In February 2011, Professor Thomas J. Schmidt became Chair of Electrochemistry at Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich,
combined with the appointment as Head of the Electrochemistry Laboratory at Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen, Switzerland.
Since 2014 Prof. Schmidt has also been Director of the Swiss Competence Center for Energy Research (SCCER) Heat & Electricity Storage.

He received his University Diploma in Chemistry from the University of Ulm/Germany in 1996 and his PhD in Chemistry from the same University in 2000. That same year he joined the group of P.N. Ross and N.M. Markovic at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory as a Chemist Postdoctoral Fellow. During this period, he intensively studied the fundamentals of electrocatalysis of fuel cell reactions. He continued to work with G.G. Scherer at Paul Scherrer Institute in Villigen/Switzerland on the development of membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) using radiation-grafted membranes and on oxygen electrocatalysis with oxide containing catalysts.
Since fall 2002, he has worked on the industrial development of high temperature membrane electrode assemblies and their components (membranes, catalysts, electrodes) using polybenzimidazole based membranes at BASF Fuel Cell GmbH (formerly Pemeas GmbH). During these eight years in industry, Dr. Schmidt led the high-temperature MEA R&D activities as Director R&D and helped to successfully commercialize the BASF Fuel Cell Celtec^® MEAs.
In parallel since 2009, he has been working as lecturer for Physical Chemistry at Provadis School of International Management and Technology, University of Applied Sciences in Frankfurt/Germany.

He recently served as co-editor of the book entitled Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cell Durability published at Springer.
Since fall 2009, he has also been serving as as instructor of the Short Course PEM Fuel Cells held at the fall meetings of the Electrochemical Society. Dr. Schmidt was chairman and co-organizer of several conferences, e.g., the Gordon Research Conference on Fuel Cells (2005) and the ECS Polymer Electrolyte Fuel Cells Symposia (2010 to 2013).
Prof. Schmidt currently serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of the Electrochemcial Society and the ECS ElectrochemistryLetters. 

In fall 2010, he received the Charles W. Tobias Young InvestigatorAward from the Electrochemical Society. He was awarded the Otto-Monsted Visiting Professorship at the Technical University of Denmark (Lyngby) in 2013. 

Emiliana Fabbri received her PhD in Materials Science from the University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy in December 2008.
A significant part of her PhD studies were carried out in the group of Prof. E. Wachsman at the University of Florida, Gainesville USA.

In 2009 she was appointed as tenured scientist at the International Center for Material Nanoarchitectonics (MANA) at the National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS), Japan.
Emiliana Fabbri deeply investigated conduction mechanisms in solid state ionic conductors, as well as electrochemical reactions related to fuel cells.  

In January 2012, Emiliana Fabbri joined the Paul Scherrer Institute in Switzerland as senior scientist, working on materials for electrochemical energy storage and conversion, with emphasis on metal oxides. To gain a fundamental understanding of electrochemical reaction mechanisms and catalytic activity descriptors, she is particularly interested in the catalyst surface chemistry and electronic structure investigated by operando X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy and X-ray absorption spectroscopy, respectively.

Dr Fabbri is authors of more than 100-refereed articles, and she has received the Kepler Prize from the European Academy of Sciences and the American Ceramic Society Ross Coffin Purdy Award in 2012 and 2012, respectively.
She was co-organizer of the Material Research Society (MRS) Fall meeting in 2014 and of the 223rd Electrochemical Society (ECS) meeting.