Medical Technologies and Clean Energy Solutions: The 10 Engineering and Technology Winners

Dr. Stefan Brendelberger is a researcher at DLR since 2007. His primary research interest is in the solar thermochemical cycles for production of renewable fuels, especially the process and reactor development. Also he is interested in numerical simulation and heat management. Dr. Brendelberger supervises PhD students and is the Project leader of SUN-to-LIQUID. In 2017, he was a MC Fellow MHC Diadikasia, Greece. His focus was on metal hydrid hydrogen compressor. In 2014, he was a Research Assistant at CSIRO, Australia. Dr. Stefan Brendelberger did his PhD in Mechanical Engineering RWTH Aachen in 2012. 2006 he did a YGT at ESA, Netherlands, where he was focused on the technology assessment of advanced energy systems. In 2005 he did his Physics Diploma at the University of Karlsruhe. Dr. Brendelberger studied abroad in Barcelona and Krakow.

Yi Cui is a Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University and leader of the Yi Cui Group. He has published about 500 research papers and has an H-index of 203 (Google). In 2014, he was ranked NO.1 in Materials Science by Thomson Reuters as “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds”. He is a Fellow of Materials Research Society, Electrochemical Society and Royal Society of Chemistry. He is a Co-Director of the Bay Area Photovoltaics Consortium, of Battery 500 Consortium and of Stanford StorageX Initiative. He is a world leading scientist to break the wall of efficient batteries.

Alessio Figalli earned his doctorate in 2007 under the supervision of Luigi Ambrosio at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa and Cédric Villani at the École Normale Supérieure de Lyon. He was a faculty at the University of Texas-Austin, before moving to ETH Zürich in 2016 as a chaired professor. Since 2019 he is the director of the “FIM-Institute for Mathematical Research” at ETH Zürich.

Christian Koos received the Dr.-Ing. degree in Electrical Engineering from University of Karlsruhe in 2007. From 2008 to 2010, he was affiliated with the Corporate Research department of Carl Zeiss AG, where he led the technology forecast in the field of nanotechnology. In 2010, he joined Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) as professor in the department of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology. His research covers photonics, optical communications, and optoelectronic signal processing. Christian is co-founder of high-tech start-up companies in the field of photonics.

Dr. Teodoro Laino was a Master and PhD Student at the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, with an MSc in Chemistry in 2001 and PhD in Chemistry in 2006. After a short period (2006-2008) at the University of Zurich, he joined IBM Research in 2008. The focus of his research is accelerated discovery for Chemistry and materials: explore AI, Cloud, Robotic and Computing technologies to accelerated the R&D process in chemical industries.

Simone Schürle is assistant professor at ETH Zurich, Switzerland, heading the responsive biomedical system lab. She develops diagnostic and therapeutic systems at the nanoscale and microscale, in order to tackle steep problems in medicine. Schuerle attended MIT, researching nanosensors for cancer diagnostics as well as methods to enhance drug transport (2014-2017). In 2013, she earned her PhD at the ETHZ. Schuerle has received several awards and fellowships, and was honored by the WEF for her scientific contributions. In 2014, she co-founded the spin-off MagnebotiX, offering magnetic micromanipulation systems.

Metin Sitti has pioneered many research areas, including wireless miniature medical robots, gecko-inspired microfiber adhesives, bio-inspired miniature robots, and physical intelligence. He is a director at Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems in Stuttgart, Germany. As side academic positions, he is a professor at ETH Zurich in Switzerland, professor at Koç University in Turkey and honorary professor at University of Stuttgart in Germany. Beforehand, he was a professor at Carnegie Mellon University (2002-2014) and a research scientist at UC Berkeley (1999-2002) in USA. He is the founder of the start-up nanoGriptech, Inc. Sitti is the recipient of the ERC Advanced Grant, Rahmi Koç Science Prize, SPIE Nanoengineering Pioneer Award and NSF CAREER Award.

Prof. Karen Scrivener, Professor at EPFL, has been working on cement and concrete for 40 years. Her career moving from academia to industry and back, gives her a unique insight into both the scientific fundamentals and practical realities of this fascinating material. Her main focus is on lowering CO2 emissions from this important material. This has led to the development of LC3 cement which can cut CO2 emissions by up to 40%. Through her roles in Journal editing, and leading think groups on sustainability she has become one of the most influential people in the field.

Following undergraduate studies in Physics in Hamburg, Stefan Tautz obtained a MPhil in Theoretical Physics and a PhD in Low Temperature Physics, both at the University of Cambridge. After a post-doc at the Universiteit van Amsterdam, he took up a position at TU Ilmenau in Germany. In 2001, he became Associate Professor of Physics at International University Bremen (as of 2007: Jacobs University), from where he moved to Forschungszentrum Jülich to become director of the Peter Grünberg Institute and Professor at RWTH Aachen University in 2007. His research interest is Quantum Nanoscience.