Biography : Andrew Blakers is E2 Professor of Engineering at the Australian National University. He has held several personal Fellowships (Humboldt, ARC Queen Elizabeth II, ARC Senior Research and Radio Research Board). He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering, the Australian Institute of Physics and the Australian Institute of Energy, and is a Life Member of the International Solar Energy Society and the Australian Conservation Foundation. He is a Public Policy Fellow at ANU in recognition of his extensive outreach activities. He has published more than 400 papers and patents, has won numerous national and international awards, and contributes to numerous review and granting panels. Leadership roles have included founder of the ANU photovoltaic group and research laboratories, Foundation Director of the Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems, Node Director of the ARENA Australian Centre for Advanced Photovoltaics, Director of the ARC Centre for Solar Energy Systems, and Node Director of the Australian CRC for Renewable Energy. He was a lead inventor of PERC silicon solar cell technology (cumulative module sales of $50 billion) and co-inventor of Sliver solar cell technology (subject of a $240 million commercialisation effort by Transform solar including $11 million royalties paid to ANU). He has extensive project management experience, and has procured about $120 million in externally-sourced research-related funding for ANU. In recent years he has contributed to analysis of 100% renewable energy futures, including a global search for pumped hydro energy storage sites; see http://re100.eng.anu.edu.au/

Biography : Qiang Xu received his Ph.D. in 1994 from Osaka University. He is director of AIST-Kyoto University ChEM-OIL, adjunct professor of Kyoto University, specially-appointed professor of Yangzhou University and distinguished honorary professor of Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests include the chemistry of nanostructured materials and their applications, especially for catalysis and energy. He received Thomson Reuters Research Front Award in 2012 and Humboldt Research Award in 2019 and was recognized a highly cited researcher (2014–2019) in Chemistry and Engineering/Materials Science by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate Analytics. He is on a number of editorial/advisory boards of journals, including EnergyChem (Editor-in-Chief, Elsevier), Coordination Chemistry Reviews (Associate Editor, Elsevier), Chem (Cell Press), Matter (Cell Press), Chemistry-an Asian Journal (Wiley), Small Structures (Wiley), ChemNanoMater (Wiley) and Advanced Sustainable Systems (Wiley). He is a fellow of Engineering Academy of Japan (EAJ), European Academy of Sciences (EURASC) and National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI).

Biography : Professor Yuan Chen received a bachelor’s degree from Tsinghua University and a Ph.D. from Yale University. He joined the University of Sydney in 2015. His research focuses on carbon materials and their sustainable energy and environmental applications, including supercapacitors, batteries, electrocatalysts, membranes, and antibacterial coatings. He is a Fellow of the Institution of Chemical Engineers, the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) and Royal Australian Chemical Institute. He received the Australian Research Council Professorial Future Fellowship in 2016, an Excellence in Review Award from Carbon in 2015, a Young Scientist Award from the Singapore National Academy of Science in 2011. He is currently serving as an editor for Carbon (Elsevier). He also serves as Chair for Australian Carbon Society and Asian Association of Carbon Groups since August 2017.

Biography : Shi Xue Dou is a Distingiushed Professor at University of Wollongong, the founding director of ISEM and UOW Research Ambassador for Asia. He received his PhD at Dalhousie University, Canada in 1984 and DSc at the University of New South Wales in 1998 and was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Science and Engineering in 1994. He was awarded the Australian Government’s Centenary Medal in 2003 and Australian Order of Member in 2019 for his contribution to materials science and engineering, multiple Australian Professorial Fellowships from 1993 to 2011, the Vice-Chancellors Senior Excellence Award in 2008, Outstanding Partnership Award in 2012 and the Life Achievement Award from ASTS in 2018. He is named as a highly cited researcher in materials science by Thomson Reuters with citations of 45,000 and h-index of 98 (Scopus). His research focusses on energy and electronic materials. He has supervised and co-supervised 98 PhD students, more than 60 postdoctoral and visiting fellows. He is program leader for Auto CRC 2020 on electrification program and the on-going ARENA 2016-2020 on smart sodium storage system program.