Three-Dimensional Graphene

Hirotomo Nishihara is a Full Professor at both the Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR) and the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials (IMRAM) at Tohoku University, Japan. He received his PhD from Kyoto University in 2005 and subsequently joined IMRAM as an Assistant Professor, where he has since devoted his career to advancing research on carbon-based and nanoporous materials. His scientific achievements have been recognized with several distinctions, including the Gottfried Wagner Prize (2019) and the JSPS Prize (2020).
In 2022, Professor Nishihara founded the startup company 3DC and currently serves as Chief Science Officer. He leads the industrial development of ?graphene mesosponge,? a novel porous carbon material created by his group based on a template-based synthesis approach. His research interests include the design, synthesis, and structural characterization of advanced carbonaceous materials, as well as the study of their functional properties for applications in energy storage and conversion, environmental technologies, and bio-related systems.

Takeharu Yoshii is an Associate Professor at the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials (IMRAM) at Tohoku University, Japan. He received his PhD in Engineering from Osaka University in 2020 under the supervision of Professor Hiromi Yamashita. In the same year, he joined IMRAM as an Assistant Professor working with Professor Hirotomo Nishihara and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2025. His achievements have been recognized by several awards, including the Chemical Society of Japan Award for Young Chemists (2025) and the JVSS Society Award for Young Researchers (2025). His research has focused on the design and synthesis of nanostructured heterogeneous catalysts, and has recently expanded to the synthesis, characterization, and catalytic applications of carbon materials.

Wei Yu is an assistant professor at Tohoku University. He received his Ph.D. in material science and engineering in 2018 at Tsinghua University in China with Prof. Feiyu Kang. He then conducted postdoctoral research with Prof. Ce-Wen Nan still at Tsinghua University and joined Prof. Hirotomo Nishihara?s group at Tohoku University (Japan) in November 2020. In April 2025, he was promoted to tenure-track assistant professor (PI) at Tohoku University. His current research is on the rational design of carbon materials and the construction of unique in situ characterizations for beyond Li-ion batteries. He has > 25 peer-reviewed publications and three international/Chinese patents. He has five grants as PI supported by JSPS KAKENHI, JSPS Bilateral Collaboration Project, and China Postdoctoral Science Foundation. He is serving as a youth editorial board member for ACS Applied Energy Materials and Energy Materials Devices.

Junlong Huang is an Assistant Professor at the Advanced Institute for Materials Research (WPI-AIMR), Tohoku University, Japan. He received his Ph.D. from Sun Yat-sen University in 2020 under the supervision of Prof. Ruowen Fu, followed by postdoctoral research with Prof. Dingcai Wu from 2020 to 2022. In October 2024, Dr. Huang joined the Nishihara Laboratory at AIMR, where he collaborates with Prof. Hirotomo Nishihara on the development of novel carbon materials for energy storage devices. His work focuses on the design and preparation of functional porous polymers and carbon materials for energy storage devices.

Robert Szilagyi is an associate professor of chemistry at The University of British Columbia, Okanagan campus (UBCO). He received his degrees from University of Pannonia, Hungary in Carbon and Oil Technology (M.Sc.), Theoretical Organic and Organometallic Chemistry (Ph.D.), while working with Prof. Lajos Bencze. He was a postdoc with Prof. Keiji Morokuma at Emory University and then gained his synchrotron science skills at Stanford University with Profs. Ed Solomon, Britt Hedman, and Keith Hodgson. His independent academic career started at Montana State University, where he rose to the rank of associate professor. Since 2022, he joined the Chemistry Department at UBCO as Department Head and research chair. He was recognized as an emerging young scientists in 2011 by the Kavli Foundation, and received the ?Momentum? prestigious research award from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 2014 and 2015. His research program thrives at the boundaries of experimental and theoretically research by contributing to fundamental scientific discoveries using quantum chemical methods and synchrotron spectroscopic techniques in bioinorganic systems, coordination chemistry, and materials science of Fe-S systems, phyllo-aluminosilicates, and carbon materials.