Plenary Speakers

Sir David King is the Director of the Smith School of Enterprise and Environment at the University of Oxford.  He was the UK Government’s Chief Scientific Adviser and Head of the Government Office of Science from October 2000 to 31 December 2007.  In that time, he raised the profile of the need for governments to act on climate change and was instrumental in creating the new £1 billion Energy Technologies Institute.  In 2008 he co-authored The Hot Topic (Bloomsbury) on this subject.  As Director of the Government’s Foresight Programme, he created an in-depth horizon scanning process which advised government on a wide range of long term issues, from flooding to obesity.  He also chaired the government’s Global Science and Innovation Forum from its inception.  He advised government on issues including the foot-and-mouth disease epidemic of 2001; post 9/11 risks to the UK; GM foods; energy provision; and innovation and wealth creation.  He was also heavily involved in the Government’s Science and Innovation Strategy 2004-2014. He has published more than 500 papers on chemical physics and science and policy, and has been awarded numerous prizes, fellowships, and honorary degrees. He remains Director of Research at the Department of Chemistry in Cambridge. He was President of the British Science Association from 2008-9.

  

Professor Herbert Waldmann is Head of the Department of Chemical Biology at the Max Planck Institute of Molecular Physiology and concurrently also holds the position of Professor of Biochemistry at the Technical University Dortmund. He is research active in the fields of organic synthesis and chemical biology, and has been awarded numerous academic distinctions for his work, which include the Otto Bayer Prize and the Max Bergmann Medal.

Professor Bogusław Buszewski is Chair of Environmental Chemistry & Bioanalytics in the Faculty of Chemistry at the Nicolaus Copernicus University in Poland. His research interests are: environmental analysis, chromatography and related techniques (HPLC, SPE, GC, CZE, stationary phases and columns, surface characterization, adsorption, sample preparation), MIP, biomarkers for cancer, selective separation and molecular identification of microorganisms, spectroscopy,  field analysis, utilization of waste and sludge, chemometrics and molecular modeling.He has been a Humboldt Fellow at Tübingen University (Germany) and visiting professor at several universities in the USA, Japan, UK, South Africa, the Netherlands and Taiwan. He serves as a member of the Committee of Analytical Chemistry of the Polish Academy of Sciences and as member of the editorial boards of 20 national and international journals.

 

Prof. Rudi van Eldik was born in 1945 in Amsterdam (The Netherlands) and grew up in Johannesburg (SA). He received his chemistry education and DSc degree at the former Potchefstroom University (SA), followed by post-doctoral work at the State University of New York at Buffalo (USA) and the University of Frankfurt (Germany). He was appointed as Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the Private University of Witten/Herdecke in 1987. In 1994 he accepted his present position as Professor of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg. His research interests cover the elucidation of inorganic and bioinorganic reaction mechanisms, with special emphasis on the application of high pressure thermodynamic and kinetic techniques. In recent years his research team has also focused on the application of low-temperature rapid-scan techniques to identify and study reactive intermediates in catalytic cycles. He is editor of the series Advances in Inorganic Chemistry, Co-editor of the Journal of Coordination Chemistry and editor of 12 monographs. He serves on the Editorial Board of several chemistry journals. Rudi is also the author of almost 800 research papers and review articles in international journals. In 2009 he was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit (‘Bundesverdienstkreuz’) by the Federal President of Germany, and the Inorganic Mechanisms Award by the Royal Society of Chemistry (London).

Vincent Rotello is the Charles A. Goessmann Professor of Chemistry at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, with an appointment in the Program in Molecular and Cellular Biology. He has been the recipient of the NSF CAREER and Cottrell Scholar awards, as well as the Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar, and the Sloan Fellowships, and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) and of the Royal Society of Chemistry (U.K.). He is currently an Executive Editor for Advanced Drug Delivery Reviews and Associate Editor for North America for the Journal of Materials Chemistry, and is on the Editorial Board of nine other journals. His research program focuses on engineering the interface between hard and soft materials, and spans the areas of devices, polymers, and nanotechnology/bionanotechnology, with over 300 papers published to date.

            

Berhanu Abegaz is a professor of Chemistry at the University of Botswana. He started his career in chemistry in the US by undertaking his PhD studies in the areas of physical/organic and photochemistry.  He then returned to Africa and got into the field of phytochemistry making considerable contributions in bioactive substances, especially those that act on infectious pathogens and parasites.  He is well known for his contributions in the development of chemical sciences in Africa and has received numerous awards, recognitions including membership in honorific academies. He also has interests in indigenous knowledge systems and higher education.

Professor Nyokong holds a DST/NRF chair in medicinal chemistry and Nanotechnology at Rhodes University. She is also the director of DST/NRF Nanotechnology Innovation Center for Sensors, based at Rhodes University. Her research involves the development of phthalocyanines as photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy (PDT), a cancer treatment that uses a combination of a dye, laser light and oxygen. Her research combines phthalocyanines with nanoparticles, such as quantum dots (for imaging) and magnetic fluid (for heat treatment of cancer). She has been awarded numerous awards for her work including L’Oreal-UNESCO award for “Women in Science” as a Laureate representing Africa and the Arab States and was bestowed with the Order of Mapungubwe by the former state President of South Africa, Mr Thabo Mbeki.

Professor Martyn Poliakoff began his academic career as an undergraduate at King's College, Cambridge, obtaining his B.A (1969) and Ph.D. (1973) under the supervision of J. J. Turner FRS. In 1972, he was appointed as a 1972-79 Research Officer in the Department of Inorganic Chemistry of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne. Promotion to Senior Research Officer followed in 1973 and then to a tenured position in 1975. In 1979, he was appointed to a Lectureship in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Nottingham. Promotion to Reader in Inorganic Chemistry and then to Professor of Chemistry followed in 1985 and 1991 respectively. In addition to his chair in Nottingham, Professor Poliakoff is an Honorary Professor of Chemistry at Moscow State University. From 1994-99, he held an EPSRC/Royal Academy of Engineering Clean Technology Fellowship at Nottingham. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society (2002), of the RSC (2002) and of the IChemE (2004). He was awarded CBE (2008) for "Services to Sciences" and made Honorary Member of the Chemical Society of Ethiopia (2008) In 2010 he was awarded the Leverhulme Medal of the Royal Society for his outstanding contributions in the fields of Green Chemistry and supercritical fluids by the application of chemistry to advance chemical engineering processes. He is currently Chair of the Editorial Board of the RSC journal Green Chemistry and a Council Member of the IChemE. He and his colleagues are very active in promoting chemistry via their YouTube channel, The Periodic table of Videos, www.periodicvideos.com

 

Professor Mary B. Nakhleh is a Professor of Chemistry at Purdue University, and she holds a joint appointment with Curriculum and Instruction.  She holds a B. S. in chemistry from the University of Georgia and Master’s and Ph. D. degrees from the University of Maryland.  Mary has served on several general chemistry committees, including the conceptual exam committee, for the American Chemical Society's Examinations Institute, and she has been active as a Councilor and member of the American Chemical Society. She has also served as Associate Editor for the Journal of Research in Science Teaching and for the Journal of Computers in Mathematics and Science Teaching.; she has also served on several NSF panel reviews for the Course, Curriculum & Laboratory Improvement Program. Mary’s recognitions include the 1996 Early Career Research Award from the National Association for Research in Science Teaching and numerous teaching awards from Purdue University. She is also a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the American Educational Research Association. Mary’s academic research focuses on how K-16 students’ drawings and other external representations can be used to analyze their understanding of the particle nature of matter. She has been involved in several NSF-funded projects to make innovative changes in the teaching of undergraduate chemistry; she has received grants from the Dreyfus Foundation and the Hewlett-Packard Foundation to implement computer-based laboratories in undergraduate chemistry courses.