Plenary speakers

Lia Addadi obtained a Laurea (MSc) in Chemistry from the University of Padova, Italy, and a PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel. She joined the Faculty of Chemistry at the Weizmann Institute in 1983. She received numerous prizes and honors, among them the 1998 Prelog Medal in Stereochemistry, and the 2011 Aminoff Prize by the Swedish Royal Academy of Sciences. In 2017 she was elected to the US National Academy of Sciences, and in 2018 she received an honorary PhD from the ETH in Zurich.

Lia Addadi addresses questions related to the formation of crystals in organisms, either fulfilling a physiological function, or pathologically induced. She studies the interactions between crystals and their biological environments, spanning several orders of magnitude from the molecular level to the cell and tissue level. In collaboration with Steve Weiner she investigates the strategies and design principles of mineralized tissues in biomineralization, from the formation pathways to the architecture, and finally to structure-function relations.

Debra Bernhardt is a Group Leader and Professor in the Australian Institute for Bio engineering and Nanotechnology and School of Chemistry and Molecular Biosciences at The University of Queensland. Her research program focuses on the theoretical and computational approaches to develop a fundamental understanding of the behaviour of matter and devices with particular interest in nonequilibrium systems. She applies these approaches to a wide range of problems, particularly transport in nanoscale systems, fluctuation phenomena, design of materials, gas separation, energy storage and conversion. Debra has held research appointments at the University of Basel in Switzerland, the Australian National University, and Griffith University. She is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Chemical Institute, an elected member of the European Academy of Science and Arts and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science. In 2011 she was awarded the Vice Chancellor’s Research Excellence Award for Research Leadership at Griffith University, in 2017 she was the recipient of the Association of Molecular Modellers of Australasia Medal and in 2019 she became an ARC Australian Laureate Fellow. Debra publishes in her maiden name (Debra J. Searles).

Yi Cui is a Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University.

He received a B.S. in Chemistry in 1998 at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) followed by a Ph.D in 2002 at Harvard University. After that, he went on to work as a Miller Postdoctoral Fellow at University of California, Berkeley. In 2005 he became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University and in 2010 was promoted with tenure.

His current research is on nanomaterials for energy storage, photovotalics, topological insulators, biology and environment. Professor Cui has founded three companies to commercialize technologies from his group: Amprius Inc., 4C Air Inc. and EEnovate Technology Inc. He is a Fellow of Materials Research Society, a Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry and a Fellow of Electrochemical Society. He is an Associate Editor of Nano Letters. He is a Co-Director of the Bay Area Photovoltaic Consortium and a Co-Director of Battery 500 Consortium. Professor Cui is a highly proliferate materials scientist and has published more than 430 research papers which have received over 150,000 citatiosn with a H-Index of 183 (Google scholar).

In 2014, he was ranked No.1 in Materials Science by Thomson Reuters as “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds”. His selected awards include: Blavatnik National Laureate (2017), MRS Kavli Distinguished Lectureship in Nanoscience (2015), the Sloan Research Fellowship (2010), KAUST Investigator Award (2008), ONR Young Investigator Award (2008), Technology Review World Top Young Innovator Award (2004).

Kazunari Domen received B.S. (1976), M.S. (1979), and Ph.D. (1982) honors in chemistry from the University of Tokyo. Dr. Domen joined Chemical Resources Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1982 as Assistant Professor and was subsequently promoted to Associate Professor in 1990 and Professor in 1996. Moving to the University of Tokyo as Professor in 2004, and Cross appointment with Shinshu University as Special Contract Professor in 2017. University Professor of the University of Tokyo in 2019.

Domen has been working on overall water splitting reaction on heterogeneous photocatalysts to generate clean and recyclable hydrogen. He has published more than 800 original and review papers and h-index is more than 110. His research interests is now being focused on development of photocatalysts for water splitting reaction and application of those photocatalysts to practical solar hydrogen production.

Prof. Bin Liu received her BS degree and Ph.D. degree from Nanjing University and National University of Singapore, respectively, before her postdoctoral training at the University of California, Santa Barbara. She joined the NUS in late 2005, where she is currently Professor and Department Head of Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. For her research focusing on organic nanomaterials for biomedical and energy applications, Prof. Liu has received many highly prestigious awards, including Singapore President’s Young Scientist Award 2008, Asia Rising Star 2013, BASF Materials Award 2014, Materials in Society Lectureship 2015, Singapore President’s Technology Award 2016, and Asian Scientist Top 100 List in 2017. Prof. Liu was named as The World’s Most Influential Minds and the Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Materials Science by Thomson Reuters during 2014-2017. She is the Fellow of Singapore Academy of Engineering, Asia-Pacific Academy of Materials, and the Royal Society of Chemistry.

Stuart Parkin is the Managing Director of the Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics, Halle, Germany, and an Alexander von Humboldt Professor, Martin Luther University, Halle-Wittenberg. His research interests include spintronic materials and devices for advanced sensor, memory, and logic applications, oxide thin-film heterostructures, topological metals, exotic superconductors, and cognitive devices. Parkin’s discoveries in spintronics enabled a more than 10000-fold increase in the storage capacity of magnetic disk drives. For his work that thereby enabled the “big data” world of today, Parkin was awarded the Millennium Technology Award from the Technology Academy Finland in 2014 (worth 1,000,000 Euro). Parkin is a Fellow/ Member of: Royal Society (London), National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, German National Academy of Science - Leopoldina, Royal Society of Edinburgh, Indian Academy of Sciences, and TWAS - academy of sciences for the developing world. Parkin has received numerous awards including the American Physical Society International Prize for New Materials (1994); Europhysics Prize for Outstanding Achievement in Solid State Physics (1997); 2009 IUPAP Magnetism Prize and Neel Medal; 2012 von Hippel Award - Materials Research Society; 2013 Swan Medal - Institute of Physics (London); Alexander von Humboldt Professorship − International Award for Research (2014); ERC Advanced Grant - SORBET (2015).

Paul S. Weiss is a Nano scientist and holds a UC Presidential Chair and is a distinguished professor of chemistry and of materials science at UCLA. He studies the ultimate limits of miniaturization, developing new tools and methods for atomic-resolution and spectroscopic imaging and chemical patterning. He applies these advances in other areas including neuroscience, microbiome studies, and high-throughput cell transfection. He has won awards in science, engineering, teaching, publishing, and communications. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, AAAS, ACS, AIMBE, APS, AVS, Canadian Academy of Engineering and MRS. He is the founding and current editor-in-chief of ACS Nano.

Prof. Yi XIE received her BS in Xiamen University (1988) and Ph.D in University of Science and Technology of China (USTC, 1996). In May 1996, she joined the faculty at the Department of Chemistry, USTC. She is now a Principal Investigator (PI) of Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at Microscale and a full professor of Department of Chemistry, USTC. She is also a recipient of several awards, including L'Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Awards, TWAS Prize for Chemistry, IUPAC Distinguished Women in Chemistry/Chemical Engineering, Nano Research Award. She was elected as member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013 and TWAS member in 2015. Her research interests focus on the design and synthesis of inorganic functional solids with efforts to modulate their electronic and phonon structures.