Dominic Bresser is currently serving as full professor at Ulm University (UUlm) and Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), and as department head and principal investigator at the Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU) in Germany. His research focuses on the development of advanced lithium and sodium batteries. In addition to his role at UUlm, KIT and HIU, he is serving as editor-in-chief for the Journal of Power Sources Advances (Elsevier). Amongst others, he has been awarded with the Carus Medal for his scientific achievements by the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the Carus Award by the city of Schweinfurt, Germany, and an ERC Starting Grant by the European Research Council.
He has co-authored more than 220 peer-reviewed publications, 1 book, 5 book chapters, 23 patents, and given more than 100 presentations at international conferences, including 85 plenary, keynote, and invited talks.

Dr. Susanne Dörfler earned her PhD in materials chemistry from TU Dresden in 2013, focusing on adapting vertically aligned CNTs for energy storage applications such as sulfur cathodes. She has been a group manager at IWS since 2016 and has coordinated various R&D projects and/or work packages (WPs) in EU projects on battery material development and electrochemical characterization. Her team has experience in characterizing innovative materials and composites for applications in various next-generation battery chemistries, and since 2018, especially in sulfide-based solid-state batteries.

Franziska Friedrich is a Specialist in Electrochemistry and Battery Cell Development at the BMW Group, where she leads R&D projects focused on solid-state batteries and screening activities. She completed her PhD at the Chair of Technical Electrochemistry at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), investigating materials degradation and hysteresis phenomena in high-energy cathodes for lithium-ion batteries. Prior to her doctoral studies, she earned her Master’s degree in Chemistry with top honors from Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich (LMU) and conducted research on redox-flow and lithium-ion battery technologies. She has published extensively in leading electrochemistry journals on cathode materials and cell degradation mechanisms.

Yoshiya (Josh) Fujiwara is the Division Manager at the Consortium for Lithium Ion Battery Technology and Evaluation Research Center (LIBTEC) in Japan. In his current role, he oversees computational materials science and advanced analysis within the national SOLID-Next project. Prior to joining LIBTEC in 2023, he spent over two decades as a Chief Engineer and Principal Scientist at Honda R&D and the Honda Research Institute USA, pioneering next-generation battery materials, electrocatalysts, and hydrogen storage technologies. His international research background includes visiting scholar positions at MIT, Ohio State University, and the University of Pennsylvania. He holds over 60 patents and has authored numerous publications on energy storage modeling and materials design.

Clare P. Grey, FRS, DBE is the Geoffrey Moorhouse-Gibson and Royal Society Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge University and a Fellow of Pembroke College Cambridge.   She received a BA and D. Phil. (1991) in Chemistry from Oxford University.  After post-doctoral fellowships in the Netherlands and at DuPont CR&D in Wilmington, DE, she joined the faculty at Stony Brook University (SBU) in 1994.  She moved to Cambridge in 2009, maintaining an adjunct position at SBU.  She was the founding director of the Northeastern Chemical Energy Storage Center, a Department of Energy, Energy Frontier Research Center, the director of the EPSRC Centre for Advanced Materials for Integrated Energy Systems (CAM-IES) and a founding member of the Faraday Institution. Recent honors/awards include the Société Chimique de France, French-British Prize (2017), the Solid State Ionics Galvani-Nernst-Wagner Mid-Career Award (2017), the Eastern Analytical Symposium Award for Outstanding Achievements in Magnetic Resonance (2018), the Italian Chemical Society Sacconi Medal (2018), the Charles Hatchett Award, IoM3 (2019), the RSC John Goodenough Award (2019), the Richard R. Ernst Prize in Magnetic Resonance (2020), the RS Hughes Award (2020), the Körber European Science Prize (2021), the ACS Central Science Disrupters Prize (2022) and the ISMAR Prize (2025). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Electrochemical Society, and the International Society of Magnetic Resonance, and a Foreign member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, an International Member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), and received a DBE in 2022.  Her current research interests include the use of solid state NMR and diffraction-based methods to determine structure-function relationships in materials for energy storage (batteries and supercapacitors), and conversion (fuel cells).  She is a cofounder of the company Nyobolt, which seeks to develop batteries for fast charge applications. 

Yan-Yan Hu is a Professor of Chemistry & Biochemistry at Florida State University and a faculty affiliate of the National High Magnetic Field Lab. Her research advances magnetic resonance techniques to investigate interface chemistry, ion transport, and microstructure formation in energy and biomaterials. She earned her B.S. in Chemistry from Tsinghua University and her Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry, focusing on solid-state NMR method development and applications, from Iowa State University, advised by Prof. Klaus Schmidt-Rohr. She then conducted postdoctoral research in energy materials as a Royal Society Newton Fellow and a Marie Curie Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge, under the supervision of Dame Prof. Clare Grey. She is a recipient of the Marion Milligan Mason Award from the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Emerging Young Investigator Award from the Florida Section of the ACS, the CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation, and the Agnes Fay Morgan Research Award from Iota Sigma Pi. Dr. Hu served as an Associate Editor for Materials Today Chemistry and as a Guest Editor for the Journal of Magnetic Resonance, and she currently serves as a Topical Editor for Chemistry of Materials.

Kyu Tae Lee is a Professor in the School of Chemical and Biological Engineering at Seoul National University, South Korea. He received his B.S. (2000) and Ph.D. (2006) in Chemical Engineering from Seoul National University, with a focus on electrochemistry. From 2007 to 2010, he conducted postdoctoral research at the University of Waterloo, working on lithium–sulfur and sodium-ion batteries. He began his independent academic career at UNIST in 2010 and joined Seoul National University in 2015. He has published more than 140 peer-reviewed papers and was recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher by Clarivate in 2018. His research focuses on electrochemistry and materials chemistry for lithium-ion and post-lithium-ion batteries.

Partha P. Mukherjee is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and a University Faculty Scholar at Purdue University. His prior appointments include Assistant Professor and Morris E. Foster Faculty Fellow of Mechanical Engineering at Texas A&M University (2012-2017), Staff Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (2009-2011), Director’s Research Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory (2008-2009), and Engineer at Fluent India (currently Ansys Inc., 1999-2003). He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the Pennsylvania State University in 2007. His honors include Scialog Fellows’ recognition for advanced energy storage, University Faculty Scholar and Faculty Excellence awards for Early Career Research and for Graduate Student Mentorship from Purdue University, the Minerals, Metals & Materials Society Young Leaders Award, and invited presentations at the U.S. National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering symposium and Gordon Research Conference (GRC) – Batteries, to name a few. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. His research interests focus on transport, electrochemistry, and materials interactions in energy storage and conversion. 

Dr. Kyusung Park is an Executive Vice President at Samsung SDI, where he has led the All-Solid-State Battery (ASB) development since 2021. In this capacity, he is responsible for defining the strategic roadmap and leading Samsung’s next-generation solid-state technology. Prior to his current executive role, Dr. Park held Staff Scientist positions at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT). He also conducted key research on next-generation battery chemistries at The University of Texas at Austin, working with Professor John B. Goodenough. Throughout his career at these leading institutions, he has specialized in the transition from fundamental science to high-performance cell technologies for advanced energy storage.

Mauro Pasta is Professor of Applied Electrochemistry in the Department of Materials at the University of Oxford. He received his BSc, MSc, and PhD in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Milan, Italy, and subsequently carried out postdoctoral research in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University.

Professor Pasta’s research lies at the interface of electrochemistry and materials science, with a focus on developing battery chemistries beyond lithium-ion. His work aims to achieve a mechanistic understanding of solid electrode interphases and their relationship to bulk electrolyte properties, with the ultimate goal of enabling the rational design of next-generation electrolytes.

In addition to his academic research, Professor Pasta is strongly committed to translating fundamental science into real-world impact. He currently leads the SOLBAT (solid-state lithium metal anode) programme at the Faraday Institution, which seeks to accelerate the development of solid-state battery technologies. He is a co-founder of four battery start-ups, through which he aims to accelerate the commercial deployment of next-generation energy storage solutions.

Over the course of his career, Professor Pasta has received multiple honours, including the Corday–Morgan Prize (2025) and the Piontelli Award (2017), and was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in 2021. He has published 115 peer-reviewed papers, which have received more than 19,000 citations (h-index 55).

Jean-Marie Tarascon is a specialist of Solid-State Chemistry. He started his carrier in the U.S., first at Cornell University (1980), and subsequently at Bell Labs and Bellcore until 1994. He then became professor at the Université de Picardie Jules Verne and director of the Laboratoire de Réactivité et Chimie des Solides (LRCS UMR CNRS 7314) in Amiens. In 2011, he founded the French Research Network on Electrochemical Energy Storage (RS2E), a CNRS research federation grouping together industrial and academic actors in the battery and supercapacitor fields.

Among his first research topics were the electronic properties of Chevrel phases as well as their ability to insert alkali cations. At the end of the 1980’s, Jean-Marie Tarascon headed the chemistry group at Bellcore and worked at high Tc cuprates supraconductors and the role of oxygen non-stoichiometry, cationic substitutions, magnetism or structure modulation. He thereafter came back to electrochemistry and became a globally recognized specialist on energy storage. Jean-Marie Tarascon’s credits as a battery researcher include the development of a plastic and flexible Li-ion battery. Since he moved back to France, he has been working on advanced technologies for tomorrow’s batteries, enlisting the development of new “chimie douce” synthesis routes for battery materials, Li-rich layered materials, metal-air batteries and electrocatalytic reactions as well as redox flow systems and other technologies beyond Li-ion batteries (for instance Na-ion batteries). He accepted the Chair of Solid-State Chemistry and Energy (Chimie du Solide et Energie) at the Collège de France in 2014, where he has been a professor since.

Claire Villevieille earned her PhD from the University of Montpellier in 2009, focusing on the development of alloy materials for Li-ion batteries under the supervision of Laure Monconduit. Subsequently, she spent ten years at the Paul Scherrer Institute, initially as a senior researcher supervised by Prof. Petr Novak, and later as Group Leader of the Battery Materials and Characterization group. Her research concentrated on advancing operando techniques both in laboratory and at large-scale facilities, including synchrotron and neutron sources, to better understand complex reaction mechanisms in various electrochemical systems such as Li-ion batteries, Na-ion batteries, and Li-S batteries.

In 2021, Dr. Villevieille joined the LEPMI laboratory as a CNRS Research Director and received her habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (HDR) that same year. Her current work encompasses solid-state batteries based on thiophosphate materials and water-based electrolytes. She is committed to investigating intricate reaction mechanisms within battery systems utilizing diverse operando methodologies at both lab and facility scales, aiming to overcome limitations related to ionic and electronic transport properties. Her core research interests include solid-state synthesis, electrochemical behavior, and the bulk–surface relationships of electrode and electrolyte materials.

To date, Dr. Villevieille has supervised over 30 students and postdoctoral researchers, published more than 140 articles, and has been honored with several awards from professional societies in materials science and battery research (ISE, IBA, SCF, among others).