EES symposium

Professor Hao completed her PhD in 2010 at the School of Photovoltaic and Renewable Energy Engineering, UNSW, Sydney, Australia. Her pioneering research focuses on the development of earth-abundant, thin-film materials and devices for solar photovoltaics and solar fuel applications. Leading a prominent research group, she has set multiple efficiency records for emerging thin-film solar cells. Prof Hao has published >200 peer-reviewed journal papers, including publications in Nature Energy, Nature Photonics, and Energy & Environmental Science. She has been awarded a number of prestigious awards for her research excellence, including 2020 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science: Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year, 2021 Australian Academy of Science Pawsey Medal.

Saiful Islam is Professor of Materials Science at the University of Oxford. He grew up in London and obtained his Chemistry degree and PhD from University College London. He then worked at the Eastman Kodak Labs in New York, and the Universities of Surrey and Bath. His research focuses on understanding and developing new materials for lithium and sodium batteries, solid-state batteries and perovskite solar cells.
 
Saiful has received several awards including the 2022 Royal Society Hughes Medal for energy research, 2020 ACS Award in Energy Chemistry and 2017 RSC Peter Day Award in Materials Chemistry. He presented the 2016 BBC Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on the theme of energy which included a lemon battery world record. He is a Patron of Humanists UK, and when not exploring energy materials, he enjoys family breaks (as a dad of two), films and indie music.

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, aiming to optimise solar cell performance based on molecular and hybrid materials. Since 2010 she has been working together with the Grantham Institute for Climate Change to explore the mitigation potential of photovoltaic and other renewable, technologies. Jenny has published over 200 articles in peer-reviewed journals, several book chapters and a book on the physics of solar cells. She was awarded the 2009 Institute of Physics Joule Prize and medal and the 2012 Royal Society Armourers and Brasiers Company Prize for her research.

Jan Rossmeisl is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen. He joined the University of Copenhagen in 2015 having previously been an Associate Professor at the Danish Technical University. Since 2020 he has headed a Danish National Research Foundation, Center of Excellence, Center for High Entropy Alloy Catalysis and in 2024 he received an ERC synergy grant together with three others. Jan is coauthor on more than 250 papers and on the Clarivate highly cited researchers list. Jan is also a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. His research interests include theoretical catalysis, electrocatalysis, high entropy materials and simulations of chemical systems.

Jennifer Wilcox is Presidential Distinguished Professor of Chemical Engineering and Energy Policy at the University of Pennsylvania, with a home at the Kleinman Center for Energy Policy and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. At Penn, she oversees the Clean Energy Conversions Lab.
 
Wilcox is also a senior fellow at the World Resources Institute, where she leverages her expertise to help accelerate policy support and investments in research, development, and deployment of industrial decarbonization and carbon removal solutions in order to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050. 
 
Most recently, Wilcox served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for the Office of Fossil Energy and Carbon Management at the Department of Energy. Before coming to Penn, she was the James H. Manning Chaired Professor of Chemical Engineering at Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
 
Wilcox’s research takes aim at the nexus of energy and the environment, developing both mitigation and adaptation strategies to minimize negative climate impacts associated with society’s dependence on fossil fuels. This work carefully examines the role of carbon management and opportunities therein that could assist in preventing 2° C warming by 2100. Carbon management includes a mix of technologies spanning from the direct removal of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to its capture from industrial, utility-scale exhaust streams, followed by utilization or reliable storage of carbon dioxide on a timescale and magnitude that will have a positive impact on our current climate change crisis.
Funding for her research is primarily sourced through the National Science Foundation, Department of Energy and the private sector. She has served on a number of committees including the National Academy of Sciences and the American Physical Society to assess carbon capture methods and impacts on climate. She is currently a member of the Energy & Environmental Science Journal Editorial Board. She is the author of the first textbook on carbon capture and, most recently, the CDR Primer. In 2023, she was named one of the TIME 100 Climate.

Karen Wilson is Professor of Catalysis at the Centre for Catalysis and Clean Energy at Griffith University in Queensland, and previously held professorial positions at RMIT University (2018-23) and Aston University (2013-17). At Aston she was also Research Director of the European Bioenergy Research Institute and held a prestigious Royal Society Industry Fellowship in collaboration with Johnson Matthey. Karen holds a BA and PhD from the University of Cambridge, and MSc in heterogeneous catalysis from the University of Liverpool, and has also held academic positions at the University of York and Cardiff University. She has published >300 peer-reviewed articles (h-index 82, >24,500 citations Google Scholar). Karen’s research interests lie in the design the design of tunable porous materials for sustainable biofuels and chemicals production from renewable resources. Karen is Associate Editor of Sustainable Energy & Fuels (Royal Society of Chemistry), and Energy & Environmental Materials (Wiley) and Editorial Board member for Energy & Environmental Science (Royal Society of Chemistry). She is also a co-investigator and theme leader the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence, ‘Green Electrochemical Transformation of Carbon Dioxide’ - GetCO2.