Dr Asel Sartbaeva was born in Kyrgyzstan. She received her MSc degree at the Kyrgyz-Russian Slavic University in Bishkek, and MPhil and PhD degrees at Cambridge University. She has worked in the Department of Physics at ASU on glasses, zeolites and superconductors. In 2007, she was awarded a Glasstone Research Fellowship at Oxford University. Her main research interests are hydrogen storage materials and flexible frameworks.