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.

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.

MARIA VALNICE BOLDRIN ZANONI is Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the Institute of Chemistry, UNESP, Araraquara. Doctor of Chemical Sciences from the Institute of Chemistry of the University of São Paulo, São Carlos (1989), Post-doctoral at the University of Loughborough, England; University of Wisconsin, Madison, USA and Oxford University. She was advisor of the Research Development from UNESP from 2009-2017. She is currently coordinating of “National institute for alternative technologies of detection, toxicological evaluation and removal of micropollutants and radioaticves”. She has experience in electroanalysis of micropollutants, photoelectrocatalytic processes and environmental electrochemical. In 2014 was honored with the Elsevier/CAPES Award, which highlighted 10 Brazilian researchers, which works had higher impact in the scientific community. Has 208 published papers, with 3624 citations.

Trends in photoelectrocatalysis: a powerful tool in environmental treatment, electroanalysis, water disinfection, hydrogen production and CO2 conversion

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

Theoretical Verification of Photoelectrochemical Water Oxidation Using Nanocrystalline TiO2 Electrodes

Doron Aurbach is a full professor in the department of A senate member and the Director of the cleantech center at the Bar-Ilan Institute of Nanotechnology and Advanced Materials (BINA)

Advances in non-aqueous oxygen electrochemistry, in connection to developing rechargeable Li and Na –oxygen batteries

Marie-Christine Record has completed her PhD in 1992 from Montpellier University (France) and postdoctoral studies from Ecole Centrale Paris (France). She was an associate professor at Montpellier University from 1996 to 2004 and from 2004, she is full professor at the Aix-Marseille University (France) where she works on the elaboration of thin films materials for energy. She has published more than 80 papers in reputed journals and has been serving as an editorial board member of repute.

Electrochemistry

Vladimir Sergeevich Bystrov is a professor at Institute of Mathematical Problems of Biology RAS. He has his expertise in various fields of the Computational Molecular Modeling, Computational exploration and computer simulation of nonlinear multifunctional nanomaterials and ddifferent organic & bio-molecular nano-structures such as: Bioferroelectric & polymer PVDF/PVDF-TrFE thin ferroelectric films, graphene/oxide graphene and related polar composite nanomaterials; amino acids (glycine, etc.), peptides, peptides nanotubes, thymine and DNA, etc); hydroxyapatite (HAP) & nanoparticles, etc. Computational studies of such various nanostructures were made by using of the molecular mechanics, quantum-chemical calculations (ab initio, DFT, semi-empirical methods), molecular dynamics (MD) simulation & combined methods on the base of own software, as well several HyperChem, MOPAC, AIMPRO, VASP and Gaussian software (Linux clusters in Russia IMPB&KIAM, Linux cluster in University of Aveiro, Portugal). He is a Head of Group for Computer Modelling of Nanostructures and Biosystems of IMPB- KIAM RAS.

Computational exploration and computer simulation of nonlinear multifunctional nanomaterials and different organic & bio-molecular nano-structures such as: Bioferroelectric & polymer PVDF/PVDF-TrFE thin ferroelectric films, graphene/oxide graphene and related polar composite nanomaterials; amino acids (glycine, etc.), peptides, peptides nanotubes, thymine and DNA, etc); hydroxyapatite (HAP) & nanoparticles, etc.

James Y. Becker has his expertise in organic electro-synthesis (mostly in non-aqueous media) and mechanistic studies by electrochemical techniques. He is also involved in investigating electrochemical properties of various organoSilicon and organoGermanium compounds, including cyclic and unsaturated derivatives. Recently he has been involved in producing high surface area electrodes, mainly by porous Gold.

Organic Electro-Synthesis

Prof. Kamal K. Kar, Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science is Umang Gupta Chair Professor from July 2014 to June 2017. He pursued higher studies from Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur, India, and Iowa State University, USA before joining as a Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials science at IIT Kanpur in 2001. Prof. Kar is an active researcher in the area of nanostructured carbon materials, nanocomposites, functionally graded materials, nanopolymers, and smart materials for structural, energy and biomedical applications. He has published more than 185 papers in international referred journals, 135 conference papers, 05 books on nanomaterials and their nanocomposites, 30 review articles/book chapters and more than 55 national and international patents. He has guided 17 PhD students and 77 M.Tech students. Currently 17 PhD students, 07 M.Tech students and few visitors are working in his group.

Nanostructured Carbons as Multifunctional Materials for the Advancement of Energy Storage Applications

Pascal Boulet has completed his PhD in 2001 from both the University of Lyon (France) the University of Geneva (Switzerland). He then moved to University College London (England) as a postdoctoral fellow for two years. Since 2003 he is associate professor at the Aix-Marseille University (France) where he works on materials for energy using computational chemistry tools. He has published over than 50 papers in reputed journals.

Electrochemistry

Evgeny Katz received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the Frumkin Institute of Electrochemistry (Moscow) in 1983. He was a senior researcher at the Institute of Photosynthesis (Pushchino), Russian Academy of Sciences (1983-1991), a Humboldt fellow at the Technische Universität München (Germany) (1992-1993), and a research associate professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (1993-2006). Since 2006 he is Milton Kerker Chaired Professor at the Department of Chemistry and Biomolecular Science, Clarkson University, NY (USA). He has (co)authored over 400 papers in the areas of biocomputing, bioelectronics, biosensors and biofuel cells. Thomson Reuters included him in the list of the world’s top 100 chemists over the past 10 years as ranked by the impact of their published research. Professor Katz was also included in the list of top cited chemists prepared by the Royal Society of Chemistry with the worldwide rank 378 based on his Hirsch-index, which is currently 81.

Bioelectronics, Bionanotechnology, Biosensors, Biomolecular computing, Biofuel cells.

Rolando Guidelli obtained his degree in Chemistry at Florence University, Italy, and was appointed by Florence University as a lecturer in Electrochemistry. He was then promoted to full professor of Electrochemistry at the age of 32 years in the Faculty of Science of Florence University. His scientific interests have been focused on electrode kinetics, structure of metal/water interfaces, and bioelectrochemistry. He has won several distinguished prizes in the field of electrochemistry and has published more than 230 papers in reputed journals and several book chapters. Furthermore, he has served as the organizer of several conferences in the field.

What Ion Flow Along Ion Channels Can Tell About Their Functional Activity

Grzegorz Milczarek received his PhD and D.Sc. degree from Faculty of Chemical Technology at Poznan University of Technology (Poznan, Poland). Currently hi is a Professor at the same university. He is also a head of the Division of General and Analytical Chemistry. His research areas include: electrocatalysis, preparation of new materials for energy conversion and storage, preparation of chemically modified electrodes to be used as electrochemical sensors. He has published over 50 peer reviewed publications.

Advanced electroactive materials based on lignosulfonates

Ingo Krossing studied chemistry in Munich (LMU) and finished his Ph.D. thesis 1997 (with Prof. H. Nöth). From 1997 to 1999, he worked as Feodor Lynen postdoc with Prof. J. Passmore at UNB, Canada. In 1999, he started his independent career as a Liebig- and DFG-Heisenberg-Fellow at the Universität Karlsruhe (TH) (mentor: Prof. H. Schnöckel). 2004 he changed as assistant professor to the Ecole Polytechnic Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), before being appointed Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at the Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg in 2006. His research interests cover ionic systems from reactive cations to ionic liquids, as well as electrochemical energy storage. With an ongoing ERC Advanced Grant he develops absolute acidity and reducity scales.

Protoelectric Potential Map – Unified Acidity and Reducity Scales and their Experimental Realization

Dr. Ruiyong Chen received his Ph.D. degree (summa cum laude) in 2011 in physical chemistry from the Saarland University, Saarbrücken, Germany. He is currently a habilitation candidate at the Saarland University and a project leader at the KIST Europe. He has expertise in synthesis and characterization of electrode materials for energy storage systems and energy-efficient electrolysis. He has developed new two lithium intercalation cathode materials with disordered rock-salt structure for improving reversible capacity (up to 400 mAh g-1) for lithium ion batteries. He is currently developing new high voltage aqueous electrolytes for stationary energy storage using redox flow batteries.

High voltage aqueous redox flow batteries

Professor Gupta is the South African Research Chair for Nanotechnology for Water and a Professor in the Department of Applied Chemistry at the University of Johannesburg. He joined the University as a Distinguished Visiting Professor under the Global Excellence and Stature initiative and was subsequently approved by the NRF as the aforementioned SARChI Chairholder. He was a Marie Curie Fellow at the Department of Chemistry, University of Regensburg, Germany, Visiting Professor (DAAD) at the Technical University of Chemnitz and Freie University of Berlin, and a KFUPM Chair Professor at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Mineral in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. He has visited more than 25 countries for research and academic collaborations.

Nanotechnology for Water, Environmental Engineering, Electro-analytical Chemistry, Chemical sensors, Waste Management.

Jim P. Zheng is a Professor and Sprint Eminent Scholar Chair at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Florida A&M University and Florida State University, Adjunct Chair Professor at the College of Automobile Engineering of Tongji University, Adjunct Professor at the Shanghai Institute of Technical Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is the recipient of National Academy of Inventors Fellow, National Research Council Fellow, Army Research & Development Achievement Award, NASA Faculty Research Award, and Progress Energy Professional Development Award. He has published more than 150 articles in scholarly journals, and 140 papers in conference proceedings in the fields of energy storage, fuel cells, nano-sensors, photonics, and thin film growth, and been awarded 18 patents, and 5 patents have been licensed by a private companies. He is the founder of General Capacitor LLC and a co-founder of Bing Energy International Inc.

Nano material and Nanotechnology, Photonic and Chemical Sensors, Li-ion Batteries, Thin film growth, Fuel cells, Nano-sensors, Electrochemical Capacitors, Li-air Batteries.

Werner Paulus is exploring low temperature oxygen diffusion mechanisms in transition metal oxides. Oxygen doping, via topotactic reaction mechanisms while proceeding at ambient temperature is a powerful tool to access structural and electronic complexity in a controlled way. It also allows to better explore the underlying diffusion mechanisms on an atomic scale, having huge importance in solid state ionics, e.g. for the optimisation of battery materials, fuel cell membranes/electrolytes or sensors. Research activities cover synthesis methods from powder to large single crystals and to explore oxygen intercalation reactions in especially dedicated electrochemical cells on single crystals and polycrystalline electrodes by neutron and X-ray diffraction (synchrotron & laboratory), spectroscopy (XAFS, Raman, INS, IXS, NMR) combined with 18O/16O oxygen isotope exchange reactions and sophisticated data analysis (Maximum Entropy, twinning).

Research activities cover synthesis methods from powder to large single crystals and to explore oxygen intercalation reactions in especially dedicated electrochemical cells on single crystals and polycrystalline electrodes by neutron and X-ray diffraction (synchrotron & laboratory), spectroscopy (XAFS, Raman, INS, IXS, NMR) combined with 18O/16O oxygen isotope exchange reactions and sophisticated data analysis (Maximum Entropy, twinning).

Sakari Kulmala is professor of Analytical Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry, Aalto University.

Analytical Chemistry, Electrochemiluminescence and its applications

Venelin Enchev is professor of Theoretical Chemistry in the Institute of Organic Chemistry with Centre of Phytochemistry, Bulgarian Academy of Science.

Organic Chemistry, Physical Chemistry, Theoretical Chemistry, Cheminformatics and Computational Chemistry, Computational Chemistry, Tautomerism, Proton transfer reactions

PD Dr. rer. habil. Daniel A. M. Egbe was born in Mambanda Cameroon on the 20th of May 1966. He obtained his BSc in Physics and Chemistry (major: Organic Chemistry ) in 1991 at the University of Yaoundé Cameroon (presently known as University of Yaoundé I (UYI)- uy1.uninet.cm). He moved to the Friedrich-Schiller University of Jena Germany (uni-jena.de) in 1992, where he obtained a Masters and a Ph. D in Chemistry in 1995 and 1999, respectively. He completed his "Habilitation" in Organic Chemistry at the same institution in 2006, before spending postdoctoral stays at the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany (02/2006-08/2006), at the Technical University of Eindhoven in Holland (2006-2007) and at the Technical University of Chemnitz, Germany (2007-2008). Since 2009, he is a senior scientist the Linz Institute for Organic Solar Cells (LIOS) (lios.at) of the Johannes Kepler University of Linz, Austria (jku.at). His research interests are the syntheses and the study of structure-property relations of (semi)conducting organic and organic/inorganic (hybrid) materials (small molecules and polymers) finding applications in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), organic photovoltaics (OPVs), organic field effect transistors (OFETs), CO2 reduction, etc. He is member of German Chemical Society (GDCh), Organic Electronics Association (OE-A), American Chemical Society (ACS), World University Service (WUS), german chapter (member of board of directors) (wusgermany.de). He is the initiator of the German-Cameroonian Coordination office (KBK-cameroon.net), initiator of ANSOLE, initiator and chairman of ANSOLE Germany e.V. (ansole.org). Since July 2012, he is consultant at ICTP (The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste Italy) on energy issues. He speaks more than 5 languages.

His research interests are the syntheses and the study of structure-property relations of (semi)conducting organic and organic/inorganic (hybrid) materials (small molecules and polymers) finding applications in organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs), organic photovoltaics (OPVs), organic field effect transistors (OFETs), CO2 reduction, etc.

Werner Lottermoser has completed his thesis work about neutron diffraction and magnetism of special silicates from Francfort University (Germany) and university lecturing qualification on Single Crystal Mössbauer Spectroscopy (SCMBS) in 1996 from Salzburg University (Austria). He is now working on sub-nanometric imaging, nanomaterials and materials for industrial applications. He has published more than 65 papers in reputed journals and 150 abstracts and has been serving e.g. for one year as a referee board member at the Journal of Physical Chemistry A. Recently, he was awarded the Austrian Staatspreis for Innovation together with AB-Microelectronics, Salzburg

Materials Science and Mineralogy

Nina Dimcheva graduated from the University of Sofia (M.Sc. in Chemical Physics, 1990) and obtained her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at the University of Plovdiv (2001). Since mid-2006 she is Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry in the same department, The University of Plovdiv, Bulgaria. Her research interests are focused on the catalytic activities and electrochemical characteristics of immobilized enzymes; electrodeposition of nano-clusters of noble metals on graphite/glassy carbon; modification of electrodes by electrically active enzymes and related studies aiming at the development of enzyme-based biocatalytic electrodes.

Electrochemistry, Heterogeneous catalysis, Immobilized oxidative enzymes, Enzyme-modified graphite and noble metals electrodes, Amperometric biosensors, Biofuel cells.

Mirosław Kwiatkowski in 2004 obtained Ph.D. degree at the Faculty of Fuels and Energy, AGH University of Science and Technology in Krakow, in the discipline: technology of chemistry. Currently he is working an assistant professor at the AGH University of Science and Technology, at the Faculty of Energy and Fuels. Main field of his interests is physical chemistry, mathematical modelling of the adsorption process, description of the porous structure, practical aspects of adsorption, an analysis of the influence of the production method on the formation of the porous structure of carbon adsorbents, numerical analysis, computer science, energy efficiency, renewable energies and problems connected with municipal waste management. His published work includes more than 40 papers in international journals and 72 conference proceedings. He is a member of the editorial board of internationals journals as well as a member of the Organizing Committee international conferences, and a regular reviewer in a reputable scientific scientific journals. Apart from scientific work Mirosław Kwiatkowski also does some teaching. Runs classes on computer science, numerical methods, chemistry and is a tutor of a student scientific society called “Green Energy”.

Main field of his interests is physical chemistry, mathematical modelling of the adsorption process, description of the porous structure, practical aspects of adsorption, an analysis of the influence of the production method on the formation of the porous structure of carbon adsorbents, numerical analysis, computer science, energy efficiency, renewable energies and problems connected with municipal waste management.