Yury Gogotsi is a Distinguished University Professor and the Charles T. and Ruth M. Bach Endowed Chair in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. He also serves as Director of the A.J. Drexel Nanomaterials Institute. He received his MS (1984) and PhD (1986) from Kyiv Polytechnic and a DSc degree from the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine (1995). Together with his students and colleagues, he has made principal contributions to the development of materials for electrochemical capacitors and other energy storage devices, discovered MXenes, demonstrated the tuning of structure and porosity of carbide-derived carbons, and developed new processes for the synthesis, surface modification, and purification of nanotubes and nanodiamonds.
Yury Gogotsi also published the first microscopic observation of water inside carbon nanotubes, discovered polygonal nanotubes (graphite polyhedral crystals), and shaped the field of high-pressure surface science. He is recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher in Materials Science and Chemistry and a Citations Laureate in Physics by Clarivate. He has received numerous awards for his research, including the Blaise Pascal Medal from the European Academy of Sciences, the Ceramic Prize from the World Academy of Ceramics, the Materials Research Society (MRS) Medal, the American Chemical Society (ACS) Award in the Chemistry of Materials, etc. He has been elected a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors, the World Academy of Ceramics, the European Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea, and many professional societies. He holds honorary doctorates from several European Universities.
For full CV, publications, and current research activities, visit https://research.coe.drexel.edu/mse/nanomaterials/
Ekaterina Pomerantseva is an Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Drexel University. She received a B.S. degree in Materials Science in 2000 and M.S. degree in Chemistry and Materials Science in 2003 from Lomonosov Moscow State University, a M.S. degree in Biochemistry in 2005 from McGill University, and a Ph.D. degree in Solid-State Chemistry in 2007 from Lomonosov Moscow State University.
Prior to joining Drexel, she held postdoctoral appointments in the Institute for Systems Research at the University of Maryland College Park (2010 – 2013) and the Department of Chemistry at the University of Waterloo (2009 – 2010). She has co-authored over 75 journal papers. In 2018, she was selected to receive a prestigious NSF CAREER award. She is Scialog Fellow and Stein Fellow.
Since 2018, she is a senior investigator member of the m2M Center for Mesoscale Transport Properties, a U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science funded Energy Frontiers Research Center. Her research interests lie in the discovery and development of new solutions and next generation systems for sustainable energy and clean environment, with the focus on materials chemistry and electrochemistry as it relates to energy storage and water treatment. She leads Material Electrochemistry Group, members of which design and apply chemical synthesis methods to obtain materials with the desired structure and advanced electrochemical properties, bridging the gap between chemistry and materials science. Her group develops chemical pathways that can be used to realize materials with tunable structures and compositions that exhibit high affinity towards ions in solutions, rapid electron and ion transport, and enhanced electrochemical stability. These properties are needed to realize electrochemically-driven energy storage and water treatment devices with high performance.
Lucia Gemma Delogu is head of the ImmuneNanolab at the University of Padua and Visiting Professor at New York University AD. Delogu previously worked at the University of Southern California and as visiting Professor and Marie S. Curie Fellow at the Technical University of Dresden, Germany.
Delogu’s research focuses on using systems immunology approaches to study bi-dimensional nanomaterials and MXenes in particular for their interactions with immune cells towards biomedical applications. Beyond various National Italian Grants, she has been the scientific coordinator of two interdisciplinary European projects on nanomedicine and nanosafety (G-IMMUNOMICS, CARBOIMMAP). Her work as the corresponding author has appeared in major academic journals, including Nature Communications, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Nano Today, ACS Nano, and Small. Cumulatively, her work contributes to immunology, nanotechnology, material science, and space biology.
Dr. Laura Fusco received her B.Sc. in Medical Biotechnologies from the University of Milan studying the effects of nanoparticles on human health. After receiving her M.Sc. in Medical Biotechnologies and Molecular Medicine “Summa cum laude”, in 2018 she earned her Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Trieste (Italy), with a project on the toxicological effects of graphene at the skin level, supported by the EU H2020 Programme Graphene Flagship.
Dr. Fusco integrated her research at the Karolinska Institutet (Sweden) and has worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in the framework of two H2020 projects and as a Seconded Scientist at Sidra Medicine (Qatar), exploring the immune interactions of carbon nanomaterials. In 2020, Dr. Fusco served as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Padua (Italy), working on a project on nanomaterials for wound healing during space flights funded by the European Space Agency, ESA. She received several awards, including a Marie Curie Global Individual Fellowship (MSCA-IF) and was selected to attend the 71st Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting, in 2022. She is currently a Marie Curie Global Fellow at Drexel University and the University of Padua, in the framework of the SEE project focused on MXene skin and immune interactions for biomedical applications.
Faisal is an Associate Professor of Chemical Engineering at Khalifa University. His research focuses on novel membranes and devices for water treatment and energy applications, including desalination, wastewater treatment, seawater and brine mining, valuable minerals recovery, ammonia, hydrogen, batteries and waste-to-wealth.
Faisal is also the Deputy Director of the Centre of Membrane and Advanced Water Technology (CMAT) at Khalifa University and serves as an Editorial Board Member in the Desalination Journal published by Elsevier. Additionally, he sits on the Advisory Board for XPRIZE Water Scarcity, part of the Mohamed Bin Zayed Water Initiative. This $119 million, five-year global competition aims to enhance access to clean water by creating reliable, sustainable, and affordable seawater desalination systems.
A frequent contributor to academic journals, Faisal was also a visiting assistant professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States from 2016 to 2018. He received his PhD in Interdisciplinary Engineering with a focus on water technologies from the joint program at the Masdar Institute and MIT. He obtained his Master of Chemical Engineering from Imperial College London for his research on the use of ionic liquids in the determination of surface energies, which led him to receive the Lonza Award and an Associateship of the City and Guilds of London Institute Award in chemical engineering at Imperial College London.
He is a graduate of both the Executive Leaders and Innovative Leaders programs of the UAE Government Leaders Program at the Prime Minister’s Office in Dubai. Additionally, he is an alumnus of the Young Future Energy Leaders Program at the Masdar Institute and a Water Expert in the National Experts Program managed by the Emirates Foundation under the Abu Dhabi Government. Finally, Faisal is the recipient of the Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum Global Water Award in 2025.