Professor Abruña, Émile M. Chamot Professor of Chemistry, is Director of the Center for Alkaline Based Energy Solutions (CABES), the Energy Materials Center at Cornell (emc2) and the Abruña Energy Initiative. He completed his graduate studies with Royce W. Murray and Thomas J. Meyer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1980 and was a postdoctoral research associate with Allen J. Bard at the University of Texas at Austin from 1980-81. After a brief stay at the University of Puerto Rico, he joined Cornell in 1983. He was Chair of the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology from 2004-2008. His research is focused on the development and oerando characterization of energy materials for fuel cells, electrolyzers and batteries. Prof. Abruña is a member of the National Academy of Sciences (2018), the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2007) and Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (2007). He has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Presidential Young Investigator Award, A. P. Sloan Fellowship, J. S. Guggenheim Fellowship and J. W. Fulbright Senior Fellow. He is a Fellow of the Electrochemical Society and the International Society of Electrochemistry. He received the Faraday Medal of the Royal Society in 2011, the Gold Medal of the International Society of Electrochemistry in 2017 and the American Chemical Society Award in Analytical Chemistry (2021). Most recently he received the 2024 Global Energy Prize, the 2024 Enrico Fermi Award, the 2025 Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences, the 2025 G. Ertl Award, the Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award for 2026 and the Gustavus John Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest in 2026. In 2022 he established the Abruña Energy Initiative with the objective of providing renewable and resilient energy solutions to isolated, and often forgotten communities. Prof. Abruña is the co-author of over 625 publications (H-index = 121) and has given over 730 invited lectures world-wide. He considers his 67 Ph.D. students and 75 Post-Doctoral associates, to date, as his most important professional achievement. Abruña is best known for revolutionizing the fundamental understanding of electrochemical interfaces by pioneering the development of operando techniques with emphasis on X-ray based methods, transmission electron microscopy (TEM), differential electrochemical mass spectrometry (DEMS) and confocal Raman imaging. His group pioneered the development of non-precious metal based electrocatalysts for alkaline fuel cells as well as novel materials for batteries, supercapacitors, molecular assemblies and electrochemical sensors.