Professor Pankaj Vadgama qualified in Medicine and Chemistry. He is Professor of Clinical Biochemistry and recently, Director of the Interdisciplinary Research Centre in Biomedical Materials, at Queen Mary University of London. His interests are in electrochemical biosensors for near-patient and in vivo monitoring, using miniaturised sensors and microdialysis. He has adapted biosensor chemistry for direct operation in biofluids and tissue, and has over 200 publications, 20 published patents. His underpinning research is in membrane technology for device packaging, and he was one of the first to report diffusion control membranes for extended linear range enzyme electrodes. Membrane systems for electrochemistry include microporous and anionic membranes, variously for selectivity and extended linearity to cover the clinical ranges of metabolites. He has variously worked on spider silk as an implant material, microfluidics for diagnostics, recess electrodes for reduced biofouling and electrochemically based mass transport measurement at bone adhesives as a surrogate for mechanical strength measurement during materials ageing. He has recently completed work on nanosilver as an antimicrobial agent for urine catheters and has established design strategies for a biodegradable electrochemical sensor for potential use for wound care. He is co-founder of a sensors spinout company, Camstech Ltd., to develop point of care sensors, and is Editor in Chief of Bioelectrochemistry.

Membrane technology for device packaging

Professor Yuyuan Zhao obtained his BEng and MSc degrees from Dalian University of Technology, and PhD degree from Oxford University. He worked as a Lecturer at Dalian University of Technology and a Research Fellow at Birmingham University, before he joined Liverpool University in 1998 as a Lecturer. He was subsequently promoted to Senior Lecturer, Reader and then Professor, and served as Head of the Centre for Materials and Structures from 2014 to 2016. He is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM). Professor Zhao pioneered the Sintering and Dissolution Process (SDP) for manufacturing aluminium foam. He further invented the Lost Carbonate Sintering (LCS) process, a more versatile and cost-effective method for producing micro-porous metals. The LCS technology has led to the creation of Versarien, a highly successful start-up company which was floated on London Stock Market in 2013. Professor Zhao was awarded the Ivor Jenkins Medal in 2015 by the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining for his contribution to powder metallurgy in developing and commercialising innovative powder based technologies for manufacturing metal foams.

Professor Zhao’s research is focused on the manufacture, characterization and applications of porous metals and metal matrix syntactic foams. His current interests are thermal and electrochemical properties of porous metals and their applications in thermal management and porous electrodes.

Dr. Osman Adiguzel graduated from Department of Physics, Ankara University, Turkey in 1974 and received PhD- degree from Dicle University, Diyarbakir-Turkey. He studied at Surrey University, Guildford, UK, as a post doctoral research scientist in 1986-1987, and his studies focused on shape memory alloys.

Shape memory effect and displacive phase transformations in shape memory alloys and other alloys, molecular dynamics simulations, alloy modeling, electron microscopy, electron diffraction, x-ray diffraction and crystallography.

Rainer Waser received his PhD in physical chemistry at the University of Darmstadt in 1984, and worked at the Philips Research Laboratory, Aachen, until he was appointed Professor at the faculty for Electrical Engineering and Information Technology of the RWTH Aachen University in 1992 and director of the Institute for Electronic Materials at the Forschungszentrum Jülich, in 1997. He is member of the Emerging Research Devices working group of the ITRS, and he has been collaborating with major semiconductor industries in Europe, the US, and the Far East. Since 2002, he has been the coordinator and spokesman of the research program on Nanoelectronic Systems in Information Technology within the Germany national research centres in the Helmholtz Association. In 2007, he has been co-founder of the Jülich-Aachen Research Alliance, section Fundamentals of Future Information Technology (JARA-FIT). Together with Professor Wuttig, he heads a collaborative research center on resistively switching chalcogenides for future electronics (SFB 917) which comprises of 14 institutes within JARA-FIT and has been funded by the German national science foundation (DFG) since 2011. In 2014, Rainer Waser received the Leibniz Prize of the DFG for his work on the phenomenon of redox-based resistive switching.

Redox-based resistive switching Valence change mechanism in transistion metal oxides Non-volatile memories based on resistive switching Electrocatalytic reactions at oxide surfaces

Marie-Christine Record is Full Professor of Materials Chemistry at the University of Aix-Marseille (France) since 2004. She earned her PhD from the University of Montpellier (France) in 1992 and after a post-doc position at Ecole Centrale Paris, she was hired as a Lecturer at the University of Montpellier. She has published more than 100 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as an editorial board member of repute.

Her main field of interest is the elaboration of materials. Her skills spread from the determination of phase diagrams to the synthesis of materials by using methods such as mechanical alloying, Self-propagating-High-temperature Synthesis and electrochemistry. She has been working on materials for application purposes. She is currently working on the elaboration of 2D and 1D nanomaterials by Electro-Chemical-Atomic-Layer Epitaxy.

Xin Jiang is the Head of the Chair of Surface and Materials Technology at the University of Siegen, He was the Senior Scientist of the Fraunhofer Institute for Surface Engineering and Thin Films , Braunschweig in 2003

Thin-film technology, surface and interface phenomena, nanomaterials, application of thin layers

Shozo Yanagida is an emeritus professor of Osaka University and a research director of “Research Association for Technological Innovation of Organic Photovoltaics” (RATO) of University of Tokyo. Since he was promoted to a professor of newly established “Koza” (research course) of Graduate School of Engineering in Osaka University (1980), he had contributed to photochemical conversion of solar energy, e.g., excellent photocatalyses of both nano-sized (quantized) ZnS and poly- & oligo-paraphenylene. When he was staying at SERI (now ENREL) as a visiting professor of Dr. A. Nozik’s group in 1984, he understood that organic molecules and their aggregates are kinds of quantum dots themselves. He has his expertise in evaluation of dye-sensitized solar cells, i.e., molecular structured photovoltaics, and passion in improving photo-conversion efficiency and long-term durability of solar cells in view of unidirectional electron flow and electron lifetime in solar cell devices.

Molecular modeling of effective and efficient electrochemical processes that are driven by amorphous and molecular structured materials.

Doron Burshtain has completed his PhD in Analytical Electrochemistry and Interfaces from The Hebrew University in Jerusalem (Israel) in 2005, and postdoctoral studies on The Weismann Institute of Sciences (Israel). He is the R&D Manager of 3DBattery Ltd., a start-up company developing revolutionary techniques for battery preparation. At the same time, during the past two years served as a consultant at the Weismann institute of science in Rehovot (Israel), at Prof. Jacob Sagiv’s group. He has published more than 30 papers and patents in reputed journals and major patents offices around the globe (granted and pending). In the recent years deeply involved in the cutting-edge research and development technologies of Energy Storage devices.

Interfacial Electrochemistry and surface modifications, Lithium Ion and post lithium rechargeable batteries, Energy storage devices.