Professor Husam Alshareef is a leader in materials science, with pioneering expertise in developing nanoscale materials for energy and electronics applications. He joined KAUST in 2009 as a founding member and currently serves as chair of the KAUST Center of Excellence for Renewable Energy and Storage Technologies (CREST) and principal investigator of the Functional Nanomaterials & Devices Laboratory.

Alshareef began his career as a postdoctoral researcher at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, and subsequently held positions at Micron Technology and Texas Instruments, where he developed new materials and processes for integrated circuit fabrication. With more than 620 journal publications and 70,000 citations, he is recognized by the Web of Science and Clarivate Analytics as a highly cited researcher in materials science, placing him in the top 1% of researchers worldwide for research output.

Professor Alshareef is a fellow of multiple prestigious organizations, including the Materials Research Society, American Physical Society, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, U.S. National Academy of Inventors, UK Institute of Physics, Royal Society of Chemistry and Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining. He holds 80 issued patents, has received numerous awards, and is frequently invited to speak at conferences worldwide — accomplishments that reflect his extensive contributions to materials science.

Dr. Emad Alhseinat is an Associate Professor in the Chemical Engineering Department at Khalifa University. Since being appointed as Assistant Professor at KU in 2016, he has managed to attract internal and external research grants that total more than AED 6.7 Million as a principal investigator (PI). Dr. Alhseinat has established his lab in novel separation processes for water treatment and desalination at KU. Dr. Alhseinat has filed five patents with KU and published several scientific journal papers in high-impact Journals, i.e., Water Research, Desalination, Chemical Engineering, Separation and Purification Technology, Electrochimica Acta, and Journal of Physical Chemistry C.

Faisal Abdulla AlMarzooqi is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Khalifa University. He received his PhD degree in Interdisciplinary Engineering from the joint program at Masdar Institute and at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2015 for his research on the Interplay of Membrane Fabrication and Nanotechnology in Water Desalination. He obtained his Master's degree in Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London in 2009 for his research on the use of ionic liquids in the determination of surface energies, which led him to receive the Lonza award in the same year. He is the deputy director of the Center of Membrane and Advanced Water Technology (CMAT) at Khalifa University and an Editorial Board Member in the Desalination journal by Elsevier. Faisal’s research focuses on membranes and devices fabrication for solar water treatment and energy applications including, desalination, wastewater treatment, valuable metals recovery, hydrogen and batteries.

Dr. Babak Anasori received his PhD from Drexel University in 2014 in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, the birthplace of MXenes. After completing his PhD, he served as a Postdoctoral Associate from 2014 to 2016, then became a Research Assistant Professor at the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University. In 2019, he began his independent career as an Assistant Professor at IUPUI. In 2023, he was recruited to Purdue University through Purdue’s Moveable Dream Hires initiative as the Reilly Rising Star Associate Professor with tenure, holding joint appointments in the School of Materials Engineering and the School of Mechanical Engineering.
​Since 2015, Dr. Anasori has co-discovered more than 60 MXene compositions with increasingly complex chemistries, expanding the compositional and structural space of this family of 2D materials. Among these discoveries, he is one of the inventors of the subfamily of ordered double-transition metal MXenes, discovered during his postdoctoral research. This breakthrough was recognized as one of the “Biggest Moments in Chemistry of 2015” by the American Chemical Society. His lab later discovered high-entropy MXenes in 2021, further expanding the tunability and compositional diversity of the MXene family. In 2025, his lab reported ~ 40 novel MXenes containing two to nine transition metals in Science. The work was featured by Nature News with the headline, “Chemists cram record nine metals into trendy 2D material.

Prof Casiraghi holds a Chair in Nanoscience at the Department of Chemistry, University of Manchester (UK). She received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cambridge (UK). In 2007, she was awarded with the prestigious Kovalevskaja Award (1.5M Euro). In 2010 she joined the department of chemistry at the University of Manchester. She is recipient of several awards, including the ERC Consolidator (2015), ERC Proof of Concept (2020), ERC Advanced grants (2022), as well as the Leverhulme Award in Engineering (2016, 100K GBP), and the RSC 2020 Gibson-Fawcett Award. Her current research work focuses on the development of biocompatible 2D inks and their use in printed electronics and biomedical applications.

Giulio Cerullo è Professore Ordinario di Fisica della Materia presso il Politecnico di Milano. La sua attività di ricerca si sviluppa secondo due linee complementari: (i) generazione di impulsi di luce ultrabrevi; (ii) studio di processi ultraveloci in molecole e solidi. Nell’ambito dell’ottica ultraveloce, il Prof. Cerullo ha inventato l’amplificatore ottico parametrico non-collineare (NOPA) che consente la generazione di impulsi di luce visibile con durata fino a 5 fs, corrispondenti a pochi cicli di oscillazione del campo elettromagnetico. Il NOPA visibile è uno strumento standard utilizzato in numerosi laboratori di ricerca in tutto il mondo. Successivamente, ha esteso la capacità di generazione di impulsi di durata inferiore a 10 fs all’infrarosso e all’ultravioletto. In parallelo, ha sviluppato un sistema di spettroscopia ottica ultraveloce con una combinazione unica al mondo fra breve durata degli impulsi laser e ampia accordabilità in frequenza. Tale sistema ha consentito lo studio di processi fotoindotti sulla scala temporale inferiore a 100 fs, prima sperimentalmente inaccessibile. I risultati più importanti di questa attività sono: osservazione in tempo reale dell’isomerizzazione del retinale nella rodopsina, evento primario della visione; studio dei meccanismi di fotoprotezione del DNA; studio di processi di rilassamento ultraveloce dei portatori in grafene.

Prof. Feng is the head of the Chair of Molecular Functional Materials at Technische Universität Dresden. He received his Bachelor’s degree in analytic chemistry in 2001 and Master’s degree in organic chemistry in 2004. Then he joined the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research for PhD thesis, where he obtained his PhD degree in April 2008. In December 2007, he was appointed as a group leader at the Max-Planck Institute for Polymer Research, and in 2012, he became a distinguished group leader. Since 2021 he is the Director of the Department of Synthetic Materials and Functional Devices at the Max Planck Institute of Microstructure Physics.

Dr. Yury Gogotsi is Distinguished University Professor and Charles T. and Ruth M. Bach Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University. He also serves as Director of the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute. He received his MS (1984) and PhD (1986) from Kiev Polytechnic and a DSc degree from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in 1995. His research group works on 2D carbides and nitrides (MXenes), nanostructured carbons, and other nanomaterials for energy, water and biomedical applications. He published more than 800 papers, which have been cited more than 170,000 times. He has been recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher in Chemistry and Materials Science, and a Citations Laureate in Physics by Clarivate Analytics. He has received numerous awards for his research including a Chemistry of Materials Award from ACS, MRS Medal, S. Somiya Award from IUMRS, European Carbon Association Award, Materials Innovation Award from Materials Today, International Nanotechnology Prize (RUSNANOPrize), R&D 100 Awards from R&D Magazine and many other distinctions. He has been elected a Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences, World Academy of Ceramics, AAAS, MRS, ACerS, ECS, RSC and ISE. He holds honorary doctorates from several European universities

Dr. Shabir Hassan is the Director of ShabLab and Zebrafish Avatar Lab at Khalifa University (KU). Before joining KU, he was an Early Career Investigator at Harvard Medical School and Associate Bioengineer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, USA. His main focus of research has been devising in vitro platforms of diseases such as cancer and different tissues for drug discovery and drug delivery applications. Additionally, his interest revolves around 3D bioprinting of disease models to study genetic and rare diseases. He has an immense interest in bioimaging platforms such as mini-optical tomographic systems for studying 3D in vitro lab models.

Dr Carlo Saverio Iorio – Is an adjunct professor at the York University in Toronto - Canada and director of the Centre for Research and Engineering in Space Technologies (CREST) of the University of Brussels - Belgium. He has more than 25 years of experience in Space-related science and technology programmes. His interests are mainly in heat and mass transfer phenomena, and material science for biomedical applications. He has coordinated more than 25 European Space Agency-supported experiments in microgravity taking advantage of the available Space platforms including sounding rockets, parabolic flights, satellite capsules and the International Space Station. Recently, he has been appointed as an expert on Space policy at the European Commission General Directorate on Defence, Space, and Industries. He is also a member of the European Space Agency strategic group for the design and implementation of future European Policies in Space. He has been recently appointed as part of the Belgian Delegation for Space at the European Defence Agency. The CREST has been recognized in 2025 as an official Ground-Based Facility of the European Space Agency.

Silvia holds a PhD in Chemistry from The University of Edinburgh (2008) and she holds professional qualifications as a Pharmaceutical Chemist (2007, UK) and a Pharmacist (2006, Italy). She was honorary researcher at University College London (2005–2007), Academy of Finland Fellow at the University of Helsinki (2008– 2010), and CRSS Fellow jointly at Monash University and Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization (Melbourne, 2010– 2012). In 2013 she returned to the University of Trieste (Italy) where her scientific adventure had started with her M.Sc. degree (honours). There, in 2015 she became Assistant Professor and she established her lab thanks to a starting grant. She was promoted to Associate Professor (2018), and then to Full Professor (2025). Between 2021– 2022 (6 months) she was Visiting Professor at the University of Cambridge (UK).

Silvia enjoys multidisciplinary research enabled by the central role of chemistry. She is active at the interface between supramolecular chemistry and nanotechnology, and between biological chemistry and materials science. Her interests in bio-organic and bio-orthogonal chemistry date back to her doctoral studies, continuing through the years. She has served these communities as a member of the RSC CBBG Interest Group Committee (2022-2025).

ICREA Research Professor and leader of the ICN2 Nanobioelectronics and Biosensors Group, Arben Merkoçi obtained his PhD at the University of Tirana (Albania) in ion selective electrodes. Since 1992 he has carried out research as postdoctoral fellow and research professor at the Polytechnic University of Budapest (Hungary), University of Ioannina (Greece), Università degli Studi di Padova (Italy), Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona and New Mexico State University (USA). His research is focused on the integration of biological molecules and other species with micro- and nanostructures to design novel (bio)sensors. He is member of the Academy of Sciences of Albania and director and coordinator of NANOALB (www.nanoalb.al), the regional network of nanoscience and nanotechnology.

Prof. Nicolosi received a BSc with honors in Industrial Chemistry from the University of Catania (Italy) in 2001. In 2006 she received a Ph.D. in Physics in 2006 from the University of Dublin, Trinity College, working under the supervision of Prof. W. J. Blau and Prof. J. N. Coleman. During her PhD she worked on the processing and characterisation of MoSI nanowires. After receiving her PhD she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the group of Prof. J. N. Coleman until December 2007.

Dr. Anna-Maria Pappa is an Assistant Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Khalifa University and a visiting scholar at Cambridge University. She was previously an Independent Oppenheimer research fellow at the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at Cambridge University and the Maudslay-Butler Research Fellow in Engineering at Pembroke College, Cambridge.

She has a Diploma in Chemical Engineering and an MSc in Nanotechnology (Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece). She completed her PhD studies in 2017 (University of Lyon, France) working on bioelectronic devices for healthcare diagnostics. In 2017 she received the L’Oreal-UNESCO Women in Science award for developing an innovative platform that can be used to test the efficacy of newly synthesized antibiotics and in 2019 she was listed on the Innovators under 35 MIT technology review.

She is currently an associate editor of Scientific Report, Frontiers in Electronics and Applied Physics Letters, AIP. Her current research interests lie in bio-integrated electronics based on conducting polymers and 2D materials.

Professor Percipalle received his PhD in molecular genetics from the International School for Advanced Studies, Trieste, Italy. He then held post-doctoral positions at the Medical Research Council Laboratory of Molecular Biology in Cambridge, UK, where he worked on the mechanisms of nucleocytoplasmic transport and at the Karolinska Institute, Stockholm, Sweden, where he focused his research activities on elucidating the functional architecture of the cell nucleus. He presently holds a Guest Professor position in the Department of Molecular Biosciences, the Wenner-Gren Institute, Stockholm University. Before joining NYUAD, he was Associate Professor of Cell Biology in the Department of Cell and Molecular Biology, Karolinska Institute.

Ahsan earned his PhD from Chonbuk National University, South Korea, and completed post-doctoral work at Toyama University, Toyama, Japan under the Venture Business Laboratory (VBL) program. He joined King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Dhahran, Saudi Arabia as Assistant Professor of Chemistry in 2010. In 2016, he was promoted to Associate Professor. He joined as Associate Professor of Chemistry at Khalifa University in 2019. Undergraduate, M.S. and PhD students have been supervised and co-supervised in strategically important research areas. His main research interests are the development of new materials, novel methods for the production of materials for clean energy generation and storage, catalysis, sensors and biomedical applications. He is subject editor/editorial board member for the International Journal of Hydrogen Energy (Sabbatical), Materials Research Bulletin and Scientific Reports.

Francesco Ricci is a professor at the Chemistry Department of the University of Rome, Tor Vergata. His research interests lie in the fields of electrochemical sensors, DNA functional nanotechnology, DNA-based sensors, aptamers, conformational switching probes and smart drug-release. After the PhD in Chemistry earned in 2005 at the University of Rome, Tor Vergata, Francesco Ricci spent 2 years as a visiting post-doc researcher at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Francesco Ricci has been awarded an International Marie Curie Outgoing Fellowship (2010), an ERC Starting Grant (2013) and an ERC Consolidator Grant (2019). He is also the recipient of the inaugural 2017 ACS “Advances in Measurement Science Lectureship” Award and the 2017 “Heinrich Emanuel Merck Award on Analytical Science”.

Dr Yarjan Abdul Samad is an Assistant Professor of Aerospace Engineering at Khalifa University, UAE and a Senior Research Associate and Senior Teaching Fellow at The University of Cambridge. He has served as the Chief Technology Advisor to a climate change company called Levidian based out of Cambridge, UK, which is transforming waste gas resources to graphene and hydrogen. His research work is on bottom-up and top-down production of graphene & related materials crystals. He is interested in employing these materials for technologies for Space in particular and Aerospace in general. He was among the team of scientists on European Space Agency (ESA)’s Zero Gravity flights who were the first to test Graphene in microgravity. He has also tested graphene-based materials for applications in space using Sounding Rockets. He is a member of the Science Team of Rashid Rover, which is due for launch within 2026, by MBRSC, UAE. He is the recipient of several awards such as Young Leaders Award 2020 by the UK’s Young Professional Society, The Innovator of The Year by the technology development company, Pakistan foreign affairs award for twenty-five under the age of 40 talents of Pakistani origin abroad, Nano Today Best Scientific Presentation, and many other Best Scientific Talks awards at international conferences.