The 2013 Materials Research Society Fall Meeting in Boston, December 1–6, will be chaired by Charles T. Black (Brookhaven National Laboratory), Elisabetta Comini (Università di Brescia), Gitti L. Frey (Technion–Israel Institute of Technology), Kristi L. Kiick (University of Delaware), and Loucas Tsakalakos (General Electric–Global Research Center). Updated information on the meeting is available at www.mrs.org/fall2013.

Charles T. Black is a Scientist and the Group Leader for Electronic Nanomaterials in the Center for Functional Nanomaterials, a US Department of Energy User Facility at Brookhaven National Laboratory. His research interests include using nanostructured materials and self-assembly approaches in photovoltaic devices. Black received his BS degrees in physics and mathematics from Vanderbilt University (1991) and his PhD degree in physics from Harvard University (1996). From 1996 to 2006, Black was a Research Staff Member at the IBM Thomas J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, N.Y. He has authored more than 75 publications and conference proceedings, and four chapters of books. He currently holds 37 US patents. Black is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Elisabetta Comini is responsible for the research line on “Metal oxide nanocrystalline quasi-1D structures” in the SENSOR Laboratory at the University of Brescia and CNR-IDASC, in Italy. She is a research specialist in the growth of metal oxides, particularly nanowires, thin films and the measurement of their electronic, functional, and structural properties. She earned her Laurea degree in physics from the University of Pisa (1996) and her PhD degree in materials science from the University of Brescia (2001). Comini serves as a reviewer for various international journals and she is part of the technical program committee of several conferences in chemical sensing. She is supervising several undergraduate as well as graduate students at the University of Brescia. Comini has over 180 technical publications in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters, and review papers; her h-index is 33 (ISI web of knowledge); she is also editor of various books and holds four patents.

Gitti L. Frey is an associate professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Technion–Israel Institute of Technology. She received her BS and MSc degrees in chemistry with honors from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and her PhD degree in materials science from the Weizmann Institute of Science, Israel. She served as a postdoctoral fellow in the Optoelectronics Group of the Cavendish Laboratory, at Cambridge University, then joined the Technion in the fall of 2002 where she was promoted to Associate Professor in January 2009. From 2009 to 2010, she was a Visiting Professor at the Colorado School of Mines and Visiting Scientist in the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Colorado. Frey’s group has performed significant work in the field of functional hybrid materials, including the co-assembly of organic and inorganic precursors into hierarchical structures, and correlating the interfacial structure with photo-physical processes toward energy applications such as photovoltaics and light-emitting diodes. Among other awards, Frey received the Marie Curie Fellowship, The Alon Fellowship, and the Technion’s Excellence in Teaching and Promotion of Research Awards.

Kristi L. Kiick is a Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and a Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Delaware (UD), and has recently been named Deputy Dean of the UD College of Engineering. She received a BS degree from the University of Delaware, and an MS degree as an NSF Predoctoral Fellow from the University of Georgia. After working in industry at Kimberly Clark Corporation, she returned to academia for her PhD degree in polymer science and engineering from the University of Massachusetts Amherst, which she received in 2001. Kiick’s research interests are centered on the use of biologically derived methods for the synthesis and assembly of advanced macromolecular materials with long-term applications in medicine and/or device technologies. Kiick has recently been named a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering. Her editorial activities include serving as a Principal Founding Editor for MRS Communications. She has authored or co-authored over 75 peer-reviewed papers and holds 15 US patents. She serves as the advisor of the MRS Student Chapter at UD.

Loucas Tsakalakos is a Senior Scientist at the General Electric (GE)–Global Research Center in Niskayuna, N.Y., and has recently been named Manager of the Photonics Laboratory. He received his BS degree (1995) from Rutgers University, and his MS (1998) and PhD (2000) degrees in materials science and engineering from the University of California–Berkeley. His expertise is in the integration of heterogeneous thin film and nanostructured materials systems for micro- and nanodevice applications, and he also has extensive experience in the characterization of materials. He is a member of Tau Beta Pi (The National Engineering Honor Society); the author or co-author of over 30 journals, conference proceedings, and book chapter publications, as well as over 30 internal GE publications; he has edited one book (on the topic of nanotechnology for photovoltaics) and holds 12 US patents. Tsakalakos is an associate editor of the Journal of Photonics for Energy, and has given over 30 invited presentations at various international conferences, workshops, and institutions.