Anja Bielefeld leads a junior research group at the Center for Materials Research at Justus-Liebig University Giessen (JLU), Germany. She also currently holds a replacement professorship at the Institute for Environmental and Sustainable Chemistry at Technical University Braunschweig (TU BS).

Her group works on experimental and application-oriented modeling of electrochemical systems, bridging the gap between theoretical and experimental aspects. A particular emphasis is put on microstructure effects in solid-state batteries.

Anja has a background in physics from TU BS, and spent part of her master’s studies at the University of Oslo. She completed her Ph.D. at JLU specializing in solid-state battery composite cathodes and gained expertise in automotive battery research and concept development at Volkswagen AG.

Dr. Claudio Cazorla earned his Ph.D. in Computational Physics from the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (Barcelona, Spain) in 2006. From 2006 to 2010, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Physics & Astronomy at University College London (United Kingdom). In 2010, he joined the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (Spain) as a JAE-DOC Research Fellow.

In 2014, Dr. Cazorla was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship at the School of Materials Science and Engineering, UNSW Sydney (Australia), where he worked as a Senior Lecturer until 2020. In 2019, he received a prestigious Ramón y Cajal Research Fellowship from the Spanish government and returned to his alma mater institution. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics at the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya.

Dr. Cazorla´s research focuses on the theoretical and computational study of multifunctional materials for energy applications, including solid-state electrolytes, photovoltaic cells, solid-state refrigeration, and photocatalysis. He has published over 180 articles in peer-reviewed journals and serves as a Divisional Associate Editor for Physical Review Letters (Condensed Matter division) at the American Physical Society.

Dominic Bresser is currently serving as professor at Ulm University and principal investigator at the Helmholtz Institute Ulm (HIU), which is associated with the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Germany. His research focuses on the development of advanced lithium and sodium batteries, covering polymer, hybrid and liquid electrolyte systems, new and optimized organic and inorganic electrode materials, sustainable processing strategies, as well as alternative current collectors and binders. In addition to his role at KIT-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.

Ivana Hasa is Associate Professor of Electrochemical Materials at WMG, University of Warwick (UK). She earned her PhD in 2015 from Sapienza University of Rome (Italy), focusing on design and characterization of sodium-ion battery materials. She then gained extensive experience in electrochemical energy storage through postdoctoral roles at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (USA) and Helmholtz Institute Ulm (Germany) before joining WMG in 2020 as Assistant Professor.

Her research activities are directed toward the understanding of the processes governing the chemistry of sodium-ion batteries. Design and synthesis of advanced functional materials and the understanding of their physical properties and electrochemical behaviour are the core of her research interest. At the Energy Innovation Centre, she is working toward the development and scale up of new battery chemistries from concept to full proven cell prototypes with a focus on manufacturing/performance relationship. Ivana serves as technical advisor for the “New and Emerging battery technologies” working group of Batteries Europe/BEPA. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and Academic Lead for the WMG-Faraday Institution Battery School.

Nuria Garcia-Araez did her PhD at the University of Alicante (Spain), and then she worked as a postdoc researcher at Leiden University and AMOLF (the Netherlands) and as a senior scientist at the Paul Scherrer Institute (Switzerland). She then took a faculty position at the University of Southampton (UK), where she is currently full professor. She has received nine academic prizes, including the Best Spanish Young Electrochemist award by CIDETEC in 2013, and four competitive fellowships, including a prestigious Early Career Researcher Fellowship by the EPSRC in 2016.

Sara Drvarič Talian works at the National Institute of Chemistry in Slovenia. Her research interests are in determining the electrochemical mechanisms of operation of energy storage materials and she has expertise in the field of electrochemistry, impedance spectroscopy measurements and the use of novel operando characterization techniques. She has worked with lithium-sulfur and magnesium-sulfur batteries, lithium-ion batteries and more generally with lithium metal and magnesium metal battery systems. She is the leader of the youth section of the Slovenian Chemical Society and has been awarded multiple prestigious awards for her doctoral dissertation.