PLENARY SPEAKERS

Professor Dr. J.R. Morante was born in Mataró (Spain). Professor Dr. J.R. Morante received in 1980 his Ph. D. in Physics from the University of Barcelona. Since 1986 he is full professor of Electronics, Semiconductor and Device Physics, in the Faculty of Physics in the University of Barcelona where he has been Vice-dean, Dean, Academic Director of the Electronics Engineering studies, and the first head of the department of Electronics. He has also been Barcelona University coordinator of the inter-university Master on Energy Engineering. At November 2008 he joined the Catalonia Institute of Research for Energy, IREC where he is the head of the Advanced Materials and Devices for Energy Area. He is director of the Xarmae, network of the Generalitat of Catalunya on Materials for Energy and Vicepresident of the European Material Research Society. Likewise, he has been member of the advisory board of the Fundació Bosch i Gimpera devoted to the technology transfer and member of the Council of the Serveis Científic-Técnics de la Universitat de Barcelona. He is specialized in the development of renewable energy devices and systems for applications in the field of energy and environment based, mainly, on nano structures and their functionalization. His special attention is focussed on advanced materials and systems for energy storage and energy conversion. He has taken part in more than 35 R&D&I international and industrial projects in the programmes EU frame program as well as in private industrial contracts. He has authored or co-authored more than 600 works in international specialized journals with a factor h=52 (ISI web and SCOPUS) with more of 11.000 citations, more than 12 deposited patents and has supervised more than 35 doctoral theses; he is a member of international committees and editorial teams of journals, and has been guest editor of many special issues. He has been awarded the Narcís Monturiol of the Generalitat of Catalunya, and the “senior research distinction” of the Generalitat of Catalunya.

Speech title: Surface chemical reactions at self-heated metal oxide nanowires

 

Alberto Vomiero is chair professor in Experimental Physics at the Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. He was awarded his PhD in Electronic Engineering from the University of Trento and his Degree in Physics from the University of Padova. His main interests are in composite nanomaterials (wide bandgap semiconductors, semiconducting nanocrystals and hybrid systems) for gas sensors and excitonic solar cells. In the last years, his research interests focused on dynamics of charge exchange and exciton dynamics in photoactive materials. He is Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellow of the European Commission, Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK) and of the Institute of Nanotechnology (UK), chair of the Italian section of the American Nano Society and member of the Global Young Academy. He is in the editorial board of Scientific Reports (NPG).

Speech title: Composite wide bandgap semiconducting oxides for high-efficiency excitonic solar

Graduated in Physics at Universitat de Barcelona (UB) in 1997, where he also obtained his PhD (European Doctorate and PhD Extraordinary Award) in 2001 in the field of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) applied to nanostructured materials. He also worked at the microscopy facilities and as Assistant Professor at UB, focusing in TEM advanced techniques, such as HAADF electron tomography, HREELS and in general high resolution (S)TEM. From 2009 to 2015 he was Group Leader at Institut de Ciència de Materials de Barcelona, ICMAB-CSIC and Scientific Supervisor of its electron microscopy facilities  Since 2013 he is Vice-President of the Spanish Microscopy Society (SME), and since 2009 he was Member of its Executive Board. Since 2015 he is the leader of the Group of Advanced Electron Nanoscopy at Institut Català de Nanociència i Nanotecnologia (ICN2), CSIC and The Barcelona Institute of Science and Technology (BIST). He has been awarded with the 2014 EMS Outstanding Paper Award, EU40 Materials Prize 2014 (E-MRS) and listed in the Top 40 under 40 Power List (2014) by The Analytical Scientist.

Speech title: A close look to the atoms: a journey to the nanoworld through advanced electron microscopy

Arben Merkoçi is currently ICREA Professor and director of the Nanobioelectronics & Biosensors Group at Institut Català de Nanociencia i Nanotecnologia (ICN2). After his PhD (1991) at Tirana University (Albania), in the topic of Ion-Selective-Electrodes (ISEs) Dr. Merkoçi worked as postdoc and senior researcher/invited professor in the field of nanobiosensors and lab-on-a-chip technologies in Italy, Spain, USA and since 2006 at ICN2. Prof. Merkoçi research is focused on the design and application of cutting edge nanotechnology and nanoscience based biosensors. These nanobiosensors are based on the integration of biological molecules (DNA, antibodies, cells and enzymes) and other (bio)receptors with micro- and nanostructures/motors and applied in diagnostics, environmental monitoring or safety and security. He has published around 250 peer review research papers, supervised around 25 PhD students and has been invited to give plenary lectures and keynote speeches in around 100 occasions in various countries.

Speech title: Nanobiosensors for diagnostics

Isabel Pastoriza-Santos obtained her PhD degree from the Universidade de Vigo in 2001. She worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Melbourne (Australia) in 2002 and 2003. Since 2009, she has been an Associate Professor at the University of Vigo. She has published around 1140 peer review research papers, 8 book chapters and holds 2 patents. In 2012 she was awarded with “For Women in Science Fellowship” from UNESCO-L’OREAL (Spain). Her current interests include the nanoparticles synthesis, surface modification and assembly, plasmonics and nanostructures-based sensing and catalysis.

Speech title: Plasmonic nanostructures for catalysis and sensing

Paolo Samorì is Distinguished Professor (PRCE) and director of the Institut de Science et d’Ingénierie Supramoléculaires (ISIS) of the Université de Strasbourg (UdS) where he is also head of the Nanochemistry Laboratory. He is also Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC), fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (EURASC), member of the Academia Europaea (MAE) and junior member of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF). He obtained a Laurea (master’s degree) in Industrial Chemistry at University of Bologna in 1995. In 2000 he received his PhD in Chemistry from the Humboldt University of Berlin (Prof. J. P. Rabe). He has published >230 papers on hierarchical self-assembly of functional graphene and organic based supramolecular architectures, supramolecular and graphene based electronics, and more generally on the fabrication of multifunctional (nano)devices . His work has been awarded various prizes, including the Young Scientist Awards at E-MRS (1998) and MRS (2000) as well as the IUPAC Prize for Young Chemists (2001), the “Vincenzo Caglioti” Award (2006) granted by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy), the “Nicolò Copernico” Award (2009) for his discoveries in the field of nanoscience and nanotechnology, the “Guy Ourisson” Prize (2010) of the Cercle Gutenberg (France), the ERC Starting Grant (2010) and the CNRS Silver Medal (2012). He is member of the advisory boards of Advanced Materials, Small, ChemPhysChem and ChemPlusChem (Wiley-VCH), Chemical Society Reviews, Chemical Communications, Journal of Materials Chemistry and Nanoscale (RSC).

Speech title: Complex dynamic multicomponent supramolecular nanomaterials: tailoring low dimensional multifunctional nanostructures

Liberato Manna received his PhD in Chemistry in 2001 from the University of Bari (Italy) and worked at UC Berkeley as visiting student and then at the Lawrence Berkeley Lab as postdoc until 2003. He was then scientist at the National Nanotechnology Lab in Lecce (Italy) and in 2009 he moved to the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT), Genova (Italy) as director of the Nanochemistry Department. Since 2010 he is also part-time professor at TU Delft (The Netherlands). Currently he is also Deputy Director of IIT for the Materials and Nanotechnology programs.

Speech title: Chemical, Structural and Surface Transformations in Nanocrystals

François M. Peeters received the PhD degree in physics from the University of Antwerp in 1982. He did postdoctoral research at Bell Laboratory (Murray Hill, NJ, USA) and Bell Communications Research (Red Bank, NJ, USA). He was appointed full professor at the University of Antwerp in 2000.

His areas of interests are computational modelling of mesoscopic and nanoscopic semiconductor and superconducting nanostructures, like phase transitions (structural and melting), artificial atoms (quantum dots and coupled quantum dots), graphene and other two dimensional atomic layered systems.

Peeters is a Fellow of the American Physical Society and the European Physical Society. He is a member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium and of the Academia Europaea. The University of Szeged awarded him a Doctor Honoris Causa and in 2013 he was awarded the Francqui Chair. He is associate editor of Journal of Applied Physics, co-editor of Europhysics Letters and member of the excecutive editorial board of Solid State Communications. He published over 1000 papers with more than 25,000 citations and h-index 72.

Speech title: Atomic collapse in graphene

Prof Chun-Sing Lee jointed the City University of Hong Kong in 1994 and co-founded the Center Of Super-Diamond and Advanced Films (COSDAF) in 1998. He is currently the Director of COSDAF and a Chair Professor in the Department of Physics and Materials Science. His main research area covers organic optoelectronics, nanomaterials and biomedical materials. He holds over 15 US patent and has published over 400 journal papers. His publications have received over 15,000 citations. In addition to serving the editorial boards of Physical Status Solidi, Material Research Express and the advisory editorial board of Asian Materials (NPG), Prof Lee is also an associate editor of Nano-Micro Letters.

Speech title: Growth of nanowires with periodic morphologies via the vapor-liquid-solid mechanism