of characterization techniques, models devices and assesses long-term stability. He received his undergraduate degree in physics from Princeton University and his PhD degree in Materials Science from the University of California at Santa Barbara.
Dr. Md. K. Nazeeruddin received M.Sc. and Ph. D. in inorganic chemistry from Osmania University, Hyderabad, India. His current research focuses on Dye-sensitized solar cells, Hydrogen production, Light-emitting diodes and Chemical sensors. He has published more than 400 peer-reviewed papers, nine book chapters, and inventor of 49 patents. The high impact of his work has been recognized with invitations to speak at over 100 international conferences. He appeared in the ISI listing of most cited chemists, and has more than 10000 citations with an h-index of 93. He is directing, and managing several industrial, national, and European Union projects on Hydrogen energy, Photovoltaics (DSC), and Organic Light Emitting Diodes. He was awarded EPFL Excellence prize in 1998 and 2006, Brazilian FAPESP Fellowship in 1999, Japanese Government Science & Technology Agency Fellowship, in 1998, Government of India National Fellowship in 1987-1988. Recently he has been appointed as World Class University (WCU) professor for the period of March 1, 2009 ~ December 31, 2012 by the Korea University, Jochiwon, Korea.
Sang Il Seok is currently a Distinguished Professor at the School of Energy and Chemical Engineering, Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Korea. Before he joined UNIST in 2015, he served on the principle investigater of Korea Research Institute of Chemical Technology and professor at department of energy science, Sungkyunkwan University. In 2017, he was appointed as guest professor of Nankai University in China. He obtained his PhD degree at Department of Inorganic Materials Engineering of Seoul National University, Korea, in 1995. From 1996 to 1997, he experienced a post-doc to investigate defects and transport in Fe-Ti-O Spinel structure in Cornell University, USA, and visiting scholar in University of Surrey, UK, in 2003, and École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland, in 2006 respectively. His major research interests were functional inorganic-organic hybrid materials through solution process for optical amplifier, high dielectrics, corrosion-resistance coatings etc. Now, his research focus is based on inorganic-organic hybrid solar cells, in particular perovskite solar cells. He published more than 150 peer-reviewed papers including Nature, Science etc. with several awards for his Excellency.


Kai Zhu is currently a senior scientist in the Chemistry and Nanoscience Center at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He received his PhD degree in physics from Syracuse University in 2003. Before this position, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Basic Science Center at NREL, focusing on fundamental charge carrier conduction and recombination in photoelectrochemical cells, especially dye-sensitized solar cells. Dr. Zhu’s research on dye-sensitized solar cells involves the development of advanced electrode materials/architectures, basic understanding of charge transport and recombination processes in these electrodes, and thin-film solar cell development/characterization/modeling. His recent research has centered on both basic and applied research on perovskite solar cells, including perovskite material development, device fabrication and characterization, and basic understanding of charge carrier dynamics in these cells. In addition to solar conversion applications, his research interests have also included III-Nitride wide-bandgap semiconductors for high-power blue and UV light emitting diodes and ordered nanostructured electrodes for Li-ion batteries and supercapacitors.
Scientists tirelessly discover new building blocks that span a range of length scales from molecules and clusters to nanocrystals and microparticles. The self-organization of these blocks is one of the most elegant and low-cost bottom-up methods to create new materials
with a potentially unlimited range of tunable properties and to rejuvenate old ones. Virtually every domain of physical properties from photonics and plasmonics to electronics and mechanics are impacted by the emergent collective phenomena, continuously attracting the attention of researchers. While the complex nature of forces provides exciting opportunities
to direct the assembly process toward the desired structures, it also presents challenges in terms of long-range control over the order.
The focus of the symposium will be on the prospects of integrating self-organization into nanofabrication workflow, enabling the design of scalable functional devices. It will cover the fundamental aspects and latest developments in theoretical and experimental studies of self-assembly processes. Special attention will be given to the challenges of predictive material discovery using experimental and computational approaches.
Discover more
- Fundamental forces driving assembly across all scales
- New forms of self-organized materials via theory and computation
- Optimization of the discoveries of new self-organized materials and assembly processes via artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches
- In situ characterization of the nanoparticle interactions
- Emergent collective properties of assembled structures
- Prospects of integrating self-organization into nanofabrication workflow, enabling the design of scalable functional devices


Prof. Paul V. Braun is the Director of the Materials Research Laboratory, the Grainger Distinguished Chair in Engineering, and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. He also has a co-appointment as a Professor in Chemistry and is affiliated with the Department of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering and the Beckman Institute for Advanced Science and Technology. Prof. Braun has co-authored a book, about 300 peer-reviewed publications, been awarded multiple patents, and has co-founded three companies. He is the recipient of the Illinois MatSE Young Alumnus Award (2011), the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation (2010), the Stanley H. Pierce Faculty Award (2010), the 2002 Robert Lansing Hardy Award from TMS, a Beckman Young Investigator Award (2001), a 3M Nontenured Faculty Award (2001), the Xerox Award for Faculty Research (2004, 2009), and multiple teaching awards. He is a Fellow of the Materials Research Society and AAAS.
Emiliano holds a W2 tenure-track professorship at the Physics Department in LMU Munich and is the academic lead of the Plasmonic Chemistry Group. He is also a visiting researcher at the Chemistry Department, University College London, UK, and at the Physics Department, Imperial College London, UK.
His research interests lie at the interface between chemistry and physics, and focus on the development of novel nanomaterials and techniques, specifically for applications in energy conversion.
Emiliano studied chemistry at the National University of La Plata in Argentina. He was one of the founders of Nanodetection, a start-up company based on plasmonic sensing. He was also a Marie-Skłodowska-Curie research fellow at Imperial College London. In 2018, he was awarded with the ERC Starting Grant from the European Commission for his project CATALIGHT.
He is currently a Principal Investigator (PI) of two German excellence research clusters, Nanoinitiative Munich (NIM) and e-conversion; member of the Munich-based Centre for NanoScience (CeNS) and the Bavarian program Solar Technologies go Hybrid (SolTech). Since March 2019, Emiliano is also a member of the Young Academy of Europe (YAE) and he is currently co-editing the first book in Plasmonic Catalysis (Wiley, Apr. 2021).
Marjolein Dijkstra is full professor (2007) in the Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science at Utrecht University. She received a MSc degree in Molecular Sciences at Wageningen University as well as in Physics at Utrecht University. She obtained her PhD degree from Utrecht University in 1994, and was awarded twice a prestigious EU Marie-Curie Individual Fellowship to join the Physical and Theoretical Chemistry group at Oxford University and the H.H. Wills Physics Laboratory at Bristol University.
In 1999, she started her own research line at Utrecht University on obtaining a fundamental understanding on how colloidal building blocks self-assemble and how the self-assembly process can be manipulated by external fields such as gravity, templates, air-liquid or liquid-liquid interfaces, and electric fields. Her group employs Monte Carlo, (event driven) Molecular and Brownian Dynamics simulations, Stochastic Rotational Dynamics simulations to include hydrodynamics, Umbrella and Forward flux sampling, free-energy calculations based on thermodynamic integration methods, and simulated annealing techniques, and more recently machine learning techniques, to determine the (non)-equilibrium phase behavior of colloids, nanoparticles, and liquid crystals.
She is recipient of the Minerva Prize (2000), a high-potential grant (2004), a prestigious NWO VICI and Aspasia grant (2006), and an ERC advanced grant (2020), and is elected as a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (KNAW). She is (vice) director of the Debye Institute for Nanomaterials Science, (consulting) editor of Reviews of Modern Physics, Physical Review X, and Molecular Physics, and has organised several international conferences and workshops.




Laura Na Liu is a full professor at the Kirchhoff Institute for Physics at University of Heidelberg, Germany. She received her Ph. D in Physics at University of Stuttgart in 2009, working on 3D complex plasmonics at optical frequencies. In 2010, she worked as postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. In 2011, she joined Rice University as Texas Instruments visiting professor. At the end of 2012, she obtained a Sofja Kovalevskaja Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and became an independent group leader at the Max-Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems. She joined University of Heidelberg in 2015. Her research interest is multi-disciplinary. She works at the interface between nanophotonics, biology, and chemistry. Her group focuses on developing sophisticated and smart optical nanosystems for answering structural biology questions as well as catalytic chemistry questions in local environments.


Ph. D. in Chemistry from the University of Vigo (Spain). She is currently Assoc. Prof at CINBIO-Department of Physical Chemistry. Since 2012, she is the leader of the Colloid Chemistry Group. Her current interest involves the synthesis, assembly and surface modification of nanoparticles with unique properties as well as development of (multi)functional nanostructured materials and tools with applicability in nanoplasmonics, (bio)sensing, catalysis and biomedicine.


Detlef Smilgies studied physics at Goettingen University in Germany and received a Ph. D. in surface science at the Max-Planck-Institute for Fluid Dynamics, Goettingen in 1991. After postdocs in the US and in Denmark, he worked as a beamline scientist at the European Synchrotron Radiation Facility in Grenoble, France and at the Cornell High Energy Synchrotron Source in Ithaca, NY, USA. He presently is a visiting scientist at Binghamton University and an adjunct professor of chemical engineering at Cornell University. His research interests are in self-assembly in thin films of soft materials, nanoscience, organic electronics, and materials processing from the liquid phase using real-time in-situ grazing-incidence x-ray scattering.
Mona Tréguer-Delapierre received her PhD degree in physical chemistry from the University of Orsay, Paris Saclay. She has received an award from the Chancellerie des Universités de Paris for her PhD thesis. After a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Notre Dame, Indiana (USA) with Dan Meisel, she joined the faculty in the Chemistry Department at the University of Bordeaux, in 2000. Her research is centered on the fabrication of nanomaterials for catalysis, biology and optics. She has published 100 papers in international journals including Nature, Nanoletters, ACS Nano, Phys.Rev.Lett., Adv.Mat, Material Horizons. She co-edited 3 book chapters and held 12 Patents. Recently, she was awarded as the H&M Zimmer Scholar from the University of Cincinnati (USA).


This symposium invites contributions on new challenges to enhance the nanomaterials performance via chemical design. The symposium will cover a wide range of topics for metal oxides, chalcogenides, halide perovskites, and (inter)metallic nanomaterials.
- - Advanced synthetic routes to engineer functional nanomaterials in various forms (colloids, nanopowders, nanomaterials on templates) and various morphology (nanoparticles, nanoplates, clusters).
- - Surface engineering of nanomaterials to enable a device functionality (ligand exchange, surface reactions, core/shell growth).
- - Characterization techniques to study the structural features of nanomaterials, their surface and synthetic pathways (in-situ and ex-situ methods).
- - Theoretical calculations to elucidate the reaction mechanism and structural origin of nanomaterials functionality.
- - Application-specific design of nanomaterials for energy storage and energy conversion applications (catalysis, batteries, optoelectronics, plasmonics, thermoelectrics, etc.)
Overall, this symposium will target to link the structure-composition design with physical properties of nanomaterials and therefore to accelerate their use for a broad range of technologies.
- Synthetic approaches for nanomaterials
- Surface chemistry engineering of nanomaterials
- Theoretical calculations
- Characterization techniques for nanomaterials
- Application-specific chemical design of nanomaterials
Maksym Yarema received his master degree in Chemistry from Lviv National University (Ukraine) in 2007. From 2008 to 2012, he worked towards his doctorate degree at the Johannes Kepler University Linz (Austria) under supervision of Prof. W. Heiss. In 2012, he joined the research group of Prof. M. V. Kovalenko at EMPA as Marie-Curie fellow. Since 2013, he is working in the Institute for Electronics at ETH Zurich, where he received the SNSF Ambizione Fellowship in 2016 (Prof. V. Wood research group) and the ERC Starting Grant in 2019. Since January 2020, Maksym is an Assistant Professor in the Institute for Electronics at ETH Zurich, where he leads the Chemistry and Materials Design (CMD) lab. His research interest spans various topics of solid-state and physical chemistry as well as chemical engineering. Particular focus is given for colloidal nanomaterials, their synthetic approaches and applications into optoelectronic devices, memory cells, and lithium-ion batteries.






Peter Reiss is researcher at the Institute of Nanoscience & Cryogenics, CEA Grenoble, and Head of Laboratory of Molecular, Organic and Hybrid Electronics (LEMOH). He graduated (1997) from University of Karlsruhe, Germany, and earned his PhD in inorganic chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Dieter Fenske (2000). His research activities focus on the development of synthesis methods for different kinds of colloidal nanocrystals and semiconductor nanowires, the surface functionalization of nanocrystals by “tailor-made” ligands resulting in novel nanoscale building blocks and the assembly of these building blocks into structurally controlled functional materials for optoelectronics. The studied applications range from fluorescent markers for biological labelling and detection over the development of efficient emitters for LEDs and displays to new strategies for nanocrystal based energy conversion and storage. Dr. Reiss acts as Associate Editor for Nanoscale Research Letters and Journal of Nanomaterials and co-organizes the international conference series « NaNaX – Nanoscience with Nanocrystals ».
Ted Sargent received the B.Sc.Eng. (Engineering Physics) from Queen's University in 1995 and the Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (Photonics) from the University of Toronto in 1998. He holds the rank of Professor in the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto, where he holds the Canada Research Chair in Nanotechnology and serves as a KAUST Investigator. His book The Dance of Molecules: How Nanotechnology is Changing Our Lives (Penguin) was published in Canada and the United States in 2005 and has been translated into French, Spanish, Italian, Korean, and Arabic. He is founder and CTO of InVisage Technologies, Inc. He is a Fellow of the AAAS “...for distinguished contributions to the development of solar cells and light sensors based on solution-processed semiconductors.” He is a Fellow of the IEEE “... for contributions to colloidal quantum dot optoelectronic devices.”




The physics of light emission has captivated researchers since the beginning of the scientific method. Over the last decades, the surge of nanoscopic semiconductors has reignited this fascination. Additionally, newly emerging material design has led to the discovery of previously unknown excited state mechanisms. Merging these fields and deepening the knowledge thereof are essential for reaching the ultimate goal of cheap, reliable, tunable, and efficient light-emitting devices and quantum emitters.
This symposium aims to bring together scientists from various backgrounds to present and discuss their work on understanding how to obtain high-quality light emitters and then turn them into efficient optoelectronic devices. To this end, we will explore the current limits in the mechanistic understanding of charge carrier recombination pathways by investigating a variety of nanomaterial systems in and around the quantum regime.
Discover more
- Photophysics
- Spectroscopy
- Quantum dots
- 2D materials
- Perovskites
- LEDs
- Single-photon emitters
Alexander S. Urban studied Physics at the University of Karlsruhe (Germany) obtaining an equivalent to an M.Sc. degree (German: Dipl. Phys.) at the University of Karlsruhe (Germany) in 2006. During his studies he spent a year at Heriot Watt University (UK), where he obtained an M.Phys. in Optoelectronics and Lasers in 2005. He then joined the Photonics and Optoelectronics Chair of Jochen Feldmann at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich (Germany) in 2007 where he worked on the optothermal manipulation of plasmonic nanoparticles, earning his Ph.D. summa cum laude in 2010. He expanded his expertise in the fields of plasmonics and nanophotonics in the group of Naomi J. Halas at the Laboratory for Nanophotonics at Rice University (Houston, TX, USA), beginning in 2011. He returned to the LMU in 2014 to become a junior group leader with Jochen Feldmann, where he led the research thrusts on optical spectroscopy, focusing on hybrid nanomaterials such as halide perovskite nanocrystals and carbon dots. In 2017 he was awarded a prestigious Starting Grant from the European Research Council and shortly after that in 2018 he received a call as a Full Professor of Physics (W2) at the LMU. Here, he now leads his own research group working on nanospectroscopy in novel hybrid nanomaterials.
Sascha is an EPSRC Doctoral Prize Fellow at the University of Cambridge.
His research aims to tailor the optoelectronic properties of novel materials through chemical modifications. He investigates how material changes like doping, dimensionality and chirality impact the electronic structure, and thus enable more efficient devices or entirely new functionalities.
Before, he completed his PhD in Physics with Dr Felix Deschler and Prof Sir Richard Friend at the Cavendish Laboratory, where he investigated charge carrier dynamics in halide perovskite semiconductors for optoelectronic applications such as solar cells or lighting. He found that charge accumulation and localisation effects can be beneficial for device performance.
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.
i
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.
David J. Norris is currently the Director of the Optical Materials Engineering Laboratory and Professor of Materials Engineering at ETH Zurich. He received his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemistry from the University of Chicago (1990) and MIT (1995), respectively. After an NSF postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California, San Diego, he joined the NEC Research Institute in Princeton in 1997 where he led a photonics research group. He then became an Associate Professor (2001-2006) and Professor (2006-2010) of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota. In 2010, he moved to his current position at ETH Zurich. Prof. Norris is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. He received the Golden Owl award at ETH in 2012 for excellence in teaching. He was awarded an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council (2014-2019). In 2015, he was the recipient of the Max R�ssler Prize.
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.
Ivan Scheblykin obtained Ph.D. in 1999 from Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology and Lebedev Physical Institute of Russian Academy of Sciences on exciton dynamics in J-aggregates. After a postdoctoral stay in the KU Leuven, Belgium, he moved to Sweden to start the single molecule spectroscopy group at the Division of Chemical Physics in Lund University where he became a full professor in 2014. His interests cover fundamental photophysics of organic and inorganic semiconductors and, in particular, energy transfer, charge migration and trapping. The general direction of his research is to comprehend fundamental physical and chemical processes beyond ensemble averaging in material science and chemical physics using techniques inspired by single molecule fluorescence spectroscopy and single particle imaging.

This symposium invites expert contributions on emerging strategies, materials, and architectures for the effective transformation of incoherent photons between wavelengths.
- Organic, hybrid, and inorganic materials & architectures for photochemical upconversion
- Novel singlet fission materials, and fundamental studies of their photophysics
- Understanding and harnessing lanthanide-based photon conversion
- Probing and controlling energy transfer and transport in nanostructured materials
- Spin-dependent exciton dynamics
- Theory of multi-exciton interactions and energy transfer
- Applications: including photovoltaics, photochemistry, detection, bioimaging, and drug release.
Prof. Mark W.B. Wilson uses laser spectroscopy to explore, understand, and develop excitonic materials for optoelectronic devices. He joined the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Toronto in 2016 and leads the team in the WilsonLab.
From Port Colborne, Ontario, Canada, Mark first studied at Queen’s University, receiving a B.Sc. (2006, Engineering Physics), a B.A. (2008, History), and an M.Sc. (2008, Eng. Phys.) under the supervision of Prof. James Fraser. He then earned his Ph.D. (2012, Physics) at the University of Cambridge with Prof. Sir Richard Friend, before working as a postdoctoral associate in the Center for Excitonics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with Professors Moungi Bawendi (Chemistry) and Marc Baldo (Electrical Engineering).
He has contributed to our understanding of the ultrafast dynamics of singlet exciton fission in molecular semiconductors, as well as the invention of devices that combine conjugated organic molecules and colloidal quantum dots to enable solar-intensity photon up- and downconversion between the visible spectrum and the short-wave infrared.
Dr. Wu obtained his B.S. degree in materials physics from University of Science and Technology of China (2010) and his Ph. D. degree in physical chemistry from Emory University (2015, with Prof. Tim Lian). From 2015 to 2017, he was the director’s funded postdoc fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory, working with Dr. Victor Klimov. In 2017, he moved to China to start his independent research. His current work focuses on the ultrafast spectroscopy and device applications of low-dimensional optoelectronic materials. He is the winner of the 2018 Victor K. LaMer Award by the American Chemical Society and 2019 Robin Hochstrasser Young Investigator Award by the Chemical Physics journal. He also serves as the Early Career Editorial Advisory Board of Journal of Chemical Physics.
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.




Dirk M. Guldi completed both his undergraduate studies (1988) and PhD (1990) at the University of Cologne (Germany). Following postdoctoral appointments at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA), the Hahn-Meitner Institute Berlin (1992), and Syracuse University, he joined the faculty of the Notre Dame Radiation Laboratory in 1995. He was promoted a year later from assistant to associate professional specialist, and remained affiliated to Notre Dame until 2004. Since 2004, he is Full Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Pharmacy at the Friedrich-Alexander University in Erlangen. Since 2018, Dirk M. Guldi is Co-Editor in Chief of Nanoscale and Nanoscale Horizons and he has been named among the world’s Highly Cited Researchers by Thomson Reuters.
The Guldi group and its network belong to the cutting edge of worldwide research in solar-energy conversion with expertise not only in advanced photon- and charge-management, but also in the synthesis of tailored materials and molecular modeling. Impressive documentations of their accomplishments are more than 700 peer-reviewed publications, nearly 40,000 citations, and an h-index of 100. At the heart is always a multifaceted and interdisciplinary research program, where his group designs, conceptually devises, synthesizes, tests, and characterizes novel nanometer scale materials with the objective of using them in solar energy conversion schemes. A broad range of spectroscopic (i.e. time-resolved and steady-state measurements with spectrophotometric detection covering a time range from femtoseconds to minutes) and microscopic techniques (i.e. scanning probe microscopy, electron microscopy) are routinely employed to address aspects that correspond to the optimization and fine-tuning of dynamics and/or efficiencies of charge separation, charge transport, charge shift, and charge recombination processes.






Jianzhang Zhao earned a Ph.D. degree from the Department of Chemistry at Jilin University in 2000. After postdoctoral
research at the Pohang University of Science and Technology (South Korea), the Max Planck Research Unit for Enzymology of Protein Folding (Halle, Germany) and the University of Bath (UK), he took up the current position of Professor at the Dalian University of Technology in 2005. His research interests are studying the charge separation, intersystem crossing and electron spin dynamics of organic materials with femtosecond/nanosecond transient absorption spectroscopic methods, and time-resolved electron paramagnetic resonance (TREPR) spectroscopy.
Ionic and neutral radical materials have found application in a number of emergent fields such as energy storage, neuromorphic computing, bioelectronics and optoelectronics. Organic mixed ionic-electronic conductors (OMIECs) have made major breakthroughs in memory and computing, energy storage and are critical to bioelectronic applications while radical materials are finding increased coverage in optoelectronics, sensors and spintronics.
This symposium aims to bring together researchers working on various aspects of OMIECs and radical materials for organic electronic applications and will cover both fundamental and applied topics including material synthesis, electrochemistry, thin film processing,
transport properties, device physics, and the comparison of physical mechanisms in these unpaired electron systems.
- Radical materials: synthesis, properties and applications
- OMIECs: synthesis, properties and applications
- Ionic and electronic transport
- Device physics
- Electrochemistry and spectroscopy of OMIECs and radicals
- Emerging applications




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.


Feng Li completed his PhD studies at Jilin University in 2003, followed by postdoctoral studies at Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. Then he returned to Jilin University in 2005 as an Associate Professor of Chemistry and promoted to full Professor in 2008. From 2017 to 2019, He was an Academic Visitor of Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge. His research focuses on organic optoelectronic materials and devices based on some new concepts, for example the OLEDs in which the emission comes from doublet exciton. In 2019, He won the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars of China.
Professor Meredith is professor of materials physics at the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia. He is currently an Australian Research Council Discovery Outstanding Research Award Fellow, co-director of the Centre for Organic Photonics and Electronics, and Director of the UQ Solar Initiative. His research involves the development of new sustainable high-tech materials for applications such as solar energy and bioelectronics, and he particularly specialises in the transport physics and electro-optics of disordered semiconductors. Professor Meredith is also the co-founder of several start-up companies including XeroCoat and Brisbane Materials Technology. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the Premier of Queensland’s Sustainability Award (2013) and is widely recognised for his contributions to innovation and the promotion of renewable energy in Australia. He serves on several advisory boards including the Premier of Queensland’s Climate Change Council, the Australian Solar Thermal Research Initiative Strategic Advisory Board, and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency Technical Advisory Board. He originally hails from South Wales, was educated at Swansea University and Heriot-Watt University, and was DTI Postdoctoral Fellow at the Cavendish Laboratory in Cambridge before spending 6 years as an industrial scientist with Proctor and Gamble.
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.





This symposium invites contributions on new challenges in the realm of reticular chemistry to develop new crystalline materials for sustainable and clean energy applications. Reticular chemistry is the chemistry of linking molecular building blocks by strong bonds to make extended crystalline structures as exemplified by metal organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent organic frameworks (COFs).
These new class of porous crystalline materials discovered, gained their fame essentially because of their high surface areas and the extraordinary flexibility by which the characteristics of these materials could be tuned to fulfil given criteria. The focus of this symposium will be on the design of MOFs and COFs for energy applications. These include carbon dioxide capture and conversion, fuel storage and separation, photo-induced hydrogen production, fuel cells, batteries and supercapacitors.
- MOFs and COFs for carbon dioxide capture
- MOFs and COFs for fuel storage and separation
- MOFs and COFs for energy storage
- MOFs and COFs photocatalysts for solar fuel production
Professor Wendy L. Queen received her Ph.D. from Clemson University (USA) in 2009. Afterwards, she accepted a postdoctoral fellowship from the National Research Council, which was carried out at the NIST Center for Neutron Research (USA). In 2012, she took a scientific position at the Molecular Foundry at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, and in 2015 she accepted an Assistant Professorship in the Institute of Chemical Sciences and Engineering at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Switzerland. Her research is focused on the synthesis and characterization of novel porous adsorbents, namely metal-organic frameworks, that are of interest in a number of host-guest applications. The ultimate goal of her research is to contribute knowledge towards solving globally relevant problems, like reducing energy consumption, cutting CO2 emissions, and water purification. Her desire is to help train a new generation of researchers that have the knowledge and scientific skill set necessary to become future frontrunners in energy-related research.
















Bettina Lotsch is the Director of the Nanochemistry Department at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (MPI-FKF) in Stuttgart, Germany. She studied Chemistry at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (LMU) and the University of Oxford and received her PhD from LMU Munich in 2006. After a postdoctoral stay at the University of Toronto she became professor at LMU Munich in 2009 and was appointed Director at MPI-FKF in 2017. Bettina also holds honorary professorships at LMU Munich and the University of Stuttgart, and is PI of the Munich-based Cluster of Excellence e-conversion.
Bettina’s research explores the rational synthesis of new materials by combining the tools of molecular, solid-state and nanochemistry. Current research interests include molecular frameworks for solar energy conversion and storage, solid electrolytes for all-solid-state batteries, and “smart” photonic crystals for optical sensing.
Bettina was awarded an ERC Starting Grant (2014) and has been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2014. Her work has been recognized by a number of awards, including the EU-40 Materials Prize 2017 of the European Materials Research Society.
Katherine was born and raised in Eastern Ukraine, and moved with her family to the state of Rhode Island during her freshman year in high school. She attended Boston College, where she developed a passion for Materials Chemistry, working in the laboratory of Lawrence T. Scott. She graduated with high honors in 2004, and later that year moved across the river to pursue graduate studies at Harvard University. In 2011, Katherine earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Harvard University under the guidance of George M. Whitesides. Her doctoral dissertation focused on the development and characterization of a simple and portable method that used magnetic levitation for density-based chemical analysis. She also contributed to several other research efforts in the areas of paper-based diagnostics and protein biophysics. Katherine then joined the laboratory of Timothy M. Swager at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as an NIH postdoctoral fellow to pursue the development of portable electronic carbon-based chemical sensors for the detection of hazardous gases and vapors. At MIT, she developed a solvent-free approach, operationally analogous to drawing with pencil on paper, for the fabrication of sensitive and selective sensors from carbon nanomaterials. Katherine began her independent scientific career as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Dartmouth College in July 2015. She is a recipient of the Army Research Office Young Investigator Award (2017), Sloan Research Fellowship (2018), 3M Non-Tenured Faculty Award (2018-2019), and Cottrell Scholars Award (2019).
The research progress of the past ten years in the field of DSCs is marked by important breakthroughs towards their use for a sustainable future. Relentless endeavours helped to achieve high efficiencies with DSCs in outdoor and indoor environments. The considerable advances were made by developing new panchromatic rigid structure dye systems, new redox shuttles and hole tra sport materials with the underlying fundamental understanding. Under full sun illumination (standard AM 1.5), conversion efficiencies went over 13% with Zn porphyrins and 14% with co-sensitized organic dyes. The new redox couples and electrolytes based on cobalt and copper coordination complexes are able to regenerate the dye at less than 0.2 V.
Importantly, the past issues of he volatility, corrosivity and colour of the electrolytes has been resolved and new high efficiency solid state devices are more amenable to scale up and show excellent stability. Current research and development is the perquisite to improve efficiencies beyond 20%, stability and sustainability for future applications beyond solar energy conversion
- New Sensitizers
- New Materials: electrodes, redox shuttles, charge transport, semiconductors
- New Concepts for Photovoltaic Devices
- Characterisation: device physics, photophysics and materials properties
- Modelling and simulations
- Applications: Modules, BIPV, IPV
Dr Marina Freitag is presently a Royal Society University Research Fellow and Newcastle Academic Track Fellow at School of Natural and Environmental Sciences, Newcastle University, UK. She is continuing her work in coordination chemistry, energy relevant materials and solar cells. Previously, she held as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Chemistry, Uppsala University and a postdoctoral position at EPFL (Prof. Anders Hagfeldt's). She received her PhD degree with Prof. Galoppini from Rutgers University, USA, and her BSc, in Chemistry from Freie Universität Berlin, Germany.
Marina is the inventor of the so-called Zombie-cell and she contributed to recent breakthroughs in dye-sensitized solar cells and their low-light applications. She is a recipient of the Göran Gustafsson's Grand Prize for Young Researchers 2019.
Melepurath Deepa received her PhD in Applied Chemistry from Delhi University, India in 2004. Thereafter, she worked as a Scientist in the Electronic Materials Division at CSIR-National Physical Laboratory. In November 2009, she joined the Department of Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad, and she is currently an Associate Professor and the Head of the Department. Her present research is focused on designing and developing new photoanode and counter electrode architectures for quantum dot solar cells, conducting polymer composites for electrochromic devices and pseudocapacitors, and novel electrode materials for Li-based batteries. She has been a recipient of the CSIR Young Scientist Award in Chemical Sciences (2008), NASI - Young Scientist Platinum Jubilee Award in Chemical Sciences (2010), and the B. M. Birla Science Prize in Chemical Sciences (2013). She has published 125 research articles in peer reviewed SCI journals, contributed to 3 book chapters and filed 4 patents, and has an h-index of 35.
Elena Galoppini was born in Pisa, Italy. She received a Laurea in Chimica from the Università di Pisa, and a Ph.D. from the University of Chicago (synthesis and reactivity of ethynylcubanes, strained cage molecules). She was then a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin, where she synthesized and studied the effect of the helix dipole on electron transfer processes in donor-spacer-acceptor systems made from peptides. She joined as Assistant Professor the Chemistry Department at Rutgers University-Newark, where she is Distingushed Professor since 2017. She a the recipent of the 2019 Rutgers Board of Trustees Award for Excellence in Research and has authored over 100 papers and review articles. The research interests of her group are centered on the design and synthesis of model chromophoric compounds to study electronic processes on nanostructured semiconductor materials. This research finds application in the development of functional nanomaterials, including new types of solar cells, electrochromic windows and biosensors.
Kenneth Hanson received a B.S. in Chemistry from Saint Cloud State University (2005), his Ph.D. from the University of Southern California (2010), followed by an appointment as a postdoctoral scholar at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (2010–2013). His independent research career began in 2013 at Florida State University as a member of the Department of Chemistry & Biochemistry and is affiliated with the Materials Science & Engineering program. His current research interests include the design, synthesis, and characterization of photoactive molecules/materials with particular emphasis on manipulating energy and electron-transfer dynamics at organic–inorganic interfaces using multilayer self-assembly.




Suraj Soman received his PhD in Chemistry from Dublin City University, Ireland in 2012 followed by post-doctoral tenure at Michigan State University, USA. He joined CSIR-NIIST in 2014 and is currently working as Scientist at Chemical Science & Technology Division. His prime research focus is to address basic science issues related to Dye-sensitized Solar Cells (DSCs) for indoor photovoltaics (IPV) & BIPV applications using new generation copper electrolytes. His interdisciplinary research group focuses on establishing structure-function relationships by understanding and advancing the fundamental knowledge through systematic variations of components and interrogating the performance limiting parameters. He played the lead role in setting up India’s first truly indigenous DSC module fabrication line for IPV partnering with industry and was licensed for commercialization in 2019. He is a recipient of CSIR Young Scientist Award (2020), INSA Medal for Young Scientist (2020), Best Emerging Young Scientist Award (2019), BRICS Young Scientist Award (2017), International Strategic Cooperation Award (2015).


This symposium session will provide a broad perspective on some of the critical
questions in energy policy, particularly from the perspective of the global climate
crisis and the developments in renewable energy research. This will involve a 20 min
presentation followed by a 40 min moderated discussion with a diverse panel of
scientists, scientific advisors, and policy-makers to address the ongoing challenges
in energy policy and opportunities for innovation towards a more sustainable future.
Moderator
Dr. Douglas Fabini (Max Planck Institute, Germany)
Keynote Speaker
- Prof. Detlef Van Vuuren (Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency, The Netherlands)
Invited Speakers
- Prof Anke Weidenkaff (Fraunhofer Institute, Germany)
- Prof Van De Lagemaat (NREL, USA)
- Ms Helene Chraye (European Commission)
- Renewable energy
- Sustainability by design
- European Green Deal
- Energy policy
Dr. Jovana V. Milić is a Group Leader at the Adolphe Merkle Institute of the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. She obtained her PhD in the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH Zurich in July 2017. Since October 2017, she works as a scientist with Prof. Michael Graetzel in the Laboratory for Photonics and Interfaces at EPFL on the development of novel photovoltaic materials, with the focus on dye-sensitized and hybrid perovskite solar cells. Her research interests encompass (supra)molecular engineering of bioinspired organic materials with the aim of developing functional nanotechnologies. For more information, refer to her LinkedIn profile (linkedin.com/in/jovanavmilic), ORCID 0000-0002-9965-3460, and Twitter (@jovana_v_milic).
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.
This symposium session will address the critical importance of mentorship in the scientific
enterprise, with particular focus on diversity, inclusion, and gender equity. This will involve
a 15 min keynote presentation followed by a 45 min moderated panel discussion with
outstanding scientists recognized for their mentorship and fostering diversity in science.
Moderator
Prof Mónica Lira-Cantú
Keynote Speaker
Prof Zakya Kafafiz
Panellists
- Prof Ana Flavia Nogueria
- Prof Natalie Stingelin
- Prof Carlos Silva
- Prof Sir Richard Friend
- Prof. Ullrich Steiner
- Prof Bettina Lotsch
- Mentorship
- Diversity in science
- Gender equity
Dr. Jovana V. Milić is a Group Leader at the Adolphe Merkle Institute of the University of Fribourg in Switzerland. She obtained her PhD in the Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences at ETH Zurich in July 2017. Since October 2017, she works as a scientist with Prof. Michael Graetzel in the Laboratory for Photonics and Interfaces at EPFL on the development of novel photovoltaic materials, with the focus on dye-sensitized and hybrid perovskite solar cells. Her research interests encompass (supra)molecular engineering of bioinspired organic materials with the aim of developing functional nanotechnologies. For more information, refer to her LinkedIn profile (linkedin.com/in/jovanavmilic), ORCID 0000-0002-9965-3460, and Twitter (@jovana_v_milic).
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.