INVITED SPEAKERS

Ozge Akbulut is an Associate Professor at Sabancı University, Istanbul. She received her B.S. in Materials Science and Engineering at Sabancı University in 2004. Her PhD from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2009) focused on cost-effective fabrication of biomolecular devices and surface science. She continued her studies as a post-doctoral fellow at Harvard University, (2009–2011) on developing tools/techniques for resource-limited settings. Her main research interests are silicone-based composites and rheology modifiers for additive manufacturing and the cement industry. She also cofounded a company, Surgitate, on design and fabrication of tactile surgical training platforms, in 2014.

Speech Title: Single additive enables 3D printing of highly loaded ceramic suspensions

Thierry Brousse is a Full Professor of Materials Science at the University of Nantes since 2005. He received his PhD degree (1991) from University of Caen/Normandy after which he worked as an analytical/radio-analytical engineer in a company before joining the University of Nantes. He is currently a researcher at Institut des Matériaux Jean Rouxel (IMN) where his research interests focus on materials for electrochemical energy storage, with particular emphasis on innovative and/or modified materials for batteries, electrochemical capacitors, hybrid devices and microdevices. He is Associate Editor for the Journal of the Electrochemical Society since 2012, Batteries and Energy Storage topic of interest. He has been the Vice Dean of Innovation at the University of Nantes for 7 years (2013-2020). He also initiated the very popular International Symposium on Enhanced Electrochemical Capacitors (ISEECAP) in 2009 in Nantes which has since taken place every two years in Europe.

Speech Title: Pseudocapacitive electrodes: a journey from nano to micro

Randy Carney is an Assistant Professor of Biomedical Engineering at the University of California, Davis. He received his B.S. in Chemistry in 2008 from University of Arkansas. His M.S. at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2010) and PhD from EPFL in Switzerland (2013) focused on the impact of nanoscale surface structure in the organic ligand coating of metal nanoparticles on cell penetration. He continued his studies as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Davis (2014-2018) studying peptide chemistry, soft nanomaterials, and exosomes and related extracellular vesicles (EVs). His group now is working on spontaneous and surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy as platforms to examine the use of EVs as cancer biomarkers.

Speech Title: From whole blood to isolated extracellular vesicles: SERS for efficient cancer diagnostics

Jonathan De Roo was born in 1989 in Belgium. He studied chemistry at Ghent University and obtained his PhD on the surface chemistry of metal oxide nanocrystals in 2016 under supervision of Prof. Isabel Van Driessche, Prof. Zeger Hens and Prof. José Martins. During his PhD, he conducted a three month research stay in the lab of Prof. Maksym Kovalenko to study the surface of CsPbBr3 nanocrystals. He was a postdoctoral researcher at Columbia University (USA) for 2 years, working on crystallization mechanisms and custom-made ligands under supervision of Prof. Jonathan Owen. He is currently a tenure-track assistant-professor at the University of Basel where his group is working on ceramic nanocrystal synthesis and atomically defined clusters.

Speech Title:  The surface chemistry of colloidal nanocrystals; empowered by NMR

Laura Fabris is an Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Rutgers University, USA. Prior to joining Rutgers as an Assistant Professor in 2009, she was a post doc in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California Santa Barbara, USA. Dr. Fabris earned both her B.S./M.S. and Doctorate Degrees in Chemistry from the University of Padova, Italy. Her research integrates nanomaterials chemistry approaches and computational tools for the design of novel plasmonic nanostructures and their application to address relevant challenges in health and energy. In particular, the group is interested in improving disease diagnostics and patient stratification and in designing novel photocatalysts that are active under broad spectrum illumination.

Speech Title: Anisotropic Plasmonic Nanoparticles with Wide Range Resonance Tunability

Maria Ibáñez was born in La Sénia (Spain). She graduated in physics at the University of Barcelona, where she also obtained her PhD in 2013. Her PhD thesis was qualified Excellent Cum Laude and awarded with the Honors Doctorate by the University of Barcelona. Her PhD research was funded by a Spanish competitive grant (FPU) which supported her to conduct short-term research stays in cutting-edge laboratories. In particular she worked at CEA Grenoble (2009), the University of Chicago (2010), the California Institute of Technology (2011), the Cornell University (2012) and the Northwestern University (2013). In 2014, she joined the group of Prof. Dr. Kovalenko at ETH Zürich and EMPA as a research fellow where in 2017 she received the Ružička Prize. In September 2018 she became an Assistant Professor (tenure-track) at IST Austria and started the Functional Nanomaterials group.

Speech Title: Coming soon

coming soon

Speech Title: Coming soon

Lorenzo Malavasi obtained his PhD in Chemistry in 2003 at the University of Pavia and since 2008 is Assistant Professor at the Chemistry Department. In 2015 he was appointed Associate Professor in the same department. He was the recipient of the Young Scientist Award for outstanding work in the field of perovskites at the International Conference on Perovskites held in late 2005 in Zürich, and of the “Alfredo di Braccio” Prize for Chemistry 2008 of Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei awarded to distinguished under 35-year-old chemists. He is Director of the INSTM Reference Center “PREMIO” devoted to the synthesis of innovative materials and member of the Directive Board of INSTM. Since 2014 he is member of the Academic Board of the PhD in Chemistry of Pavia University.
The scientific interests of Lorenzo Malavasi are related to several areas of material science and solid state chemistry with particular interest in the investigation of structure–properties correlation in different kinds of functional materials, in particular materials for clean energy, metal halide perovskites and catalysis materials. Particular emphasis is put in the synthesis of novel materials in form of bulk, films and nanostructures with advanced functional properties and the investigation of their crystal structure, electronic, optical and transport properties.

Speech Title: Solar-driven Photocatalytic Activity of Metal Halide Perovskite

Elisa Moretti is an Associate Professor in Inorganic Chemistry at the Department of Molecular Sciences and Nanosystems, Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy). She received MSc summa cum Laude (2002) and PhD (2005) degrees in Chemistry from the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Then she moved abroad for a post-doctoral experience, to Malaga (Spain) in the group of Prof. E. Rodriguez-Castellon. In 2011 she obtained the position of Assistant Professor and in 2018 she raised to the position of Associate Professor. She is vice-Coordinator of the International PhD Programme in Chemistry at Ca’ Foscari and founder of a Spinoff, CHEERS, for a sustainable recycling and valorisation of agrifood waste.
Prof. Moretti’s research interests focus on nanostructured materials, specifically on the design and synthesis on multi-component oxide systems with controlled morphology, porosity and high surface area, their characterization and the study of their physico-chemical and optical properties. The last step is the optimization and performance validation of the materials in catalytic and photocatalytic applications (CO preferential photo-oxidation, dyes and drugs photodegradation among others).

Speech Title: Nanostructured ceria-titania photocatalysts for environmental and energy-related applications

Angshuman Nag received his Master of Science (2001-2003) in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Guwahati and then PhD (2004-2009) from Solid State Structural Chemistry Unit at Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, India. He was then postdoctoral fellow both at IISc Bangalore and at University of Chicago. In 2012, he started his independent research group at Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Pune, India. Presently, he as an Associate Professor of Chemistry at IISER Pune. The broad direction of his research group is to design novel semiconductors with interesting photophysical and optoelectronic properties. His current research is on developing perovskite semiconductors. Angshuman has published ~90 research papers. He is editorial advisory board member of both Nano Letters and Chemistry of Materials. In 2020, he was awarded the prestigious “SwarnaJayanti Fellowship” by Government of India.

Speech Title: Optical Properties of Layered Hybrid Perovskites: Nano @ Bulk

Maria Chiara Spadaro was born in Messina (Italy). She graduated in physics at the University of Messina and obtained her PhD in Physics and Nanoscience at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia (Italy) in 2016. Her PhD research was awarded to the Best PhD Thesis Award for Transmission Electron Microscopy applied to Material Science, from the Italian Society of Microscopy Science (SISM). Later she received the Laura Bassi Award, from the Italian Physics Society (SIF), and other Awards related to her scientific outcomes. After postdoctoral appointments in Modena, Lausanne (Switzerland) and Swansea (United Kingdom), she is currently Marie Curie Fellow at the Catalan Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (ICN2), in Barcelona (Spain), and Honorary Research Fellow at Swansea University. She gathers expertise in synthesis, TEM-based characterization, 3D atomic model and image simulation of nanostructured materials with application in catalysis and quantum research related fields.

Speech Title: Heterogeneous catalysts at atomic scale: from growth mechanisms to properties

Lianzhou Wang is Professor and ARC Laureate Fellow in School of Chemical Engineering, Director of Nanomaterials Centre, and Senior Group Leader of Australian Institute for Bioengineering and Nanotechnology, the University of Queensland. His research focuses on the design and application of functional semiconductor nanomaterials for renewable energy conversion/storage applications including new photocatalytsts for solar hydrogen production, low cost solar cells and rechargeable batteries. He has contributed 15 edited books and chapters, > 450 journal publications, and 17 patents, with the citations of >27000 times. He also won some prestigious Fellowships/awards including Australian Research Council (ARC) QEII Fellowship, Future Fellowship and Laureate Fellowship, UQ Research Excellence Award and Research Supervision Award, Scopus Young Researcher Award, and Research Excellence Award in Chemical Engineering. He is the fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry and was named in the list of the Clarivate’ Highly Cited Researchers.

Speech Title: Hybrid Perovskite Quantum Dots for High Efficiency Solar Cells