International
Webinars on Materials

Neil Champness is the Norman Haworth Professor of Chemistry at the University of Birmingham, UK, having moved from the University of Nottingham in 2021. After completing his PhD at the University of Southampton, UK, with Bill Levason, he moved to Nottingham in 1995, being appointed Professor of Chemical Nanoscience in 2004. His research spans supramolecular chemistry, chemical nanoscience and molecular organization. In particular he focusses on molecular design and synthetic methods, employing self-assembly to create framework materials on surfaces and in the solid-state and for the creation of interlocked structures in solution. His research achievements have been recognised by the award of a number of Royal Society of Chemistry prizes including the Corday-Morgan Medal and Prize (2006), Supramolecular Chemistry Award (2010) and Surfaces and Interfaces Award (2016). He held a Royal Society Leverhulme Trust Senior Research Fellowship (2010) and a Royal Society Wolfson Merit Award (2011-2016). He is a Member of Academia Europaea, a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (FLSW), the European Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC). In 2011 he was identified as one of the top 100 most cited chemists of the previous decade worldwide and has been designated a Thomson Reuters Highly Cited Researcher.

The 45-minute lecture will provide an overview of the production of regenerated cellulose or man-made cellulose fibers (MMCFs). After a brief definition of terms and introduction to the world market of MMCFs, a historical overview of the production and main property requirements of cellulose fibers will be presented.

The main part of my presentation is devoted to the two commercial man-made fiber technologies, Viscose (CV, CMD) and Lyocell (CLY). Due to time constraints, I will focus on the most essential aspects of the production and properties of the spinning solution, the structure formation during coagulation and regeneration, and the property profile of the produced fibers.

If time permits, I will also provide an outlook on the new developments in the field of manufacturing new environmentally friendly fiber processes for the production of MMCFs, such as the Carbamat, Biocelsol or NeoCel fiber processes, Spinnova, Tree-to-Textile, HighPerCell and Ioncell, to name a few. Examples to illustrate the differences between mechanical and chemical recycling of textile waste are shown.

Inorganic nanomaterials enabled impressive developments, both in the fundamental understanding of nucleation, growth and surface chemistry of inorganic solids, and in our ability to make functional materials for real-world applications. Nanocrystals and nanocrystal assemblies offer a versatile platform for designing two- and three-dimensional solids with tailored electronic, optical, magnetic, and catalytic properties. Unlike atomic and molecular crystals where atoms, lattice geometry, and interatomic distances are fixed entities, the arrays of nanocrystals represent solids made of “designer atoms” with continuously tunable properties.

I will discuss our recent developments in synthesis of inorganic nanostructures, from new semiconductor quantum dots to two-dimensional transition metal carbides, also known as MXenes. We are developing chemical approaches to electronically couple individual nanostructures into extended materials. These “modular” materials are explored as active components for electronic, light-emitting, thermoelectric and photovoltaic devices.

The presentation will provide information on how biomimetics can be used to discover and develop new chemicals, products and processes. A review on the applications of biomimetics with respect to chemistry will be presented.

The presentation will provide information on how biomimetics can be used to discover and develop new chemicals, products and processes. A review on the applications of biomimetics with respect to chemistry will be presented.

Aldo R. Boccaccini is Professor and Head of the Institute of Biomaterials at University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. He is also visiting Professor at Imperial College London, UK. He holds a nuclear engineering degree from Instituto Balseiro (Argentina), Dr-Ing. (PhD) from RWTH Aachen University (Germany) and Habilitation from Technical University of Ilmenau (Germany). Prior to his current position, he spent 10 years at Imperial College London, Department of Materials, as Lecturer, Reader and Professor of Materials Science. He has held post-doctoral positions at University of Birmingham (UK) and University of California, San Diego (USA). He was Head of the Department of Materials Science and Engineering in Erlangen (2017-2019). The research activities of Prof. Boccaccini are in the field of ceramics, glasses and composites for biomedical, functional and/or structural applications. He is the author or co-author of more than 900 scientific papers and 25 book chapters. His work has been cited more than 46,000 times (h = 94, Scopus, “Highly cited researcher” 2014 and 2018). He is the Editor-in-Chief of the journal “Materials Letters” (Elsevier). He serves in the editorial board of more than 10 international journals. Boccaccini has been a visiting professor at different universities around the world. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3) (UK), the American Ceramic Society, the Society of Glass Technology (UK) and the European Ceramic Society. His achievements have been recognized with several awards including the Materials Prize of the German Materials Society (DGM) in 2015, the Turner Award of International Commission on Glass (2016) and Friedberg Lecture Award (2016) of American Ceramic Society. Boccaccini is also an elected member of the World Academy of Ceramics and of the National Academy of Engineering and Applied Sciences of Germany (acatech) and advisor to the Science and Technology Ministry of Argentina. Boccaccini serves in the Executive Committee of the Federation of European Materials Societies (FEMS) representing the German Materials Society and he has been a member of the Council of the European Society for Biomaterials (ESB) since 2015. He has served in several review panels of the European Research Council (ERC) and of the German Research Foundation (DFG).

Professor Maria Forsyth “FAA” (Fellow Australian Academy of Sciences), is the Director of ARC Industrial Transformation Training Centre for Future Energy Storage Technologies, StorEnergy, past ARC Laureate fellow and currently an Alfred Deakin Professorial Fellow at Deakin University and an Ikerbasque Visiting Professorial Fellow at University of the Basque Country. Professor Forsyth is a world leader in electrolyte materials research. She has worked at the forefront of energy materials research since her Fulbright Research Fellowship in 1990 and has consistently made breakthrough discoveries, including in polymer electrolytes, ionic liquids and organic plastic crystals. Her research has focused on understanding the phenomenon of charge transport in these materials and at metal/electrolyte interfaces present in all electrochemical applications. This extensive body of work provides the basis for understanding the behaviour of these materials and thus, provides clarity on how to overcome their performance limitations and design and develop improved applications

After a PhD at Queen Mary University of London on osteoblast response to bioactive composites. I moved to Glasgow to study cell-nanoscale interactions. In 2003 I became an independent researcher securing a BBSRC David Phillips Fellowship to explore mesenchymal stem cell response to nanotopography. Appointed to a lectureship in 2008 and a Readership in 2010, I became Professor of Cell Engineering at the University of Glasgow in 2014. I hold grants from EPSRC, MRC, BBSRC, Leverhulme Trust and Sir Bobby Charlton Foundation. I am director of the EPSRC-SFI lifETIME centre for doctoral training.

My research has focussed on developing insight into MSC differentiation and self-renewal using materials and mechanotransductive cues, making contributions in journals such as Nature Materials, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Advanced Materials, Chem, Science Advances etc (>200 papers). More recently I have become interested in using materials to find activity metabolites that can be used to control MSC phenotype. As well as basic science, I am interested in translational science and have been involved in veterinary bone regeneration trials and am working now towards a human bone regeneration trail.

In 2016 I was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh and have won a number of awards – most recently the Biochemical Society Industrial-Academic Collaboration Award.

Joachim Maier received his PhD at the University of Saarbrücken in 1982, and completed his habilitation at the University of Tübingen in 1988. He has lectured at the University of Tübingen, at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a foreign faculty member, at the University of Graz as a visiting professor, and at the University of Stuttgart as an honorary professor. As director of the physical chemistry department (since 1991) of the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research he co-authored more than 900 papers on chemical and electro-chemical phenomena that garnered 70.000 citations. His major interests are solid state ionics, electrochemistry and interfaces. Joachim Maier laid the conceptual foundation of the field “nanoionics”. He is editor-in-chief of the Journal Solid State Ionics. He is a member of various national and international academies and his work received national and international distinctions.

Sergei Kalinin is a corporate fellow and a group leader at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. He received his MS degree from Moscow State University in 1998 and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania (with Dawn Bonnell) in 2002. His research presently focuses on the applications of big data and artificial intelligence methods in atomically resolved imaging by scanning transmission electron microscopy and scanning probes for applications including physics discovery and atomic fabrication, as well as mesoscopic studies of electrochemical, ferroelectric, and transport phenomena via scanning probe microscopy. Sergei has co-authored >650 publications, with a total citation of >38,000 and an h-index of >95. He is a member of Academia Europea and a fellow of MSA, MRS, APS, IoP, IEEE, Foresight Institute, and AVS; a recipient of the Blavatnik Award for Physical Sciences (2018), RMS medal for Scanning Probe Microscopy (2015), Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) (2009); Burton medal of Microscopy Society of America (2010); 4 R&D100 Awards (2008, 2010, 2016, and 2018); and a number of other distinctions.

Bruno did his undergraduate studies in Biochemistry at the Faculty of Sciences, Lisbon University. During his PhD at the Instituto Superior Técnico, Lisbon, he studied lipid phase separation and protein sorting in cell membrane model systems. He then moved to the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO) in Barcelona, Spain, where he worked on membrane protein organization and function in living cells using advance fluorescence microscopies. He started his editorial career in 2016 at Nature Communications and is now a Senior Editor at Nature Materials, where he handles manuscripts in the broader area of soft materials.

Academic publishing while often is a straightforward process, can sometimes become a lengthy and frustrating task. However, some tricks might help minimising these situations both at an editorial level and at the peer-review stage. After a brief introduction on the Nature research journals portfolio and the respective targets, the seminar will focus on the publishing process of Nature journals, from the initial editorial assessment to the distinct stages of peer-review and publication. Some of the questions that will be answered are: What makes a great paper? What editors look for in a Nature research paper? How decisions are made? Also, some practical tips for writing and managing a submission to a Nature journal will be given.

Our society is looking for more sustainable packaging since decades but a clear change have been observed with strong commitments from food industries and NGO. Several solutions can be proposed by specifying end of life and circular approach. A short introduction f this context will be proposed before focusing on the use of cellulose and nanocellulose to develop high performance materials for packaging industry.

Dr Julien Bras (H index: 51; 175 scientific papers, 15 patents) is associate professor at Grenoble Institute of Technology (Grenoble INP Pagora) since 2006. After engineer diploma in Chemistry and a PhD on Renewable Materials for biopackaging in 2004, he worked in industry few years as Innovation Manager within Ahlstrom Specialty paper and then left industry to become associate professor in 2006. Since that time, he has directly supervised 29 PhD, 21 Post-doc and more than 60 master students focusing on research on Nanocellulose, Biomaterials & Specialty papers. He was member of Institut Universitaire de France (IUF, 2016-2019, top grant for 2% of French professor). He received the French “Academy of Science” Major Prize of Innovation (IMT Espoir) in 2017 and the international mid-career award from Tappi Nano in 2019. He was head of the “Multiscale Biobased Material” group (ab. 40 pers.) during 7 years and deputy director of LGP2 (Laboratory of Pulp & Paper Science) during 3 years. Since 2021, he is in charge of International Affairs of Grenoble INP Pagora and of International Master on biorefinery and biomaterials. During the last two years (2019-2021), he has worked with Nestle thanks to a disponibility sabbatical period as Senior Expert and Department Head in the Institute of Packaging Science in the global Nestle Research Center at Lausanne, Switzerland. He has contributed to the creation of this institute, its project portfolio and led some key projects on cellulose based packaging materials and barrier properties. He was also in charge of science, sustainability, food safety, innovative technologies and academic alliance in the institute. Through his different experiences, he develops several competences. His expertise deals particularly with nanocellulose, paper science, biobased and smart materials, mainly for sustainable packaging applications.

Dr Julien Bras (H index: 51; 175 scientific papers, 15 patents) is associate professor at Grenoble Institute of Technology (Metabolites, or biological small molecules, are usually considered in identification of biomarkers. However, they can be used to drive cellular processes, such as stem cell differentiation. Use of complex media recipes to control stem cell differentiation add artefact to metabolomics experiments and so bioengineering approaches are attractive as they can drive different stem cell fates without changing what the cells are ‘fed’. We have developed metabolomics pipelines to identify bioactive metabolites that control mesenchymal stem cell (MSC) self-renewal and differentiation. We started this research avenue using peptide hydrogels with defined stiffnesses that could control MSC chondrogenesis and osteogenesis, identifying GP18:0 and cholesterol sulphate as bioactive metabolites . Next, using our nanovibrational bioreactor, the Nanokick, along with synthetic chemistry modification of hit metabolites, we focused on refining our putative osteospecifc metabolite candidates to tune potency and specificity identifying fludrocortisone acetate. Finally, we have used nanotopography to control MSC self-renewal3 to identify respiration-link metabolites that drive the immunomodulatory phenotype of MSCs4; this is critical if we wish to grow large numbers of high quality MSCs for use as immunosuppressive therapies in transplant procedures.

Kristi Anseth is a Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering and Associate Faculty Director of the BioFrontiers Institute at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She currently holds the Tisone Professorship and is a Distinguished Professor. Dr. Anseth came to CU-Boulder after earning her B.S. degree from Purdue University, her Ph.D. degree from the University of Colorado, and completing post-doctoral research at MIT as an NIH fellow. Her research interests lie at the interface between biology and engineering where she designs new biomaterials for applications in drug delivery and regenerative medicine. Dr. Anseth’s research group has published over 350 peer-reviewed manuscripts, and she has trained more than 110 graduate students and postdoctoral associates. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Engineering (2009), the National Academy of Medicine (2009), the National Academy of Sciences (2013), the National Academy of Inventors (2016) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2019). Most recently, she received the L’Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science Award in the Life Sciences (2020). Dr. Anseth has served on the Board of Directors of AIChE, Chair of the Institute Awards Selection Committee, and is an AIChE fellow. In addition, she has represented the chemical engineering community by serving as the President of the Materials Research Society, the Board of Governors for Acta Materialia, Inc, the NIH Advisory Council for NIBIB, and as Chair of the NAE US Frontiers of Engineering meetings.

Luis Liz-Marzán is a PhD in Chemistry by the University of Santiago de Compostela (1992). After a postdoc at Utrecht Unviersity and a long academic career at the University of Vigo, he is currently an Ikerbasque Professor at CIC biomaGUNE (San Sebastian, Spain), of which he has been Scientific Director (2013-2021). Co-author of over 500 scientific papers and 9 patents, Liz-Marzán is recognized for seminal contributions to colloidal synthesis of metal nanoparticles, self-assembly, nanoplasmonics, surface-enhanced Raman scattering and biomedical applications.
More information at www.bionanoplasmonics.com