9th Meeting on Chemistry & Life

PLENARY SPEAKERS


Prof. Chien-Hsiang Chang (Department of Chemical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Tchaj-wan)

Univ. Prof. Niyazi Serdar Sariciftci (Institute of Physical Chemistry, Johannes Kepler University, Linz, Austria)

Jan Skoček, Ph.D. (Heidelberg Materials, Leimen, Germany)

Prof. Izabela Radecka (Faculty of Science and Engineering, University of Wolverhampton, Wolverhampton, United Kingdom)

KEYNOTE SPEAKERS


Prof. Apostolis Koutinas (Department of Food Science and Human Nutrition, Agricultural University of Athens, Athens, Greece)

prof. Iain McCulloch (Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment; Princeton University; University of Oxford)

Chien-Hsiang Chang

Lecture: Catanionic Systems for a Sustainable Future: Applications as Drug Carriers

Dr. Chang received his Ph.D. degree in 1993 in Chemical Engineering at Purdue University, USA. He was appointed as an associate professor in 1994 at the Department of Chemical Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan and was promoted as a professor in 2000. His research interest is colloid and surface chemistry.

Dr. Chang was the president of the Taiwanese Colloid and Interface Society in the periods of 2009-2013 and 2015-2017. He has been a committee member of the Asian Society for Colloid and Surface Science since 2005 and become the president since 2022.

Dr. Chang is now working as a professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering and vice dean of the College of Engineering, National Cheng Kung University, Tainan, Taiwan and serving as an Associate Technical Editor of the Journal of Surfactants and Detergents.

Niyazi Serdar Sariciftci

Lecture: Towards sustainable fuels created by CO2 recycling

Professor Sariciftci, an Ordinarius Professor for Physical Chemistry and the Founding Director of the Linz Institute for Organic Solarcells at Johannes Kepler University, Austria, focuses on sustainable fuels via CO2 recycling.

With a background in physics, which includes work experience at the University of California, Santa Barbara, under Nobel Laureate Professor Alan J. Heeger, Sariciftci has made significant contributions to photoinduced optical, magnetic resonance, and transport phenomena in semiconducting and metallic polymers.

His work includes the invention of conjugated polymer and fullerene-based "bulk heterojunction" solar cells. With over 600 publications and 89,000 citations, he ranks among the top scientists in material science. He has authored 8 books, founded seven spin-off companies, and received numerous recognitions including the Wittgenstein Prize in 2012. Sariciftci is a fellow of prestigious scientific societies and has received honorary doctorates and awards globally.

Izabela Radecka

Lecture: From trash to treasure – importance of microbes in circular economy

Iza Radecka is a Full Professor in Biotechnology at University of Wolverhampton, UK. Her research is focused on the cost-effective synthesis of novel biodegradable materials using eco-sustainable feedstock and their chemical derivatization into a range of highly valuable products, including novel biodegradable and bioactive mulch films with slow-release delivery systems of herbicides on crop plants.

She has published numerous research papers and several book chapters, coordinated and participated in co-funded research projects at the EU as well as national level. Iza has also given a broad number of invited lectures at international conferences. Iza teaches on a wide variety of microbiology and biotechnology courses, both undergraduate and postgraduate level where she puts her knowledge and experience to good effect.

Jan Skoček

Lecture: CO2 Mineralization: CCU for and by building materials

Since 2012 working at Heidelberg Metarials, Global R&D, currently as R&D Program Manager Carbonation Technologies and as Senior Scientist before.

Managing R&D projects on CO2 reduction by concrete recycling, enforced carbonation and CO2 mineralization, which got awarded by German Innovation prize for climate and environment in 2022.

Before joining industry, followed academic career in the field of material science related to concrete and cement (2006-2012, DTU, Copenhagen) and of numerical methods and modelling (2003-2006, CTU, Prague).

Iain McCulloch

Lecture: Understanding the molecular design features responsible for charge transport in organic semiconducting polymers

Director of the Andlinger Center for Energy and the Environment and a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Princeton University, as well as holding a Visiting Professor position in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford. He previously held joint appointments as Professor of Chemical Science and Director of KAUST Solar Center at KAUST, as well as a Chair in Polymer Materials in the Chemistry Department at Imperial College.

Before joining academia, he spent 18 years managing industrial research groups at Hoechst in the US and Merck in the UK. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the European Academy of Sciences and a Member of Academia Europaea. He is the recipient of the 2022 Royal Society Armourers and Brasiers Prize, the 2020 Blaise Pascal Medal for Materials Science, the Royal Society of Chemistry 2020 Interdisciplinary Prize, 2014 Tilden Medal for Advances in Chemistry and the 2009 Creativity in Industry Prize.

His interests are in the design and investigation of organic semiconducting materials.