Invited speakers
Josefa Fernández
Title of the invited presentation:
« Ionic liquids as lubricant additives. Synergies with nanoparticles »
Bio:
Josefa Fernández is Head of the Thermophysical Properties Laboratory (integrated in NaFoMat group in 2016) since 1992. Supervisor of 16 Doctoral Thesis. 196 publications in international refereed Journals in the areas of Thermodynamic and Transport properties, Tribology, Materials, Chemical Physics, Chemical Engineering and Nanomaterials. Main researcher of 12 funded national projects and two joint French-Spanish actions on the searching on new working fluids, thermal fluids, hydraulic fluids, ionic liquids, nanofluids or lubricants in refrigeration systems, wind turbines and other machinery for the generation of renewable energies and automotive components. Responsible in the USC of a strategic and singular project granted by the Spanish Government on the use of biodegradable lubricants in wind energy and agricultural machinery with six industrial partners and Chair of an IUPAC project. Dissemination Manager of COST Network on Ionic Liquids and of the Management Committee member of the COST NANOUPTAKE on nanofluids. Board Member of Thermodynamics and Transfer Process, B1 of the International Institute of Refrigeration, International Association Transport Properties IATP, International Association Chemical Thermodynamics IACT, and of the International Organizing committee (IOC) of European Conferences on Thermophysical Properties and International Union of Applied Chemistry (IUPAC) member.
Christian Schroeder
Title of the invited presentation:
« Computational spectroscopy of ionic liquids: From NMR to fluorescence spectroscopy »
Bio:
After receiving his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Biophysical Chemistry in Göttingen (Germany) in 2003, he accepted a postdoctoral position at the University of Vienna (Austria). In 2006, Christian Schröder started his independent research career focusing on the evaluation of the bulk behavior of ionic liquids and the development of polarizable force fields to reproduce experimental spectroscopy data from MHz to THz. In 2012, he finished his habilitation thesis on « Computational Studies of Molecular Ionic Liquids ». From 2013 to 2017, he was appointed as working group leader of the European COST action CM1206 responsible for « Physicochemical Properties of Ionic Liquids and their Modelling ». Christian Schröder’s current research interests are based on computational spectroscopy including NMR, dielectric and THz spectroscopy to study solvation behavior with a particular focus on neoteric solvents such as ionic liquids or their solutions.
Andrea Balducci
Title of the invited presentation:
« Protic ionic liquids in energy storage devices »
Bio:
Andrea Balducci is Professor for “Applied Electrochemistry” at the Institute for Technical Chemistry and Environmental Chemistry and at the Center for Energy and Environmental Chemistry Jena (CEEC Jena) of the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, Germany. He is working on the synthesis, characterization and application of ionic liquids suitable for energy storage devices. Prof. Balducci is authors/co-author of more than 120 peer reviewed articles.
Manuel Maréchal
Title of the invited presentation:
« Long-range structure of self-assembled ionic liquids for efficient transport »
Bio:
Manuel Marechal is CNRS researcher in the laboratory of Molecular Systems and nanoMaterials for Energy and Health (SyMMES) in Grenoble. He holds a PhD in electrochemistry from Grenoble-INP (2004) and a habilitation diploma (HDR) from the University Grenoble Alpes (2016).
He spent two years (2005-2007) as a post-doctoral fellow/teaching assistant at the University of Victoria (B.C., Canada) and two additional years (2007-2009) as an assistant professor in the chemistry department of the University Grenoble Alpes (UGA) while doing his research in the UMR5819-SPrAM lab. He was then hired in 2009 as a CNRS researcher at UMR5279-LEPMI lab, and joined UMR5819-SyMMES lab in 2015.
His research interests deal with i) studying the interplay between structure and ionic transport in « soft » electrolytic matter, and ii) the electrochemistry for/by Large Scale (Neutron and Synchrotron) Facilities. The studied electrolytes (gels, block copolymers, ionic liquids (crystals), and hybrid membranes) are of interest for applications in energy conversion and storage devices.
Trinidad Méndez
Title of the invited presentation:
« Performance of Ionic Liquids and Microporous Carbon Electrodes for Supercapacitors »
Bio:
Trinidad Méndez received her PhD at the University of Santiago de Compostela (Spain) in 2015. From 2015 to 2018 she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA – Saclay – France).
Since 2018 she has a postdoctoral position at the Sorbonne University (Paris), where she is working on simulations of electrochemical systems with a particular focus on nanoporous electrodes and « water-in-salt » electrolytes.
Chris Hardacre
Title of the invited presentation:
« CO2 capture and utilisation in ionic liquids »
Bio:
Chris Hardacre is Head of the School of Chemical Engineering and Analytical Science at the University of Manchester. He obtained a PhD from Cambridge University in 1994 and moved to Queen’s University, Belfast in 1995 and was appointed as Professor of Physical Chemistry and became Director of Research of the Centre for the Theory and Application for Catalysis (CenTACat) in 2003. In 2016, he moved to the University of Manchester.
Through his work in ionic liquids research, he was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Encouraging Innovation Award with Merck Chemicals Ltd and was part of the team to win the Queen’s Anniversary Prize for Further and Higher Education and in 2013 was the inaugural winner of the IChemE’s Andrew Medal for catalysis. His group has strong research interests in catalysis and ionic liquids.
Current catalytic projects range from water gas shift and emission control catalysis using thermal and plasma activation to the use of transients to determine gas and liquid phase reaction mechanisms to liquid phase hydrogenations under batch and flow conditions to low temperature fuel cells and clean energy conversion.
His research in ionic liquids includes their use in modifying the properties of heterogeneous catalysts, structural determination of ionic liquids, and species dissolved therein, electrochemistry and prediction of physical properties of ionic liquids.
Alistair King
Title of the invited presentation:
« Advances in Ionic Liquids for Cellulose Processing »
Bio:
Alistair is a Docent at the Laboratory of Organic Chemistry, University of Helsinki. He earned his B.Sc. Hons and Ph.D. from The Queen’s University of Belfast. Since then he has spent several years working in custom synthesis, drug development and wood chemistry.
His current interests are in the design and application of novel solvents for biomass processing and analytics. Key applications of focus are in the regeneration of cellulose fibres, surface modification of cellulosics (nanocellulose, fibres & films) and biomass fractionation in general.
Recently Alistair and his collaborators, at the University of Helsinki and nearby Aalto University, were awarded the ‘Hennes & Mauritz Global Change Award’, presented to them by Her Royal Highness Crown Princess Victoria of Sweden. This was awarded for the joint development of the IONCELL-F process, a lyocell-type fibre-spinning process using ionic liquids as direct dissolution solvents for cellulose.
Recently they have also launched a spin-off company related to the development and scale-up of key ionic liquids useful for cellulose processing.
Barbara Kirchner
Title of the invited presentation:
« Understanding the molecular cosmos to make ionic liquids better materials »
Bio:
Since 2013 Prof. Dr. Barbara Kirchner has held the chair for Theoretical Chemistry at the University of Bonn. Before that she held the chair for Theoretical chemistry at the University of Leipzig. Other important stays were: the universities of Brisbane/Australia, Bochum/Germany, and Zurich/Switzerland.
2016 she has been a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of The Journal of Chemical Physics and since 2016 of the Editorial Board of Topics in Current Chemistry.
Prof. Kirchner’s research focus is on Quantum cluster equilibrium model, Ab initio and traditional molecular dynamics simulations, Solvents and solvent effects and the Development of tools for analyzing and visualizing trajectories. She is the author of more than 209 papers in peer-review journals.
Peter Nockemann
Title of the invited presentation:
« Rare Earth Chemistry with Ionic Liquids – from Materials Synthesis to Applications in Separation »
Bio:
Peter Nockemann is Director of Research at the School of Chemistry & Chemical Engineering at Queen’s University Belfast. He obtained his PhD from University of Cologne in 2002 and was until 2008 as a post-doctoral researcher at the KU Leuven, Belgium. He moved in 2008 to Queen’s University, Belfast as a lecturer, became senior lecturer in 2016 and was in 2019 appointed as a Full Professor and Chair for Inorganic Chemistry at QUB.
He is also the co-founder and director of QUB award-winning spin-out company Green Lizard Technologies Ltd., which focusses on delivering technological solutions in the sustainable and clean energy sector. As a co-founder and director of Seren Technologies Ltd. he is involved in the knowledge-transfer of a new technology to recycle rare-earth metals.
Current projects range from energy storage applications using ionic liquids in new battery materials for transport and redox flow batteries for stationary storage, to the development of new sustainable separation technologies for critical metals based on ionic liquids. Furthermore, his group is investigating new ionic liquid-based pathways to advanced functional materials and nanomaterials.
Isabel Marrucho
Titre of the invited presentation:
« Deep Eutectic Solvents: a platform for sustainable technologies »
Bio:
Isabel M. Marrucho is a Professor in Chemical Engineering in University of Lisbon. Currently, Isabel serves as Director of the Master degree in Chemistry in University of Lisbon-IST and she was a founder of the PhD programme in Sustainable Chemistry.
She has been active in the broad field of Green Chemistry, in particular on the study of ionic liquids and ionic liquids-based materials, for more than 15 years. Most of her work is established at the edge of chemistry, chemical engineering and material science fields and encompasses topics such as development of green solvents and functional materials, understanding of solvency and selectivity processes and design of efficient separation processes.