Polymer Science and Technology

Thieo E. Hogen_Esch did his MSc. in Polymer Chemistry, at University of Leiden, Netherlands, in 1961. He is holding his PhD. (Cum Laude) in Physical Organic Chemistry, from University of Leiden, Netherlands, completed in the year 1967. Currently he is working as a Professor in the department of Organic and Polymer Chemistry at University of Southern California.

The Hogen-Esch group is focused on the synthesis of polymers using advanced methods in all areas of polymer synthesis aimed at the fabrication of new materials with potential in energy and other materials science fields. Applications include: fuel cell and ultrafiltration/reverse osmosis membranes and polymers reinforced with perfluorocarbon clusters. Current areas of interest include: A. Non-thermodynamic self-assembled polymer blends with hydrophilic Nano-sized channels. B. Synthesis of blends polymers end-functionalized with perfluorocarbon (RF) groups for reverse osmosis and other applications.

Peter Foot studied chemistry at the Universities of Southampton and Oxford. He worked for a time in the polymer industry. and later, at Brighton and Sussex Universities, he undertook research in inorganic materials and organic polymers. His present interests are mainly in functional polymers and nanocomposites for energy conversion, organic optics & electronics and drug delivery. He led the Materials Research Group at Kingston University (1995-2008) and was Founding Director of the Materials Research Centre. He retired as full-time Professor of Materials Science in 2014, and is now an Emeritus Professor. He currently supervises 3 PhD students, having previously directed 57 postgrad research students and 9 postdoc researchers. His research has been widely funded by EPSRC, the Royal Society, industry and government/European agencies

•Conducting polymers and polyblends (e.g. for sensors and actuators) •Organic and polymeric semiconductors and thin-film devices (OLED; FET) •Organic-inorganic nanocomposites, including photovoltaic (PV) properties and electronic energy transfer •High-energy battery materials (especially Li and Mg battery cathodes), and supercapacitors •Polymer nanoparticles for targeted delivery of potent or cardiotoxic drugs •Ophthalmic polymers (surface modification and novel polymer synthesis)

Igor F. Perepichka completed his Diploma in Chemical Engineering, with Distinction from Donetsk technical University, Donetsk, Ukraine. In1987 he done his PhD in Organic Chemistry from National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine. In 1999 he achieved "Senior Research Fellow" rank (Highest Attestation Commission of Ukraine). Later he become the Professor of Chemistry, LCRI Chair; School of Chemistry, Bangor University, Bangor, UK.

His Research activity is focused on design, synthesis and studies of novel organic p-functional systems, from small molecules to conjugated polymeric materials, toward their applications in organic electronics, optoelectronics and photonics.

Roderick is a Professor in the Faculty of Science and Tier Canada Research Chair, Roderick Melnik is an applied mathematician and scientist with over 25 years of academic and industrial research experience. He is the director of the MS2Discovery Interdisciplinary Research Institute. Prior to his appointment in Canada, Melnik held full professorships in the U.S.A. and Denmark, while in the late 1990s, he held the position of senior mathematician at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Sydney, Australia. He received his PhD in Computational Mathematics and his MSc in Applied Mathematics from Kiev State University in 1989 and 1985, respectively. Melnik has been a recipient of a number of awards, including prestigious fellowships in Italy, Denmark, England and Spain. He has published over 300 refereed research contributions in the field of applied mathematics, computational science and mathematical modelling in sciences and technology. He serves on editorial boards and has been a guest editor of many international journals and book series. He is a member of such professional societies as SIAM, ASME, CAIMS, AustMS and its ANZIAM Division.Roderick Melnik is head of the M2NeT Laboratory (Mathematical Modelling for New Technologies) and is affiliated with the University of Waterloo and the University of Guelph, as well as with the Guelph-Waterloo Institute of Physics.

Polymer Science,Applied and computational mathematics with its enrichments in sciences and technologies; Partial differential equations and approximation theory; Non-smooth control, Mathematical biology and complex dynamic systems.

Vakhtang Barbakadze has completed his Ph.D and D.Sci. at the ages of 33 and 54 years from Zelinsky Instiute of Organic Chemistry, Moscow, Russia and Durmishidze Institute of Biochemistry and Biotechnology, Tbilisi, Georgia, respectively. 2006 up to date he is the head of laboratory of plant biopolymers at the Tbilisi State Medical University Institute of Pharmacochemistry. 1996 and 2002 he has been a visiting scientist at Utrecht University (faculty of pharmacy), The Netherlands, by University Scholarship and The Netherlands organization for scientific research (NWO) Scholarship Scientific Program, respectively. He has published more than 86 papers in reputed journals.

Plant biopolymers, Organic Chemistry, Polymer Science

Jintao Zhu is a Professor at the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. degree from Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry in 2005. After postdoctoral training at the University of Alberta in Canada and University of Massachusetts Amherst in USA, he joined the Huazhong University of Science and Technology in 2009.Professor Zhu has received several awards including China National Funds for Distinguished Young Scholar (2015), Chinese Chemical Society Youth Award (2013, New Century Excellent Talents of Chinese Ministry of Education (2009), and Distinguished Professor of Chutian Scholar of Hubei Province (2009).

His research interests are microfluidics processing, biomaterials, supramolecular assembly, immune-therapy, and responsive polymer materials.

Prof.dr.ir. Gustaaf Schoukens is professor of polymer technology at the Ghent University (Belgium), faculty of Engineering. He received his degree in Chemical Engineering from the K.U. Leuven (Belgium) in 1971 where he also obtained his Ph.D. in 1978. The subject of his Ph.D. research was “Non-linear viscoelastic behaviour of dispersions”. He worked as senior researcher from 1978 till 2004 in the private industry (Solvay; Central Research Laboratory) in the field of polymerization and polymer processing. In 1994 he obtained the part-time position of lecturer at the Ghent University, teaching “polymer processing”. In 2004 he obtained the fulltime position of professor at the Ghent University teaching all courses concerning polymer technology, including processing and polymerization processes. He is also involved in the courses concerning “environment and sustainable development” in general and teaching the course of “rational use of materials” in particular. Polymer technology in general and polymer processing, including synthetic and biopolymers, in particular are the main leads in his research program and of its publications. The main research topics are now the development of artificial turf for sport applications and the development of biopolymers based on chitin or chitosan with biomedical properties. A more recent research is the study of nanostructures, especially nanoparticles obtained by reaction engineering. These nanoparticles are already used in large quantities for the coating of paper and paperboards. I am an expert in the production of monofilaments for artificial sport applications and founded ERCAT (European Research Centre for Artificial Turf).

polymer processing,biomedical,polymer technology

Carlo Cavallotti received his PhD in Chemical Engineering in 1999 from Politecnico di Milano. He became assistant professor at Politecnico di Milano in 1999 and associate professor of Chemical Engineering Principles in 2006. In 2001 he was post-doctoral associate fellow at MIT. Winner of several awards, he is author of more than 60 papers on international peer reviewed journals and several book chapters. His main research focus is theoretical chemical kinetics. He is interested in the gas phase and surface chemistry active during the growth of advanced materials, in the kinetics active in plasmas and in combustion environments and, more recently, in the molecular modeling of biomolecular reacting systems.

Study of the chemical kinetics of homogenous and heterogeneous reactions and interested in the gas phase and surface chemistry responsible for the growth of advanced materials,The method adopted to investigate these different systems is similar and is based on the multiscale modeling paradigm.The study of advanced material synthesis is pursued by investigating elementary reactions through quantum chemistry, the film morphological evolution using 3D kinetic Monte Carlo methods (home built code), and the reactor fluid dynamics by integrating the equations of conservation of mass, energy, and momentum together with the Maxwell equations (in the plasma case) using the finite element method (home built code). The investigated systems comprise epitaxial and nanocrystalline silicon, the MOCVD deposition of III-V (InP, GaAs and AlGaAs) and II-VI (ZnS, CdTe, ZnSe) materials, and the deposition of Cu for microelectronic applications. The investigation of the mechanism of formation of soot during combustion is pursued through the combination of high level ab initio calculations and suitable kinetic theories such as RRKM (home built parallel code with top computational performances and top level of implemented theory). The aim of this study is the accurate determination of reaction mechanisms and kinetic constants of elementary reactions leading to the formation of benzene, the soot precursor, and its successive growth. Recently the developed computational approach has been applied to the study of separation process of biomolecules from a molecular standpoint and also interested in the study of the interaction between synthetic ligands, monoclonal antibodies and a suitable chromatographic support. The adopted computational approach is Molecular Dynamics, with force field parameters determined through ab initio simulations.

Prof. Han-Yong Jeon, male, geosynthetics/technical organic materials researcher, graduated from textile engineering department, Hanyang University in 1979. He worked for Hyejeon College, 1982-1990 and Howon University, 1990-1992, Chonnam National University, 1992-2005 and now works for Inha University. Since 1998, he is the director of Geosynthetics Institute (USA)-Korea Directory. From 2008-2012, he worked in International Geosynthetics Society as Council member (2006~2012) and he was the 6th president of Korean Geosynthetics Society (2011~2013). Also, he is members of ASTM D35 and ISO TC221 on geosynthetics from 1998. Now he is the current 32nd President of Korean Fiber Society (2014~2015). He has published more than 782 papers in domestic and international conferences. He wrote 17 texts including 'GEOSYNTHETICS’ and also published 107 papers in domestic & international journals. He has awards of Marquis Who's Who - Science and Engineering in 2003~2014 and Top 100 Scientists in the World: 2005/2011 of IBC (International Biographical Centre, UK). Also, he got the 33rd Academy Award of Korean Fiber Society in 2006 and “Excellent Paper Award of 2012” by The Korean Federation of Science and Technology Societies.

Manufacturing, Application and Evaluation of Technical Organic Materials Manufacturing, Evaluation, Standardization & Regulation of Geosynthetics Polymeric Geo composites

Professor Zizi Abdeen is an Egyptian national. She is a researcher Professor in polymer lab. Petrochemicals dept, Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute. She completed her PhD & M.Sc. degrees in Polymer Chemistry from Ain Shams University, (Egypt), where she also completed her B.Sc., Degree in Chemistry, Faculty of Sciences, Cairo University, (Egypt). She main stream research is at the frontier of materials/polymer science and emerging fields such as nanotechnology/nanocomposites. She has a keen interest in the development of intelligent materials based on bio resources such as chitosan and starch through chemical modification and advanced biotechnology processes. He is author of over 27 articles on polymers, biomaterials, hydrogels and nano composites systems and reviewer of over 15 International journals and a member of the Advisory Editorial Board of Polymers and Biomaterials in different International journals. She was sharing as technical committee in more than ten international conferences

Development of Nano-Microgels,Targeted oily water treatment and reused,Chitosan and its applications in petroleum field,Polymer nanosystems - Metal nanoparticles- Hydrogels,Synthesis of metal nanocomposites polymers (Green Synthesis),Petroleum field systems using nano-Hydrogel systems etc.

Prof Ajay Kumar Mishra is a finalist in the 2015/2016 National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF) awards in the category TW Kambule-NSTF Awards: Research and its outputs. The award is for an outstanding contribution to science, engineering and technology (SET) and innovation by an individual over a period of up to 15 years after award of a PhD or equivalent, predominantly in South Africa. The 2015/2016 National Science and Technology Forum (NSTF) awards in partnership with South 32 recognize outstanding contributions to SET and innovation for researchers and other SET professionals. Earlier this year Mishra was awarded for excellence in research and innovation at the Research Awards ceremony. He is an NRF C2-rated researcher. Currently in the Nanotechnology and Water Sustainability (NanoWS) Research Unit, College of Science, Engineering and Technology, and based at the Science Campus, Mishra is also an adjunct professor at Jiangsu University, China. He obtained his PhD in Chemistry from the Department of Chemistry, University of Delhi, Delhi, India. In 2006, he moved to the University of the Free State for postdoctoral studies in the area of composites/nanocomposites. In 2009, he joined Unisa in the Department of Applied Chemistry as a Senior Lecturer and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011. Mishra is currently group leader in NanoWS of the research area for composites/nanocomposites, water research and bio-inorganic chemistry. He has hosted several visiting researchers/scientists/postdocs in his group. Mishra has also developed a number of collaborations worldwide. His research contributions include many publications in international journals. He has delivered a number of plenary, keynote and invited lectures. Because of his outstanding research profile, he has received a number of awards, including a Global Achiever’s Conclave-Mahatma Gandhi Pravasi Samman Award at the House of Lords, UK, in 2014. Mishra has served as associate editor as well as a member of editorial boards of many international journals. He has edited several books for renowned publishers. He has also written for a number of international journals and is a member of a number of scientific societies.

Nanoscience/nanotechnology Materials science, polymers Composites/nanocomposites Water research