Advancing Perovskite-Based Photovoltaics

                                  
                                                                        

Hongxia Wang is a Professor and Australian Research Council (ARC) Georgina Sweet Laureate Fellow at Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Her research focuses on developing sustainable approaches for fabricating cost-effective solar cells and energy storage devices with enhanced performance and longevity. She has conducted extensive research on sensitized solar cells, perovskite solar cells, CZTS-based thin-film solar cells, supercapacitors, and batteries. She is an elected Fellow of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute (FRACI). Additionally, she serves as a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts (2020–2025).

Her achievements have been recognized with multiple awards, including the ‘Solar Energy Journal Best Paper Award for 2016 in Photovoltaics’ (International Solar Energy Society) and ‘the Best Research Paper Award in Manufacturing and Material Science’ (China Association for Science and Technology, 2023). She was a recipient of several prestigious fellowships, such as the ARC Laureate Fellowship (2024), ARC Future Fellowship (2012), ARC Postdoctoral Fellowship (Industry, APDI, 2007), and QUT Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellowship (2010). She was awarded QUT’s ‘Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence’ in 2024 and ‘Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Best Research with Real-World Impact’ in both 2015 and 2017.

Nitin P. Padture is the Otis E. Randall University Professor in the School of Engineering, and founding Director of the Initiative for Sustainable Energy, at Brown University (USA). He received B.Tech. in Metallurgical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Bombay (1985), M.S. in Ceramic Engineering from Alfred University (1987), and Ph.D. in Materials Science & Engineering from Lehigh University (1991). Padture was a postdoctoral fellow at the National Institute of Standards and Technology for 3 years, before joining the University of Connecticut (UConn) faculty in January 1995 as Assistant Professor. He became Associate Professor in 1998 and Professor in 2003. Padture served as Interim Department Head at UConn for one year before moving to The Ohio State University (OSU) in January 2005. At OSU he was College of Engineering Distinguished Professor, and also founding Director of the National Science Foundation funded Materials Research Science and Engineering Center. Padture moved to Brown University in January 2012, and most recently he served as Director of Brown's Institute for Molecular and Nanoscale Innovation for about eight years.

Padture’s research interests are in advanced composite, coating, and thin-film materials, for applications ranging from jet engines to emerging solar photovoltaics, impacting the transportation and energy sectors of the economy. Padture has authored or co-authored about 300 publications, including 9 awarded patents, which have been widely cited. He has delivered about 300 invited/ keynote/ plenary talks and seminars in the US and abroad. A Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, Padture has received that society's Roland B. Snow, Robert L. Coble, and Richard M. Fulrath awards. He is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the Materials Research Society. Padture has receive several awards, including the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, the IIT-Bombay Distinguished Alumnus Award, and the Brown University Presidential Faculty Award. Padture is editor of two prestigious journals in the field of materials science & engineering: Acta Materialia and Scripta Materialia.