In conversation with Michael Saliba

Michael Saliba

In our latest In conversation with, Michael Saliba, Editor-in-Chief of EES Solar, takes us through the experiences that have shaped his career. From the challenges and collaborations that influenced his path to the opportunities he sees ahead for solar research.

You've had a distinguished career in solar research. What key experiences prepared you for the role of Editor-in-Chief of EES Solar?

I have worked across physics, chemistry, materials science and device engineering, in very different research environments across several countries and cultures. My work on perovskites started in 2011 during my PhD at Oxford, when the field itself was still emerging. Later at EPFL, our work on multicomponent perovskites was a good example of how chemistry, materials science and device physics could come together to address challenges such as reproducibility and stability. It also showed how strongly the final material can depend on what happens much earlier, in the precursor chemistry and during the thermal/processing history of the liquid-to-solid transition.

Building my own research activities later in Fribourg, Darmstadt and at the Institute for Photovoltaics in Stuttgart gave me a different perspective on science: developing people, identifying promising directions and judging ideas beyond my own immediate expertise. I am very grateful to the many collaborators who have shaped my views and my career. 

Working with people from different scientific backgrounds and at different career stages has repeatedly shown me how many ways there are to approach the same problem.

One important lesson from the very fast-moving early days of perovskite materials was to focus on questions that would still matter once the latest record had been broken again. I was also fortunate to have mentors who combined very high standards with a great deal of scientific freedom. That combination has stayed with me.

What distinguishes an EES Solar paper that really stands out?

For me, a paper stands out when it changes how you think about a problem. It should address an important question, make a clear advance and support its claims convincingly. In solar cells, performance gives us an obvious and useful common yardstick. But perhaps because it is so easy to compare, it can also attract too much attention. A new efficiency number alone rarely makes a lasting paper.

Understanding why a change in composition or at an interface improves performance, stability or reproducibility is what allows others to build on a discovery. The strongest work combines technical progress with genuine physical or chemical understanding, supported where useful by theory or simulation that adds real insight.

Ultimately, the best papers do more than report a result. They change the way a problem is approached and open a door for what comes next. That is what tends to stand the test of time.

What emerging areas of solar research are you most excited about, and where do you see the greatest opportunities for transformative research?

Both single-junction and tandem photovoltaics remain extremely exciting. The field has achieved efficiencies that would have seemed remarkable not long ago, so the questions are increasingly shifting towards stability, interfaces, manufacturability and performance under realistic operating conditions. The transition from an exciting laboratory result to a technology that can operate reliably for decades is a fascinating scientific challenge in itself.

Solar cells are also part of the wider field of optoelectronics, and there is a great deal to learn by looking at the same materials from the opposite direction. Turning electrical excitation into light, rather than light into electricity, brings its own challenges and can reveal different loss processes and different aspects of the underlying physics.

I am particularly interested in methods that allow us to watch materials while they are actually forming, operating or degrading. In situ and operando techniques can reveal crystallisation, ion migration and interface formation as they happen, rather than trying to reconstruct the story afterwards. There are also major opportunities in greener processing, vapour and laser-based approaches and increasingly precise control of interfaces.

AI and machine learning will increasingly help us navigate materials and processing spaces that no individual researcher could explore systematically. More broadly, I think transformative research will come from connecting fundamental materials science and light-matter interactions with scalable processing and manufacturing.

What makes solar particularly interesting to me is that it is already technologically important, while at the same time there is still so much fundamental science left to understand.

What advice would you give to early-career researchers looking to establish themselves in the field?

Choose important problems, not simply fashionable ones. Become exceptionally good at something technically distinctive, but keep enough breadth to understand the larger scientific question. Read deeply, including older literature, because many supposedly new ideas have a history.

My own career benefited enormously from moving between different groups, countries and scientific cultures, from Oxford and EPFL to Stanford and later building research groups in Fribourg, Darmstadt, Stuttgart and Jülich. Different environments expose you to different ways of thinking. Seek out people and places that challenge your assumptions rather than simply confirming them.

Collaboration is extremely valuable, but it is equally important to develop your own scientific identity and judgement. I would also not optimise too much for publication count. Careers may be counted in papers, but they are remembered for a much smaller number of contributions.

And learn to use AI meaningfully, not simply as a time-saving tool or a gimmick, but as a way to enhance your own learning and broaden what you can do. AI will change how research is done. Those who learn to use it to learn better, faster and more broadly will benefit disproportionately.

EES Solar is quickly establishing itself as a leading journal in the field. Looking ahead, what is your vision for EES Solar?

I would like EES Solar to become one of the first places researchers think of when they have exceptional work in solar energy. My own career has shown me how much progress happens at the boundaries between disciplines, and I want the journal to reflect that. It should span fundamental chemistry, physics and light-matter interaction through to devices, manufacturing and energy systems, without being tied to one technology or material class.

It should also capture the approaches that are changing how solar research itself is done: AI and machine learning, advanced modelling and simulation, in situ and operando characterisation, better protocols and rigorous benchmarking. Some of tomorrow's important advances may come from directions that are only beginning to emerge today, and a good journal should be able to recognise them early.

At the same time, the criterion should remain simple: the work has to matter. I want EES Solar to be selective, scientifically serious, fair and efficient. If researchers trust the editorial process and consistently find papers in EES Solar that teach them something, surprise them or genuinely move the field forward, the reputation will follow.

Solar research is unusual in that very fundamental work can eventually have direct technological relevance. I would like EES Solar to be a natural home for excellent science across that full spectrum.