Sara Bals was born in Antwerp (Belgium) in 1977 and studied Physics at the University of Antwerp from 1995-1999. She obtained her PhD in 2003 with greatest distinction and special honours by the jury. From 2003-2004, she did postdoctoral work at the National Center of Electron Microscopy in Berkeley, USA. The focus of her work was the development of electron tomography for materials science. After returning to UAntwerp, she became an Assistant Professor in the Physics Department. In 2018 she was promoted to Full Professor. She is currently the spokesperson of EMAT, consisting of 7 principal investigators, about 25 postdoctoral researchers and more than 30 PhD students. Moreover, she is the coordinator of the “Nanolab” Centre of Excellence at the host institution, composed of 6 research groups. Sara Bals is an expert in the application and development of electron tomography for functional nanomaterials. By combining state-of-the-art electron microscopy with advanced 3D reconstruction algorithms, the positions and chemical nature of individual atoms in a nanomaterial are measured. These measurements are now also performed under realistic conditions (heating, liquid or gas flow experiments). She was awarded an ERC Starting grant in 2012, an ERC Consolidator grant in 2018 and an ERC Proof of Concept grant in 2023. She received the award “Laureate of the Academy for Natural Sciences” by the Royal Flemish Academy in 2016, became Francqui research professor in 2017 and was elected as member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts in 2020. She received the European Microscopy Award in 2020 and the ACS Nano Lectureship award in 2021. She is an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europaea. Since 2023 she is Associate Editor with ACS Nano.

Prof. Marc-André Fortin is the head of the Biomaterials for Imaging laboratory at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Québec (CR-CHU de Québec – Université Laval in Quebec City). He is a full professor at the department of Mining, Metallurgy and Materials Engineering at U. Laval. He is and expert in the field of nanomaterials for diagnosis and imaging of cancer, including for radiosensization therapies. He is also the founder and the manager of CR-CHUN de Qc’s small-animal imaging platform (magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, and X-ray computed tomography), mainly dedicated to the study of nano(bio)materials pharmacokinetic processes in vivo for acquiring evidence toward regulatory approvals in the biomedical device and pharmaceuticals industries. Dr Fortin graduated with a Ph.D. from Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique – Énergie et Matériaux (INRS-ÉMT – Montréal, Canada), followed by a Postdoc in biomedical imaging at Uppsala and Linköping Universities (Sweden; in biomedical imaging). Dr Fortin received twice a Career Award from the Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec (FRQS Junior 1 and 2; 2008 – 2016). His main research interests include the development of nano(bio)materials for imaging applications, new strategies to image the biodistribution of nanomaterials in vivo, additive manufacturing of biomedical polymers for enhanced visibility in biomedical imaging, as well as novel routes for radioactive nanoparticles synthesis. Dr. Fortin has published more than 75 scientific papers (ACS Nano, Nanoscale, Advanced Materials, Chemistry of Materials, Journal of Controlled Release…), 3 book chapters and 3 reviews in the field of nanomaterials for imaging. He holds several patents on novel nanoparticle synthesis routes by plasma technologies, including effective technology transfers in the precious metals extractive industry. Currently, he holds funding from NSERC, CIHR, CFI, FRQNT, and NRCan. He is a member of the College of Reviewers of the Canadian Institutes of Health (CIHR; Pharmaceutical Sciences panel). At U.Laval since 2007, he lectures on materials analysis, biomedical imaging, and nanotechnology for biomedical applications. He chaired the International Gold Conference 2022 (www.gold2022.org), a scientific platform uniting research in gold-based nanomaterials for high-technology applications.

Vivian W.-W. Yam obtained both her BSc (Hons) and PhD from The University of Hong Kong, and is currently the Philip Wong Wilson Wong Professor in Chemistry and Energy and Chair Professor of Chemistry at The University of Hong Kong. She was elected to Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, International Member (Foreign Associate) of US National Academy of Sciences, Foreign Member of Academia Europaea, Fellow of TWAS and Founding Member of Hong Kong Academy of Sciences. She was Laureate of the 2011 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award. She has received a number of awards, including the Josef Michl ACS Award in Photochemistry, RSC Centenary Medal, RSC Ludwig Mond Award, Porter Medal, Bailar Medal, I-APS Presidential Award, FACS Foundation Lectureship Award, APA Masuhara Lectureship Award, JPA Honda-Fujishima Lectureship Award, JPA Eikohsha Award, JSCC International Award, State Natural Science Award, CCS-China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) Chemistry Contribution Prize, CCS Huang Yao- Zeng Organometallic Chemistry Award, etc. Her research interests include inorganic/organometallic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry and controlled assembly of nanostructures, photophysics and photochemistry, and metal-based molecular and nano- assembled functional materials for sensing, organic optoelectronics and energy research.

Also see: https://chemistry.hku.hk/wwyam/

Prof. Souhir Boujday is the chair of the school of Chemistry at Sorbonne University in Paris. She is a full Professor at the Laboratory of Surface Reactivity, where she leads the group NanoBioSurf, which specializes in nanomaterials and surfaces, particularly for applications in biosensing and nanomedicine.
Prof. Boujday began her scientific career in the field of surface chemistry and interfacial reactivity applied to heterogeneous catalysis. She later transitioned to biological applications where she made her mark by applying a molecular-scale approach to surface decoration in the design of efficient and reliable biosensors. Her research encompasses the fundamental aspects of surface functionalization and the self-assembly of molecules at interfaces. This includes the successful biosensing of relevant targets in environmental and food matrices, as well as in body fluids.
She is also expert in the engineering of innovative plasmonic hybrid nanomaterials, which she tailor and customize in their bulk and surfaces to modulate and enhance their intrinsic properties in line with the targeted application either in biosensing or nanomedicine.

Professor Raffaella Buonsanti is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at EPFL. She leads a multidisciplinary research program which spans from nanoscience to materials chemistry and electrocatalysis.  She has received an ERC Starting Grant in 2016 and an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2022 in addition to numerous awards, including the Swiss Chemical Society Werner Price in 2021, the European Chemical Society Lecture Award and the Royal Chemical Society ChemComm Emerging Investigator Lectureship in 2019, the ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award in 2024. She is also an Associate Editor of ACS Catalysis.

 Angela Casini completed her PhD in Chemistry at the University of Florence (Italy) in 2004, and, afterwards, moved to EPFL (Switzerland) as principal investigator funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (Ambizione program). Between 2011-2015 she was assistant professor at the University of Groningen (The Netherlands), holding a Rosalind Franklin Fellowship. Between 2015-2019, she was also Chair and Director of Postgraduate Taught Masters at Cardiff University (UK), before taking up her current position at TUM in 2019. At TUM, Angela is also Liesel Beckmann Distinguished Professor and Core member of the Munich Institute of Data Science (MDSI), as well as Associated Researcher of the Catalysis Research Center (CRC). Since December 2021, Angela is ad interim manager (kommissarischen Leiterin) of the Chair of Pharmaceutical Radiochemistry at TUM. Her research focuses on the study of the role of metal ions in biological systems and of the mechanisms of action of organometallic anticancer agents. Furthermore, novel applications for metal-based compounds and supramolecular coordination complexes are explored in various domains of chemical biology, radiochemistry, drug delivery and medicine. In these fields, she has authored more than 280 publications (including 12 book chapters) with an H index of 75. She was awarded the 2019 ACS Inorganic Lectureship Award and the 2012 European Medal for Biological Inorganic Chemistry. Between 2016-2019 she was Hans Fischer Senior Fellow of the prestigious TUM Institute of Advanced Study. Angela was also invited for named lectures, including the 36th H. Martin Friedman Lecture 2021 at Brooklyn College of The City University of New York, and the 2019 TGH Jones Memorial Lecture at the University of Queensland. Recently, she has been elected member of the European Academy of Sciences. Since 2021, in the search for novel supramolecular inorganic materials, she coordinates the 4-year TUM Innovation Network “Artificial Intelligence Powered Multifunctional Materials Design” (ARTEMIS). The network focuses on using machine learning to develop novel materials for energy research and regenerative medicine. Since 2024, she coordinates the EIC Path Finder open project titled “Supramolecular Agents as Radiotheranostic Drugs (SMARTDrugs).

Prof. Qian Chen is currently an associate professor and Racheff Scholar in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She obtained her PhD degree from the same department with Prof. Steve Granick (2012) and completed her postdoctoral research with Prof. Paul Alivisatos at the University of California, Berkeley, under a Miller Fellowship. She became a faculty in 2015 and since then has received awards for the research in her group, such as the Forbes 30 under 30 Science List (2016), the AFOSR YIP (2017), the NSF CAREER award (2018), the Sloan Fellow in Chemistry (2018), the ACS Unilever Award (2018), the Hanwha-TotalEnergies IUPAC Young Scientist Award (2022), the Soft Matter Lectureship (2023), the Provost’s Award for Excellence in Graduate Student Mentoring (2024), and the MRS Outstanding Early-Career Investigator Award (2024). Her group’s research focuses on imaging, understanding, and engineering soft, biological, and energy materials at the nanoscale.

Professor Xiaodong Chen holds the President’s Chair Professorship in Materials Science and Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore, with courtesy appointments in both Chemistry and Medicine. His research interests span mechanomaterials science and engineering, flexible electronics technology, sense digitalization, cyber-human interfaces and systems, and carbon-negative technology. Prof. Chen’s outstanding scientific contributions have been recognized with numerous awards, including the Singapore President’s Science Award, Singapore National Research Foundation (NRF) Investigatorship and NRF Fellowship, the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award, Dan Maydan Prize in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Winner of Falling Walls, and Kabiller Young Investigator. He is an elected member of the Singapore National Academy of Science, the Academy of Engineering Singapore, and the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, and an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Chinese Chemical Society, and American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE). Prof. Chen also serves on the editorial advisory boards of numerous esteemed international journals, including Advanced Materials, Small, andNanoscale Horizons. Currently, he is the Editor-in-Chief of ACS Nano, a flagship journal in nanoscience and nanotechnology.

 Emiliano is Professor in Experimental Physics and Energy Conversion at the Faculty of Physics, University of Munich (LMU), Germany and he is the academic lead of the Nanomaterials for Energy group. He is also a visiting researcher at the Materials Departments of both Tianjin University, China and Imperial College London, UK. His research interests lie at the interface between chemistry and physics, and focus on the development of novel nanomaterials and techniques, specifically for applications in energy conversion. He had published over 120 scientific articles, 4 patents and co-edited the first book in Plasmonic Catalysis (Wiley, June 2021). He has been awarded by the European Commission several times, initially as Marie-Skłodowska-Curie research fellow at Imperial College London and later at LMU with ERC Grants for his projects CATALIGHT and SURFLIGHT. In 2021, the Royal Society of Chemistry in UK awarded him as Emerging Investigator in Materials Science. He is currently a PI of the German excellence research cluster e-conversion and coordinator of its graduate program, scientific board member in the Center for NanoScience (CeNS) in Munich, member of the Bavarian program Solar Technologies go Hybrid (SolTech), and fellow of the Young Academy of Europe (YAE). Since 2024, Emiliano has been elected as external Associate Researcher at the TUM Catalysis Research Center (CRC) in Munich.

Christy F. Landes is the Jerry A. Walker Endowed Chair in Chemistry at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Prior to joining UIUC, she was the Kenneth S. Pitzer-Schlumberger Professor of Chemistry at Rice University with appointments in Electrical & Computer Engineering and Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. She earned her BS from George Mason University in 1998 and completed a Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2003 under the direction of Mostafa El-Sayed. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oregon and an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the University of Texas at Austin under the direction of Geraldine Richmond and Paul Barbara, respectively.  

Christy is the Director of the NSF Phase I Center for Adopting Flaws as Features. She is the 2024 Past-Chair of the Physical Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society. She is a senior editor of the Journal of Physical Chemistry Letters and serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards of ACS Nano and Accounts of Chemical Research. She is a Fellow of the Kavli Foundation, the American Chemical Society, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Her awards include the ACS Early-Career Award in Experimental Physical Chemistry, the Langmuir Lectureship, and the Kinosita Award in Single-Molecule Biophysics. 

Xing Yi Ling is a Professor in Chemistry from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She received her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from University of Twente, the Netherlands in 2009, and her postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley between 2009-2011. She joined Chemistry and Biological Chemistry division at Nanyang Technological University in 2011, where she was promoted to professor in 2021. Xing Yi is a Fellow of The Royal Society of Chemistry, and received Singapore National Research Foundation Investigatorship, Nanyang Award for Innovation & Entrepreneurship, L’ORÉAL Singapore for Women in Science National Fellowship, Singapore National Research Foundation Fellowship, IUPAC Prize for Young Chemists, and etc. Xing Yi is the Editor-in-Chief position of the ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces and Applied Materials portfolio, a family of eight journals focused on materials, interfacial processes, and their applications. She is currently in the editorial boards of Angewandte Chemie, Chemistry of Materials, Nanoscale Horizons, Cell Reports Physical Science, ChemPlusChem. Her research focuses in using nanotechnology for fundamental studies and applications in environmental, healthcare, and catalysis fields. In particular, she is interested in self-assembling shape-controlled noble metal nanoparticles into superlattices to impart new structure-to-function properties and applications in surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS).

Jwa-Min Nam received his Ph.D. degree in chemistry from Northwestern University (Chad Mirkin & Mark Ratner) (2004) and worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of California, Berkeley (Jay Groves) (2004-2005). Dr. Nam started his independent career as an assistant professor at Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University in 2006. He is currently a full professor in chemistry and an adjunct professor in biological sciences at Seoul National University. He is serving as the Vice Dean (Planning & Public Relations) of College of Natural Sciences, Seoul National University, and was a Vice Chair of Department of Chemistry, Seoul National University (2019-2021). He has been elected as a Fellow of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST) (2024). He is a member of Global R&D Special Committee, the Presidential Advisory Council on Science and Technology, and was a member of Samsung Electronics Future Technology Committee (2019-2021). Jwa-Min Nam won many awards including Collegiate Inventors Award, National Inventors Hall of Fame, USA & USPTO (2004), Victor K. LaMer Award, American Chemical Society (2006), Outstanding Research Achievement Award, Ministry of Edu., Sci. & Tech., Republic of Korea (2010), Presidential Young Scientist Award, President of the Republic of Korea (2012), Distinguished Lectureship Award, Chemical Society of Japan (2013), Minister’s Basic Research Award from the Ministry of Science and ICT, Republic of Korea (2017), S-OIL Outstanding Thesis Advisor Award (2019), SNU Excellence in Research Award, the President, Seoul National University (2021), Outstanding Researcher Award, Inorganic Chemistry Division, the Korean Chemical Society (2022) and the Basic Science Award, the Ministry of Science and ICT, South Korea (2022). He served as an Associate Editor (2020-2023) and is currently an Executive Editor of Nano Letters (ACS Publications). He is also on the editorial advisory boards of ACS Central Science (ACS Publications), Accounts of Chemical Research (ACS Publications), Small Methods (Wiley-VCH), Particle & Particle Systems Characterization (Wiley-VCH), ChemNanoMat (Wiley-VCH), Sensors and Diagnostics (RSC) and Journal of Nanobiotechnology. Jwa-Min’s research interests include plasmonic nanoparticles, surface-enhanced spectroscopy, nanobiosensors, nanobiocomputing, nanomachines and nanoparticle-based therapeutics.

Professor Ki Tae Nam received his B.S. and M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Seoul National University, and his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He got the “outstanding PhD thesis award” from MIT. His PhD thesis was about the “virus-based battery” (Science 2007) that has been highlighted as the first demonstration of virus based electrochemical devices. During his postdoc (2007-2010) at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, he studied peptide mimetic polymers to assemble two dimensional structures (Nature Materials 2010). Since 2010, His group at SNU continue to pioneer the research area of bioinspired material science to make new functional materials for energy and optical applications. Recently, his group is pioneering a new synthesis to make uniform chiral nanoparticles using peptides and amino acids (Nature 2017 and Nature 2022). In 2022, He received the POSCO Chung-Am Award, which is one of the most prestigious awards in Korea. 

Liane M. Rossi holds a BS degree in Chemical Engineering (UFRGS, Brazil, 1994) and a PhD degree in Chemistry (UFSC, Brazil, 2001). After postdoctoral research experience in Brazil and the USA, in 2004, she joined the Institute of Chemistry at the University of São Paulo (USP) and became a Full Professor in 2016. She currently serves as Coordinator of the CCU Program at the Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Innovation (RCGI), sponsored by FAPESP/SHELL/USP (São Paulo, Brazil). Prof. Rossi is a permanent member of the Brazilian Academy of Science, effective since January 2021. She is an Editorial Advisory Board Member at ACS Catalysis (American Chemical Society) and Chemistry Select (ChemPubSoc and Wiley), and an International Advisory Board at Angewandte Chemie. She is a member of the Brazilian Chemical Society (SBQ), Brazilian Catalysis Society (SBCAT), and American Chemical Society (ACS). She is the author or co-author of about 150 papers published in indexed peer-reviewed scientific journals which received 7200 citations and an H=47. Prof. Rossi has been awarded the King Carl XVI Gustafs professorship in environmental science (Konung Carl XVI Gustafs professur i miljövetenskap) for 2023/24. Her research interests in the field of chemistry and catalysis include metal nanoparticle catalyst design, preparation and characterization. In the field of gold catalysis, she has studied the reactivity patterns at gold-ligands interfaces, bimetallic and hybrid catalysts for selective transformations. The main catalytic processes currently under study are selective hydrogenations and oxidations, biomass conversion into chemicals, and CO₂ capture and conversion.

Vincent Rotello is the Charles A. Goessmann Professor of Chemistry and a University Distinguished Professor at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He received his B.S. in Chemistry in 1985 from Illinois Institute of Technology, and his Ph. D. in 1990 in Chemistry from Yale University. He was an NSF postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1990-1993, and joined the faculty at the University of Massachusetts in 1993. He has been the recipient of the NSF CAREER and Cottrell Scholar awards, as well as the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, the Sloan Fellowships. He has received the Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award in 2023, in 2016 he was awarded the Transformational Research and Excellence in Education Award presented by Research Corporation, the Bioorganic Lectureship of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), the Australian Nanotechnology Network Traveling Fellowship, the Chinese Academy of Sciences President’s International Fellowship for Distinguished Researchers. (2016) and the Langmuir Lectureship (2010). He is a Fellow of both the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and of the Royal Society of Chemistry (U.K.). He is also recognized in 2014, 2015, 2018-2023 by Thomson Reuters/Clarivate as “Highly Cited Researcher” His research program focuses on using synthetic organic chemistry to engineer the interface between the synthetic and biological worlds, and spans the areas of devices, polymers, and nanotechnology/bionanotechnology, with over 650 peer-reviewed papers published to date. He is actively involved in the area of bionanotechnology, and his research includes programs in delivery, imaging, diagnostics and nanotoxicology.

Email：rotello@chem.umass.edu

George C. Schatz is Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University.  He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry at Clarkson University and a Ph. D at Caltech.  He was a postdoc at MIT, and has been at Northwestern since 1976.   Schatz is a theoretician who studies the optical, structural and thermal properties of nanomaterials, including plasmonic nanoparticles, plasmonic metamaterials, DNA and peptide nanostructures, and transition metal dichalcogenides. He has contributed to theories of dynamical processes, including gas phase and gas/surface reactions, energy transfer processes, quantum science, transport phenomena and photochemistry. Schatz has published four books and over 1700 papers. Schatz is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.   He has received numerous awards, including the Debye,  Langmuir and Marsha Lester Awards of the ACS, and the Bourke and Boys-Rahman Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Materials Theory Award of the MRS.  He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Chemical Society and of the AAAS.

Prof. F. Dean Toste was born in Terceira, Azores, Portugal but soon moved to Toronto Canada where he graduated with a B.Sc. (1993) and M.Sc. (1995) from the University of Toronto. He completed his PhD at Stanford University (2000) under the guidance of Professor Barry M. Trost.  After a postdoctoral appointment with Professor Robert H. Grubbs at the California Institute of Technology, he took a position as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry at the University of California, Berkeley in 2002, where he is currently Gerald K. Branch Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Joel H. Hildebrand Distinguished Professor and Chair of the Department of Chemistry.  Toste’s honors include the Janssen, BASF and Mitsui Awards; the OMCOS Award and Thieme-IUPAC Prize from IUPAC; the Nobel Laureate Signature, Cope Scholar, E.J. Corey Awards from the American Chemical Society; the Merck Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry; the Mukaiyama Award from the Society of Synthetic Organic Chemistry Japan and the Horst-Parcejus Prize from the German Chemical Society. He is an elected fellow of the Royal Society of Canada – Academy of Science, the United States National Academy of Science and the American Academy of Arts and Science.

Jianfang Wang obtained his BS degree in inorganic chemistry and software design in 1993 from University of Science and Technology of China, his MS degree in inorganic chemistry in 1996 from Peking University, and his PhD degree in physical chemistry in 2002 from Harvard University. He did postdoctoral study in University of California Santa Barbara from 2002 to 2005. In 2005, he joined Department of Physics at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) as an assistant professor. He became an associate professor in 2011 and a full professor in 2015. He was the Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Science of CUHK from August 2015 to July 2021 and has been the Chairperson of the Department of Physics of CUHK since August 2021. His current research interests are nanoplasmonics, nanophotonics, and photocatalysis.