Cafer T. Yavuz is an Associate Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology. He has received his PhD from Rice University and completed a postdoctoral work at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Prof. Yavuz has authored more than 100 journal articles and several books and chapters. He received top technology innovation award from KAIST, A-Star Excellent Researcher award, and several teacher of the year nominations. Qiang Xu received his PhD in 1994 from Osaka University. He is director of AIST-Kyoto University ChEM-OIL and adjunct Professor of Kobe University/Kyoto University.

He received Thomson Reuters Research Front Award in 2012 and Humboldt Research Award in 2019 and was recognized a highly cited researcher (2014-2019) in Chemistry and Engineering/Materials Science by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate Analytics. His research interests include the chemistry of nanostructured materials and their applications, especially for catalysis and energy. Sheng Dai is currently a group leader at Chemical Sciences Division, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL), a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UTK), and serves as a Director for an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC) for Fluid Interface Reactions, Structures and Transport (FIRST). His research has led to the winner of the 2020 Max Bredig Award given by Electrochemical Society for Ionic Liquids and Molten Salts, the 2019 ACS Award in Separation Science and Technology, and 2018 IMMA Award given by International Mesostructured Materials Association.