Gilles Frapper was born in Saint-Cado, south Bretagne. He studied chemistry at Rennes U. (PhD in Applied Quantum Chemistry 1996). Since 1997, he is at Poitiers University, having previously held research positions at NRC Ottawa and Georgetown U. in Washington D.C. He taught introductory chemistry, and he (still) enjoys teaching theoretical chemistry and material sciences. His primary research focus is to comprehend the atomic arrangements in molecular and solid-state compounds in conjunction with their properties.

Dr. Houria Kabbour integrated the CNRS in 2008 as a researcher at UCCS (University of Lille-France) laboratory in the field of solid-state chemistry where she obtained her HDR in 2016. For her postdocs, she joined in 2005 during two years the Materials Science department of the California Institute of Technology, then the Max Planck Institute for solid state research before integrating the CNRS in 2008. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Nantes (IMN) in September 2005.

Dr. Franck Fayon (PhD, 1998 University of Orléans) is research director at CNRS in the CEMHTI laboratory located in Orléans. His research focuses on the development and application of advanced solid-state NMR methods to material chemistry. He has a long standing experience in the study of oxide glasses and related metastable materials using solid-state NMR. He is currently deputy director of the CEMHTI laboratory.

The SMARTER approach to understand the structures and properties of new inorganic materials

Stéphanie Kodjikian specialized in transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and crystallography during her doctoral work on superconducting oxides (Crystallography Laboratory, CNRS Grenoble). She then broadened her skills to metallurgy (CEA Grenoble) and to biology (University of Poitiers), before joining the Laboratory of Oxides and Fluorides (Le Mans University).

Louisiane Verger received her PhD in Physics and Chemistry of Materials from the University Pierre and Marie Curie (Paris, France) in 2015. She joined the Institute of Condensed Matter Chemistry of Bordeaux (France) as a postdoctoral researcher for 18 months. She then joined in 2017 Drexel University (Philadelphia, USA) as a postdoctoral researcher. She belongs to the CNRS as a researcher since 2019. Her research activity is focused on non-oxide chalcogenide glasses and glass-ceramics for optical and energy storage applications.

Matthew Suchomel is a chargé de recherche at the ICMCB laboratory of the CNRS. His research is based on topics of fundamental solid-state chemistry, frequently approached via non-conventional synthetic routes. This work often focuses on structure-property connections using laboratory and synchrotron-based X-ray scattering methods. He obtained his PhD at the University of Pennsylvania, followed by a postdoctoral position in the chemistry group of Prof.