Plenary Speakers


ICA MANAS-ZLOCZOWER

Case Western Reserve University, Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering
 
Plenary Title:
Towards a Circular Economy: Recycling Thermoset Waste Via Dynamic Chemistry

Ica Manas-Zloczower is the Thomas W. and Nancy P. Seitz Professor of Advanced Materials and Energy in the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering and the Distinguished University Professor at Case Western Reserve University. She received BS and MS degrees in Chemical Engineering from Polytechnic Institute Jassy, Romania and a Doctor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology. She was a post-doctoral fellow at the University of Minnesota. She was elected and served as the President of the International Polymer Processing. She is also a fellow of the Society of Plastics Engineers and was elected to the Board of Directors of Extrusion Division of the Society of Plastics Engineers. She was the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Polymer Engineering and serves on the Book Advisory Board for Hanser publisher.

Professor Manas-Zloczower’s research accomplishments have been recognized through more than 90 plenary, several keynotes, lectures at national and international conferences. She has advised 35 Ph.D. students, 30 M.S. students, 18 post-docs, 4 Ph.D. exchange students and many undergraduate students. Professor Manas-Zloczower has more than 220 publications in peer-reviewed journals, more than 100 published conference proceedings, and several book chapters and patents. She is the editor of the 2009 book “Mixing and Compounding of Polymers” published by Hanser.


TIM A. OSSWALD

University of Wisconsin-Madison
 
Plenary Title:
Environmentally Safe Preservation, Stabilization and Processing of Natural Rubber Latex in an Acid Environment

Tim Osswald is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Director of the Polymer Engineering Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Originally from Cúcuta, Colombia, he received his B.S. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the field of Polymer Processing. He spent two and one half years at the Institute for Plastics Processing (IKV) in Aachen, Germany, as an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow. In 2006 he was named an Honorary Professor at the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Germany and in 2011 he was named Honorary Professor at the National University of Colombia. Professor Osswald has published over 300 papers and over a dozen books. His books have been translated into Italian, German, Spanish, Japanese, Chinese, Korean, Russian and Farsi. Professor Osswald serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of several industries and is part of a Commission to create a Science Ministry in Colombia.


Alejandro J. Müller

Faculty of Chemistry, UPV/EHU
 
Plenary Title:
Tailoring the Structure and Properties of Isodimorphic Random Copolymers by Varying Chemical Structure and Composition

Professor Alejandro J. Müller is a Materials Engineer, with an M.Sc. in Chemistry (IVIC, Caracas, Venezuela) and a Ph.D. in Physics (from Bristol University, U.K.). He held a full professorship at Simón Bolívar University in Caracas, Venezuela. Since September 2013, he is an IKERBASQUE Research Professor at POLYMAT and at the Department of Polymers and Advanced Materials: Physics, Chemistry and Technology, Faculty of Chemistry, University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU in Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain. He has co-authored more than 600 publications and achieved an h index of 72. He has supervised 28 Ph.D. theses and over 60 M.Sc. theses. Prof. Müller has given around 100 keynotes, plenaries, and invited lectures in more than 30 countries around the world. His fields of interest include: morphology, nucleation, crystallization, and crystallization kinetics of semi-crystalline polymers and multiphasic materials (in particular, polymer blends, block copolymers, biopolymers, and nano-composites). Prof. Müller has won several awards in Venezuela, including the Lorenzo Mendoza Fleury, Polar Prize for basic science. In 2011 he received the international “Paul J. Flory Polymer Research Prize”. He is a Corresponding Member of the National Academy of Engineering and Habitat from Venezuela (ANIH). In 2021 he was elected as a corresponding member of the LatinAmerican Academy of Sciences (ACAL). He is an editor for POLYMER (Elsevier) in the joint areas of Polymer Physics and Physical Chemistry.


Cyrille Boyer

University of New South Wales
 
Plenary Title:
Nanostructure Control in 3D Printing through Polymerization Self-Assembly Process

Prof Cyrille Boyer is an Australian Laureate Fellow, a full Professor in the School of Chemical Engineering, deputy-Head of School, and co-Director of Australian Centre for Nanomedicine at the University of New South Wales. Before joining UNSW, he has worked with Solvay-Solexis and Dupont Performance Elastomers. He is an associate Editor of European Polymer Journal and a member of Advisory Board of Advanced Materials, ACS MacroLetters, Polymer Chemistry, Journal of Polymer Science, etc.

His research has been recognized by several fellowships, including Australian Research Council (ARC) Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship (ARC-APD, in 2009) and ARC Future Fellowship (in 2013), and more recently, ARC Australian Laureate Fellowship (starting in 2023). He has received several prestigious research awards, including 2018 IUPAC-Polymer International Young Researcher award, 2016 ACS Biomacromolecules/Macromolecules Young Researcher Award, 2016 Journal of Polymer Science Innovation award, Le Fevre Memorial Prize awarded by Australian Academy of Science for chemistry, and 2015 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Science (one of the Prime Minister Prizes for Science). Since 2018, he has been listed as a Highly Cited Researcher in Chemistry and Cross-field by Clarivate and named as one of the Leaders in Polymers and Plastics by the Australian Newspaper. He has co-authored over 375 research articles, resulting in over 30,000 citations and H-index of 97 (Google Scholar).

Cyrille’s research interests mainly cover the preparation of functional macromolecules using photocatalysts, which find applications in various areas, including nanomedicine, advanced materials, and energy storage. In nanomedicine, his group designs new antimicrobial polymers. More recently, he has implemented his photochemistry to 3D printing for the fabrication of 3D printed objects with a control over the nano- and macro-structure.


Marcelo Calderón

University of the Basque Country UPV/EHU
 
Plenary Title:
Crossing biological barriers – smart modalities to improve performance of polymeric nanocarriers

Marcelo Calderón is an Ikerbasque Research Professor at POLYMAT, the Basque Center for Macromolecular Design and Engineering, since 2019. He received a bachelor’s degree in chemistry in 2003 and a Ph.D. degree in Chemical Sciences in 2007, both from the National University of Córdoba, Argentina. He was progressively a post-doctoral fellow, a Junior Group Leader focused on NanoScale, and an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Chemistry and Biochemistry, Freie Universität Berlin from 2007 to 2018.

Professor Calderón today is a leader of the Responsive Polymer for Therapeutics Group at POLYMAT. He was highlighted as an ‘Emerging Investigator’ by the Royal Society of Chemistry journals Chemical Communications (2015) and Journal of Material Chemistry B (2017). He was the recipient of the Arthur K. Doolittle Award in 2010 (American Chemical Society, Polymer Materials: Science and Engineering Division), the Cesar Milstein Fellowship in 2011 (Ministry of Science, Technology and Productive Innovation, Argentina), the NanoMatFutur Grant for Young Scientists from the German Ministry of Science in 2012. He completed his bachelor and doctoral studies with fellowships from the YPF Foundation and the Research Council of Argentina (CONICET), respectively.
Professor Calderón has more than 170 publications in peer-reviewed journals, more than 20 conference proceedings, 22 reviews and editorials, 4 book chapters, and 2 patents. He is a frequent reviewer of the American Chemical Society, Royal Society of Chemistry, amongst others.
His group research activities have focused toward the development of polymer-based nanomaterials that are able to sense environmental triggers and respond to them at the site of action as novel therapeutic and diagnostic approaches for novel efficient materials suitable for nanomedicine. The materials synthesized by the group were successfully used for imaging, controlled drug delivery, tumor ablation by hyperthermia, capture, and quantification of circulating tumor cells (CTCs), and topical drug delivery.

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Universidad de los Andes | Vigilada Mineducación. Reconocimiento como Universidad: Decreto 1297 del 30 de mayo de 1964.Reconocimiento personería jurídica: Resolución 28 del 23 de febrero de 1949 Minjusticia.