As an emerging class of ? ?light-responsive semiconductors, hybrid organo-metal perovskites ? ?seamlessly marry the characteristics of organic and inorganic ? ?materials, offering a new fertile playground to explore light-matter ? ?interaction. They have been studied by materials scientists for more ? ?than a century, but in the past decade, perovskites have attracted a ? ?new wave of intense interest due to their extraordinary photovoltaic ? ?properties. The hybrid characteristics of organometallic perovskites ? ?bring a unique combination of physical properties, while also ? ?endowing the material with unprecedented complexity. The strong ? ?correlation of composition/structure/function in these frontier ? ?materials exposes us to new challenges. Here, I will talk about our ? ?recent efforts to adapt both curiosity-driven and machine-learning ? ?approaches to confront these challenges. In one example, the ? ?dynamics of organic cations were found to determine the structural ? ?symmetry and glassy behavior, which led to our discovery of ? ?anomalous crystallographic phases over a wide temperature range in ? ?mixed-halide perovskites. As another example, I will discuss the use ? ?of high-throughput computing and machine learning to achieve precise ? ?control of the energy band structure to accelerate the discovery and ? ?design of new materials.

Dr. Wu Tao, Tom (吳韜) is Chair Professor ?of Frontier Materials in the Department of Applied Physics at The Hong ?Kong Polytechnic University (PolyU). He received his B.S. degree from ?Zhejiang University and his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, ?College Park. Before joining PolyU as a STEM scholar, Dr. Wu worked at ?Argonne National Laboratory in Chicago, Nanyang Technological ?University (NTU) in Singapore, King Abdullah University of Science and ?Technology (KAUST) in Saudi Arabia, and the University of New South ?Wales (UNSW) in Sydney. Dr. Wu has authored nearly 400 peer-reviewed ?papers with citations of over 34,000 and a H-index of 98 (Google ?Scholar), and he has been among the Clarivate List of Highly Cited ?Researchers since 2019. In the past two decades, his research group ?has explored perovskite materials including oxide thin films, ?nanomaterials, and hybrid compounds, focusing on their electronic, ?magnetic, and optical functionalities. He also serves as an Associate ?Editor for ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.