Harry Atwater is the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology. Atwater’s scientific interests have two themes: light-matter interactions in materials and solar energy conversion. Atwater is also an early pioneer in nanophotonics and plasmonics; he gave the name to the field of plasmonics in 2001.  He has created new high efficiency solar cell designs, and has pioneered principles for light management in solar cells.

Harry Atwater is a Member of US National Academy of Engineering, and is also a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society, SPIE and the National Academy of Inventors.  He is the founding Editor in Chief for the journal ACS Photonics, and is Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Photovoltaics. In 2006 he founded the Gordon Research Conference on Plasmonics, which he served as chair in 2008.   He is also the founding Director of the Resnick Sustainability Institute at Caltech, and he currently serves as Director of the DOE Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis, and as the Strategic Director for the QESST ERC program.  He also serves as Chair of the LightSail Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot program.

Atwater is the co-founder of Alta Devices, a solar photovoltaics company in Santa Clara, CA, that holds the current world records for 1 Sun single solar cell efficiency and module efficiency, and is currently transitioning GaAs photovoltaics technology to large-scale manufacturing and large-scale production. In addition to all of the above achievement, Atwater is the founding Editor-in-Chief of ACS Photonics.

Professor Atwater received his B. S., M. S. and Ph.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology respectively in 1981, 1983 and 1987. He held the IBM Postdoctoral Fellowship at Harvard University from 1987-88, and has been a member of the Caltech faculty since 1988.

Zhenan Bao is a K.K. Lee Professor of Chemical Engineering, and by courtesy, a Professor of Chemistry and a Professor of Material Science and Engineering at Stanford University. Prior to joining Stanford in 2004, she was a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies from 1995-2004. She received her Ph.D in Chemistry from the University of Chicago in 1995. She has over 450 refereed publications and over 60 US patents. She pioneered a number of design concepts for organic electronic materials. Her work has enabled flexible electronic circuits and displays. In her recent work, she has developed skin-inspired organic electronic materials, which resulted in unprecedented performance or functions in medical devices, energy storage and environmental applications.

Bao is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Inventors.

Bao was selected as Nature’s Ten people who mattered in 2015 as a “Master of Materials” for her work on artificial electronic skin. She was awarded ACS Award on Applied Polymer Science 2017, The L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award in the Physical Sciences 2017

Bao is a co-founder and on the Board of Directors for C3 Nano and PyrAmes, both are silicon-valley venture funded start-ups.

Jillian Buriak holds the Canada Research Chair of Nanomaterials for Energy, and the Alberta Innovates Industry Chair for Solar Energy. Buriak’s research group is interested in several themes of materials chemistry, including the development of materials for energy applications, including photovoltaics and energy storage, self-assembly for nanopatterning applications on semiconductor surfaces, and mechanistic surface chemistry on semiconductors such as silicon. She is presently Editor-in-Chief of the American Chemical Society journal, Chemistry of Materials.

Buriak is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), and the Royal Society of Canada. Recent awards include the Arthur Doolittle Award from the Polymer Materials Science and Engineering Division (PMSE) of the American Chemical Society (ACS), the Rio Tinto Alcan Award of the Canadian Society for Chemistry (CSC),  the Burghausen Award from the City of Burghausen, Germany, the E. W. R. Steacie Award from the CSC, and others. Buriak was on the Board of Reviewing Editors (BoRE) at Science from 2003 to 2008, was an Associate Editor at ACS Nano from 2009 to 2013.

Buriak received an A.B. from Harvard University in 1990, and a Ph.D. from the Université Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg, France, in 1995. After an NSERC postdoctoral appointment at The Scripps Research Institute in La Jolla, California, Buriak started her independent faculty career at Purdue University in 1997, being promoted to associate professor, with tenure, in 2001. In 2003 she joined the University of Alberta and the National Institute for Nanotechnology as a full professor and Canada Research Chair.

Dr. Xiaodong Chen is a Professor in the Materials Science & Engineering Department and in the Physics & Applied Physics Department at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. In addition, he is the Director of Innovative Centre for Flexible Devices (iFLEX) at NTU and the Director of Max Planck – NTU Joint Lab for Artificial Senses. He received his B.S. degree (honors) in chemistry from Fuzhou University, China in 1999, M.S. degree (honors) in physical chemistry from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2002, and Ph.D. degree (Summa Cum Laude) in biochemistry from University of Muenster, Germany in 2006.  After his postdoctoral fellowship at Northwestern University, United States, he started his independent research career as NRF Fellow and Nanyang Assistant Professor at NTU since 2009.  He was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in Sept 2013, then Full Professor in Sept 2016.  His research interests include mechano-materials and devices, integrated nano-bio interface, and cyber-human interfaces.  Dr. Chen is an Associate Editor for Nanoscale and Nanoscale Advances and Scientific Editor for Nanoscale Horizons.  He is a member of the editorial advisory board for Advanced Materials, Small Methods, Advanced Materials Technology, Advanced Intelligent Systems, Materials Today Energy, and ACS Applied Bio Materials.  He was recognized by more than ten prestigious awards and honors including the Singapore NRF Investigatorship, Small Young Innovator Award, Singapore NRF Fellowship, Nanyang Research Award, Advanced Materials Hall of Fame, Lubrizol Young Materials Science Investigator Award, Mitsui Chemicals-SNIC Industry Award in Materials and Nano-chemistry, Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate Analytics, and the Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry

EDUCATION

Harvard University, Cambridge, MA – Ph.D. in Applied Physics/Physical Chemistry, 1994.

Columbia University, New York, NY – M.S. in Applied Sciences in 1991.

Tsinghua University, Beijing, P. R. China – B.S. in Physics in 1989.

PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES

• G. Jackson and C. J. Wood Professor of Chemistry, Stanford University. October 2007 to present
• Professor of Chemistry, Stanford University. January 2006 to present.
• Associate Professor of Chemistry, Stanford University, September 2002 to 2005.
• Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, September 1997 to August 2002.
• 1995 to 1997, Postdoctoral Fellow, Rice University. Adviser: Professor Richard Smalley.

AWARDS AND HONORS

• NIH Director’s Pioneer Award, 2017.
• Member of the US National Academy of Sciences, 2016.
• Materials Research Society (MRS) Mid-Career Researcher Award, 2016.
• Honorary Chair Professor of National Taiwan University of Science and Technology, 2015.
• Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences, 2010
• Fellow of American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 2009.
• The Ramabrahmam and Balamani Guthikonda Award at Columbia University, 2009.
• American Physical Society James McGroddy Prize for New Materials, 2006.
• Changjian Visiting Professorship, Tsinghua University, China. 2005-2008.
• Julius Springer Prize for Applied Physics, 2004
• Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award, 2002
• American Chemical Society Pure Chemistry Award, 2002
• Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow, 2001
• Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering, 1999
• Terman Fellowship, Stanford University, 1998
• Young Microscopist of the Year Award, from Molecular Imaging Co., 1998
• Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award, 1997

H-index: 180. ~ 300 Publications. Total Citation: ~180,000, ranked 7^th in Chemistry by Thomson Reuters.

EDITORIAL BOARD

• Applied Physics A, Springer.
• Advance Functional Materials, Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH.
• Small, Wiley-VCH Verlag
• Chemical Physics Letters.
• International Journal of Nanoscience, World Scientific, Singapore.
• Nano Letters, American Chemical Society.
• Nanotechnology, Institute of Physics, England.
• Nano Research, Springer and Tsinghua University Press, Editor-in-Chief.

David Kaplan holds an Endowed Chair, the Stern Family Professor of Engineering, at Tufts University. He is Professor & Chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering and also holds faculty appointments in the School of Medicine, the School of Dental Medicine, Department of Chemistry and the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering. His research focus is on biopolymer engineering to understand structure-function relationships, with emphasis on studies related to self-assembly, biomaterials engineering and functional tissue engineering/regenerative medicine. He has published over 700 peer reviewed papers and edited eight books and the studies include a variety of structural proteins (collagens, elastins, resilins, silks). The lab has pioneered the study of silk-based biomaterials in regenerative medicine, from fundamental studies of the biochemistry, molecular biology and biophysical features of this class of fibrous proteins to their impact on stem cell functions, medical device formation, complex tissue formation. Studies are also focused on tissue engineering and regenerative medicine with the use of complex 3D tissue co-culture systems to establish and study human tissues in the laboratory and in animal systems. These systems are used to study a range of tissues (e.g., brain, kidney, cervical, adipose, bone marrow, intestine) and diseases (e.g., obesity, diabetes, cancers, polycystic kidney, infectious diseases).  Interfaces with optical imaging tools are also exploited. Since 2004 he has directed the NIH P41 Tissue Engineering Resource Center (TERC) that involves Tufts University and Columbia University.  He serves of the editorial boards of numerous journals and is Editor in Chief for ACS Biomaterials Science and Engineering.  He has received a number of awards for teaching, was Elected Fellow American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, received the Columbus Discovery Medal and the Society for Biomaterials Clemson Award for contributions to the literature.

Prof. T. Randall Lee hails from the small town and football powerhouse of Daingerfield, Texas.  He earned a earned a B.A. degree in Chemistry from Rice University (Magna Cum Laude) and a Ph.D. degree from Harvard University before pursuing an NIH postdoctoral fellowship at Caltech.  Currently a member of the faculty of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Houston, he holds the title of Cullen Distinguished University Chair, where his research focuses on nanomaterials, including nanoscale surface coatings that inhibit corrosion and resist biofilm formation and nanoparticles for biomedical and energy applications.  Additionally, Prof. Lee serves as the Associate Dean of Research for the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics at the University of Houston.  After eight years as an Associate Editor for ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, he is now the Deputy Editor for ACS Applied Nano Materials.

Prof. Lee has published more than 250 peer-reviewed papers and 8 patents/applications while mentoring 26 postdoctoral fellows, 64 graduate students, 92 undergraduate researchers, 38 visiting scientists/scholars, and 18 high school students.  His awards include the Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award (1993), NSF CAREER Award (1995), UH Research Excellence Award (1999), UH-Enron Teaching Excellence Award (1999), HAO Outstanding Faculty Award (2000), UH Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award (2006), and National Science Council of Taiwan Visiting Scholar (2010 & 2016).

Xing Yi Ling received her Ph.D. degree under the supervision of Prof. David Reinhoudt and Prof. Jurriaan Huskens at the University of Twente, Netherlands in 2008. In 2009, she joined Prof. Peidong Yang at the University of California, Berkeley for postdoctoral research under the Rubicon fellowship from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO, NL). Xing Yi Ling joined Chemistry and Biological Chemistry division at Nanyang Technological University in 2011, where she was promoted to associate professor in 2016. She is the recipient of the 2016 Lectureship Awardee at the 96th Chemical Society Japan Annual Meeting, winner for the 2015 L’ORÉAL Singapore for Women in Science National Fellowship (2015), The Asian and Oceanian Photochemistry Association (APA) prize for Young Scientist (2014), Singapore National Research Foundation fellowship (2012), Rubicon Fellowship by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NOW, 2009), The Netherlands and IUPAC Young Chemist award (2009). Her research group focuses on fabrication of surface-enhanced Raman scattering platforms by nanofabrication or self-assembly of shape-controlled noble metal nanocrystals for sensing and anti-counterfeiting applications.

Bin Liu received BS degree from Nanjing University and Ph.D. degree from the National University of Singapore (NUS) before her postdoctoral training at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She joined the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Department of NUS in late 2005. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 2010 and was named as Chair Professor in 2014. Her current research focuses on organic nanomaterials for biomedical and energy applications. Dr. Liu has received many highly prestigious awards, including Singapore President’s Young Scientist Award 2008, L’Oréal Women in Science National Fellowship 2011, Asia Rising Star 2013, BASF Materials Award 2014, Materials in Society Lectureship 2015, Singapore President’s Technology Award 2016, and Asian Scientist Top 100 List in 2017. Dr. Liu was named as The World’s Most Influential Minds and the Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Materials Science by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics during 2014-2018. Dr. Liu is the Fellow of Singapore Academy of Engineering, Asia-Pacific Academy of Materials, the Royal Society of Chemistry and serves as the Deputy Editor for ACS Materials Letters.

Kian Ping Loh is the Provost’s Chair Professor in NUS and has long standing research interests in diamond, graphene and 2D materials research. Loh KP’s team developed a strategy for the large area growth and transfer of graphene on silicon wafer (Nature 2014), a new strategy for the synthesis of graphene quantum dots from bucky balls (published in Nature Nanotechnology); fabricated the first broadband graphene polarizer (published in Nature Photonics). His awards include the President’s Science Award in 2014, the University Outstanding Researcher award in 2012, University’s Young Scientist award in 2008, American Chemical Society Nano Lectureship award in 2013. He is currently the associate editor of Chemistry of Materials. He is also head of the 2D materials group in Centre for Advanced 2D Materials, NUS also a co-director of the Shenzhen-NUS Joint Collaborative Innovation Center for Optoelectronic Science & Technology.

Kirk Schanze earned his B.S. in Chemistry from Florida State University in 1979 and his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1983. He was appointed a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, from 1984-1986 and began his independent faculty career at the University of Florida in 1986. Schanze was University Distinguished Professor and Prominski Professor of Chemistry at the University of Florida until 2016.  He is currently the Robert A. Welch Distinguished University Professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio.   He was a Senior Editor of the ACS journal Langmuir from 2000 – 2008.  Since 2008, Schanze is Editor-in-Chief of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, the ACS journal focused on chemistry and engineering of applications-focused research in materials and interfaces.

Schanze’s research is focused on the field of light-matter interactions in molecular, polymer and materials systems.  His group has developed and studied materials with applications in luminescence, chemo- and bio-sensing, light emitting diodes, solar cells and solar fuels.  He has authored or co-authored 300 peer-reviewed articles on basic and applied research topics, with a primary focus on organic and organometallic materials chemistry, and is named in 20 patents or disclosures.

Dr. Han Sen Soo has been a faculty member in NTU Singapore since 2012. The overarching theme of his research program is artificial photosynthesis. He has been at the forefront of a unique form of artificial photosynthesis including original research in the critical functions of light absorption, charge separation, and multielectron reduction and oxidation photoredox catalysis. His current interests include the development of molecular photosensitizers and catalysts to harvest sunlight for proton reduction to produce solar fuels and chemicals. Dr. Soo’s team is also preparing photocatalysts and mesoporous materials derived from earth-abundant elements to valorize biomass macromolecules and degrade environmental pollutants by ambient condition, oxidative C-C bond cleavage. Dr. Soo recently received the Asian and Oceanian Photochemistry Association Prize for Young Scientists 2016 and a Distinguished Lectureship Award at the Asian International Symposium for Outstanding Scientists of the 99^th Chemical Society of Japan Annual Meeting 2019 in recognition of his team’s contributions to artificial photosynthesis.

Paul S. Weiss holds a UC Presidential Chair and is a distinguished professor of chemistry & biochemistry and of materials science & engineering at UCLA. He received his S.B. and S.M. degrees in chemistry from MIT in 1980 and his Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California at Berkeley in 1986. He was a postdoctoral member of technical staff at Bell Laboratories from 1986-88 and a visiting scientist at IBM Almaden Research Center from 1988-89. He served as the director of the California NanoSystems Institute and held the Fred Kavli Chair in NanoSystems Sciences at UCLA from 2009-14. Before coming to UCLA, he was a distinguished professor of chemistry and physics at the Pennsylvania State University, where he began his academic career in 1989. His interdisciplinary research group includes chemists, physicists, biologists, materials scientists, mathematicians, electrical and mechanical engineers, computer scientists, clinicians, and physician scientists. They focus on the ultimate limits of miniatu­rization, exploring the atomic-scale chemical, physical, optical, mechanical, and electronic properties of surfaces, interfaces, and supramolecular assemblies. They develop new techniques to expand the applicability and chemical specificity of scanning probe microscopies. They apply these and other tools to study self- and directed assembly, and molecular and nanoscale devices. They advance nanofabrication down to ever smaller scales and greater chemical specificity to operate and to test functional molecular assemblies, and to connect these to the biological and chemical worlds. Two major themes in his laboratory are cooperativity in functional molecules and single-molecule/assembly biological structural and functional measurements. He has written over 400 publications, holds over 30 patents, and has given over 800 invited, plenary, keynote, and named lectures.

Weiss has been awarded a National Science Foundation (NSF) Presidential Young Investigator Award (1991-96), the Scanning Microscopy International Presidential Scholarship (1994), the B. F. Goodrich Collegiate Inventors Award (1994), an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Fellowship (1995-97), the American Chemical Society (ACS) Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry (1996), a John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation Fellowship (1997), a NSF Creativity Award (1997-99), the ACS Award in Colloid and Surface Chemistry (2015), the ACS Southern California Section Tolman Medal (2017), the ACS Patterson-Crane Award in Chemical Information (2018), and the IEEE Nanotechnology Pioneer Award (2019), among others. He was elected a fellow of:  the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2000), the American Physical Society (2002), the American Vacuum Society (2007), the ACS (2010), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2014), the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (2016), the Canadian Academy of Engineering (2017), the Materials Research Society (2019), and an honorary fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society (2010). He was also elected a senior member of the IEEE (2009). He received Penn State’s University Teaching Award from the Schreyer Honors College (2004), was named a nanofabrication fellow at Penn State (2005), and won the Alpha Chi Sigma Outstanding Professor Award (2007). He was a visiting professor at the University of Washington, Department of Molecular Biotechnology (1996-97) and Kyoto University, Electronic Science and Engineering Department and Venture Business Laboratory (1998 and 2000), and a distinguished visiting professor at the Kavli Nanoscience Institute and the Joint Center for Artificial Photosynthesis at Caltech (2015). He is a visiting scholar at the Kavli Institute for Bionano Science & Technology and the Wyss Institute for Biologically Inspired Engineering at Harvard University (2015-18). He held the Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique (INRS) Chaire d’excellence Jacques­Beaulieu (2016-17) and was a Fulbright Specialist for the Czech Republic (2017). Weiss was a member of the U.S. National Committee to the International Union of Pure and Applied Chemistry (2000-05). He has been the technical co-chair of the Foundations of Nanoscience Meetings and thematic chair of the Spring 2009 and Fall 2018 ACS National Meetings. He was the senior editor of IEEE Electron Device Letters for molecular and organic electronics (2005-07), and is the founding editor-in-chief of ACS Nano (2007-). At ACS Nano, he won the Association of American Publishers, Professional Scholarly Publishing PROSE Award for 2008, Best New Journal in Science, Technology, and Medicine, and ISI’s Rising Star Award a record ten times.

Professor Andrew Wee is Professor of Physics, and Vice President (University and Global Relations) at the National University of Singapore (NUS). He is past President and Fellow of the Singapore National Academy of Science (SNAS), Fellow of the Institute of Physics UK (IoP), Institute of Physics Singapore (IPS), and an academician of the Asia-Pacific Academy of Materials (APAM). His research interests include scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) and synchrotron radiation studies of the molecule-substrate interface, graphene and 2D materials, and related device studies. He is an Associate Editor of ACS Nano, and on the Editorial Boards of several other journals.

Prof Wee was a visiting scientist with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratories in the US, a Commonwealth Fellow as well as a Rhodes Scholar at the University of Oxford. He holds a BA (Honours) and MA in Physics from the University of Cambridge, and DPhil from the University of Oxford. He teaches an undergraduate class “Science at the Nanoscale”, and is a co-author of a textbook of the same title.

Karen L. Wooley is the W. T. Doherty-Welch Chair in Chemistry, University Distinguished Professor and Presidential Impact Fellow at Texas A&M University, where she holds appointments in the Departments of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Materials Science & Engineering.  She also serves as Director of the Laboratory for Synthetic-Biologic Interactions.  Her academic training included undergraduate study at Oregon State University (B.S., 1988) and graduate study under the direction of Professor Jean M. J. Fréchet at Cornell University (Ph.D., 1993).  She began an academic career as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, was promoted in 1999 to Full Professor with tenure, was installed in 2006 as a James S. McDonnell Distinguished University Professor in Arts & Sciences, and in 2007 received an appointment in the School of Medicine, Department of Radiology.  Karen relocated to Texas A&M University in July 2009.  Research interests include the synthesis and characterization of degradable polymers derived from natural products, unique macromolecular architectures and complex polymer assemblies, and the design and development of well-defined nanostructured materials.  The development of novel synthetic strategies, fundamental study of physicochemical and mechanical properties, and investigation of the functional performance of her materials in the diagnosis and treatment of disease, as non-toxic anti-biofouling or anti-icing coatings, as materials for microelectronics device applications, and as environmental remediation systems are particular foci of her research activities.  Recent awards include the American Chemical Society Award in Polymer Chemistry (2014), Royal Society of Chemistry Centenary Prize (2014), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (2014), Honorary Fellow of the Chinese Chemical Society (2014), Oesper Award (2015), Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2015), and both Distinguished Research and Teaching Achievement Awards from the Texas A&M University Association of Former Students (2016).  Karen has served on the technical advisory boards and served in consulting capacities for several companies, from Fortune 500 companies to start-ups, and law firms.  She is the co-founder and President of Sugar Plastics, LLC, and Chief Technology Officer of Teysha Technologies, LTD.  Karen currently serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Chemical Society, among many other advisory roles within the broader scientific community.

Qihua Xiong received his B.S. degree in physics from Wuhan University in 1997, M.Sc. degree from Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He went to the United States in 2000 and received his Ph.D. degree from The Pennsylvania State University in 2006. After three years postdoctoral experience in Prof. Charles M. Lieber’s group at Harvard University, he joined Nanyang Technological University as an assistant professor in 2009 and promoted to Nanyang Associate Professor in 2014. He was promoted to full Professor in 2016. He is a NRF Fellow awarded in 2009 by Singapore National Research Foundation. His outstanding achievement has been recognized by a few prestigious awards, such as IPS Nanotechnology Physics Award (2015), Singapore National Research Foundation Inaugural Investigatorship (NRFI) Award (2014) and Nanyang Award for Research Excellence by NTU (2014). Since 2018, he was appointed as the Associate Editor for Optics Express, the flagship open-access journal by Optical Society of America, Deputy Editor for InfoMat, a newly established journal dedicated to information materials by Wiley, and Associate Editor for Journal of Semiconductors. He was elected Fellow of American Physical Society in September 2018. He serves as international advisory board for many prestigious international journals, such as ACS Photonics, Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics (IoP), Science China Materials, and Nano Research, Springer.