Contributors to the Pioneering Investigators collection 2025: part 3

Hyun S. Ahn completed his doctoral training in Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley, followed by postdoctoral work at the University of Texas at Austin. He then began his independent career at Yonsei University in 2017, where he currently serves as an associate professor. His research focuses on deciphering, understanding, and ultimately commanding all elementary electron transfer steps in the photon-to-fuel energy conversion processes, from the natural photosynthetic Z-scheme to the fuel forming redox catalysis reactions.

Ulf-Peter Apfel is a Professor for Chemistry at Ruhr University Bochum and Head of the Electrosynthesis Department at Fraunhofer UMSICHT. He obtained his PhD from Friedrich-Schiller-University Jena in 2010 and conducted postdoctoral research at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. From 2014 to 2019, he led an Emmy-Noether research group at Ruhr University Bochum before being appointed to his current joint position in 2020. His research focuses on molecular and heterogeneous electrocatalysis, electrode structuring, and electrolyser engineering for sustainable hydrogen production, bio-electrolysis, electroorganic reactions and CO₂ conversion, bridging fundamental chemistry and applied energy technologies.

Veronica Augustyn is the Jake and Jennifer Hooks Distinguished Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at North Carolina State University. Her research focuses on the electrochemistry of materials, and especially transition metal oxides, for energy and environmental applications. Recent topics include understanding electrochemical interfacial phenomena, insertion mechanisms, and nanoconfinement effects. She completed her PhD at UCLA with Prof. Bruce Dunn in 2013, and was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Texas at Austin with Prof. Arumugam Manthiram. She supports the materials electrochemistry community as a Scientific Editor of the Journal of Materials Chemistry A and is a Member-at-Large of the Electrochemical Society Battery Division.

Lars Borchardt received his PhD in inorganic chemistry from Technische Universität Dresden, Germany in 2013. After a postdoctoral stay at ETH Zürich, Switzerland he was awarded a junior research group in 2015 and started working on mechanochemistry. Since 2019 he has been professor for inorganic chemistry at Ruhr-University of Bochum. His research interests span the entire field of mechanochemistry, from inorganic to organic to polymer chemistry. He is particularly interested in mechanochemical catalysis and in understanding the underlying mechanisms through in situ analytics.

Basile F. E. Curchod is a Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Bristol (UK). His research group (https://in-silico-photochem.com) focuses on the development of theoretical methods for simulating the dynamics of molecules beyond the Born–Oppenheimer approximation, and their applications to atmospheric photochemistry and photochemical processes triggered at advanced light sources. Basile is the recipient of the 2022 Marlow Award, the 2022 PCCP Emerging Investigator Lectureship Award, and the 2023 JPC and PHYS Division Lectureship Award from the American Chemical Society. Basile is also a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Physical Chemistry A and the Chair of the Spectroscopy and Dynamics Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Jeremiah J. Gassensmith is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at The University of Texas at Dallas. His research integrates materials chemistry and immunology, with a particular focus on using metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) to modulate immune responses and develop next-generation vaccines and immunotherapies. His group also engineers virus-like particles (VLPs) and hybrid biomaterials for biomedical imaging, sensing, and therapeutic delivery. Gassensmith earned his PhD from the University of Notre Dame under Bradley Smith and completed postdoctoral training with Sir Fraser Stoddart. His interdisciplinary work has been recognized with numerous national and international awards for innovation, mentorship, and translational research.

Bin Kang is currently a full professor at the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering of Nanjing University and a “Youth Yangtze River Scholar” of China. He completed a joint-PhD in 2011 from NUAA and Georgia Tech and joined Nanjing University in 2015. He now leads a multi-disciplinary research team that involves novel nanoprobes, AI-assisted cell spectroscopy, multimodal cell imaging, and nano-photonic devices and instruments. He has published >80 papers in high-tier journals. He also holds a number of China and US patents, one of which was successfully transformed into practical products (with Zolix Co.).

Dr Ivanhoe Leung is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Chemistry and the Bio21 Institute at the University of Melbourne. He is a biological chemist with strong expertise in the use of NMR spectroscopy and complementary biophysical techniques to uncover the molecular mechanisms that underpin biological processes. A major focus of his research is bacterial metabolism, where his group investigates how pathogens such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis remodel their metabolic pathways to adapt to nutrient stress. Dr Leung has authored >80 publications and received several awards, including the RACI Welcome Award and the Chemistry Supervisor of the Year Award in 2024.

Soichiro Ogi is a lecturer at the Integrated Research Consortium on Chemical Sciences, Japan. He received his PhD from the University of Tsukuba in 2011 under the supervision of Prof. Masayuki Takeuchi. He conducted postdoctoral research at NIMS, Tsukuba (2011–2013), and at the University of Würzburg, Germany (2014–2016). He began his academic career at Nagoya University as an assistant professor in 2016 and became a lecturer in 2021. His current research focuses on developing strategies to control self-sorting behavior via seeding methods, to modulate photophysical properties via additive design, and to program supramolecular polymerization in neutral lipid environments.

Andreas Orthaber, an Associate Professor in the Ångström Laboratories at Uppsala University, Sweden, received his PhD from the Karl-Franzens University Graz, Austria in 2010. Since 2014, he has been a research group leader in the Program for Synthetic Molecular Chemistry. The group works at the interface between organic and inorganic molecular materials, exploring low valent pnictogen containing polyaromatics and coinage metal clusters. The research focuses on utilizing electronic structure modifications of molecules by elemental substitution, structural as well as geometric control for opto-electronic applications, (light) responsive materials and small molecule activation.

Yoko Sakata is a professor at Nagoya University. She received her PhD degree in 2010 from the University of Tokyo under the supervision of Prof. Mitsuhiko Shionoya. After postdoctoral research at Kyoto University and ERATO Kitagawa Integrated Pores Project, she moved to Kobe University in 2012 as a project assistant professor. In 2014, she became an assistant professor at Kanazawa University and was promoted to associate professor in 2018 at the same university. She began her professor career at Nagoya University in 2024. Her main research interest is synthesis and application of new self-assembled supramolecular metal complexes.

Thomas S. Teets is currently the Russell A. Geanangel Professor of Chemistry at the University of Houston. He earned a BS degree from Case Western Reserve University, followed by a PhD at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and postdoctoral research at California Institute of Technology, before starting his independent career in 2014. He leads a physical inorganic chemistry research group that focuses mainly on the photochemistry and photophysics of coordination compounds and organometallic complexes, emphasizing photosensitizers for photoredox catalysis and phosphorescent compounds for optoelectronic applications.

Judy Wu is a computational organic chemist and the Thomas Albright Professor of Chemistry at the University of Houston. Her research focuses on investigating concepts of ground and excited state aromaticity and antiaromaticity and their applications for developing useful chemical reactions and designing functional organic molecules. She has received several honors, including an IUPAC Young Chemist Award, a Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award, and the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship among others. Her recent research interests involve molecular solar thermal energy storage systems, photoswitches, mechanistic photochemistry, and functional carbon-rich π-systems.

Dr Hang Xing, born in Nanjing, earned his BS and MS from Nanjing University under Junfeng Bai, and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign under Yi Lu. He conducted postdoctoral research with Chad A. Mirkin at Northwestern University before joining Hunan University. His research interests span the interdisciplinary fields of analytical chemistry, chemical biology, and cell engineering, with a particular focus on microbial and mammalian cell interfaces. He developed the Liposome Fusion-based Transport (LiFT) platform for inner leaflet-specific engineering, alongside other modification strategies, enabling advances in artificial cell communities, transmembrane signaling, and biocatalysis.

Wei Xiong is a Full Professor and Kent Wilson Faculty Scholar in Chemistry and Biochemistry at UC San Diego. He earned his BS from Peking University (2006) and PhD from the University of Wisconsin–Madison (2011) with Prof. Martin Zanni, followed by postdoctoral work at JILA with Professors Margaret Murnane and Henry Kapteyn. Since joining UCSD in 2014, his research has advanced ultrafast nonlinear spectroscopy and imaging to probe polaritonic dynamics, biological assemblies, and charge transfer at interfaces. His honors include the Sloan Fellowship, Coblentz Award, Brown Investigator Award, JPC Lectureship, AAAS Fellowship, and recognition as a Blavatnik Finalist.

Mingming Zhang, a Professor at Xi’an Jiaotong University, received his PhD from Zhejiang University in 2012 and postdoctoral trainings from Georgia Tech (2012–2013), University of Maryland, College Park (2013–2015) and University of Utah (2015–2017). His current research interests are multicomponent coordination chemistry, which explores the applications of different multicomponent structures for light-emitting, photocatalysis and other applications.

Professor Peng Zheng received his BS from Nanjing University, China (2008) and PhD from University of British Columbia, Canada (2013), under Professor Hongbin Li. He then pursued postdoctoral research at Harvard Medical School with Dr Timothy A. Springer. In 2015, he returned to Nanjing University as a Professor in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. His research employs single-molecule force spectroscopy to investigate protein mechanics and receptor–ligand interactions. His lab also uses artificial intelligence and molecular dynamics simulations to study protein stability and design ultrastable proteins.

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