
Plenary Speakers

ICA MANAS-ZLOCZOWER
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
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
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
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
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.

Manjusri Misra
Dr. Manjusri Misra is a professor and Tier 1 Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Sustainable Biocomposites in the School of Engineering and holds a joint appointment in the Department of Plant Agriculture at the University of Guelph. As well, she is the Research Program Director of the Bioeconomy Panel for the Ontario Agri-Food Innovation Alliance, a program between the Ontario Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs (OMAFRA) and the University of Guelph. She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), and the Society of Plastic Engineers (SPE).
Misra’s current research focuses primarily on novel biobased composites and nanocomposites that can take the place of conventional plastics in many commercial applications, from packaging to auto parts. She specializes in the development of advanced polymeric materials from sustainable resources, recycled materials, and waste-streams to reduce landfilling, ocean pollution, and greenhouse gas emissions, supporting Circular Economy. She has authored more than 800 publications, including 450 peer-reviewed journal papers, 30 book chapters, and 55 patents. Her Google-Scholar citations count is 47,135 and h-index 96 (June 15, 2023).
She was the editor or co-editor of 5 books in the area of biocomposites and nano materials. She was an editor of the CRC Press volume, “Natural Fibers, Biopolymers and Biocomposites,” Taylor & Francis Group, Boca Raton, FL (2005); American Scientific Publishers volume “Packaging Nanotechnology”, Valencia, California (2009); “Polymer Nanocomposites”, Springer (2014) and “Fiber Technology for Fiber-Reinforced Composites”, Woodhead Publishing (2017). She was the chief editor of “Biocomposites: Design and Mechanical Performance” Woodhead Publishing (2015). She was the President of the BioEnvironmental Polymer Society (BEPS) in 2009. She serves on the editorial boards of “Journal of Applied Polymer Science”, “Composites Part A: Science and Manufacturing”, “Polymer Testing”, “Macromolecular Materials and Engineering”, «ACS Omega», and “Composites Part C: Open Access”. Dr. Misra has received many awards including the Andrew Chase Forest Products Division Award from the AIChE and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the BioEnvironmental Polymer Society (BEPS). In 2020, she was selected as one of Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 Award Winner in the Manulife Science and Technology category from the Women Executive Network