Dr.-Ing. (chem.) Mariya E. Ivanova (Female) is the team leader of “Materials for Proton-Conducting Solid Oxide Cells” in the the Solid Oxide Cells (SOC) department. Her research focus encompasses development of functional proton-conducting oxide materials and devices such as fuel cells and electrolyzers for electricity and H2 generation, but also for CO2 conversion to added-value chemicals in co-electrolyzers. She is the author or a co-author of 40 peer-reviewed publications (including Nature family journals, J. Mater. Chem. A, Sep. Purif. Technol., J. Membr. Sci., Solid State Ionics, Inorg. Chemistry, ChemSusChem), several book chapters and patents. She has been the PI and coordinator of the national project ProtOMem (BMBF fund), as well as co-PI of several national and international research project (e.g., N-INNER, EFFIPRO, MEM-BRAIN alliance). She is a regular reviewer in relevant scientific journals and research funding agencies. Member of the network “Women in Green Hydrogen”, the American Ceramic Society (ACerS)/Division Engineering Ceramics, the German Hydrogen and Fuel Cell Association (DWV), and the Bulgarian Hydrogen Association (BGH2A).

Prof.-Dr. Payam Kaghazchi (Male) is a theoretical physicist (Ph.D.: Fritz-Haber-Institute/FU Berlin, 2009). He is currently head of the modeling team at the Institute of IEK-1 in the Forschungszentrum Jülich in Germany, and an associate professor in the Department of Inorganic Materials Science at University of Twente in the Netherlands. His research has focused on developing and applying multiscale modeling approaches to simulate and design materials for energy storage and conversion systems. He has published about 120 articles in peer-reviewed scientific journals (including Advanced Energy Materials, Energy & Environmental Science, Materials Today, and Nature Energy).

Hon.-Prof. Dr.-Ing. Norbert H. Menzler (Male), Materials Scientist, is head of the Solid Oxide Cell department at the Institute of Energy and Climate Research, IEK-1: Materials Synthesis and Processing of Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Germany. Since 2010 he is additionally Lecturer at the Technical University of Aachen (RWTH Aachen) for Materials in Energy Applications and since 2019 he is Honorary Professor at RWTH Aachen. He is co-author of 187 refereed papers, 90 papers in international conference proceedings, 13 book chapters and holds currently 10 patents (Data from Scopus (11/2023): 4243 citations, h-index 35). He is/was leading various national R&D projects, is/was principal investigator of numerous national and international R&D projects. He is frequent reviewer for more than 10 international journals (e.g., J. Power Sources, Electrochimica Acta, Int. J. Hydrogen Energy and others). He is a member of the German Ceramic Society, therein part of the Technical Committee “Processing Technology” and a member of the Electrochemical Society. His R&D focuses on solid oxide cells (fuel cells and electrolyzers), ceramic processing, degradation effects and post-test analysis of SOCs.

M.Sc. Severin Kuffer (Male) studied physics at FAU Erlangen-Nurnberg. During his master thesis he investigated the vibrational properties of the 2D materials 1T’ and 2H-MoTe2. He will join the material simulation group of Payam Kaghazchi and will work on his PhD thesis co-supervised by M. E. Ivanova as part of the ECOLEFINS project team.