Scientific Program

Michael Stanley Whittingham is an English-American chemist. He is currently a professor of chemistry and director of both the Institute for Materials Research and the Materials Science and Engineering program at Binghamton University, part of the State University of New York. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 2019. Whittingham is a key figure in the history of the development of lithium batteries. He discovered the intercalation electrodes in 1970s for the first time and thoroughly described the concept of intercalation reaction for rechargeable batteries in the late of 1970s. He holds the original patents on the concept of the use of intercalation chemistry in high-power density, highly reversible lithium batteries. His work on lithium battery laid the foundations for other followers' later developments. Therefore, he is the called Founding Father of rechargeable lithium batteries.

Vojislav Stamenkovic is a Senior Scientist, Technical Leader and Principal Investigator at the US Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory in Argonne, Illinois. He earned Ph.D. degree in physical chemistry from University of Belgrade in 2001, after spending three years as a visiting scientist at the University of California at Berkeley. Dr. Stamenkovic is an expert in the design and synthesis of functional materials for electrochemical applications, primarily in the elds of polymer electrolyte membrane fuel cells, electrolyzers and batteries. His research interests include materials for energy conversion and storage, electrocatalysis, spectroelectrochemistry, as well as functional bio materials. His work published in high impact journals such as Science and Nature series is often featured in the headlines of Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Stamenkovic serves as an Associate Editor of the ACS Catalysis journal and on the editorial board of Surface Science and Surface Science Letters. In 2004 Dr. Stamenkovic received a Recognition Award from Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory for implementation of fundamental science into nanoscale applications, in 2012 he was awarded the Distinguished Performance Award from University of Chicago and in 2014, he received a presti- gious US DOE Hydrogen and Fuel Cells Award in recognition for his outstanding contributions in catalysts R&D.

Sharon Hammes-Schiffer is a physical chemist who has contributed to theoretical and computational chemistry. She is currently the John Gamble Kirkwood Professor of Chemistry at Yale University.
Sharon Hammes-Schiffer completed her B.A. in chemistry at Princeton University in 1988 and her Ph.D. in chem- istry at Stanford University in 1993. She then worked with John C. Tully at AT&T Bell Laboratories as a postdoc- toral research scientist.
She held positions on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame (1995-2000) and at Pennsylvania State Univer- sity (2000-2012). As of 2012 she joined the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
Hammes-Schiffer studies chemical reactions in solution, in proteins and at electrochemical interfaces, particularly the transfer of charged particles driving many chemical and biological processes. She also researches the effects of Quantum tunnelling and hydrogen bonding on enzymatic reactions and has pioneered work in what she calls the Nuclear-Electronic Orbital Method (NEO) which allows for a more accurate estimate of nuclear properties such as density, geometry, frequencies, electronic coupling, and nuclear motions.
She is an author or co-author of over 250 papers and has given more than 200 invited talks.
She has served as Editor-in-Chief of Chemical Reviews, member of the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science and advisory editor for Theoretical Chemistry Accounts.

Nick Birbilis is Deputy Dean, College of Engineering and Computer Science at The Australian National University (ANU). He was Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Monash University (2013-18); where he was also the inaugural Woodside Innovation Chair. He has a PhD (2004) in Materials Engineering, and was a postdoctoral fellow at The Ohio State University.
His main research interests are related to materials and involve the development of materials, including materials design, modeling and production. He has been involved in the practical development of numerous light alloys and 3D printed alloys - with several patents. His research is highly interdisciplinary, eccompassing both use of machine learning and aaplying projects of social relevance and impact.
He is Associate Editor of Electrochimica Acta (an ISE journal) since 2010, and has been active in a number of so- cieties, including the ISE, ECS and NACE. He has received a number of awards and presented numerous invited lectures. He is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society, Fellow of the National Association of Corrosion Engineers (NACE, USA) and an ARC Australian Research Fellow. He was awarded the ATSE Batterham Medal and named a Victorian Tall Poppy and in 2016 he was awarded the ‘Woodside Innovation Chair’ at Monash, an industrially funded personal chair associated with durability of next generation materials.

Yi Cui is a Professor in Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University. He received a Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry at University of Science and Technology of China in 1998 and attended graduate school from Harvard University. He was a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Berkeley.
His current research is on nanomaterials and electrochemistry for energy storage, catalysis, solar cells and envi- ronment. He is an Associate Editor of Nano Letters, a Co-Director of Battery 500 Consortium and he founded Amprius Inc. in 2008, a company to commercialize the high-energy battery technology. The high-energy batter- ies, that he invented, have started to be used in commercial. In 2017, he co-founded EEnovate Technology Inc. to serve as a technology incubator to commercialize water, textile, large-scale energy storage and new materials technology from his group.
He has won numerous awards, including ECS Fellow (2018), Blavatnik National Laureate in Physical Sciences (2017), MRS Fellow (2016), MRS Fred Kavli Distinguished Lectureship in Nanoscience (2015), Fellow of Royal Soci- ety of Chemistry (2015), Resonate Award for Sustainability (2015), Inaugural Schlumberger Chemistry Lectureship (University of Cambridge, 2015), Top 10 World Changing Ideas for His Work on Batteries to Capture Low-Grade Waste Heat (Scienti c American, 2014), NO. 1 “Hottest Researchers of Today” in Materials Science (Thomas Reuters, 2014), Inaugural Nano Energy Award (2014), the IUPAC Distinguished Award for Novel Materials and Synthesis (2013), the Global Climate and Energy Project Distinguished Lecturer (2009), ONR Young Investigator Award (2008), MDV Innovators Award (2007), the Technology Review World Top Young Innovator Award (2004).

Hector Abruña, Emile M.Chamot Professor of Chemistry, is Director of the Energy Materials Center at Cornell (emc2). He completed his graduate studies with Royce W. Murray and Thomas J. Meyer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1980 and was a postdoctoral research associate with Allen J. Bard at the University of Texas at Austin. After a brief stay at the University of Puerto Rico, he moved to Cornell in 1983. He was Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology from 2004-2008.
Abruña has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Presidential Young Investigator Award, Sloan Fellowship, J. S. Guggenheim Fellowship, and J. W. Fulbright Senior Fellow. He is the recipient of the Electro- chemistry Award for the American Chemical Society (2008), and the C.N. Reilley Award in Electrochemistry for 2007. He was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2007, member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007, and Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry in 2008. He received the D. C. Grahame Award from the Electrochemical Society for 2009, the Faraday Medal of the Royal Society for 2011, and the Brian Conway Prize from the International Society of Electrochemistry for 2013. In 2013, he was made Fellow of the Electrochemical Society. Abruña is the co-author of over 440 publica- tions and has given over 575 invited lectures world-wide. Out of the 50 students that, to date, have obtained a Ph.D. under his direction, 14 have gone on to faculty positions.