Confirmed Speakers

Christoph Weder is Professor of Polymer Chemistry and Materials and Director of the Adolphe Merkle Institute (AMI) at the Uni¬ve¬rsi¬ty of Fribourg, Switzerland. Chris was trained in chemistry and materials science at ETH Zurich, before he joined the MIT as a postdoc. After a Habilitation at ETH he held a faculty position at Case Western Reserve University for nearly a decade, before joining the AMI in 2009. From 2014 to 2020 Chris served as founding director of the Swiss National Center of Competence in Research Bio-Inspired Materials. Chris’ main research interests are the design, synthesis and investigation of novel functional poly¬mers, in particular stimuli-responsive polymers, bio-inspired materials, supramolecular systems, and polymer nano¬¬composites. He has mentored about 20 MS and 55 PhD students and some 40 postdoctoral researchers. He is co-author of about 300 research papers and co-inventor of twenty patent families. He was involved in one start-up company and has made contributions to several commercialized technologies. Chris is an Associate Editor of ACS Macro Letters, member of the Swiss Academy of Technical Sciences, and a Fellow of the American Chemical Society’s Division of Polymer Chemistry

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Katharina Landfester received her doctoral degree in 1995. After a postdoctoral stay at the Lehigh University (Bethlehem, PA), she worked at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam (Germany) leading the miniemulsion group. From 2003 to 2008, she was full professor at the University of Ulm. She joined the Max Planck Society in 2008 as one of the directors of the MPIP. She was awarded the Reimund Stadler prize of the German Chemical Society and the prize of the Dr. Hermann Schnell Foundation, followed by the Bruno Werdelmann Lecturer in 2012 and the Bayer Lecturer in 2014. Her research focusses on creating functional colloids for new material and biomaterial applications. She has published more than 600 papers in international journals, 30 reviews and holds more than 50 patents.

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Raymond received his academic education at KU Leuven Belgium where he graduated from the faculty of Bioscience engineering in 2016. Immediately after, he joined the Membrane Technology Group of professor Ivo Vankelecom in pursue of a PhD as an FWO-funded research fellow. During his time as PhD researcher, he focused on finding new and innovative membrane solutions for existing challenges in the field of carbon capture, biogas purification and olefin/paraffin separation. He was a visiting researcher at institutes in Canada and Germany and obtained his PhD title in November 2020. In 2021, he started a position as postdoctoral fellow at KU Leuven and in beginning of 2022 he joined the Zirfon team at Agfa Gevaert.

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Daniel Ceretti is a Doctoral Researcher at Ghent University. His main research focus is on the design of materials for additive manufacturing, polymer processing and rheological behavior of molten polymers. Prior to his work at Ghent University, he graduated as a Master of Nanoscience and Advanced Materials and as a Materials Engineer from Federal University of ABC in São Paulo area Brazil. He was also an exchange student and researcher at Case Western Reserve University, where he worked on the processing of polymer nanocomposites and their characterization.

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Zehan Chen received her master degree from Tongji University, Shanghai, China. She is currently a PhD student in Université catholique de Louvain. Her research interests focus on the design and synthesis of nanostructured functional materials and their applications in energy storage, such as solid-state electrolytes and anode materials.

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Róbert obtained his bachelor in chemistry in 2016, and master of science in chemistry in 2018 at Ghent University (UGent), under the supervision of Prof. Richard Hoogenboom. His master thesis focused on the synthesis of poly(2-oxazoline)-drug conjugates for improved cancer therapy. Later that year, he was granted an FWO-SB scholarship to start his Ph.D. research at UGent for the groups of Laboratory for Chemical Technology (LCT) and Supramolecular Chemistry (SC) to develop algorithms to model the molecular structures of poly(2-alkyl/aryl-2-oxazoline)s.

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Tess De Maeseneer is a 4th year PhD-student at the KU Leuven in Belgium under supervision of prof. Moldenaers and prof. Cardinaels. During her master of Chemical Engineering at the same institution, she had the opportunity to work together with multiple companies including DSM, PepsiCo, Valio, Döhler and Glucanova on a project concerned with developing healthier yogurt alternatives. This immediately sparked her interest in combining the field of engineering with health science. As a consequence, she was very excited to start her PhD in the field of tissue engineering. Her main research focus is the in-depth rheological and structural characterization of polymer hydrogels aimed to be used in a novel breast reconstruction method.

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Jasper Delaey graduated summa cum laude as Master’s in chemistry in 2018. His thesis focused on the application of PDLLA-based polymers and gelatin-derivatives in corneal endothelial tissue engineering. For his Master’s thesis he was awarded by the Belgian polymer group (BPG) as well as by the royal Flemish society of chemistry (KVCV). Enthralled by the subject, he decided to continue his research in the topic and started to work in the polymer chemistry and biomaterials group as a PhD researcher under an FWO grant. Here, he focuses on the application of smart polymers as a scaffold component of membranes for corneal endothelial cells.

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Carolane Gerbehaye received her master's degree in chemical sciences from the University of Mons in 2018. Her master thesis consisted in the synthesis and characterization of functional polymers by solid-state modification. Then, she naturally pursued her research by starting a PhD within the group of Prof. Jean-Marie Raquez and under the co-supervision of Dr. Rosica Mincheva in the laboratory of Polymeric and Composites Materials in the University of Mons. During her thesis, she focuses on the modulation of the thermal properties of aromatic polyesters by solid-state modification techniques in order to give them a second life.

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I am a doctoral researcher in the research group of Prof. Bart Goderis, which is part of the Polymer Chemistry and Materials Division at KU Leuven. My research topic is about increasing the sustainability of polymer powder-based Additive Manufacturing (AM) by studying the very fast structural changes and thermal behavior of various polymeric materials under typical AM conditions. I graduated as a master in chemistry at KU Leuven. During my studies, I had the opportunity to do an internship at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences in Sweden, under the supervision of Prof. Ramune Kuktaite.

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Sofie Houben obtained her bachelor's degree at Hasselt University in 2016 and her master’s degree at the university of Leuven in 2018. Her master thesis was focused on poly(arylene oxindole) star polymers for gene therapy applications. Subsequently, sofie started her PhD at Hasselt University under the supervision of Prof. Louis Pitet focusing on the design of tough double network hydrogels for tissue engineering.

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Sinan Kardas obtained his Bsc. and Msc. degrees in Chemistry at the University of Mons (UMONS, Belgium). His Master research was mainly focused on the elaboration of hairy cellulose nanocrystals using a supramolecular approach. After obtaining his master’s degree in Materials Chemistry in 2018, he started as a joint PhD student between the Laboratory for Chemistry of Novel Materials (UMONS), under the supervision of Prof. Mathieu Surin and the Institute for Complex Molecular Systems (TU/e, The Netherlands) under the supervision of Prof. E.W. Meijer. During his thesis, he focuses on the theoretical study of sequence-defined oligomers for catalysis and supramolecular oligomers with molecular modelling techniques.

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Current position: PhD thesis conducted under the supervision of P. Zinck at ULille (UCCS) and W. Thielemans at KU Leuven (SusMat): “Surface initiated ring-opening polymerisation as a tool for grafting polymers on nanocelluloses.” My research field are material science, and in particular polymer chemistry and polysaccharides. I have graduated from the university of Bordeaux with a Masters in chemistry, functional molecules and macromolecules, specialized in macromolecular engineering. Relevant professional experiences: Second year Master internships Synthesis of modified monom ers for their use in electronic organic and bioelectronic

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Marie Lenaerts obtained her bachelor and master degree in Chemistry at KU Leuven, Belgium. She made her master thesis in the group of Guy Koeckelberghs, the Laboratory for Polymer Synthesis, on the synthesis and performance of solvent resistant nanofiltration membranes. This is an emerging field for the industry as it is a more sustainable solution for purifications and separations. Triggered by this topic, she started her PhD in 2019 under supervision of prof. Koeckelberghs and co-supervision of prof. Vankelecom. Her research focusses on the development of polymeric nanofiltration membranes for sustainable separations in harsh conditions.

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Zhen Liu is a PhD student from physical chemistry and polymer science group of VUB, supervised by Prof. Niko Van den Brande and Prof. Bruno Van Mele. Her research focus is on the characterization of conjugated materials applied in optoelectronics with advanced thermal analysis techniques. Prior to this PhD, she received her master’s degree of chemical and materials engineering at VUB in 2018. Her master study was supported by a Master Mind Scholarship from the Flemish government.

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Manon Minsart is a PhD student in the Polymer Chemistry & Biomaterials Group at Ghent University (Belgium). She obtained her master's degree in chemistry at Ghent University in July 2018. In December 2018, she obtained a FWO-SB fellowship. Her PhD research focuses on the development and characterization of hydrogel-based wound dressings (films, electrospun nanofibers) based on natural and synthetic polymers for the treatment of burn wounds.

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I graduated in 2019 from a European Institute of Technology (EIT Raw Materials) labelled Master degree named AMIS (Advanced Materials for Innovation and Sustainability). This led me to obtain two degrees: (i) an engineering degree in Grenoble (France), (ii) a Master of Physics at the University of Liège. I started my research on polymer materials during my Master Thesis on the self-assembly at water-air interface of diamond shape-memory polymers. Then, I started a PhD at the Center for Education and Research on Macromolecules (CERM) thanks to a FNRS – FRIA grant. My research consists on the development of fully degradable, self-folding shape memory elastomer composites for biomedical applications. I synthesize networks of poly(phosphoester) reinforced with nanofibers of poly(caprolactone). Today I will present such networks, which is a completely new formulation for shape-memory composites such that I follow the impact of interface between the two polymers via the fiber diameter on a large spectrum of properties.

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Sander Smeets obtained his Bachelor's degree in Chemistry at Hasselt University in 2017, with a dissertation on the morphology control in organic photovoltaics in the DSOS group. Subsequently, he received his Master of Science in Chemistry at Ghent University in 2019. During his Master's thesis, which was performed with the Supramolecular Chemistry group of Prof. R. Hoogenboom, he optimized a post-polymerization functionalization to synthesize partly functionalized poly(2-oxazoline)s for molecularly imprinted polymers (MIPs). Currently, he is performing his Ph.D. in the DSOS group on the elucidation of the importance of homocoupling defects in organic semiconductors, strongly leaning on continuous flow chemistry for the reproducible production of push-pull type conjugated polymers.

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François Toussaint obtained his B.S. and M.S. in chemistry at the University of Liège (Uliège). His master thesis mainly focussed on organic flow synthesis. After the obtention of his Master’s degree in 2019, he started his PhD in the Center for Education and Research on Macromolecules (CERM) at the University of Liège under the supervision of Dr. Antoine Debuigne. His thesis work mainly focusses on finding alternatives to Poly-ethylene glycol for the post-modification of liposomes in drug delivery applications.

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Filip Van Lijsebetten In 2019, he received his Master's degree in Chemistry from Ghent University (Belgium), where he worked on his thesis on sequence-defined macromolecules. He was awarded a Ph.D. scholarship from the Research Foundation Flanders (FWO) in October 2019 to work on the development of industrially applicable dynamic polymer networks. One of his main goals is to address (re)processability and recyclability issues for cross-linked materials.

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