"Bridging Continents, Powering Futures: Accelerating Sustainable Energy Materials Discovery through AI and African-European Research Partnerships” presents a vision for advancing sustainable energy through both technological innovation and global collaboration. The talk first highlights the urgent need to accelerate the discovery of next-generation photovoltaic materials such as organic and perovskite solar cells, which traditionally take over a decade to develop. Dr. Kekeli N'Konou demonstrates how his research integrates machine learning, physics-informed neural networks, and large language models with advanced simulation expertise to predict high-performance material combinations, extract insights from scientific literature, and guide experimental validation more efficiently. The second part addresses the equally critical goal of strengthening African scientific capacity, where Dr. N'Konou draws on his international journey to present effective models such as North-South co-supervision, immersive training in European laboratories, and virtual collaboration frameworks that enable impactful research without driving brain drain. Together, these approaches outline a forward-looking paradigm for science that is both cutting-edge and inclusive, driven by AI and sustained through equitable global partnerships.
Speaker Bio: Dr. Kekeli N’Konou is an Assistant Professor in physics and electronics at JUNIA ISEN Lille, a part-time lecturer at the University of Lille, and a researcher at the Institute of Electronics, Microelectronics and Nanotechnology (IEMN, CNRS) in France, where he began his research position in spring 2022. He earned his Ph.D. in Micro- and Nanoelectronics from Aix-Marseille University in 2018 and completed a research and teaching position at INSA Toulouse in 2019. From 2019 to 2022, he held a full-time teaching position at ISEN Lille. He maintains active collaborations with African institutions, including the University of Lomé and the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) in Ghana. His research focuses on modeling, organic, and perovskite photovoltaic devices, plasmonic nanostructures, and the application of artificial intelligence to materials and optoelectronic device design, with an emphasis on sustainable technology and science education in Africa. He serves on scientific committees for international conferences in Togo, Nigeria, and Morocco. A 2025–2026 Fulbright France laureate, he will spend six months at Penn State University, actively engaged in rethinking science education in Africa in the era of artificial intelligence.