Fatwa F. Abdi is an Associate Professor in the School of Energy and Environment at City University of Hong Kong (CityUHK). He obtained his undergraduate and masters’ degrees in Materials Science and Engineering from Nanyang Technological University, National University of Singapore and Massachusetts Institute of Technology. After a brief stint in the semiconductor industry, he then received his PhD (cum laude) in Chemical Engineering from Delft University of Technology, the Netherlands, and was awarded the Martinus van Marum Prize by the Royal Dutch Society of Sciences and Humanities. Prior to joining CityUHK, he spent a decade at Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie, Germany, where he served as Group Leader and Deputy Director of the Institute for Solar Fuels. His research group focuses on the development of materials, devices, and integrated systems for solar-to-chemical conversion. Combining advanced characterization, multiphysics modeling, and device engineering, the work in his group spans topics ranging from fundamental charge carrier processes in photoelectrode materials to scalable technologies for solar fuel and chemical production.

Luka Đorđević is an Associate Professor at the Department of Chemical Sciences, University of Padova. He obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Trieste and was a visiting scholar at the Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard University. After postdoctoral research at the Universities of Trieste and Cardiff, he joined Northwestern University as a fellow at the Center for Bio-Inspired Energy Science. 

In 2023, Luka established his independent research group at the University of Padova, supported by an ERC Starting Grant and the Rita Levi-Montalcini program. His research focuses on molecular and supramolecular approaches to solar-to-chemical energy conversion, with particular emphasis on π-conjugated photocatalytic materials and the use of visible light to convert abundant feedstocks into fuels and value-added chemicals. 

Paolo Fornasiero is Full Professor and Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Trieste, where he also serves as Vice-Rector for Research. His research focuses on multifunctional nanomaterials for heterogeneous catalysis, energy conversion, and environmental sustainability.

He has co-authored more than 370 scientific papers, receiving over 44,000 citations. He has served as Associate Editor of ACS Catalysis since 2015 and as Executive Editor since 2021. He is a member of the Accademia dei Lincei, Academia Europaea, and the European Academy of Sciences, and has received numerous national and international awards, including the 2016 Heinz Heinemann Award and the 2026 Royal Society of Chemistry Environment, Sustainability and Energy Horizon Prize.

Yun Jeong Hwang is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Seoul National University (SNU). She earned her B.S. and M.S. in Chemistry from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) and completed her Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley, where she studied charge separation in semiconductor nanowire arrays for photoelectrochemical water splitting. She began her independent research career at the Clean Energy Research Center of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), where she was a pioneering member of the e-chemical (electrochemical CO₂ conversion) project, before joining SNU as an Associate Professor in 2021. Her research focuses on electrochemical catalytic reactions for carbon, nitrogen, hydrogen, and oxygen utilization, including CO₂ conversion, H₂O splitting, nitrogen reduction reactions, biomass upgrading, and the formation of N-containing small molecules. Her research encompasses various in situ/operando electrochemical spectroscopic analyses to elucidate reaction pathways and nanocatalyst surface dynamics. She has served as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Materials Chemistry A and Materials Advances (Royal Society of Chemistry) since 2019, and Editorial Advisory Board of Chem Catalysis and ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces. Her honors include the 2020 Top 10 Technology Award in Climate Change Response (Korean Government Ministerial Commendation), the 2020 Top 100 National R&D Award as Project Investigator, and selection as a member of the Young Korean Academy of Science and Technology (Y-KAST). 

(ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0980-1758;  https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=S5ivX2UAAAAJ&hl)

Professor Jae Sung Lee received his BS degree from Seoul National University in 1975, MS degree from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology in 1977, and PhD degree from Stanford University in 1984. After a brief tenure at Catalytica Inc. as a research fellow, he returned to his native Korea to become a professor of chemical engineering at Pohang University of Science and Technology (POSTECH). He and his group moved to Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST) in 2013. He has been leading a research group of the “eco-friendly catalysis and energy laboratory (Ecocat)”, whose research interests are focused on photocatalysis/photoelectrochemistry for solar energy conversion, electrocatalysis for water splitting, and heterogeneous catalysis of CO₂ utilization. He has special interest in solar fuel production via photoelectrochemical cells for practical applications.

He served as the President of Korean Association of Photo Science (KAPS) and the Treasurer of Asian Pacific Association of Catalysis Societies (APACS). He is a member of Korean Academy of Engineers. He is (or was) in the editorial boards of Journal of Catalysis, Applied Catalysis A, Journal of Molecular Catalysis, ChemCatChem, Catalysts, Catalysis Letters, and Artificial Photosynthesis. He served as a technical advisor for many Korean chemical companies including Sam Sung Petrochemicals, Sam Sung Advanced Institute of Technology, and LG Chemicals. He was the recipient of Green Energy Prize 2005 (Korean Society of Energy Engineering) and Yeosan Catalysis Research Prize 2010 (Korean Institute of Chemical Engineers). He has ⁓470 peer-reviewed publications, which have been cited more than 38000 times (H-index: 107 by WoS), and ~100 granted patents.

Suljo Linic was born in northwestern Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he completed his elementary and high school education. His family were forcefully displaced from Bosnia during the Bosnian war of 1990s. He moved to the USA in 1994 after being awarded a faculty scholarship from West Chester University (West Chester, PA).  He completed his BS degree in Physics with minors in Mathematics and Chemistry at West Chester University (PA) in the spring of 1998. Suljo obtained his PhD degree in chemical engineering at University of Delaware, specializing in surface and colloidal chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis. He was a Max Planck postdoctoral fellow with Prof. Dr. Matthias Scheffler at the Fritz Haber Institute of Max Planck Society in Berlin (Germany), working on first principles studies of surface chemistry. He started his independent faculty career in 2004 at the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor where he is currently Martin Lewis Perl Collegiate Professor of Chemical Engineering and the director of Energy Systems Engineering program. He was also a Hans Fischer Faculty Fellow from 2015 to 2019 at the Department of Chemistry at Technical University in Munich. He served as an associate chair in the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Michigan from 2017 – 2022.

Suljo’s research has been recognized through multiple awards including the Gabor A. Somorjai Award by ACS, the Emmett Award by The North American Catalysis Society, the ACS Catalysis Lectureship for the Advancement of Catalytic Science awarded annually by the ACS Catalysis journal and Catalysis Science and Technology Division of ACS, the Nanoscale Science and Engineering Forum Young Investigator Award by American Institute of Chemical Engineers, the ACS Unilever Award awarded by the Colloids and Surface Science Division of ACS, the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award awarded by the Dreyfus Foundation, the DuPont Young Professor Award, and a NSF Career Award. Suljo has presented more than 250 invited and keynote lectures, published more than 110 peer-reviewed papers in leading journal with over 27,000 citations. He serves as the associate editor of Journal of Catalysis.  

Dr. Dooshaye Moonshiram is a Senior Scientist and Group Leader at ICMM-CSIC (Madrid, Spain). Her research focuses on the use of advanced X-ray techniques to investigate catalytic processes relevant to artificial photosynthesis, solar fuel production, and sustainable energy conversion. Through the combination of synchrotron and X-ray free-electron laser methods with spectroscopy and photochemistry, her work seeks to unravel the structural and electronic dynamics that govern these complex reactions.

Since establishing her independent research program, she has built a multidisciplinary team working at the interface of spectroscopy, catalysis, and photochemistry. Her research has resulted in publications in journals including JACS, Nature Chemistry, PNAS, and Nature Communications. Her group is currently developing molecular systems based on earth-abundant elements for applications in solar energy conversion and sustainable catalysis.

Prof. Dr. Andrea Ramírez Ramírez is Professor of Low-Carbon Systems and Technologies and Head of the Department of Chemical Engineering at Delft University of Technology (TU Delft), the Netherlands. She holds a BSc in Chemical Engineering, an MSc in Human Ecology, and a PhD focused on industrial energy efficiency. Her research develops methodologies and decision-support tools to evaluate emerging low-carbon technologies and their potential contribution to sustainable industrial systems. Internationally recognized for her expertise in techno-economic, environmental, and systems assessments, she has played a leading role in advancing the evidence base for industrial defossilization and energy transition strategies. Prof. Ramírez Ramírez has co-authored more than 140 peer-reviewed scientific publications. She served as Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Greenhouse Gas Control, is a Fellow of the Netherlands Academy of Engineering, and actively contributes to national research and innovation agendas as a champion of the Energy Transition route within the Dutch Research Agenda (NWA).

Qian Wang is a Professor at Nagoya University, Japan. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Tokyo in 2014 and continued her research there as a postdoctoral researcher within the Artificial Photosynthetic Chemical Process Technology Research Association project. In 2018, she was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Fellowship and moved to the University of Cambridge, where she further developed her research in artificial photosynthesis. In 2021, she returned to Japan to join Nagoya University as an Associate Professor and was promoted to Professor in 2025, establishing her own research group. Her research team focuses on developing new materials, strategies and technologies for artificial photosynthesis, with the goal of efficiently converting solar energy into renewable fuels and chemicals.

Li-Zhu Wu is a full professor of Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Her research is focused on photochemical synthesis and solar energy conversion to the “Solar Light to Energy Conversion processes” that is evolving from the stage of Proof of Concept to becoming a Reality with practical interests. Her awards include National Nature Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholar of China, the 10^th China Youth Science and Technology Award, the 7^th Young Women Scientists award of China, a Certificate of Merit of the 3^rd National Innovation Award, the 9^th China Chemical Society-China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation Chemical Contribution Award. She was elected as a Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2019, a Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in 2021, a New Cornerstone Investigator in 2022.