Invited speakers
Speakers that have accepted to participate:
Licheng Sun, Westlake University, China and KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden
Prof. Licheng Sun received his PhD degree in 1990 from Dalian University of Technology, after a postdoc stay at Max-Planck-Institut für Strahlenchemie with Dr. Helmut Görner, and then as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at Freie Universität Berlin with Prof. Dr. Harry Kurreck, he moved to KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm in 1995 as a postdoc with Prof. Björn Åkermark, became an assistant professor in 1997 at KTH, associate professor in 1999 in Stockholm University, and full professor in 2004 at Department of Chemistry, KTH. He was appointed in 2020 as a chair professor at Westlake University, China, and director of the Center of Artificial Photosynthesis for Solar Fuels at Westlake University. Prof. Sun’s research interests cover artificial photosynthesis, solar cells, and solar fuels. His work has been cited over 60 000 times with an H-index of 124.
Antoni Llobet, ICIQ, Tarragona, Spain
Antoni Llobet received his PhD at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB) in 1985, and then moved to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for a postdoctoral stay with Prof. Thomas J. Meyer, until the end of 1987. After a short period again at UAB and at University of Sussex-Dow Corning (UK) he then became Scientific Officer for the Commission of the European Communities, based in Brussels, Belgium (1990-1991). Then he was appointed Senior Research Associate at Texas A&M University and in 1993 joined the faculty of the Universitat de Girona. In 2004 was appointed Full Prof. at UAB and in 2006 joined the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) in Tarragona.
In 2018 he has been awarded with the “Alexander von Humboldt Research Award” for a career achievement by the Humboldt Foundation from Germany.
At present he is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of “Catalysis Science and Technology” from the Royal Society of Chemistry and “European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry” from Wiley-VCH. He served as EAB for “Inorganic Chemistry” from the American Chemical Society during the period January 2015 till December 2016.
Ryuhei Nakamura, RIKEN, Tokyo, Japan
Ryuhei Nakamura studied electrochemistry at Osaka University and obtained his doctoral Degree in Science in 2005. Since then, he has worked at RIKEN CSRS and the Earth-Life Science Institute, Tokyo Institute of Technology. Dr Nakamura’s research is focused on bio-geological energy-conversion processes, with the aim of understanding how life emerged and to develop future technologies for a sustainable society.
Kristina Tschulik, Ruhr Universität, Bochum, Germany
Kristina Tschulik studied Chemistry at TU Dresden (Germany), and performed her doctoral studies on magnetic field-assisted structured electrodeposition at IFW Dresden until 2012. Afterwards, she joined the University of Oxford (UK) as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie IEF postdoctoral researcher, working on single nanoparticle electrochemistry and electroanalysis. In 2015, Kristina moved to Ruhr-Universität Bochum (Germany) as a Junior Professor, where she was promoted to Full Professor in 2018 and currently holds the Chair of Electrochemistry and Nanoscale Materials. Her research focusses on characterizing physical properties and intrinsic chemical (re-)activity of functional nanomaterials for renewable energy technologies by advanced electrochemical approaches including single entity electrochemistry and spectro-electrochemistry.
Christophe Léger (CNRS, Marseille, France)
Christophe Léger received his Ph.D. in Bordeaux, after working on metal electrodeposition under the supervision of Françoise Argoul, and began to work on redox enzymes working as a postdoc in the group of Fraser Armstrong in Oxford. He was hired by the CNRS in Marseille in 2022 to study structure/function relationships in enzymes (hydrogenases) that oxidize and produce H2. He develops and uses electrochemical methods to study the mechanisms of complex metalloenzymes, with a recent emphasis on the biological reduction of CO2.
Carla Casadevall, URV/ICIQ, Tarragona, Spain
Dr. Casadevall was born in Palafrugell-Girona (Spain) in 1991 and is currently a Ramón y Cajal fellow and a Junior Group Leader at the Universitat Rovira i Virigli (URV) and the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ, Tarragona, Spain), working on the development of catalyst-functionalized polymeric microreactors for the production of solar fuels and chemicals within artificial photosynthesis. She obtained a BSc in chemistry (2013) and a MSc (2014) in Advanced Catalysis and Molecular Modelling at the University of Girona (Spain). She then moved to ICIQ to do a PhD (2015-2019) working on homogeneous systems for artificial photosynthesis and photoredox catalysis. During that time, she performed 4 PhD international internships: KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Arizona State University (USA), University of Groningen (Netherlands) and MPI-CEC (Germany). After obtaining her PhD she joined the University of Cambridge (UK) in September 2019 as a BBSRC postdoctoral research associate and later as a Marie Skłodowska–Curie Individual Fellow (2020-2022) working on biohybrid systems for artificial photosynthesis. In October 2022 she came back to Spain and started her independent career with a “La Caixa Junior Leader Incoming Fellowship” and recently with a Ramón y Cajal at ICIQ and URV.
Ross Milton (Université de Genève, Switzerland)
Ross Milton was raised in the south of the United Kingdom and completed a BSc (2010) and PhD (2014) in Chemistry at the University of Surrey (UK), where his PhD thesis focused on enzymatic electrodes in glucose-oxidizing fuel cells for energy conversion under the supervision of Robert Slade and Alfred Thumser. Ross then began his first postdoctoral position in Shelley Minteer's group at the University of Utah (USA), first focusing on alternative electrode constructs and new materials (such as redox polymers) for energy conversion by enzymatic electrodes.
He was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Individual Fellowship (2015) between the University of Utah and the National University of Ireland Galway (Dónal Leech, incoming phase) to investigate the electroenzymatic reduction of unreactive dinitrogen to ammonia by nitrogenase.
With a developing interest in complex enzymatic electron transfer and catalytic mechanisms, Ross embarked upon a second postdoctoral position (2017) in Alfred Spormann's group at Stanford University (USA).
After completing the incoming phase of the MSc fellowship in Dónal Leech's group, Ross began his independent career as an Assistant Professor (tenure track) in the Department of Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at the University of Geneva (Switzerland) in September 2019.