Light-driven chemistry for a sustainable future

Alexandra Boltasseva is a Ron and Dotty Garvin Tonjes Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, USA. She received her PhD in electrical engineering at Technical University of Denmark, DTU in 2004. Boltasseva specializes in nanophotonics, quantum photonics, and optical materials. She is the 2023 recipient of the R.W. Wood Prize (Optica, formerly Optical Society of America), 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, 2018 Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists Finalist and received the 2013 Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Photonics Society Young Investigator Award, 2013 Materials Research Society (MRS) Outstanding Young Investigator Award, the 2011 MIT Technology Review Top Young Innovator (TR35), the 2009 Young Researcher Award in Advanced Optical Technologies from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and the Young Elite-Researcher Award from the Danish Council for Independent Research (2008). She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), MRS, IEEE, Optica, and SPIE.

Jennifer Dionne is an associate professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford, and an affiliate faculty of the Stanford Neurosciences Institute, TomKat Center for Sustainable Energy, and Bio-X. Jen received her PhD in Applied Physics at the California Institute of Technology, advised by Harry Atwater, and BS degrees in Physics and Systems & Electrical Engineering from Washington University in St. Louis. Prior to joining Stanford, she served as a postdoctoral researcher in Chemistry at Berkeley, advised by Paul Alivisatos. Jen’s research develops new nanophotonic materials and microscopies to observe chemical and biological processes as they unfold with nanometer scale resolution. She then uses these observations to help improve energy-relevant processes (such as photocatalysis and energy storage) and medical diagnostics. Her work has been recognised with a Moore Inventor Fellowship (2017), the Materials Research Society Young Investigator Award (2017), Adolph Lomb Medal (2016), and Sloan Foundation Fellowship (2015), and was featured on Oprah’s list of '50 Things that will make you say ‘Wow’!'. She currently serves as director of the DOE-funded Photonics at Thermodynamic Limits Energy Frontier Research Center and faculty co-director of Stanford’s Photonics Research Center.

Andrew M Beale is an EPSRC Early career Fellow and Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at UCL based at the Research Complex at Harwell, Rutherford Appleton Laboratories in Harwell, Didcot. He is also co-director of the spin-off company Finden Ltd. Current research interests fall mainly into the category of catalysis and solid-state chemistry particularly studied under dynamic or operando conditions. Specific areas of interest include the development of novel imaging techniques (‘multimodal’) for the study of single catalyst bodies/grains under real reaction conditions, determining the nature of the active site and reaction mechanism in catalysts for NOx abatement, methane activation/upgrading, unravelling the self-assembly mechanism of the microporous materials and the characterisation of catalytically active supported nanoparticles.

Professor Junwang (John) Tang is a member of the Academia of Europaea, Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences, Fellow of RSC, Fellow of IMMM and Honorary Fellow of CCS. He is currently the Director of Industrial Catalysis Center and Carbon Neutrality Chair Professor of Materials Chemistry and Catalysis at Tsinghua University, China and Visiting Professor at University College London, UK.

Tang has pioneered in coupling photons with phonons for small molecule activation to produce zero-carbon fuels (eg H2O to H2, N2 to NH3) and green chemicals (CO2 to alcohols and CH4 to long chain hydrocarbons) as well as microwave catalysis (eg chemical plastic recycling), together with the investigation of the underlying charge dynamics and kinetics by state-of-the-art spectroscopies. He is also the Editor / Associate Editor of five journals, including Appl Catal B, EES Solar etc.

Susannah Scott is a Distinguished Professor in Chemical Engineering and in Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She earned her PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from Iowa State University and conducted postdoctoral research at the Institut de recherches sur la catalyse in Lyon, France. In 1994, she joined the faculty of the University of Ottawa, Canada, where she was named a Canada Research Chair. In 2003, she moved to Santa Barbara, where she currently holds the Mellichamp Chair in Sustainable Catalysis. Recently, she delivered the Ipatieff Lecture at Northwestern, the Grace Hopper Lecture at the University of Pennsylvania, the Kurt Wohl Memorial Lecture at the University of Delaware, the Boulder Scientific Lecture at the Colorado State University, the Eastman Foundation Lectures at the University of California, Berkeley, and the Irving Wender Lecture at the Pennsylvania State University. In 2022, she chaired the Gordon Research Conference on Catalysis. Her research interests focus on the design of catalysts for the conversion of conventional and unconventional carbon-based feedstocks.  

Professor Anatoly V Zayats is the head of the Photonics & Nanotechnology at the Department of Physics, King’s College London, where he also leads Nano-optics and Near-field Spectroscopy Laboratory. He is a Co-Director of the London Centre for Nanotechnology and the London Institute of Advanced Light Technologies. His current research interests are in the areas of nanophotonics, plasmonics, metamaterials, plasmocatalysis, nonlinear and ultrafast optics and spectroscopy, photonic spin-orbit interactions, and optical properties of surfaces, thin films, semiconductors and low-dimensional structures. He is a founding Editor-in-Chief of Advanced Photonics journal. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics, the Optical Society of America, SPIE, the Royal Society of Chemistry and elected Member of Academia Europaea.