Juan José Vilatela, IMDEA Materials, Spain

Juan José Vilatela has a PhD from the Department of Materials Science and Metallurgy of the University of Cambridge (2009). He leads a research group at IMDEA Materials, focused on the development of macroscopic materials made up of nanobuilding blocks in a way that the unique properties at the nanoscale are preserved through the assembly process and a new generation of high-performance engineering materials is produced. He has coordinated several academic and industrial research projects related to nanomaterials, including an ERC Starting Grant. He has been awarded the 2016 young investigator award by the European Society for Composite Materials and the 2018 “Miguel Catalán” under 40 investigator award by the Madrid Regional Government. In 2021 he co-founded Floatech, a spin-off company pursuing the industrialisation of a new sustainable process for the fabrication of Si anodes for the next generation of Lithium-ion batteries. Find the group on Twitter: @MNGMaterials

Don’t forget to check out the Emerging Investigator series interview with Juan José in this Editorial.

Sahika Inal, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia

Sahika Inal is an Associate Professor of Bioengineering with affiliations in Electrical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST). She has a B.Sc. degree in Textile Engineering from Istanbul Technical University (Turkey), an M.Sc. in Polymer Science, and a Ph.D. in Experimental Physics, both from the University of Potsdam (Germany). She completed her postdoctoral training at the Center of Microelectronics of Provence of the Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Mines de Saint-Étienne (France). Her expertise is in polymer science and bioelectronic devices, particularly in the photophysics of conjugated polymers, characterization of polymer films and the design of biosensors and actuators. The Inal lab exploits the functionalities of organic electronic materials, investigates ionic/electronic charge transport, and designs electronic devices that record/stimulate biological signals. Find Sahika on Twitter: @InalSahika

Don’t forget to check out the Emerging Investigator series interview with Sahika in this Editorial.

Malak Kawan, University of Cambridge, UK

Malak is currently a PhD candidate in Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge working on developing biohybrid implantable devices for the brain to improve biocompatibility and tissue integration. She received her BS from the University of Delaware in Neuroscience in 2017 with a focus on Chemistry and was working on neurobehavioural studies. She obtained her MS from King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) in 2019 in the research area of bioelectronics and worked on integrating lipid bilayers with electrochemical transistors for ion channel recordings. Find Malak on Twitter: @KawanMalak

Prashun Gorai, Colorado School of Mines, USA

Dr. Prashun Gorai is a research assistant professor in the Department of Metallurgical and Materials Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) with a joint faculty appointment at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). He obtained his B.Tech in Chemical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2008, and his PhD (also in Chemical Engineering) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 2014. Subsequently, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at CSM and NREL, from 2014-2017. He received a graduate student fellow award from the American Vacuum Society in 2009. In 2012 and 2013, he was a recipient of the Dow Chemical graduate fellowship. The Royal Society of Chemistry has recognized him as an outstanding peer reviewer for the J. Materials Chemistry A in 2018 and 2019. At CSM and NREL, his team utilizes first-principles computations and data informatics to accelerate the discovery of novel functional materials for thermoelectrics, photovoltaics, solid-state energy storage, and power electronics. In the quest to discover novel functional materials, his team aims to map unexplored/under-explored chemical spaces with targeted computational searches. Beyond discovery, his team is also interested in predicting and modelling defect properties of materials. Details about his team can be found on the 3D Materials Lab webpage.

Don’t forget to check out the Emerging Investigator series interview with Prashun in this Editorial.