Rohit R. Gaddam is an assistant professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering in the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER), Bhopal, India. He completed his PhD under Prof. George Zhao at the University of Queensland (UQ), Australia, on alkali-ion batteries. He was awarded the IPRS and UQ Centennial Scholarships for his PhD. He also briefly pursued his research at Washington University in St. Louis, USA, and the CSIR-Indian Institute of Chemical Technology, Hyderabad, India. He was the recipient of the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship to pursue his research in the field of energy storage at the Technical University of Munich, Germany. Dr. Gaddam’s current research focuses on advanced functional material synthesis for energy applications.
George Zhao is a professor and an ARC Australian Laureate Fellow of the School of Chemical Engineering at UQ. He has held a couple of other fellowships, such as the ARC Future Fellow (2011–2014) and the UQ Vice-Chancellor’s Research and Teaching Fellow (2014–2017). Prof Zhao’s research focuses on nanoporous materials for sustainable energy storage and conversion as well as for environmentally friendly chemical processes and products. The overall objective of his research program is to develop tailor-designed advanced porous materials with desired structural, interfacial, and morphological properties for applications in the fields ranging from energy storage and conversion, heterogeneous catalysis, adsorption, water and air purification, and seawater desalination, to photonics. Prof. Zhao is a recipient of several prizes and awards, such as 2nd prize of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, global highly cited researcher, American Carbon Society Award, and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry.