(HyPT-3) Overview of Session 5B: Photo-electrochemical (PEC) and Photocatalysis (PC)

Thursday 14 September 2023 4:30pm - 6:00pm ACST (UTC+9:30)

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS: Prof. Francesca Toma (Helmholtz-Zentrum Heren), Dr Hannah Johnson (Toyota), Dr. Katharina Brinkert (Warwick), PANELLISTS A/Prof Sophia Haussener (EPFL​​​​​​​), A/Prof Fatwa Abdi (CityU HK), CHAIR Prof Greg Metha (UoA)

SESSIONS AIMS TO:

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS

Prof. Francesca Toma (Helmholtz-Zentrum Heren)

Prof. Toma is the Director of the Institute of Functional Materials for Sustainability at Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon and a Distinguished Helmholtz Professor at Helmut Schmidt University. Her research centers on the synthesis and characterization of sustainable materials for renewable energy and biological applications. She also holds a position as a Visiting Professor at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

She earned her Ph.D. in Biophysics from the International School of Advanced Studies in Italy in 2009, and acquired postdoctoral experience at the University of Trieste, before moving to the University of California, Santa Barbara as a Marie Curie Researcher in 2011, and to the University of California, Berkeley in 2013. For nearly a decade, she was as a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, where she served as the Program lead of the Liquid Sunlight Alliance and as the Photoelectrochemistry Technology Lead for HydroGEN.

Prof. Toma's has co-authored 100 publications, focusing on (photo)electrocatalysis, drug delivery, and tissue engineering. Her work has garnered international recognition with several awards. She was honored as one of the "100 Women of Materials Science" by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2018 and received the "Rising Star" Award from the American Chemical Society in 2021. She was also awarded the “Alfredo di Braccio Award” by the Italian Academy of Science. Her achievements culminated in her selection as an Oppenheimer Fellow by the US National Laboratory Directors' Council in 2022, underscoring her contributions as a leader to advancing scientific research.

Dr Hannah Johnson (Toyota​​​​​​​)

Dr Hannah Johnson is a Senior Engineer in the Materials Engineering department at Toyota Motor Europe based in Belgium. She has been working on solar fuel production for the past 6 years with topics including hydrogen production, CO2 conversion and CO2 capture. For hydrogen production, there are three pathways under investigation – photoelectrochemical, photocatalytic and photovoltaic combined with electrolysers.

For photoelectrochemical hydrogen production, she is coordinator of the European Horizon 2020 project, Sun-To-X, which, for solar hydrogen, focuses on development of transparent, porous and conductive photoelectrode supports and methods to deposit semiconductors onto them.

Dr. Katharina Brinkert (Warwick)

Dr. Katharina Brinkert is an Assistant Professor in Catalysis (tenure-track) at the University of Warwick, UK and a group leader at the Center of Applied Space Technology and Microgravity (ZARM) at the University of Bremen, Germany. Her group’s research interests span artificial photosynthesis systems generating oxygen, fuels and other chemicals from sunlight using (photo-)electrocatalysis for applications in terrestrial and space environments. Katharina is currently leading a Topical Team at the European Space Agency on "Interfacial Processes in (Photo-)Electrochemistry in Reduced Gravitational Environments (IPERG)" and she has received the Zeldovich Medal in 2021 for founding the research field “Photoelectrochemistry in Space Environments”.

Prior to her position at Warwick, she was a Leopoldina Postdoctoral Fellow at the California Institute of Technology/USA with Prof. Harry Gray, investigating (photo-)electrochemical ammonia production from dinitrogen. Before her stay in California, she was a Research Fellow with the Advanced Concepts Team at the European Space and Technology Center (ESTEC) in Noordwijk/ the Netherlands, investigating solar hydrogen production in microgravity environment. Katharina received her PhD from Imperial College London in 2015.

PANELLISTS

A/Prof Sophia Haussener (EPFL​​​​​​​)

Sophia Haussener is an Associate Professor heading the Laboratory of Renewable Energy Science and Engineering at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL). She received her PhD (2010) in Mechanical Engineering from ETH Zurich. Between 2011 and 2012, she was a postdoctoral researcher at the Joint Center of Artificial Photosynthesis (JCAP) and the Energy Environmental Technology Division of the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). She is the vice president of EPFL’s research award commission (since 2021). She has published over 80 articles in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and 2 books. She has been awarded the ETH medal (2011), the Dimitris N. Chorafas Foundation award (2011), the ABB Forschungspreis (2012), the Prix Zonta (2015), the Global Change Award (2017), and the Raymond Viskanta Award on Radiative Transfer (2019), and is a recipient of the Starting Grant of the Swiss National Science Foundation (2014). She is a co-founder of the startup SoHHytec aiming at commercializing photoelectrochemical hydrogen production. She is the former chair of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) Solar Energy Division, a former Member of the Scientific Advisory Council of the Helmholtz Zentrum, and a member of the scientific board of the Liquid Sunlight Alliance.

Her current research is focused on providing design guidelines for thermal, thermochemical, and photoelectrochemical energy conversion reactors through multi-physics modeling and demonstrations. Her research interests include: thermal sciences, fluid dynamics, charge transfer, electro-magnetism, and thermo/electro/photochemistry in complex multi-phase media on multiple scales. 

A/Prof Fatwa Abdi (CityU HK)

Fatwa F. Abdi is an Associate Professor in the School of Energy and Environment, City University of Hong Kong (CityU HK). He obtained his PhD (cum laude) in Chemical Engineering from TU Delft, the Netherlands, in 2013, and he was the recipient of the Martinus van Marum prize from the Royal Dutch Society of Sciences and Humanities. Prior to joining CityU HK, he was a group leader and the deputy head of Institute for Solar Fuels, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Germany. His research group is interested in the development of materials and engineering of devices for solar-to-chemical conversion applications.

His group focuses on complex metal oxides with activities spanning from investigating their fundamental material properties using e.g., spectroscopy techniques to implementing bulk and surface modification strategies to overcome their limitations. At the same time, his group utilizes the combination of multiphysics modeling and validation experiments to identify challenges associated with device scale-up and demonstrate highly efficient solar-to-chemical conversion devices.