Featured speakers: Merging polymer structure with dynamics
Within each session featured speakers will each give invited lectures of 20 minutes supplemented by contributed oral presentations. Abstracts for the large poster sessions are invited. Submit poster abstracts here.
Guosong Chen
Fudan University, China
Presentation title: Protein assembly driven by dual non-covalent interactions
Guosong Chen currently is a professor in Deparment of Macromolecular Sciences, Fudan University. She graduated in chemistry at Nankai University in 2001 and carried out her PhD at the same university, working on supramolecular chemistry.
View full bio
After her postdoctoral studies in carbohydrate chemistry at Iowa State University, she moved to Fudan University in Dec. 2008, where she joined the research group of Prof. Ming Jiang, MCAS in macromolecular self-assembly as a lecturer, working on the interface of macromolecular self-assembly and supramolecular chemistry. After she was promoted to associate professor in 2011, her research focus has been reoriented to carbohydrate-based macromolecular self-assembly and its biological functions. She was promoted to full professor in 2014. As a corresponding author, she published more than 60 papers to date. She was elected as Fellow of Royal Chemical Society (FRSC) and now serves as an Associate Editor of ACS Macro Letters and an international board member for Polymer Chemistry, Bioconjugate Chemistry, Polymer International, Journal of Macromolecular Science, Part A and etc.
Yanchun Han
Chinese Academy of Sciences, China
Presentation title: Control morphology of semiconducting conjugated polymer from solution processing
Yanchun Han received her B. S. degree from University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) in 1990 and Ph. D. degree from Changchun Institute of Applied Chemistry (CIAC), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 1995. After working as a post-doc /visiting scholar at University of Naples, University of Kaiserslautern (Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow) and University of Michigan, she joined the State Key Lab of Polymer Physics and Chemistry, CIAC as a full professor in 2000.
View full bio
She served as the Director of State Key Lab of Polymer Physics and Chemistry from 2005 to 2015. She was selected to 100-Talent program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2000 and got National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2001. She received the first Prize of Jilin Science and Technology Progress in 2010. Her current research interests include polymer thin film, inherent structure−property -processing relations of conjugated polymers.
Hiroshi Jinnai
Tohoku University, Japan
Presentation title: Static and dynamic visualizations of organic-inorganic interface by microscopical techniques
Professor Hiroshi Jinnai is a Professor of the Institute of Multidisciplinary Research for Advanced Materials (IMRAM), Tohoku University. He received his D. Eng. in 1993 under supervision of Prof. Dr. Takeji Hashimoto (Kyoto University, Japan).
View full bio
During his thesis study at Kyoto University, he visited National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA, twice as a guest scientist for performing the small angle neutron scattering experiments under the guidance of Dr. Charles C. Han. In 1993, he joined the Japan Science & Technology Agency (JST) ERATO (Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology) program, Hashimoto Polymer Phasing Project, as a group leader. He was appointed Lecturer at the Department of Macromolecular Science and Engineering of Kyoto Institute of Technology in 1998 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2002. In 2011, He moved to another ERATO program, Takahara Soft Interfaces Project, as a research manager. He was concurrently a Research Professor at the Institute of Materials Chemistry and Engineering (IMCE), Kyushu University. In 2015, he moved to Tohoku University. His research field includes polymer physics, soft matter physics, and development of characterization methodology. Specifically, he is widely recognized by his development of electron tomography (3D electron microscopy). He was awarded the SPSJ (The Society of Polymer Science, Japan) Wiley Award in 2006. He is the first Japanese to win the biannual Ernst-Ruska-Prize in 2007 from the Deutsche Gesellschaft fur Elektronenmikroskopie (German Society of Electron Microscopy). He is also the recipient of The Japanese Society of Microscopy Society Award, Setoh Prize (2012), The Award of the Society of Polymer Science, Japan (2017) etc. He is the Fellow of American Physical Society (APS) since 2011. Professor Jinnai has co-authored more than 200 scientific papers.
Christopher Li
Drexel University, USA
Christopher Li received his B. S. from the University of Science and Technology of China in 1995 and his Ph.D. from the Department of Polymer Science, The University of Akron in December 1999. After working as a post-doc at the Maurice Morton Institute of Polymer Science, UA for 2 years, he joined Drexel University, the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in 2002 as an assistant professor.
View full bio
He was promoted to associate and full professor in 2007, and 2011, respectively. His group studies ordered polymeric systems, including crystalline, liquid crystalline and block copolymers, for energy storage and biomedical applications.
Christopher Li is a Fellow of American Physical Society and North American Thermal Analysis Society, and is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Polymer, Macromolecules (14-17), etc. He has received several awards including the NSF Creativity Award, NSF-CAREER Award, Outstanding Oversea Young Scientist, National Science Foundation of China, Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellowship, ASM Bradley Stoughton Award, DuPont Young Faculty Award, among others. He served as the President of the North American Thermal Analysis Society (NATAS) in 2016.
Bradley D Olsen
MIT, USA
Presentation title: Polymer gels adapted from and inspired by the nuclear pore
View full bio
Full information coming soon.
Sijbren Otto
University of Groningen, The Netherlands
Presentation title: Systems chemistry: Selective formation of oligomers driven by folding and self-assembly
Sijbren received his M.Sc. (1994) and Ph.D. (1998) degrees cum laude from the University of Groningen in the Netherlands. He worked on physical organic chemistry in aqueous solutions in the group of Prof. Jan B. F. N. Engberts. In 1998 he moved to the United States for a year as a postdoctoral researcher with Prof. Steven L. Regen (Lehigh University, Bethlehem, Pennsylvania) investigating synthetic systems mediating ion transport through lipid bilayers.
View full bio
In 1999 he received a Marie Curie Fellowship and moved to the University of Cambridge where he worked for two years with Prof. Jeremy K. M. Sanders on dynamic combinatorial libraries.
Sijbren started his independent research career in 2001 as a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Cambridge in the UK and accepted an appointment as Assistant Professor at the University of Groningen in 2009 and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011 and Full Professor in 2016. He is director of the Chemistry MSc degree program.
Sijbren was awarded ERC starting (2010) and advanced (2017) grants from the EU and a VICI grant from NWO in the Netherlands and is one of six main applicants of the prestigious national gravitation program on Functional Molecular Systems (FMS). He is joint editor-in-chief of the re-launched Journal of Systems Chemistry and chaired COST Action CM1304 on the subject of Systems Chemistry uniting more than 90 European research groups.
Ophelia Tsui
HKUST, Hong Kong
Presentation title: Tuning the effective viscosity of polymer films by chemical modifications
Ophelia K. C. Tsui obtained her B.Sc. degree in Physics from University of Hong Kong in 1988 and her Ph.D. degree in Physics from Princeton University in 1996.
View full bio
After a postdoctoral fellowship at Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1996 and later the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1997, Prof. Tsui joined the Department of Physics at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 1998. In 2006, she joined the Department of Physics at Boston University as an Associate Professor, and was promoted to be a full Professor in 2011. Since 2017, she has also been appointed a Professor of Physics in HKUST.
Prof. Tsui was elected a fellow of the American Physical Society in 2011. Currently, she is an advisory board member of Macromolecules and Macromolecular Chemistry and Physics. She is also the Chairman of the Council, the Physical Society of Hong Kong (2018-20). Prof. Tsui has co-edited three books in polymers, and co-organized several focused sessions on polymer interfaces and dynamics under confinement in major international conferences, such as the APS March Meeting and the Society of Rheology Annual Meeting.
Prof. Tsui’s research interests are primarily in experimental soft condensed matter, with a focus on the dynamics of polymers under nano-confinement. In collaboration with theorists and experimentalists of other disciplines, she also works on the crystallization kinetics of polymer surfaces, the nature of glass transition, and mechanics of cancer cells.