Piers studied for his first degree in Physics at the University of Bristol, graduating in 1998. For his PhD (2002) he investigated the physics of polycrystalline ice at the British Antarctic Survey in Cambridge. After two Antarctic field seasons (2000/2001 and 2002/2003) drilling and measuring the world�s oldest ice core record recovered from Dome C he moved to the University of New South Wales in Australia. In 2004 he made a change in research direction to develop photoelectrodes for solar water splitting after winning a post-doctoral fellowship with the CSIRO. In 2006 he was awarded an Ig Nobel prize for �calculating the number of photographs that must be taken to (almost) ensure that nobody in a group photo will have their eyes closed�. Piers returned to the UK (2007) to work as a Research Associate at Imperial College London on interpreting loss mechanisms in dye sensitised solar cells where developed new approaches to simulating and characterising behaviour in this class of devices. In October 2011 he began an EPSRC fellowship at Imperial to measure model and exploit molecular wiring in hybrid optoelectronic devices.

Born in the Netherlands,David Cahen studied chemistry & physics at the Hebrew Univ. of Jerusalem (HUJ), Materials Research and Phys. Chem. at Northwestern Univ, and biophysics of photosynthesis (postdoc) at HUJ and the Weizmann Institute of Science, WIS. After joining the WIS faculty he focused on alternative sustainable energy resources, in particular various types of solar cells. In parallel he researches hybrid molecular/non-molecular systems, focusing on understanding and controlling electronic transport across (bio)molecules. He is a fellow of the AVS and the MRS. He heads WIS' Alternative, sustainable energy research initiative.

He studied electrical engineering in Stuttgart and started working on Si solar cells in 2004 under the guidance of Uwe Rau at the Institute for Physical Electronics (ipe) in Stuttgart. After finishing his undergraduate studies in 2006, he continued working with Uwe Rau first in Stuttgart and later in Juelich on simulations and electroluminescence spectroscopy of solar cells. After finishing his PhD in 2009 and 1.5 years of postdoc work in Juelich, Thomas Kirchartz started a three year fellowship at Imperial College London working on recombination mechanisms in organic solar cells with Jenny Nelson. In 2013, he returned to Germany and accepted a position as head of a new activity on hybrid and organic solar cells in Juelich and simultaneously as Professor for Photovoltaics with Nanostructured Materials in the department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the University Duisburg-Essen. Kirchartz has published >100 isi-listed papers, has co-edited one book on characterization of thin-film solar cells whose second edition was published in 2016 and currently has an h-index of 38.

Philip Schulz holds a position as Research Director for Physical Chemistry and New Concepts for Photovoltaics at CNRS. In this capacity he leads the “Interfaces and Hybrid Materials for Photovoltaics” group at IPVF via the “Make Our Planet Great Again” program, which was initiated by the French President Emmanuel Macron. Before that, Philip Schulz has been a postdoctoral researcher at NREL from 2014 to 2017, and in the Department of Electrical Engineering of Princeton University from 2012 to 2014. He received his Ph.D. in physics from RWTH Aachen University in Germany in 2012.

Susanne Siebentritt is a physics professor and heads the laboratory for photovoltaics at the University of Luxembourg.

Her research interest is twofold: the electronic structure of semiconductors and thin film solar cells and the fundamental functioning and limitations of these devices. Her interest in thin film solar cells is kindled by the fact that they present the electricity source with the lowest carbon footprint.

She is the author of more than 210 peer reviewed publications and has an h-index of 40. In 2014 she received the FNR Outstanding Publication Award, together with three co-authors. In 2015 she was awarded the "Grand Prix en Sciences Physique – Prix Paul Wurth" of the Luxembourgish Institut Grand Ducal. She is a board member of applied research programmes for the energy transition: the Kopernikus project of the German Ministry of Education and Research and “Luxembourg in transition”. She serves on the editorial board of Physical Review Applied and of Solar RRL. She’s the head of the doctoral school in Science and Engineering at the University of Luxembourg.

Thomas Unold leads the Combinatorial Energy Materials Research group in the Department Structure and Dynamics of Energy Materials at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin (HZB). The group currently focuses on the exploration of novel thin film solar cell materials using physical vapor deposition based combinatorial synthesis approaches and high-throughput semiconductor characterization techniques, including temporally and spatially
resolved investigations of the charge carrier dynamics in these materials. Dr. Unold received a PhD in physics at the University of Oregon, and  performed postdoctoral research at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, USA, the Universität Oldenburg and at the Max-Born Institute for
Nonlinear Optics, Berlin, before joining HZB.