Andrew is a Professor of Materials Chemistry and a University Research Professor at the University of Oxford. His main interests are in the dual roles of flexibility and disorder in functional materials.

Stephen Loeb is a Professor of Chemistry and the Canada Research Chair in Supramolecular Chemistry and Functional Materials at the University of Windsor. Steve is a world-renowned expert in supramolecular chemistry and its applications in inorganic chemistry. Over the past 30 years, he has made significant contributions to the areas of mechanically interlocked molecules, anion recognition and metal-organic framework (MOF) materials. He is widely recognized for pioneering the use of MOFs to support molecular dynamics in the solid-state – publishing a pair of landmark articles in Nature Chemistry showing that the large amplitude rotation and translational motion of macrocycles in interlocked molecules can be made to operate in inside porous solid-state materials. His impact on inorganic chemsitry in Canada was recognized with the 2012 Rio Tinto Alcan Award from the Chemical Society of Canada and in 2017 he was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Monique A. van der Veen is Associate Professor in the department of Chemical Engineering at Delft University of Technology. In 2010, she obtained her PhD at the university of Leuven, under the guidance of Thierry Verbiest and Dirk De Vos. With a 3-year postdoctoral fellowship from the  Fund for Scientific Research –Flanders she continued to work at the University of Leuven, as well as in the group of Mischa Bonn at the Max-Planck Insitute of Polymer Research in Mainz. In 2013 she started her own group at Delft University of Technology. In 2017 she was awarded an ERC Starting Grant, in 2018 the Athena Prize by the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO) and in 2020 a VIDI Grant by the Dutch Science Foundation (NWO). She seeks to unravel and control the dynamical behaviour of framework materials with external physical forces. Via this route she aims to design better materials for electronics, separations and catalysis.

Tessel Bouwens is an early career researcher from the Netherlands. She is currently working as an NWO Rubicon Postdoctoral Fellow at the Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, UK.

In her research, Bouwens employs supramolecular strategies in artificial leaf-research. She uses the concepts used in nature to design new devices for solar energy conversion technologies with a supramolecular approach.

Bouwens obtained her PhD in 2021 supervised by Prof. Dr. Joost Reek and Dr. Simon Mathew from the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands. She developed the ring-launching solar cell that improves the power conversion efficiency by launching charged rings (hence the name) away from the electron donor, thereby inhibiting charge recombination. This approach integrates supramolecular machinery in solar cells and demonstrates the impact of molecular organization on the performance of devices for solar conversion technologies.

I studied at the University of Parma (Italy), where I obtained by BSc, MSc and PhD in Chemistry. Here, I concluded my doctoral research in early 2018 with a thesis on the investigation of crystal structure and aperiodicity of metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) by using single-crystal X-ray diffraction as a total scattering technique. I then joined Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) to work as postdoctoral fellow in the Chemical Engineering Department, where I studied the synthesis optimisation of MOFs for electronic applications and started working on the development of single-crystal total scattering routines and their adaptation to MOF materials. In late 2019 I was awarded a FWO postdoctoral grant to move to the EMAT facility at the University of Antwerp (Belgium), aiming to extend my crystallographic studies on MOF nanocrystals by using electron diffraction. While integrating electron crystallography in my total scattering toolbox, I was offered a Max Planck Society scholarship to move to the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research (Germany) starting from January 2022. Here, I am investigating the structure complexity of flexible and defective MOFs by single crystal total scattering, and defining standard practices for extending this approach to any other type of crystalline porous framework.

Distinguished Professor, Member of Japan Academy, Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry,

Honorary Member of Chemical Society of Japan, Honorary Member of Japan Society of Coordination Chemistry

The Honorary Fellowship of the Council of the Chemical Research Society of India (CRSI)

Education:

1975-1979        Kyoto University, Graduate School, Hydrocarbon Chemistry, PhD degree 1971-1974    Kyoto University, Undergraduate course, Hydrocarbon Chemistry

Professional Appointments:

2017-Present    Distinguished Professor, PhD

2013-Present    Director, Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences, Kyoto University

2007-2012        Deputy Director, Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences, Kyoto University

1998-2016        Professor, Department of Synthetic Chemistry & Biological Chemistry, Kyoto University 1992-1998        Professor, Department of Chemistry, Tokyo Metropolitan University

1988-1992        Associate Professor, Department of Chemistry, Kinki University 1986-1987   Visiting Scientist, Department of Chemistry, Texas A & M University

F. A. Cotton Laboratory

1983-1988        Lecturer, Department of Chemistry, Kinki University

1979-1983        Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry, Kinki University

 Research interests:

Chemistry of Coordination Space, Porous Materials, Porous Coordination Polymers (PCPs), Metal-organic Frameworks (MOFs)

Award:

2022               Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher

2021               Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher

2020               Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher

2019                Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher

2019                Emanuel Merck Lectureship Award (Darmstadt, Germany)

2018                Grand Prix of the Fondation de la maison de la chimie, France

2018                2018 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher

2017                Chemistry for the Future Solvay Prize

2017                2017 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher 2017    The 58^th Fujihara Award

2016                 1st Air Liquide Awards on Essential Small Molecules

2016                 Fred Basolo Medal for Outstanding Research in Inorganic Chemistry (American Chemical Society, Northwestern University)

2016                2016 Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher 2016    Japan Academy Prize

2015                Marco Polo della Scienza Italiana Award

2015                 2015 Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher

2014                 2014 Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher

2013                 The 10^th Leo Esaki Prize

2013                 The de Gennes Prize（Royal Society of Chemistry）

2013                 Kyoto University Shi-Shi Award

2011                 Kyoto Shimbun Award Culture Academic Award

2011                 The Medal with Purple Ribbon 2011 (The Japanese Government)

2011                 Research Category, Prizes for Science and Technology, The Commendation for

                        Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and

                        Technology

2010                 Thomson Reuters Citation Laureate (Chemistry)

2009                 The Chemical Society of Japan Award

2008                 Humboldt Research Award, Germany

2007                 The Japan Society of Coordination Chemistry Award

2002                 The Chemical Society of Japan Award for Creative Work

Academic Education and Degrees

Veronique Van Speybroeck is full professor at the Ghent University and head of the Center for Molecular modeling (http://molmod.ugent.be), a multidisciplinary research center composed of about 40 researchers.  She obtained her PhD in 2001 from the Ghent University. Her expertise lies in first principle kinetics and molecular dynamics simulations of complex chemical transformations in nanoporous materials. Major method develpments were done in the framework of two ERC grants. The research is strongly driven by the ambition to model as close as possible realistic materials/processes. To this end, she is recently exploring methods to also model spatially extended nanostructured materials, including defects and other spatial heterogeneities.

She has a record of significant contributions in the field of modeling nanoporous materials for catalysis, adsorption, e.g. zeolites, Metal-Organic Frameworks, Covalent Organic Frameworks; all applications are inspired and performed in close synergy with experimental groups.   She is also an elected member of the Royal (Flemish) Academy for Science and the Arts of Belgium (KVAB, www.kvab.be).

Omer Yaffe is a senior scientist (assistant professor) at the Weizmann Institute of Science.

He investigates the structure-function relationship in functional materials such as semiconductors, ionic-conductors, and ferroelectrics. Specifically, he is interested in phenomena that stems from strongly anharmonic atomic displacements in solids. 

He earned his Bachelor's degrees in chemistry and chemical engineering (dual-program) at Ben Gurion University in 2005, followed by a master’s degree in chemical engineering. In 2013, he earned a Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute followed by a postdoctoral term at Columbia University, New York.