Francesca M. Toma

Biography

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 Hamburg, Germany. 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 gained postdoctoral experience at the University of Trieste before moving to the University of California, Santa Barbara, as a Marie Curie Researcher in 2011, and then to the University of California, Berkeley in 2013. For nearly a decade, she served as a Staff Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she was the Program Lead of the Liquid Sunlight Alliance and the Photoelectrochemistry Technology Lead for HydroGEN. In 2022, she also served for a year as a Detailee in the Catalysis Science Program of Basic Energy Sciences at the U.S. Department of Energy.

Prof. Toma has co-authored more than 120 publications, focusing on (photo)electrocatalysis, drug delivery, and tissue engineering. Her work has garnered international recognition with several awards as seen below. In 2022, she was selected as an Oppenheimer Fellow by the U.S. National Laboratory Directors' Council, underscoring her contributions as a leader advancing scientific research. The Division of Energy & Fuels of the American Chemical Society selected her as a finalist for the 2025 Energy Lectureship in the Mid-Career category. She serves on the Editorial Advisory Board of ACS Catalysis and the Editorial Board of SustEnergMat. She is also an Associate Editor of three journals, including npj Materials Sustainability, Progress in Materials Science, and EES Solar.

RSC prizes and awards

• Alfredo di Braccio Award 2021, the Italian Academy of Science 
• Rising Star Award 2021, American Chemical Society 
• Honored as one of “100 Women of Materials Science” 2018, Royal Society of Chemistry
• Emerging Investigator 2017 – Journal of Materials Chemistry A, Royal Society of Chemistry

RSC affiliations

• Editorial Board, EES Solar