Plenary speakers

Athina Anastasaki was born and raised in Athens, Greece and obtained her B.S. in Chemistry at the University of Athens. She then commenced her PhD studies at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Prof. Dave Haddleton and graduated in late 2014 with the Jon Weaver award for the best PhD in polymer chemistry in the UK. In early 2015, she accepted a Monash-Warwick research fellow position between the Pharmaceutical department at Monash University and the University of Warwick, jointly supervised by Professor Thomas Davis and Professor Dave Haddleton. She then received an Elings Fellowship, followed by a Global Marie Curie Fellowship, to conduct research alongside Professor Craig Hawker at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Since January 2019, she is an Assistant Professor at ETH and her group focuses on fundamental polymer synthesis, depolymerization and self-assembly predominantly in the area of controlled radical polymerization. Athina has co-authored over 125 peer-reviewed publications and has been the recipient of an ERC starting Grant, the Hanwha-Total IUPAC Young Scientist Award, the ACS Macromolecules Young Investigator Award, and the Golden Owl award, which is in recognition of outstanding faculty teaching. Athina also currently serves as an Associate Editor in the RSC journal Polymer Chemistry.

Joseph M. DeSimone is the Sanjiv Sam Gambhir Professor of Translational Medicine and Chemical Engineering at Stanford University. He is also Co-Director of Stanford’s Precision Health and Integrated Diagnostics (PHIND) Center (Canary Center) and the founding Faculty Director of the Center for STEMM Mentorship at Stanford. He holds appointments in the Departments of Radiology and Chemical Engineering with courtesy appointments in the Department of Chemistry, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, and Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Previously, DeSimone was a professor of chemistry at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and of chemical engineering at North Carolina State University. He is also Co-founder, Board Member, and former CEO (2014 -2019) of the additive manufacturing company, Carbon. DeSimone has published over 380 scientific articles and is a named inventor on over 240 issued patents. He has mentored 80 students through Ph.D. completion in his career, half of whom are women and members of underrepresented groups in STEM. In 2016 DeSimone was recognized by President Barack Obama with the National Medal of Technology and Innovation, the highest honor in the U.S. for achievement and leadership in advancing technological progress. DeSimone is responsible for numerous breakthroughs in his career in areas including green chemistry, medical devices, nanomedicine, and 3D printing, also co-founding several companies based on his research. In the 1990s he and students invented a green manufacturing process for the synthesis of fluoropolymer materials that eliminated so-called “forever chemicals” like PFAS, which was only partially commercialized by DuPont. In the mid-2000s, DeSimone and students developed a nanoparticle manufacturing platform rooted in an imprint lithography-based r2r process, PRINT (particle replication in non-wetting templates)—the first technology to enable large-scale fabrication of uniform nanoparticles for medicine with independent control over particle features such as size, shape, and composition. Based on PRINT, DeSimone co-founded Liquidia Technologies (NASDAQ: LQDA), which has multiple clinical products. DeSimone’s lab published a large body of research using PRINT to study how specific particle featuresinfluence biological processes and to advance the design of vaccines. More recently, DeSimone and team invented a revolutionary 3D printing technology, CLIP (continuous liquid interface production). CLIP eliminates the slow, layer-by-layer construction seen with other polymer 3D printing approaches to enable parts to ‘grow’ continuously and rapidly from a pool of liquid resin. CLIP delivers production-grade parts comparable in performance to injection molded parts. Based on CLIP, DeSimone co-founded, and was the CEO of for six years, Carbon, Inc., now a global digital additive manufacturing company helping to advance product innovation in numerous industries, including medical, dental, footwear, automotive, and aerospace. CLIP is also used by many academic laboratories to advance research in areas including medical devices and implants. DeSimone has received numerous recognitions for achievements in science, engineering, invention, and business. In addition to the U.S. National Medical of Technology and Innovation, these include the U.S. Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award (1997); the American Chemical Society Award for Creative Invention (2005); the Lemelson-MIT Prize (2008); the NIH Director’s Pioneer Award (2009); the AAAS Mentor Award (2010); the Kabiller Prize in Nanoscience and Nanomedicine (2015); the Heinz Award for Technology, the Economy and Employment (2017); the Wilhelm Exner Medal (2019); the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award (2019 U.S. Overall Winner); and the Harvey Prize in Science and Techonlogy (2020). He is an elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences one of only 25 individuals elected to all three branches of the U.S. National Academies (Sciences, Medicine, Engineering). DeSimone received his B.S. in Chemistry in 1986 from Ursinus College in Collegeville, PA and his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1990 from Virginia Tech.

Ben L. Feringa obtained his PhD degree at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands under the guidance of Professor Hans Wynberg. After working as a research scientist at Shell in the Netherlands and the UK, he was appointed lecturer and in 1988 full professor at the University of Groningen and named the Jacobus H. van 't Hoff Distinguished Professor of Molecular Sciences in 2004. He was elected Foreign Honorary member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Sciences. In 2008 he was appointed Academy Professor and he was knighted by Her Majesty the Queen of the Netherlands. Feringa’s research has been recognized with numerous awards including the Körber European Science Award (2003), the Spinoza Award (2004), the Prelog gold medal (2005), the Norrish Award of the ACS (2007), the Paracelsus medal (2008), the Chirality medal (2009), the RSC Organic Stereochemistry Award (2011), the Humboldt award (2012), the Nagoya gold medal (2013), the ACS Cope Scholar Award (2015), the Chemistry for the Future Solvay Prize (2015), the August-Wilhelm-von-Hoffman Medal (2016), The 2016 Nobel prize in Chemistry, the Tetrahedron Prize (2017) and the European Chemistry Gold Medal (2018). In 2019 he was elected as a member of the European Research Council. Feringa’s research interest includes stereochemistry, organic synthesis, asymmetric catalysis, molecular switches and motors, self-assembly, molecular nanosystems and photo pharmacology. www.benferinga.com

Holger Frey studied Chemistry at the University of Freiburg (Germany). Following a stay at Carnegie Mellon-University with Kris Matyjaszewski in 1990 (Pittsburgh, USA) he obtained his PhD at the University of Twente (The Netherlands) with Martin Möller. After his “Habilitation” (University of Freiburg, 1998) on polycarbosilane chemistry he moved to the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) in 2001. Since 2003 he has been holding a full professorship in Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz. His research is directed at novel linear and branched functional polymer structures, anionic polymerization, polyethers, biobased materials, novel thermoplastic elastomers and biomedical materials in general. His group focuses on epoxide polymerization and carbanionic polymerization in general, as well as catalytic CO2 copolymerization, emphasizing biobased monomer units. Recently, the “rPEG” concept was developed as a non-immunogenic alternative to poly(ethylene glycol). To date he and his research group have published 425 peer-reviewed original research articles and reviews (current H-index 79 according to google scholar, > 28,000 citations). Holger Frey is an Associate Editor of the RSC Polymer Journal “Polymer Chemistry”.

Jian Ping Gong is a distinguished professor at Hokkaido University, Japan. She graduated from Zhejiang University, China, and received Doctor of Engineering at Tokyo Institute of Technology. She joined the faculty at Hokkaido University in 1993. She had been focusing on novel hydrogels with high mechanical performances, including double network hydrogels with high strength and toughness, self-healing hydrogels, low surface friction hydrogels, hydrogels with under water adhesion. Recently, she is focusing on functional hydrogels inspired by biological systems, including metabolic-like hydrogels, marine adhesive hydrogels, and memory-forgetting hydrogels. She is also working on the applications of the double network hydrogels as cartilages. She has received various awards including The DSM Materials Sciences Award (2014), The Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ) Award (2021), and the APS Polymer Physics Prize (2023).

Arthi Jayaraman is currently a full professor in the Departments of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Delaware (UD), Newark. She is also the director for an NSF-funded NRT graduate traineeship program on ​‘Computing and Data Science Training for Materials Innovation, Discovery, and Analytics’. She currently serves as associate editor for Macromolecules and for the last three years also served as the inaugural deputy editor for ACS Polymers Au. Jayaraman received her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from North Carolina State University and conducted her postdoctoral research in Materials Science and Engineering at University of Illinois-Urbana Champaign. After holding the position of Patten Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at University of Colorado (CU) at Boulder, in 2014 she joined the faculty at UD. Her research expertise is in the development and application of computational techniques to study polymer nanocomposites, blends, and solutions, and biomaterials. She has received the following honors: UD College of Engineering Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching (2023), AIChE COMSEF Impact Award (2021), American Physical Society (APS) Fellowship (2020), Dudley Saville Lectureship at Princeton University (2016), ACS PMSE Young Investigator (2014), AIChE COMSEF division Young Investigator Award (2013), CU Provost Faculty Achievement Award (2013), Department of Energy (DOE) Early Career Research Award (2010), and CU Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering’s outstanding undergraduate teaching award (2011) and graduate teaching award (2014).

Professor at University of Bordeaux Bordeaux INP/CNRS https://www.lcpo.fr/people/faculties/sebastien-lecommandoux Sébastien Lecommandoux received his Ph.D. (1996) in Physical Chemistry from the University of Bordeaux. After a postdoctoral experience at the University of Illinois (UIUC, USA) in the group of Prof. Samuel I. Stupp, he started his academic career at the Laboratoire de Chimie des Polymères Organiques as Associate Professor in 1998 and was promoted to Full Professor at Bordeaux INP in 2005. He is currently Director of the Laboratoire de Chimie des Polymères Organiques (LCPO-CNRS) and is leading the group “Polymers Self-Assembly and Life Sciences”. His research interests include the design of bio-inspired polymers for biomaterials and pharmaceutical develoment, especially based on polypeptide, proteins and polysaccharide-based block copolymers self-assembly, the design of polymersomes for drug-delivery and theranostic, as well as biomimetic approaches toward design of synthetic viruses and artificial cells. He published over 220 publications in international journal, 6 book chapters and 12 patents (3 being licenced), with over 18000 citations (h-factor 67, Google Scholar). He is also co-director of the joint laboratory LCPO-L'OREAL. Sébastien Lecommandoux is recipient of the CNRS bronze medal (2004), Institut Universitaire de France Junior Chair (IUF 2007), Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry RSC (2017), Seqens Award of the French Academy of Science (2019), Member of the Academia Europaea (2020), XingDa Lectureship Award from Peking University (2021). He has been Editor-in-Chief of Biomacromolecules (ACS) since 2020 after serving as Associate Editor since 2013. He is also in the Editorial Advisory Board of several international journals, including Bioconjugate Chemistry (ACS), Polymer Chemistry (RSC) and Biomaterials Science (RSC).

Kris Matyjaszewski is J.C. Warner University Professor of Natural Sciences and director of Center for Macromolecular Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. In 1994 he discovered Cu-mediated atom transfer radical polymerization, commercialized in 2004 in US, Japan and Europe. He Synthesized many advanced materials for biomedical, environmental, and energy-related applications. He has co-authored >1,200 publications, (>190,000 citations, h-index 209) and 68 US patents. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences, European, Australian, Polish, Hungarian, and Georgian Academies of Sciences. He received 2023 NAS Award in Chemical Sciences, 2021 Grand Prix de la Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie, France, 2017 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry, 2015 Dreyfus Prize in Chemical Sciences, 2011 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, 2009 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, and thirteen doctorates honoris causa.

Charlotte Williams is a professor of Inorganic Chemistry and an EPSRC Established Career Research Fellow in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Oxford. Her research interests lie in polymerization catalysis, inorganic and polymer chemistry. She is particularly focussed on carbon dioxide utilization by copolymerization and on the production of bio-derived polyesters, polycarbonates and block polymers. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society. Her work has been recently recognised by the Leverhulme Medal of the Royal Society (2022), The Royal Society of Chemistry Tilden Medal (2021), an OBE for Services to Chemistry (2020), Macro Group UK Medal (2019), DeChema Otto Roelen Catalysis Medal (2018), The UK Catalysis Hub Sir John Meurig Thomas Medal (2017) and the Royal Society of Chemistry Corday Morgan Medal (2016). Home - Charlotte Williams Research (ox.ac.uk)