Institutsleitung

Prof. Francesca M. Toma is the Director of the Institute of Functional Materials for Sustainability at Helmholtz Zentrum Hereon and a Distinguished Helmholtz Professor at Helmut Schmidt University. Her research centers on the synthesis and characterization of sustainable materials for renewable energy and biological applications. She also holds a position as a Visiting Professor at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

She earned her Ph.D. in Biophysics from the International School of Advanced Studies in Italy in 2009, and acquired postdoctoral experience at the University of Trieste, before moving to the University of California, Santa Barbara as a Marie Curie Researcher in 2011, and to the University of California, Berkeley in 2013. For nearly a decade, she was as a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, where she served as the Program lead of the Liquid Sunlight Alliance and as the Photoelectrochemistry Technology Lead for HydroGEN. In 2022, she also served for a year as a Detailee in the Catalysis Science Program of the Basic Energy Science of the Department of Energy.

Prof. Toma's has co-authored 120 publications, focusing on (photo)electrocatalysis, drug delivery, and tissue engineering. Her work has garnered international recognition with several awards. She was honored as one of the "100 Women of Materials Science" by the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2018 and received the "Rising Star" Award from the American Chemical Society in 2021. She was also awarded the “Alfredo di Braccio Award” by the Italian Academy of Science. In 2022, she was selected as an Oppenheimer Fellow by the US National Laboratory Directors' Council in 2022, underscoring her contributions as a leader to advancing scientific research. The Division of Energy & Fuels of the American Chemical Society selected her as a finalist for the 2025 Energy Lectureship for the Mid-Career category.