Prashant V. Kamat is a Rev. John A. Zahm, C.S.C., Professor of Science in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Radiation Laboratory at the University of Notre Dame. He is also a Concurrent Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He earned his doctoral degree (1979) in Physical Chemistry from Bombay University, and postdoctoral research at Boston University (1979-1981) and University of Texas at Austin (1981-1983). He joined Notre Dame in 1983. Professor Kamat has for nearly four decades worked to build bridges between physical chemistry and material science to develop advanced nanomaterials that promise cleaner and more efficient light energy conversion.
He has directed DOE funded solar photochemistry research for more than 40 years. In addition to large multidisciplinary interdepartmental and research center programs, he has actively worked with industry-sponsored research. He has served on many national panels on nanotechnology and energy conversion processes. He has published more than 500 peer reviewed scientific papers that have been well recognized by the scientific community (87000 citations, h-index 149 –Source Web of Science). Since 2014Thomson-Reuters has featured him as one of the most cited researchers every year (2014-2023).
He is currently serving as the Editor-in-Chief of ACS Energy Letters. He has also served as the deputy editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters. He is a member of the advisory board of several scientific journals (Chemical Reviews, Journal of Colloid & Interface Science, ACS Applied Nanomaterials, Research on Chemical Intermediates, and EES Solar). His contributions are recognized through various national and international awards. They include Honda-Fujishima Lectureship award by the Japanese Photochemical Society (2006), CRSI medal by the Chemical Research Society of India (2011), Langmuir lectureship award (2013), Smalley Award by the Electrochemical Society (2022), Porter Medal in Photochemistry (2022), and Henry H. Storch Award in Energy Chemistry (ACS National award, 2024). He is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society (ECS), American Chemical Society (ACS), American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), Materials Research Society (MRS), and Pravasi Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy.
URL: Kamatlab.com
M.V. Dozzi is Associate Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Milan (UniMi). She received her PhD degree in Chemical Sciences in 2012 at UniMi with a thesis on TiO2 photoactivity optimization by means of structural and surface modifications, for which she was awarded with the “Giovanni Semerano” prize of the Physical Chemistry Division of the Italian Chemical Society. Part of her thesis (March – August 2010 and April - July 2011) was done at the Catalysis Research Center of Hokkaido University in Sapporo (Japan), under the supervision of Prof. B. Ohtani. For several years she mainly focused on the mechanistic aspects of photocatalysis on TiO2-based semiconductors for environmental and energy applications. Recently, her attention has been devoted to the development of efficient ternary metal oxide-based photo(electro)catalysts for solar energy conversion. She published 67 papers on international journals and one book chapter. She presented more than 100 communications, most of them personally delivered in oral form, at several international and national scientific congresses. Her present h-index is 29 (Scopus). She is a member of the Italian Chemical Society and of the Italian Photochemistry Group (GIF), Italian section of the European Photochemistry Association.
Burkhard König received his Ph.D. from the University of Hamburg and continued his scientific education as a post-doctoral fellow with Prof. M. A. Bennett, Research School of Chemistry, Australian National University, Canberra, and Prof. B. M. Trost, Stanford University. Since 2000, he is a full professor of organic chemistry at the University of Regensburg. His current research interests revolve around the use of visible light in organic chemistry.
Prof. Burkhard König’s scientific work is centered in the field of physical-organic chemistry and photochemistry. As one of the pioneers of chemical photocatalysis, he has significantly developed the field of light-driven organic synthesis in the past 20 years. He is one of the leading minds in this active research area in Germany and internationally. His contributions to the research area are ground-breaking and open new research directions.
Even before the methodology of photocatalysis received greater attention in synthetic chemistry, work by the König group on flavin photocatalysis began around 2000. The group reported the first photocatalytic variant of the Meerwein arylation and the first enantioselective heterogeneous photocatalysis with visible light. They introduced the concept of consecutive photo-induced electron transfer (conPET), established the redox-neutral utilization of carbon dioxide in synthesis via photogenerated carbanions, and used organic semiconductors and excited anions in photocatalysis. Recent contributions focus on dynamic photo-nickel catalysis and synthetic photochemistry at the water-oil interface. All projects combine synthetic methodology development with mechanistic investigations to pave the way for predictable applications in synthetic chemistry and industrial production processes. In close collaboration with groups from molecular biology, photoswitchable probes are developed that allow the reversible activation or inhibition of enzymes, GPCRs, and ion channels.
The research received European (ERC) and national funding (Koselleck Award German Science Foundation; research clusters “Chemical Photocatalysis” and “Assembly control in photocatalysis”) and was recognized by awards (most recent: Honda Award 2023 of the Japanese Photochemical Society).
Michael R. Wasielewski is currently the Clare Hamilton Hall Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University, Director of the Institute for Quantum Information Research and Engineering (INQUIRE), and Director of the Center for Molecular Quantum Transduction (CMQT), a US-DOE Energy Frontier Research Center. He received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Chicago and was a postdoctoral fellow at Columbia University. His research has resulted in over 830 publications and focuses on light-driven processes in molecules and materials, artificial photosynthesis, molecular electronics, quantum information science, ultrafast optical spectroscopy, and time-resolved electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy.
He is an elected member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. His honors and awards include the Royal Society of Chemistry Faraday Lectureship Prize; the Josef Michl American Chemical Society Award in Photochemistry; the Porter Medal for Photochemistry; the Royal Society of Chemistry Physical Organic Chemistry Award; the Royal Society of Chemistry Environment Prize; the James Flack Norris Award in Physical Organic Chemistry of the American Chemical Society; the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award of the American Chemical Society; the Bruker Prize in EPR Spectroscopy; the International EPR Society Medal in Chemistry; the Chemical Pioneer Award of the American Institute of Chemists; and the Humboldt Research Award.