Serena Cussen (née Corr) is currently Chair of Energy Materials and Professor in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Sheffield. There she leads the Energy Materials Research Group, where her research focuses on understanding the synthesis-structure-function interplay in materials for electrochemical energy storage. She also leads the UK’s Faraday Institution FutureCat consortium, discovering new and scaling up next-generation cathodes for Li-ion batteries. Recipient of RSC Journal of Materials Chemistry Lectureship (2017), the ISIS Science Impact Award (2021) and the RSC Interdisciplinary Prize (2023), Serena is deeply committed to career sustainability, early career mentoring, the promotion of women in STEM and public outreach. She sits on the Faraday Institution Expert Panel, EPSRC Materials Working Group, and advisory boards including Nanoscale, Chemistry of Materials, and Batteries & Supercaps. A former member of the RSC’s Materials Division Council, she has contributed to the RSC’s Equity in Publishing group (contributing to the recent “Is publishing in chemistry gender biased?” report) and was featured in the International Women’s Day report “The Chemical Ladies”.