Plenary Speakers

Doris Segets received her PhD in 2013 from Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen Nürnberg (FAU) in the field of particle technology and finished her habilitation in mechanical process engineering in July 2020. Since then, her main interest is to bring new materials into applications and thus to bridge the gap between fundamental research and industrial application. Together with her interdisciplinary team, she develops hierarchically structured electrode layers for energy conversion and storage. Applications range from electrosynthesis, electrolysis, fuel cells and batteries. In December 2018 she was appointed as junior professor (W1) for process technology for electrochemical functional materials at the University of Duisburg-Essen (UDE) where she was promoted in 2021 to full professor (W3) and is now heading the Institute for Particle Science and Technology. Doris Segets’ works are highly recognized, e.g. the Friedrich-Löffler-Prize 2016, the Dechema Prize 2020 and the Gottschalk-Diederich Baedecker Prize 2021. She is also active within the community as chairperson of the ProcessNet working group on interfacially dominated systems and processes and as member of the Young Academy of BBAW/Leopoldina.

Presentation Title
Hierarchically Structured Electrodes: Their Design, Implementation and Characterization to Make Academic Developments Relevant

Adam Z. Weber holds B.S. and M.S. degrees from Tufts University, and a Ph.D. at University of California, Berkeley in chemical engineering under the guidance of John Newman. Dr. Weber is a Senior Scientist and Leader of the Energy-Conversion at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, co-Director of the Million Mile Fuel Cell Truck Consortium and co-Deputy Director of HydroGen consortium. His current research involves understanding and optimizing fuel-cell and electrolyzer performance and lifetime including component and ionomer structure/function studies using advanced modeling and diagnostics, understanding flow batteries for grid-scale energy storage, and analysis of solar-fuel generators and CO₂ reduction. Dr. Weber has coauthored over 175 peer-reviewed articles and 10 book chapters on fuel cells, flow batteries, and related electrochemical devices, developed many widely used models for fuel cells and their components, and has been invited to present his work at various international and national meetings. He is the recipient of a number of awards including a Fulbright scholarship to Australia, a 2012 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), the 2014 Charles W. Tobias Young Investigator Award of the Electrochemical Society, the 2016 Sir William Grove Award from the International Association for Hydrogen Energy, and a 2020R&D100 award for microelectrode development. He is a Fellow of The Electrochemical Society and the International Association of Advanced Materials.

Presentation Title
Importance of Transport in Electrochemical Energy-Conversion Technologies

Eileen Yu holds a Chair of Electrochemical Engineering in the Department of Chemical Engineering, Loughborough University, UK. After obtained her PhD from Newcastle University pioneering on the development of direct methanol alkaline fuel cells, she worked as a research fellow at Max Planck Institute for Dynamics of Complex Technical Systems, Germany before she returned to Newcastle University to take a prestigious EPSRC Research Fellowship (Life Science Interface). This fellowship enabled her to extend her research into the biosciences, from which she has developed a multidisciplinary research programme. She has a wide range of experience in various fields in electrochemical and bioelectrochemical systems for energy, environmental and biomedical applications. She has attracted more than £20m funding from various funding organisations. Her current research includes understanding fundamentals and engineering applications of electrocatalysis and microbial electrosynthesis for CO₂ utilisation, resource recovery from wastes, bioremediation and environment monitoring with bioelectrochemical systems.

Presentation Title
Gas Diffusion Electrodes for CO₂ Electrochemical Reduction