Confirmed speakers to date

Steve Craig received his undergraduate degrees (B.S. in Chemistry, A.B. in Math) from Duke in 1991. After a year at Cambridge (M. Phil.), he began doctoral work at Stanford, where he received his Ph.D. in 1997. Following his Ph.D., he took a position as a Research Chemist in DuPont Central Research until early 1999, when he moved to a postdoctoral position at The Scripps Research Institute. In 2000, he joined the Department of Chemistry at Duke, where he is now William T. Miller Professor of Chemistry. Prof. Craig’s research interests bridge synthetic organic, physical, and materials chemistry. Current areas of activity include using chemistry to guide the design and synthesis of stress-responsive and self-healing polymers and constructing tailored polymer architectures as a mechanism to create new reactivity and catalysts through mechanochemical coupling.

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David Leigh is one of the pioneers of the field of artificial molecular machinery and molecular nanotechnology. He has introduced influential concepts for the synthesis of interlocked and knotted molecular architectures, pioneered the use of ratchet mechanisms in the invention of synthetic molecular motors, and initiated the field of molecular robotics.

David obtained his PhD from the University of Sheffield, UK, in 1987 and, after postdoctoral research at the National Research Council of Canada in Ottawa, David returned to the UK as a Lecturer at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology in 1989. After spells at the Universities of Warwick and Edinburgh, in 2012 David returned to Manchester where he is currently the Sir Samuel Hall Chair of Chemistry and a Royal Society Research Professor.

He has won a number of major international awards including the Izatt-Christensen Award for Macrocyclic Chemistry, EU Descartes Prize and the Feynman Prize for Nanotechnology. He was elected to the Fellowship of the Royal Society (FRS), the UK’s National Academy of Science and Letters, in 2009.

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Hongbin Li is currently a Professor at the Department of Chemistry, the University of British Columbia, Canada. He held the position of Canada Research Chair in Molecular Nanoscience and Protein Engineering from 2004-2014. Prior to joining UBC, he worked as an Associate Research Scientist in Columbia (2002-2004) and a postdoctoral research fellow in Department of Biophysics and Physiology, Mayo Medical Center (1999-2002). He obtained his Ph.D. degree in polymer chemistry and physics at the Jilin University in 1998 and B.S. degree at Tianjin University in 1993, both in China. In 1996-1996, he was a visiting student at Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany. His research is focused on single molecule force spectroscopy, protein mechanics and protein-based biomaterials. His contributions have been recognized by Charles McDowell Award in Research, NSERC Accelerator Award, Career Investigator Award from Michael Smith Foundation, JILA Distinguished Fellowship and Changjiang Scholar.

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Matthias Rief obtained his PhD in Physics in 1997 at the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München, Germany, He continued his studies with a DFG sponsored postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University in the laboratory of J. A. Spudich focussing on the structure and function of molecular motors. Since 2003, Matthias Rief has been a full professor of Biophysics at the Technische Universität München. Matthias Rief is an expert in single molecule force spectroscopy of biomolecules. He has made contributions to the understanding of the mechanics of molecular motors and folding and unfolding mechanics of proteins. Prof. Rief has been recognized with a number of awards, including the Jahrespreis of the German Biophysical Societ and the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Prize from the DFG. He is a fellow of the Biophysical Society as well as member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina and of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

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Fraser Stoddart, 2016 Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1942. He obtained all his degrees from Edinburgh University and spent time at Queen’s University, Imperial Chemical Industries and the Universities of Sheffield and Birmingham in the UK before moving to the US in 1997. Presently he is a Board of Trustees Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University, having previously been the Saul Winstein Professor of Chemistry at UCLA. He has mentored 450 undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows during his career. He has over 1150 publications and has launched two startup companies. Stoddart was honored by Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II as a Knight-Bachelor in her 2007 New Year’s Honors List for his services to chemistry and molecular nanotechnology.

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David Alsteens is a group leader and professor at the Louvain Institute of Biomolecular Science and Technology at Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain) in Belgium. He is research associate at the FNRS. He obtained his PhD in Bioengineering in 2011 and then moved as a long-term EMBO fellow at ETH Zurïch in Basel (Switzerland). He was awarded an ERC starting grant to work on deciphering virus entry at the single-virus level by combining atomic force microscopy with confocal laser scanning microscopy. His group aims at understanding at the single-molecule level specific interactions that drive biological processes.

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Roman Boulatov received his PhD in chemistry from Stanford for synthesis and physical studies of metalloporphyrins. After a postdoc at Harvard, where he worked on unconventional energy conversion schemes, he started his independent research program in covalent mechanochemistry at the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign. In 2012 his group moved to the University of Liverpool.

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Guillaume obtained his Masters Degree in Chemistry (summa cum laude) from the University of Louvain (Belgium) in 2004. He did his Masters thesis under the supervision of Prof István E. Markó on the development of platinum-based catalyst for the hydrosilylation of alkynes. He obtained a fellowship from the FRIA to undertake a PhD, in the same laboratory, on the synthesis of angular triquinanes. In 2009 he took a post-doctoral position in the laboratory of Prof Jean-François Gohy and Charles-André Fustin (UCL, Belgium) to work on the assembly of mechanically-linked block copolymers. In 2011, after having obtained a Bourse d’excellence from the WBI and a Fellowship for International Mobility from the FRS he joined the group of Prof David A. Leigh, first in Edinburgh then in Manchester, to work on the development of molecular machines. Since January 2016 he is a Royal Society University Research Fellow at the University of Manchester.

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Steven De Feyter is full professor at the Department of Chemistry at KU Leuven, in Belgium. After his PhD in 1997 (promotor: Frans De Schryver), he moved to Caltech to work with Ahmed Zewail, on femtochemistry. He returned to Leuven and set-up a team investigating “molecules on surfaces”. Nano(bio)chemistry on surfaces is the core activity of the group. To please our “seeing is believing” desire, we use high-resolution scanning probe microscopy techniques such as scanning tunneling microscopy and atomic force microscopy, sometimes combined with optical microscopy techniques, to unravel the beauty and function of multi-(bio)molecular assemblies on surfaces. The liquid-solid interface is our preferred playground. Steven is Associate Editor of Chemical Communications since 2011. He was awarded an ERC Advanced Grant in 2013.

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Professor Giuseppone was trained in asymmetric synthesis as a PhD student (Laboratory of Prof. H.B. Kagan, University of Orsay), and in total synthesis as a postdoctoral fellow (Laboratory of Prof. K.C. Nicolaou, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, USA). He then entered the field of supramolecular chemistry for his habilitation work by joining, as a Chargé de Recherche CNRS (Assistant Professor), the laboratory of Prof. J.-M. Lehn in Strasbourg.

In 2008 he started his independent career as an Associate Professor by creating the SAMS Research Group at the Institut Charles Sadron (ICS) of Strasbourg.

In 2010, he was awarded the ERC Starting Grant from the European Research Council. He was then awarded the Guy Ourisson Prize 2012 for young scientists under 40, and was appointed deputy director of the ICS the same year. In 2013, he was promoted Full Professor of Chemistry at the University of Strasbourg and nominated as a junior member of the Institut Universitaire the France (IUF).

Professor Giuseppone is currently interested in synthetic organic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry, dynamic combinatorial chemistry, systems chemistry, self-assembled functional materials, responsive materials, supramolecular machines for integrated motions, supramolecular polymers, and supramolecular electronics.

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Leonhard Grill studied experimental physics and did his phD with Silvio Modesti at the Laboratorio TASC in Trieste (Italy). He then in 2002 joined the group of Karl-Heinz Rieder at the Freie Universität Berlin where he started to work on the manipulation of single molecules and established his own research group in 2007 that moved to the Fritz-Haber-Institut in Berlin in 2009 (department of Physical Chemistry, lead by Martin Wolf). He received the Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology in 2011 and became Professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Graz in 2013. His research interests are the characterization and manipulation of single functional molecules at surfaces, ranging from switches over wires to motors, the bottom-up on-surface polymerization of molecular building blocks and cooperative phenomena in molecular nanostructures (for more information see www.nanograz.com).

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Stefan Hecht studied chemistry at the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin and at the University of California at Berkeley, where in 2001 he obtained his PhD working under the guidance of Prof. Jean M. J. Fréchet. After establishing his own research group at Freie Universität Berlin and a subsequent position as a group leader at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim an der Ruhr, in 2006 he became the Chair of Organic Chemistry and Functional Materials in the Department of Chemistry at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. His research interests range from synthetic macromolecular and supramolecular chemistry to surface science, with particular focus on utilizing photoswitchable molecules for remote-controlling materials, devices, and processes. More information can be found at: www.hechtlab.de

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Peter Hinterdorfer was educated as biophysicist and worked mainly on high resolution microscopy techniques on native and model biological systems. In his time as student and PostDoc (University of Virginia, Charlottesville, VA, USA) he learned various fluorescence microscopy techniques. He started with scanning probe microscopy technologies from 1993 on, when he took a position at the University of Linz, Austria, where he is now working as department head of the institute of biophysics. He is convinced they have done some pioneering work in single molecule force spectroscopy and that they invented a combined topography and recognition imaging technique. His running research grants and his publications show a focus in the application and development of advanced nanoscopic techniques for nano-bio technology, life science, and medical diagnostics. His particular research interests cover structural elucidation, molecular recognition and transport.

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Nathalie Katsonis was born in Vienna (Austria). Her drive to investigate the interplay between macroscopic motion, molecular machines and light started during her master research with Prof. Ludovic Jullien at Ecole Normale Superieure (Paris, France), upon investigating the structure and photochemistry of a chromophore that initiates the flagellar movement of purple bacteria. She received her PhD from Sorbonne University in 2004 (France), for her work on chirality and order in molecular self-assemblies. She then joined the group of Prof. Ben Feringa as a postdoctoral fellow, to extend her research interests to artificial molecular motors and switches. Since early 2017 Nathalie is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Twente (The Netherlands), where she leads a research group dedicated to life-like molecular systems and materials. She is junior member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences, and in 2017 she received the Gold Medal of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society, in recognition for her achievements in chemistry.

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Rafal Klajn completed his Ph.D. in Chemical and Biological Engineering at Northwestern University in 2009. Since then, he is based at the Department of Organic Chemistry of the Weizmann Institute of Science (Israel), where he is currently an associate professor. The interests of his research group revolve around nanoscale self-assembly and reactivity, and the development of new stimuli-responsive nanomaterials. He is the recipient of the 2010 IUPAC Prize for Young Chemists, the 2013 ACS Victor K. LaMer Award, the 2016 Netherlands Scholar Award for Supramolecular Chemistry, and the 2018 Cram Lehn Pedersen Prize in Supramolecular Chemistry.

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Lukas Milles studied Physics, Political Science and Economics in Munich and Paris. He is currently completing a PhD in the lab of Hermann Gaub at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich focusing on the single-molecule mechanics of pathogen adhesins that target human host proteins and their underlying molecular mechanisms.

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Dr. Appelhans´ group carries out the design, synthesis and deep physical-chemical characterization of multifunctional, bioactive and responsive polymer structures and associates for use in nanomedicine. This work comprises especially dendritic polymers with special emphasize on glycodendrimers, but also responsive polymersomes and nanocapsules as well as multicompartment structure for drug delivery and cell mimics.

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2010-2013: Bachelor of Science in Chemistry (Honours) from West Bengal State University, India.
2013-2015: Master of Science in Chemistry from Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India. Master Thesis: “Enantioselective Synthesis of α,β-Diamino Esters Via Memory of Chirality concept”.
2015 to Present: Pursuing PhD under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Michael SCHMITTEL at the University of Siegen, Germany.
Research Topic: Design and Application of Chemical Fuel Driven Molecular Machines.

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Borja Ibarra received his PhD. in Molecular Biology from Universidad Autónoma Madrid in 2001. He made the ‘leap’ to Molecular Biophysics as a postdoctoral fellow in Prof. Carlos Bustamante lab at UC Berkeley. Back in Spain in 2007, he applied single molecule manipulation methods as optical tweezers at the CNB-CSIC (Madrid) to study biological molecular motors at a single molecule level. He joined the Nanobiosystems department at IMDEA Nanoscience in 2010, where he started the Molecular Motors Nanomanipulation Lab. His laboratory combines biochemical, molecular biology, supramolecular chemistry, theoretical modeling, and single-molecule (optical tweezers) techniques to unravel the mechanistic aspects of biological and synthetic molecular motors. Due to the highly interdisciplinary nature of the single-molecule research field, his lab has established a series of collaborations with national and foreign scientists from different disciplines (Molecular and Cell Biology, Chemistry, Theoretical Physics), which already produced several peer-review publications.

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Claire Kammerer obtained her PhD in 2009 from the University Pierre and Marie Curie (Paris) under the supervision of Prof. Giovanni Poli, working on palladium-, ruthenium-, and gold-catalyzed domino reactions and cycloisomerizations. Next, she joined Prof. Thorsten Bach's group at TUM (Munich) as an A. von Humboldt postdoctoral fellow to work on the total syntheses of (+)-bretonin B and (–)-pulvomycin. In 2012, she was appointed Maître de Conférences (Assistant Professor) at the University Paul Sabatier (Toulouse) and joined the NanoSciences Group at CEMES-CNRS. Her research interests are focused on the design and synthesis of molecular machines to be studied on surface at the single-molecule scale.

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Roy Lavendomme was born in Belgium in 1990. He obtained his Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in chemistry at the Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB, Belgium). Then, he carried out his PhD studies (2012–2016) in organic and supramolecular chemistry at the ULB under the supervision of Prof. Ivan Jabin and Prof. Michel Luhmer. His PhD research focused on the development of new and rational tools for the selective modification of polyphenolic platforms (mostly calixarenes) and the development of calixarene-based molecular containers. In January 2017, he joined the group of Prof. Jonathan R. Nitschke at the University of Cambridge as a postdoctoral researcher supported by the Wiener-Anspach Foundation to study the formation of new supramolecular metal-organic assemblies.

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Philippe Leclère received a Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Liège (Belgium) in 1994. He joined the group of Jean-Luc Brédas at the University of Mons in 1995 as a research fellow. From 2000 to 2004, he worked as research associate and served as research coordinator at the Materia Nova Research Center. During this period, he spent 4 months (in 1999) in the group of Jean-Pierre Aimé at the University of Bordeaux (France) and one year (2003) in the group of E.W. (Bert) Meijer at the Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in the Netherlands. Since 2003, he is still visiting scientist at the Institute of Complex Molecular Systems at TU/e. In October 2004, he became Research Associate of the Belgian National Fund for Scientific Research (FRS - FNRS) in the group of Roberto Lazzaroni at the University of Mons. In October 2014, he became Senior Research Associate of the FRS - FNRS.

His research is aiming at the:
Characterization by means of scanning probe microscopy (SPM) techniques of the morphology and the nanoscale properties (such as electrical and mechanical properties) of organic and hybrid systems including polymer blends, nanocomposites, block copolymers, liquid crystals, and supramolecular (nano)structures (build by self-assembly of functional (macro)molecules). These systems are mainly studied for their use in organic electronics and energy harvesting devices (field effect transistors, organic light emitting diodes, (hybrid) photovoltaic solar cells, batteries, nanogenerators and (bio)sensors), in smart coatings as well as biomimetic polymer-based materials.
Development and validation of novel SPM techniques (such as in situ electrochemical cell, in situ photoconductive atomic force microscopy, .) and methodologies to quantitatively determine mechanical, thermal, electrical and the "coupled" properties of polymeric and hybrid materials at the nanoscale.

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Aida Llauró earned a degree in Physics from University of Barcelona in 2010 and a master's in Biophysics from University Autonomous of Madrid in 2011. In 2012 she started her PhD in the De Pablo lab, where she studied mechanical properties of virus-like particles with Atomic Force Microscopy. After finishing her PhD in 2016 she joined the Asbury lab in the University of Washington, Seattle, to investigate microtubule dynamics and spindle pole body-microtubule interactions. In 2018 she began working for LUMICKS as an application scientist.

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Gwénaël Rapenne obtained his Ph. D. in 1998 from Louis Pasteur University (Strasbourg) under the supervision of Dr Jean-Pierre Sauvage and Dr Christiane Dietrich-Buchecker working on the synthesis and resolution of double helices and molecular knots. After spending one year as a Lavoisier postdoctoral fellow working on Fullerenes with Prof. F. Diederich at ETH Zürich, he joined the University Paul Sabatier of Toulouse as a Maître de Conférences to work in the field of single molecular machines in the NanoSciences Group at CEMES-CNRS and has been promoted Full Professor in 2011. From 2018 he is also Professor in Nara Institute of Science and Technology (NAIST, crossed-position) where he is the head of the Biomimetic and Technomimetic Molecular Science Laboratory.

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b. 1956; Diploma in Chemistry 1980 (Univ. Freiburg), Diplôme de Langue et Civilisation Francaise (Sorbonne, Paris), Dr. rer. nat. 1985 (Univ. Freiburg, Ch. Rüchardt), 1985-87 postdoctoral fellow at the University of Rochester (with J.P. Dinnocenzo), Habilitation 1992 (Univ. Freiburg), associate professor in Würzburg (1993-1999), full professor in Siegen (1999 until now). Awards: BASF Award 1975, Studienstiftung des Deutschen Volkes 1977-1981, DAAD-NATO fellow 1985-1987, Liebig fellowship 1987-1989, Gödecke Award 1987, INSA lectureship 2000, JSPS Lectureship 2004. Professional Activities: Associate Editor of J. Phys. Org. Chem. (2001-), Vorsitzender des GDCh-Ortsverbandes 2001-2005, Chair of "Reactive Radical Ion Workshop 2002", Chair of Gordon Research Conference on "Free Radical Reactions" in 2005. Director of the Research Center of Micro- and Nanochemistry and -Engineering in Siegen; Speaker of the DFG-Research Group "Lab-on-Microchip". Since 2007 speaker of the research and graduate course “Heterosensors”. 2009-2011: chairman of the department. 2016 (Feb./March): Distinguished Honorary Professor (IIT Kanpur). Memberships: GDCh, Liebig Vereinigung, ACS, Dechema, Deutscher Hochschulverband. > 250 research papers, one book (Radicals and Radical Ions in Organic Synthesis, VCH-Wiley, in German), > 200 lectures at conferences and scientific institutions

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Mathieu Surin obtained a PhD from the University of Mons in 2005, in the field of self-assembly of conjugated polymers with Prof. Roberto Lazzaroni. In 2005, he was a visiting researcher at the University of California Santa Barbara with Prof. Alan Heeger. He then completed a post-doctoral fellowship in the group of Prof. Paolo Samorì at the Institute for Supramolecular Science and Engineering (ISIS) in Strasbourg. He is now senior research associate of the Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS) and associate professor at the University of Mons. His current research interests are bioinspired supramolecular chemistry and self-assembled materials.

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Lander obtained his Master's degree in Chemistry from KULeuven in 2015. He stayed at KULeuven in order to pursue a PhD under the supervision of Prof. De Feyter. Currently, he is finalizing his thesis on the influence of nanoscale confinement on 2D supramolecular self-assembly.

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Liang Zhang was born in Lanzhou, Gansu (China). He obtained his Bsc and Msc from Fudan University and then joined Prof. David Leigh's group for a PhD degree in 2015 funded by President’s Doctoral Scholar (PDS) Award from the University of Manchester. He recently completed his PhD on synthesis and studying of topologically complex molecules and won the RSC Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry PhD Thesis Award. He is now continuing his research as a postdoctoral research associate in Prof. David Leigh's group in Manchester and helping with the management of Prof. David Leigh’s satellite group in East China Normal University in Shanghai, China.

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