PLENARY SPEAKERS

Prof. Clara Viñas has dedicated work at industry (1984-1985), at public institutions being the head of Municipal Laboratory of Sabadell City (1985-1991) involved on chemical-bromatological analysis of food and environmental control, and at academia at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) from 1991. She is a Full Professor at the ICMAB-CSIC since 2006.

She has published 25 book chapters with ISBN, a chapter for “Science of Synthesis” Encyclopedia and over 312 original scientific papers in peer refereed journals included in the SCI (h= 46). She has been supervisor of 12 Master degrees (2 were distinguished by the Catalan Society of Chemistry with “Sant Jordi” Award) and 11 Doctoral Thesis (3 were distinguished by the U.A.B. with the Extraordinary Yearly Prize). She pioneered the EUROBORON conferences and co-chaired EUROBORON I, HALCHEM IV, IMEBORON XIII and ZING Conference on “Medicinal Chemistry of Boron Compounds Conference”. She has led competitively funded research Spanish projects and participated in European, Catalonian and industry ones. She is co-author of 6 patents (1 European, 1 USA, 1 China and 3 British). She commonly acts as reviewer of SCI journals and Funding agencies.

The focus of her scientific activity is in the chemistry of boron clusters. Her research interests are in the synthesis of novel icosahedral boron clusters to be used in biosensors, in potentiometric sensors, to generate non-conventional surfactants, new homogeneous catalysts based on metallacarboranylphosphines or metallacarboranylthioethers, gold and magnetic NPs capped with carboranylmonothiol and carboranylphosphinic acids, carboranyl iodinated compounds and high Boron containing molecules for medicinal applications as radioimaging / radiotherapy and Boron Neutron Capture Therapy (BNCT).rk at industry (1984-1985), at public institutions being the head of Municipal Laboratory of Sabadell City (1985-1991) involved on chemical-bromatological analysis of food and environmental control, and at academia at the Spanish Council for Scientific Research (CSIC) from 1991. She is a Full Professor at the ICMAB-CSIC since 2006.

Talk title: Harmony between Boron clusters and Phosphorous moieties enhances the properties of the resulting nanomaterials

Evamarie Hey-Hawkins has been a Full Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Leipzig University, Germany, since 1993. She received her diploma (1982) and doctoral degree (1983) at the University of Marburg, Germany. After stays at the University of Sussex, UK (1984/85), the University of Western Australia (1985/86) and the ANU, Canberra, Australia (1986/87), she completed her habilitation in Marburg (1988). From 1988-1990 she was a Research Associate at the MPI for Solid State Research, Stuttgart.

In 2013, she was awarded the degree of “Distinguished Woman in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering” by IUPAC. She is also the recipient of the Elhuyar-Goldschmidt Lecture Award (2015) and the Costin Nenitzescu-Rudolf Criegee Lecture Award (2016). She was honoured with two honorary doctoral degrees (Dr. h.c.), by Babeş–Bolyai University, Romania (2014) and Ss. Cyril and Methodius University in Skopje, Macedonia (2016). In 2016, the Romanian Chemical Society (SChR) honoured her with the Costin Neniţescu Medal.

Since 2007, she has been the Speaker of the Graduate School “Building with Molecules and Nano-objects (BuildMoNa)” (www.buildmona.de). Since 2013, she is chairing the COST Action “Smart Inorganic Polymers” (CM1302, SIPs, www.sips-cost.org).

Her scientific interests are in the field of organophosphorus chemistry, biologically active boron compounds, heterometallic transition metal complexes and catalysis. She has authored more than 430 publications in refereed journals.

Webpage: http://research.uni-leipzig.de/hh/

Talk title: Making and Breaking of Phosphorus-Phosphorus Bonds

Maurizio Peruzzini since February 2017, is Director of the Department of Chemical Sciences and Technologies of Materials of the National Research Council (DSCTM-CNR). He was Director of the Institute of Chemistry of OrganoMetallic Compounds at CNR (ICCOM-CNR) between 2011 and 2017 and Chair elected of the Division of Inorganic Chemistry of the Italian Chemical Society (2009 – 2011). Currently he is Chairman of the “Sacconi Foundation”. MP has received the prize “Raffaele Nasini” 1993, gold medal awarded by the Inorganic Chemistry Division of the SCI in recognition of his studies on molecular hydrogen complexes and has been awarded with the SCF French-Italian Prize, 2011 by the Société Chimique de France. MP has lectured in more than 80 Universities or Research Centers worldwide and has given invited lectures in more than 70 International and National Conferences. He is author of more than 350 scientific publications and 4 patents [h-index 49 (ISI); ResearcherID:M-1705-2014]. Coordinator of several research projects, he is the recipient (PI) of an ERC ADVANCED GRANT for the project “Phosphorene functionalization: a new platform for advanced multifunctional materials” (PHOSFUN) (2015 – 2019).

Talk title: Advances in black phosphorus chemistry: changing the ugly duckling to a black swan

Anne-Marie Caminade is Director of Research Exceptional Class at the CNRS, and the head of the “Dendrimers and Heterochemistry” group at the LCC-Toulouse (France). After two PhDs in Toulouse and two Post-docs (IFP-Paris and Von Humboldt fellow in Saarbrücken), she holds a CNRS researcher position since 1985. She developed several aspects of phosphorus chemistry. Her current research interest is on dendrimers (hyperbranched nanomolecules), in particular on their use as catalysts, for nanomaterials and for biology/nanomedicine. She is the co-author of about 445 publications, 50 book chapters, 2 books,  and 30 patents (h index 61).

Talk title: Silica and Si-O-containing materials functionalized with phosphorus dendrimers. Synthesis, properties, and uses

Miquel Solà (1964) obtained his PhD at the UAB in 1991 with academic honours. His doctoral research under the supervision of Profs. J. Bertran and A. Lledós was awarded with the Saint Albert Prize. After several months in a consultant private company, in 1993 he moved to the University of Girona (UdG) as assistant researcher. In 1994 he did postdoctoral research in Amsterdam with Prof. Baerends and in 1995 in Calgary with Prof. Ziegler. He was appointed assistant professor of the UdG in 1997. In 2001, he got the Distinction for the Promotion of University Research (young scientist category). Since 2003, he holds a permanent position as full professor in the UdG. He was awarded with the ICREA Academia Prize two times, in 2009 and 2014. In 2013 he got the Physical Chemistry prize awarded by the Spanish Royal Society of Chemistry. He is coauthor of more than 30 book chapters and 325 scientific papers that have received about 11000 citations (h index of 55). He has supervised 16 doctoral Theses. He serves in the Editorial Board of Front. Chem., Theor. Chem. Acc., ACS Omega, and Sci. Rep. journals. Full list of papers: http://scholar.google.com/citations?user=wwh9fP4AAAAJ&hl=en

Talk title: Connecting hydrocarbon and boron hydride chemistries and bidimensional and three-dimensional aromaticities

Carmen Nájera was born in Nájera (La Rioja) and was graduated from the University of Zaragoza in 1973, obtaining her doctorate in chemistry from the University of Oviedo in 1979. She spent postdoctoral stays at the ETH (Zurich), the Dyson Perrins Laboratory (Oxford), Harvard University, and Uppsala University. She became Associate Professor in 1985 at the University of Oviedo and Full Professor in 1993 at the University of Alicante. She is coauthor of more than 400 papers and book chapters, 6 patents and has supervised more than 45 PhD students (WOS data, h = 63, 16,808 citations). She has been visiting professor at different institutions and universities in Marseille, Tucson, Bahia Blanca, Paris, Strasbourg, Bolonia, Campinas and Rio de Janeiro. She has delivered more than 200 lectures in Spanish and Foreign Institutions and Congresses. She has been awarded with the 2006 Organic Chemistry Prize Janssen-Cilagfrom the Spanish Royal Chemical Society of Chemistry, the 2006 Rosalind Franklin International Lectureship from the English Royal Society, the SCF 2010 French-Spanish Prize Miguel Catalán-Paul Sabatier from the SociétéChimique de France, the IUPAC 2015 Distinguished Women in Chemistry or Chemical Engineering Award, Medal to a Professional Career by the Colegio Oficial de Químicosfrom the Comunidad Valenciana 2015 and the 2018 Serratosa Lectureship. In 2010, she was named Correspondent Member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences and in 2012 full Member of the Royal Spanish Academy of Sciences (medal no. 53). In 2013, She was appointed as Active Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Her fields of interest are Synthetic Organic Chemistry, and Asymmetric Catalysis. She is in the Advisory Board of Tetrahedron, Tetrahedron: Asymmetry, European Journal of Organic Chemistry, and ChemCatChem. Professor Nájera is Manager Director of the spin-off company MEDALCHEMY S.L. for the development of APIs.

Talk title: Privileged Chiral Phosphorous Ligands of Coinage Metals as Catalysts for 1,3-Dipolar Cycloadditions of Azomethine Ylides

David Scheschkewitz holds the Chair in General and Inorganic Chemistry of Saarland-University at Saarbrücken (Germany) since 2011. He obtained his PhD in chemistry from the Philipps-University of Marburg (Germany) in 1999 for research on aromatic boron heterocycles. After postdoctoral stints in Toulouse (France), Riverside (California) and Zürich (Switzerland) he carried out his habilitation at the Julius-Maximilians-University in Würzburg (Germany) with investigations on anionic silicon-silicon double bond systems. He was appointed as Senior Lecturer to Imperial College in May 2008 and moved to assume his current role as Chair of General and Inorganic Chemistry at Saarland University three years later. He received several prizes and awards, inter alia the Wöhler Young Investigator Award (2008), the Carl Duisberg-Memorial Award (2009) and the Lieseberg-Prize of the Heidelberg Chemical Society (2009).
His main scientific interests concern (1) the syntheses of heavy alkene homologues and the peripheral functionalization of heavier double bonds, (2) unsaturated yet stable small Group 14 clusters and their derivatization as well as (3) low-valent Group 14 ligands for transition metal complexes and their role in the activation of small molecules and catalysis.

Talk title: Unsaturated Maingroup Species: Beyond the Carbon Copy

He studied chemistry at Wrocław University of Science and Technology where his scientific adventure started with M. Sc. Thesis, completed in 1971, followed by doctoral thesis (1977) both under the supervision of Prof. Przemysław Mastalerz. Prof. Mastalerz subsequently supervised his scientific career for many years. In his laboratory Paweł Kafarski worked on the synthesis of organophosphorus compounds and their potential biological activities. In 1976/1977 he interrupted his PhD studies and spent nine months at Marquette University at Milwaukee working in the laboratory of Prof. Sheldon E. Cremer on the synthesis of phosphetanes. In 1989 he spent six months in the laboratory of Prof. Henri-Jean Cristau at Ecole Nationale Superieure de Chimie at Montpellier elaborating the procedure for the synthesis of phosphono peptides containing P-N bond in their structures. Scientific activity of Paweł Kafarski was concentrated on elaboration of synthetic procedures suitable to produce phosphonate inhibitors (most likely in enantiomerically pure forms) of physiologically important enzymes, to mention only: aminopeptidases (targets for anti-cancer and anti-malarial drugs), cathepsin C (potential anti-tumor agents), glutamine synthetase (target for ant-tuberculosis agents), urease (antibacterials for treatment of stomach ulcer and stone formation in urinary tract) or L-phenylalanine ammonia lyase (potential herbicides). The design of ligands for these targets relied on knowledge of molecular mechanisms of the catalyzed reactions and on three-dimensional structures of the chosen proteins. He coauthored over 250 papers, which are well cited in the literature (over 5000 independent citations).

Talk title: Aminophosphonic enzyme inhibitors as potential drugs against civilization diseases

Matthias Beller, studied chemistry at the University of Göttingen, Germany, where he completed his PhD thesis in 1989 in the group of L.-F. Tietze. After spending a year with K. B. Sharpless at MIT, USA Beller worked in industry from 1991 to 1995. Then, he moved to the Technical University of Munich as Professor for Inorganic Chemistry. In 1998, he relocated to Rostock to head the Institute for Organic Catalysis, which became in 2006 the Leibniz-Institute for Catalysis. The work of his group has been published in >870 original publications, reviews and >120 patent applications. He won several awards including the Leibniz-Price of the DFG, the Paul-Rylander Award of the Organic Reaction Catalysis Society of the USA and the Karl Ziegler Prize from the German Chemical Society. In 2006 he was awarded the German Federal Cross of Merit. Besides he received the first “European price for Sustainable Chemistry” and was appointed to honorary doctor of the University of Antwerp and the University of Rennes.
2017 Matthias Beller has received the Karl Ziegler Prize from GDCh (German Chemical Society) and the Karl Ziegler Foundation. The award is one of the highest honours in the field of chemistry in Germany.

Talk title: How important are Ligands in Catalysis? Teaching non-noble Metals to behave like noble ones

Hiroyuki Nakamura was received his PhD from Tohoku University under the supervision of Professor Yoshinori Yamamoto in 1996. He became an assistant professor at Kyushu University (1995-1997) and at Tohoku University (1997-2002). He worked as a visiting assistant professor at University of Pittsburgh with Professor D. Curran (2000-2001). In 2002, he was appointed as an associate professor at Gakushuin University and promoted as a professor in 2006. In 2013, he was appointed as a professor at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He received the Chemical Society of Japan Award for Young Chemists in 1999 and the Incentive Award of the Japanese Society for Molecular Target Therapy of Cancer in 2007. He became president of the Japanese Society of Neutron Capture Therapy in 2015. His research interests include synthetic methodology, medicinal chemistry, chemical biology, photodynamic therapy, and neutron capture therapy.

Talk title: Cancer Therapy Using Boron: Target Protein Identification and Neutron Capture Therapy

T. Don Tilley was born in Norman, Oklahoma, on November 22, 1954. After receiving his B.S. degree in chemistry from the University of Texas in 1977, he went to the University of California at Berkeley where he completed graduate studies in organolanthanide chemistry under the direction of Richard Andersen (Ph.D. 1982). After his graduate work at Berkeley he was appointed as an NSF-sponsored exchange postdoctoral fellow to work jointly with Bob Grubbs and John Bercaw at the California Institute of Technology (1981-2), and with Luigi Venanzi and Piero Pino at the ETH in Zürich (1982-3). During this period, he developed the chemistry of the (pentamethylcyclopentadienyl)ruthenium fragment. In 1983 he began his independent research career as an Assistant Professor at the University of California at San Diego. There he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1988, and then to Professor in 1990. In 1994, he accepted appointments as Professor of Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley and as Faculty Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Talk title: Chemical Transformations with Unusual Metal Complexes containing Low-Valent or Hyper-Coordinate Silicon Ligands

Philippe MIELE received his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry in 1993 at the University of Montpellier. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, GA, USA), he became Assistant Professor (1994), and then Professor at the University of Lyon. He was the leader of the group “Molecular Precursors and Inorganic Materials” in the Laboratory of Multimaterials and Interfaces (UMR UCBL/CNRS 5615) and Lab Head from 2003 up to 2010. He became full Professor at the University of Lyon in the Laboratory of Multimaterials and Interfaces (UMR UCBL/CNRS 5615) and Lab Head from 2003 up to 2010. In fall 2010, he joined the European Institute of Membranes in Montpellier (UMR ENSCM/UM/CNRS 5635) setting up a new group. In 2011, he has been also appointed to his present position as Lab Head.
Its research interests lie in boron chemistry, particularly for molecules and materials for energy, health and environmental applications. He is mostly recognized as an expert in the field of non-oxide advanced ceramics using the Polymer Derived Ceramics (PDCs) route, which allows the preparation of ceramics with complex composition in various shapes and morphologies. With his group, he has developed this strategy by mastering each step of the process: synthesis of the molecular precursors, conversion into the preceramic polymer, shaping, conversion into the ceramic by an appropriate chemical and/or thermal treatment. Original nitride materials which contain mainly B, Si, Al, are thus fabricated such as fibers, membranes, (meso)porous materials, nanomaterials and nanocomposites, monoliths,…
Philippe MIELE has co-authored around 260 papers in international journals (h=42), 12 patents and has given around 40 invited talks in international meetings. He has supervised more than 35 PhD theses. He has co-organized around 10 symposia in international conferences and is member of numerous international advisory boards of conferences such as “ISNT”, “Euroboron”, “CIMTEC”,….. He was nominated junior member (2003) then senior member (2016) of the “Institut Universitaire de France” (IUF) and has been elected in 2011 at the “World Academy of Ceramics” affiliated with the class “Science”.

Talk title: Boron nitride based nanostructured materials: molecules, polymers, nano-objects and their applications