Topics & Session Chairs

Fabio Ragaini is full Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at Milan University, were he did his complete career, except for a period as a visiting scientist at The Pennsylvania State University, with Prof. G. L. Geoffroy.
He was the Coordinator of the Interdivisional Group of Organometallic Chemistry of the Italian Chemical Society and was chairman of the “XI Congresso Del Gruppo Interdivisionale di Chimica Organometallica (CoGICO2014)”, Milano 2014.
He is the author of 119 papers on scientific journals, a monograph entitled “Catalytic Reductive Carbonylation of Organic Nitro Compounds” (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1997), 2 book chapters, 147 communications to congresses, and 3 patents. His interests are mainly centered on organometallic chemistry and homogeneous catalysis, with a focus on reduction/carbonylation reactions of nitroarenes.

Rinaldo Poli started his independent career in 1987 at the University of Maryland at College Park, raising through the ranks to Full Professor, then moved to France in 1996. He is now Professor at ENSIACET and leads a research group at the Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination of CNRS in Toulouse. He has been President of the Coordination Chemistry Division of the French Chemical Society from 2016 to 2018 and is the representative of this society on the board of the Division of Organometallic Chemistry of EuCheMS.
He is a member of the European Academy of Sciences and a ChemPubSoc Fellow. His research interests span from structure-bonding-reactivity relationships, especially for open-shell organometallic compounds, to the application of metal complexes to (enantio)selective catalysis and to controlled radical polymerization. He also uses precision polymer synthesis to develop innovative catalytic nanoreactors.

Mauro Botta received the Laurea cum laude in Chemistry from the University of Turin in 1985. In 1998, he moved to the University of Eastern Piedmont “Amedeo Avogadro” where currently he is Professor of Inorganic Chemistry. Throughout his career, his scientific interests have focused on the use of NMR techniques for the characterization of inorganic systems, starting from organometallic clusters and then moving on the complexes of the f-elements.
Current research interests are: i) multifrequency and multinuclear NMR relaxometric techniques for the characterization and development of paramagnetic systems as imaging probes; ii) synthesis and characterization of multi-functional inorganic nanoparticles; iii) multimeric systems as high-field MRI contrast agents. Recipient of the “Raffaello Nasini” gold medal award for Inorganic Chemistry of the Italian Chemical Society and of the “GIDRM gold medal for magnetic resonance”.

Alexander A. Trifonov was born in 1962, studied chemistry at the State University of Gorky (USSR) and in 1984 received his diploma degree. During his PhD studies he has been working at the Institute of Organometallic Chemistry of Russian Academy of Sciences (Nizhny Novgorod) under supervision of Prof. M.N. Bochkarev and in 1989 received his PhD at the Institute of Organoelement Compounds of Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow).
He did postdoctoral studies at the Technical University of Berlin, Germany (Prof. H. Schumann, 1991), Université de Paris-Sud, France (Prof. H. Kagan, 1993-1995). In 1999-2000 he was an A. von Humboldt fellow in the research group of Prof. J. Okuda (Mainz University, Germany).Until 2016 he was a vice-director of Institute of Organoelement Compounds of Russian Academy of Sciences (Moscow) and in July 2018 he has become director of this institute

Luca Gonsalvi (Parma, Italy, 1968) obtained his Laurea Degree in Chemistry in 1994 at the University of Parma (Italy). From 1996 to 1999 he joined the group of Anthony Haynes and Peter M. Maitlis at the University of Sheffield (UK) as Ph. D. student, In December 1999, he moved to Delft University of Technology (NL) as Postdoctoral Research Associate to work with Roger A. Sheldon and Isabel W. C. E. Arends. In December 2001, he joined ICCOM CNR Florence (Italy) as Staff Researcher. Since 2010 he is Senior Researcher and Group Leader at ICCOM CNR.
His research interests, centred on homogenous catalysis, include organometallic chemistry and catalysis in water, carbon dioxide activation and utilisation, hydrogen activation by precious and base transition metals. He has co-authored more than 100 articles on peer-reviewed journals, filed 1 patent and presented his work at more than 140 conferences and symposia, including Keynote and Plenary Lectures. Recently, he has been Scientific Secretary of the 28th International Conference on Organometallic Chemistry (ICOMC 2018).

Sven Schneider (*1972) is full professor and managing director of the Institute for Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Göttingen, Germany. His research interests are focused on catalysis, the activation of small molecules (particularly N₂, CO₂ and H₂) for chemical synthesis and sustainable energy storage, and gas phase deposition of inorganic materials.
He is vice-chair of the collaborative research center SFB1073 and received an ERC Consolidator Grant in 2015. He currently serves on the editorial board of Structure and Bonding and the editorial advisory board of Inorganic Chemistry.

Marcella Bonchio is a Full Professor of Chemistry at the Department of Chemical Sciences of the University of Padova and the scientific leader of the NanoMolCat group (http://www.chimica.unipd.it/nanomolcat/). In 2011, She received the Italian Chemical Society Award for Research Innovation. Research achievements target the design of hybrid catalysts integrating nano-inorganic clusters with organic interfaces, for applications in solar fuels, smart-materials and nano-medicine. Prof. Bonchio’s publications include the breakthrough design of highly robust polyoxometalate-based systems for photo-induced water oxidation.
She is responsible for several funded projects in the fields of functional nano-materials, and artificial photosynthesis. Group alumni, featuring an optimal 50:50 gender balance, are now employed by academic institutions and international companies. She is part of the Scientific Board of international journals (Wiley-Eur. J. Inorg. Chem., ChemSusChem and Cell Press-Chem).

Carles Bo Jané started his scientific career at the University Rovira i Virgili where he got a Ph.D. in 1992 and became assistant professor at the Physical and Inorganic Chemistry Department few years later. From 2004, he heads a group at the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia, ICIQ, in Tarragona. Main research activity is devoted to the application of computational chemistry methods to a diversity of topics, often in very close collaboration with experimentalists.
His research deals with homogeneous catalysis, unravelling reaction mechanisms and understanding ligand and additives effects, properties of supramolecular assemblies, and polyoxometalates, electronic structure and multi-scale modelling.

Vito Capriati is Full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Bari (I). He is co-founder of the academic spin-off “Synchimia srl” and Director of Interuniversity Consortium CINMPIS since 2016. Main research interests revolve around the chemistry of highly polarised organometallic compounds, the synthesis and reactivity of new heterocycles, asymmetric catalysis, and the development of new sustainable chemical processes using unconventional reaction media (e.g., water and deep eutectic solvents). He was the recipient of the CINMPIS Prize “Innovation in Organic Synthesis” (2009) and of the Award of the Italian Chemical Society (Organic Division) for “Mechanistic and Theoretical Aspects of Organic Chemistry” (2014).  He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry since 2019. He is author of over 120 papers, 7 book chapters, co-editor of “Lithium Compounds in Organic Synthesis From Fundamentals to Applications” (2014), and editor of various Special Issues (ORCID: 0000-0003-4883-7128).

François Gabbaï was born in France and studied in Bordeaux where he obtained a bachelor in 1990.  The same year, he crossed the Atlantic to undertake his graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin with Alan Cowley.  Upon completion of his Ph.D. in 1994, he received an Alexander von Humboldt fellowship and joined the group of Hubert Schmidbaur at the Technische Universität München as a postdoctoral fellow. He stayed in Munich for four years and ultimately received a Habilitation.  In 1998, he joined Texas A&M University where he now holds the Arthur E. Martell Chair of Chemistry.
He is a member of the advisory board of several international journals and has served as an Associate Editor for Organometallics since 2011.  He is a Fellow of the American Chemical Society, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the recipient of the 2009 North American Dalton Lectureship. He was also recognized in 2016 with the 2016 ACS F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry.

Roberta Sessoli developed her career at the University of Florence where she is full professor since 2012. She played a key part in the original discovery of single-molecule magnets (SMM). Her current interests include the interplay between magnetism and chirality, magnetic molecules on surfaces to form hybrid interfaces for spintronics, and molecules with highly coherent spin dynamics for quantum information.
For her scientific achievements she has been selected as a member of the Science and Technology Advisory Council of the President of the European Commission and she received prestigious prizes such as the Distinguished Woman in Chemistry award from IUPAC (2015), the Lecoq de Boisbaudran award from the European Rare Earths Society (2015), and the Agilent Technologies Europhysics prize (2002). In 2010 she has been awarded with an ERC Advanced Grant

Jesper Bendix obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 1998 from University of Copenhagen under the supervision of Prof. C. E. Schäffer. Following post-doctoral stays in Mülheim, Germany at Caltech, USA, at the University of Utah and in Berne, Switzerland, , he returned to University of Copenhagen where he is currently heading the Section for Inorganic Chemistry. He has published ca. 160 research papers mostly in coordination chemistry.
He is recipient of the Ellen and Niels Bjerrum chemistry prize and elected member of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters. His current research focuses on synthesis as well as electronic and structural studies of molecule-based magnetic materials with emphasis on structural control and building-block approaches to magnetic systems. In parallel he is studying synthesis and the electronic structure of high-valent metal centers with strongly donating ligands from the isoelectronic series: carbide, nitride, oxide and fluoride.

Andrea Rossin was born in Biella, Northern Italy, in 1974. He got his degree with full marks in Inorganic Chemistry in 1999 at the Università di Torino (Italy), In the years 2001-2004 he developed his Ph.D. work at Cardiff University (Cardiff, Wales, UK). In year 2005 he was a post-doctoral fellow of the EU-FP6 ITN network AQUACHEM at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (Barcelona, Spain). Between 2006 and 2009 he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at ICCOM-CNR in Florence. From 2010 he is a permanent researcher at ICCOM-CNR. His research interests are twofold: (a) Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs) synthesis, characterization and applications in CO₂ storage, heterogeneous catalysis and luminescent sensing; (b) reactivity studies of ammonia-borane and amino-boranes as chemical hydrogen storage materials with transition metal organometallics.

Takashi Uemura is Professor at Department of Advanced Materials Science, Graduate School of Frontier Sciences, The University of Tokyo, Japan. He received his Ph.D. degree at Kyoto University in 2002. He then began his academic career as Assistant Professor (2002) and then Associate Professor (2010)., He was promoted to Professor at the University of Tokyo in 2018.  In 2006–2010, he was also a researcher of PRESTO programme of Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). Since 2013, he has been a research director for a CREST programme of JST.  His research interest is the preparation of synergistic nanohybrids between coordination compounds and polymeric materials. He has been awarded several prizes, including Young Scholar Lecture Series, CSJ (2008), CSJ Award for Young Chemists (2010), Young Scientists’ Prize, Kao Research Initiative Award (2014) and JSPS Prize (2016).

Paola Ceroni is full professor at the University of Bologna. In 1998 she obtained her PhD degree in Chemical Sciences at the University of Bologna. Current research is focused on photochemistry and electrochemistry of supramolecular systems with particular emphasis towards luminescent nanocrystals.
Her research on luminescent silicon nanocrystals was funded by an ERC Starting Grant PhotoSi (2012-2017) and an ERC Proof of Concept SiNBiosys (2017-2019).
She is co-author of 190 scientific papers in refereed international journals. h-index: 47 (Google Scholar). She is co-author of a book entitled: “Photochemistry and Photophysics : Concepts, Research, Applications” (2014, Wiley-VCH) and the editor of three books published by Wiley and Springer. She is fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. She has presented oral communications at more than 70 national and international conferences and 30 invited lectures.

Max Massi obtained his PhD in Chemical Science at the University of Bologna in 2005. He then spent three years at Monash University (Melbourne, Australia) as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the group of Prof. Phil Andrews and Prof. Peter Junk. In 2009 he moved to Curtin University (Perth, Australia) to begin his independent academic career as a Lecturer and he was also awarded an Australian Postdoctoral Fellowship by the ARC. In 2013, he was awarded a Future Fellowship from the ARC.
Max is currently as Associated Professor at the School of Molecular and Life Sciences and member of the Curtin Institute for Functional Materials and Interfaces at Curtin University. The research carried out in Max’s group focuses on the synthesis and photophysical investigation of transition metal and lanthanoid coordination or organometallic complexes, including their potential applications in materials and life sciences. He is author of 90 peer-reviewed publications and 5 patents.

Francesco Ruffo is Associate Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry at the ‘Università di Napoli Federico II’. The research activity is centred in the field of Organometallic Chemistry, with focus on:
1) complexes containing chiral ligands based on carbohydrates for biological application and asymmetric catalysis;
2) platinum(II) e palladium(II) compounds containing unsaturated ligands;
3) catalytic conversion of oily biomass.

Bas de Bruin studied chemistry at the University of Nijmegen from 1989-1994. He obtained his Ph. D. (April 20, 1999) from the same university. After some post-doctoral experiences, he returned to the University of Nijmegen as an Assistant Professor in Inorganic Chemistry. He moved to the University of Amsterdam in 2005, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2008). He was promoted to Full Professor at the same university in 2013. Bas de Bruin presently focuses at the development of new tools in homogeneous catalysis, using metals in unconventional oxidation states and unconventional ligands, specifically aiming at the development of new catalytic organic reactions.

Paolo Fornasiero is full professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Trieste, Italy. Research interests are in the areas of applied nanomaterials, heterogeneous catalysis, solar fuels, energy related processes, biomass conversion and environment protection. Since 2015 he serves as Associate Editor of ACS Catalysis. He received several awards, including the 2018 M.T. Messori Roncaglia Award, the 2017 Edoardo Kramer Award, the 2016 IACS Heinz Heinemann Award, the 2013 Chiusoli Medal and the 2005 Nasini Medal.
He is co-author of over 230 scientific publications, 13 book chapters and editor of various special issues. Current h-index is 72 with over 21.500 citations (Google Scholar).

Prof. Mizuki Tada was received her Ph.D. at the department of chemistry, the University of Tokyo in 2005. She became an assistant professor at the University of Tokyo and moved to Institute for Molecular Science as an associate professor in 2008. She is a professor of chemistry at Nagoya University since 2013. Her research interests are the design of supported metal complexes, heterogeneous catalysis, and operando imaging of solid materials and fuel cells.

Prof. Francesco Paolucci.. He received his degree in chemistry, magna cum laude, from the University of Bologna, Italy, in 1986
Since 1/12/2011 Professor of Chemistry University of Bologna.
Visiting Professor at Keio University, Japan (2015); Professeur Invité of Université de Bordeaux, France (2013); Chercheur Invité CNRS, Bordeaux, France (2010). He is Head of the Dept. of Chemistry “Giacomo Ciamician” Univ. of Bologna and Vice-president of the International Society of Electrochemistry (2019-2021).
He is co-author of more than 190 publications in peer-reviewed International Journals and chapters in books. H-index: 45 (Scopus), 50 (Google Scholar)
His interest focuses on the electrochemistry of carbon nanostructures, fullerenes, carbon nanotubes and graphene and their exploitation in energy-related applications,

Dmitry Yakhvarov was born in 1974 in Kazan, Russian Federation. He graduated the Department of Physical Chemistry of Kazan State University in 1996 with excellent marks. He got his Ph.D. (Candidate of Sciences) in February 2000 and became a Dr. habil. (Doctor of Sciences) in 2012. Since 1995 he is a Chief Scientist of Arbuzov Institute of Organic and Physical Chemistry of the Federal Research Center “Kazan Scientific Center of Russian Academy of Sciences” and head of the Laboratory of Organometallic and coordination compounds. Dmitry Yakhvarov is a specialist in phosphorus, physical, inorganic, coordination and organoelement chemistry, catalysis and electrochemistry.
His main research interests are focused on the development of new technologies for the preparation of organophosphorus and organoelement compounds, including organometallics, by electrochemical methods based on the principles of “green chemistry”. In 2016 he was awarded the honorary title of “Professor of the Russian Academy of Sciences”.

Barbara Milani is associate professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Trieste, Italy. Her main research interests deal with organometallic chemistry and homogeneous catalysis, mainly applied to polymerization reactions. She is co-author of 73 publications, 2 books chapters and 7 patents. Current h-index: 26.
Since 2008 she is member of the Advisory Board of Dalton Transactions, and since 2009 of the International Advisory Board of the International Symposium on Homogeneous Catalysis (ISHC).
She is the Coordinator of the PhD School in Chemistry jointly held by University of Trieste and University Ca’ Foscari Venezia. She has been the scientist in charge of National and International research grants, including a European Research Training Network with a project entitled: “Atom-economic synthesis using palladium, the chamaleon catalyst”. In April 2017 she got the National Abilitation for Full Professor in Inorganic Chemistry

Professor Laurel L. Schafer completed her PhD in catalysis in 1999 and an NSERC Post-Doctoral Fellowship in metal-mediated organic synthesis at the University of California – Berkeley. She began her independent career at UBC in 2001 and has risen through the ranks to Full Professor.
Laurel has received numerous awards recognizing her research excellence including a Humboldt Research Award (2010), an NSERC Discovery Grant Accelerator Award (2011), a UBC Sustainability Research Fellowship (2011), the Clara Benson Award (2014) and she is a Canada Research Chair in Catalyst Development (2011 – 2021). She is also an FSRC, FSRC(UK) and FAAAS and an Associate Editor at Organometallics. Laurel is a leader in the development of new catalysts using early transition metals for the efficient, atom economic and selective synthesis of amine functionalized small molecules and materials of interest to the pharmaceutical, agrochemical, fine chemical and polymer industries.

Paola Turano received her Ph.D. in Chemical Sciences at the University of Florence in 1993, where she became Associate Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry in 2002. The main topics of her research are: development and application of solution and solid state NMR methods for the characterization of biomolecules, with a focus on paramagnetic metalloproteins and high molecular weight systems; characterization of protein-protein functional interactions and protein-small molecules interactions for drug design; structural biology of proteins involved in iron metabolism; NMR-based metabolomics and biobanks. She was the recipient of the “Raffaello Nasini Medal 2003” of the Inorganic Chemistry Division of the Italian Chemical Society. In the period 2012-2014 she was the Chair of the Division of Chemistry in Life Sciences of EuCheMS. Presently she is Chair of the Scientific Committee of the da Vinci European Biobank and member of the GIDRM Council. .

Patrick Gamez received his PhD at the University of Lyon and was awarded the French Chemical Society Prize for his PhD research. After postdoctoral stays at the MPI für Kohlenforschung (Germany) and at the University of Strasbourg (France), he became research associate at Leiden University (The Netherlands). Since October 2010, he is ICREA Research Professor in bioinorganic chemistry at the University of Barcelona. He is the (co-)author of over 235 publications (h-index: 53; >10800 citations). He is president founder of the Association Science Squared, vice-president of the Spanish Bioinorganic Chemical Society and Editor-in-chief of the journal Chemistry Squared. He is member of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Royal Spanish Society of Chemistry, Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry and of the Advisory Board of Inorganic Chemistry Frontiers. He has been Associate Editor of RSC Advances (2015-2017). Since June 2016, he is Fellow of the RSC.

Silvio Aime is Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry at the Department of Molecular Biotechnologies and Health Sciences and Head of the Center of Excellence on Molecular Imaging of the University of Torino.
His main research activities deal with the development of Imaging Probes for MR-Molecular Imaging applications (paramagnetic complexes, nanoparticles, CEST agents, targeting and responsive probes, hyperpolarized Para-Hydrogen containing molecules).
He is author of more than 600 peer-review publications and 30 patents. In the last decade his research interests have included the design and testing of imaging probes for other imaging modalities (nuclear, optical and photoacoustic imaging). Recent awards: 2013: World Molecular Imaging Society Gold Medal Award; 2013: Fischer Award for Contrast Media Research; 2014: Gold Medal “Amedeo Avogadro” from the Italian Chemical Society.

Prof. Zijian Guo received his PhD degree from the University of Padova and worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at Birkbeck College, the University of London. He worked also as a research associate at the University of Edinburgh. He joined the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Nanjing University as a professor of chemistry in 1999, where he served as the director of the State Key Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry from 2000 to 2009 and the dean of the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering from 2006 to 2014. He was elected to the fellow of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2017. He served as editorial/advisory board members or associated editors of several national and international chemistry journals.
The major research interest of his lab focuses on the chemical biology of metals and metallodrugs. He was awarded the First Prize in Natural Sciences from Ministry of Education of China in 2015 and Luigi Sacconi Medal from the Italian Chemical Society in 2016.

Gabriele Centi is full professor of Industrial Chemistry at the University of Messina, Italy, and President of the European Research Institute of Catalysis (ERIC). Research interests are in the areas of applied heterogeneous catalysis, sustainable energy and chemical processes, biomass conversion and environment protection.
He was coordinator of the EU Network of Excellence IDECAT, and is actually President of IACS (International Association of Catalysis Societies) and vice-President of the InterUniversity Consortium on the Science and Technology of Materials (INSTM). He received several awards, and is involved in various editorial activities.
He is author of over 450 scientific publications, 12 books and editor of various special issues. Current h-index is 77 with over 22.250 citations (Google Scholar).

Dr. Jing-Lin Zuo is Full Professor in Nanjing University, China. He has been the Cheung Kung Scholar of Ministry of Education, China (since 2009) and Director of State Key Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry in Nanjing University (Since 2010).
His research interests are focused on functional coordination chemistry and organometallic chemistry, including: (1) Molecular conductors and conductive metal-organic frameworks; (2) Multifunctional magnetic materials, such as single molecule magnets, magnetic semiconductors, and spin-crossover materials; (3) Electro-optical conversion materials (OLEDs); (4) Functional self-healing materials based on coordination bonds. He has published about 300 peer reviewed articles. He is currently the Associate Editor of ACS Omega, and the Editorial Board Member of Sci. Chin. Chem. and Chin. J. Inorg. Chem.

Alceo Macchioni is Full Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Perugia. His interests include the development of efficient catalysts for the oxidation of water, a key process for the photosynthesis of solar fuels, exploiting organometallics as precursors and the investigation of the structure/activity relationships in organometallic catalysts for olefin polymerization, by means of multinuclear and multidimensional NMR spectroscopy. He is author of more than 177 papers (H-index = 44, total citations > 7400).

Kuo-Wei Huang is currently Professor and the Director of Chemical Sciences Programme at KAUST. He received his B.S. from National University of Taiwan and Ph.D. from Stanford University. Prior to joining KAUST as a founding faculty member, he had been Assistant Professor in National University of Singapore and Goldhaber Distinguished Fellow at Brookhaven National Laboratory.
He has coauthored over 200 publications and is a co-inventor of 18 patents and patent applications. The research interests of his group include CO2 utilization, hydrogen storage, small molecules activation and kinetic and DFT studies of transition metal and organocatalysis. He also serves as an Associate Editor of Journal of Saudi Chemical Society (JSCS) and Journal of Molecular and Engineering Materials (JMEM).

Angela Dibenedetto is Full Professor at the University of Bari-UNIBA (IT) – Department of Chemistry. Her scientific interests are focused on carbon dioxide utilization in synthetic chemistry, catalysis, coordination chemistry and organometallic chemistry, green chemistry, marine biomass (algae) production by enhanced carbon dioxide fixation, marine biomass as source of fuels and chemicals applying the Biorefinery concept.
Actually she is director of the Interuniversity Consortium on Chemical Reactivity and Catalysis-CIRCC. Author of over 150 scientific papers published in international Journals since 1995 and several book Chapters. She was Invited speaker at several International conferences.
Current h-index is 37 with over 5858 citations (Google Scholar).

László T. Mika was born in 1976 Budapest, Hungary. He studied chemical engineering (University of Veszprém, Hungary) and chemistry (Eötvös University, Hungary) and received a PhD degree in organic- and organometallic chemistry from Eötvös University in 2010, under supervision of Prof. István T. Horváth. He worked as an assistant professor at Institute of Chemistry, Eötvös University until 2012, when he joined to the Department of Chemical and Environmental Process Engineering, Budapest University of Technology and Economics as an associate professor.
Since 2016 he is the head of Department and Laboratory of Catalysis. His research activity documented by ca 40 scientific papers covers different areas of green chemistry (biomass conversion, applications of alternative reaction media for catalysis including designing of new catalytic systems). He received the Janos Bolyai Scholarship of Hungarian Academy of Sciences (2014–2017), József Varga Scholarship (2017–2019) and the Bolyai Plaquette (2018).

Born in Marseille on July 9th 1961. BSc (1984) and PhD in Chemistry (1989), earning several awards including the gold medal of the General Governor of Canada (University of Ottawa). Fellowship from Italian embassy in Canada (1987, University of Parma). Since 1989 she is at the University of Milan where she is now full professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry. Coordinator of the PhD in Industrial Chemistry (2009-2015 and 2018-2021). Member of the Directive Council of the Center of Excellence CIMAINA and of the Governing Council of the National Interuniversity Consortium of Materials Science and Technology (INSTM; 2016-2020). “Flavio Bonati” (GICO, SCI;1996) and “Federchimica-per un futuro intelligente” (1998) awards.
Her main research interests are the preparation of coordination compounds with second-order nonlinear optical and/or luminescent properties or for application in dye-sensitized solar cells. Author of 140 publications and three patents

Our research deals with the design and the synthesis of metal complexes and coordination compounds [Ir(III), Pt(II)] for optics and opto-electronics. We are investigating the functionalization of photo-active ligands and metal-based systems, for their photochemical and photophysical properties: luminescence and second order nonlinear optics. We are also developping organometallic photochromes as metallo-switches for the modulation of linear and non linear optical properties. The final aim of this research is the achievement of multifunctional organometallic materials. A second aspect of our research, developed in collaboration with Pr. H. Doucet and Dr J.-F. Soulé (Rennes), focuses on metal-catalysed C-H bond activation of (hetero)aromatics directed towards new atom-economic reactions. We have pioneered the use of Pd-catalysed C-H bond activation reactions for the access to luminescent molecules and complexes by designing simple and direct synthetic routes

Alberto Credi (b. 1970) is professor of Chemistry at the Università di Bologna and Associate Research Director at the National Research Council (CNR). He is the Director of the Center for Light Activated Nanostructures (CLAN), a University-CNR joint laboratory for research in the areas of supramolecular chemistry and photochemistry, materials science and nanoscience. His contribution to the realization of logic devices, machines and motors of nanometer size is internationally recognized. He has authored 4 books and over 270 scientific publications (h = 69), he received several prestigious grants and awards, including an ERC Advanced Grant, and he delivered more than 150 invited talks at national and international conferences and seminars. Since the beginning of his career he is engaged in the popularization of chemistry disciplines.

Kay Severin is professor of chemistry at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. His research group works on synthetic organic and inorganic chemistry, with projects ranging from small molecule activation (the chemistry of laughing gas) to the construction of functional nanostructures.

Gianfranco Pacchioni received his PhD at the Freie Universität Berlin in 1984. He worked at the IBM Almaden Research Center, and at the Technical University of Munich. Since 2000 he is Full Professor at the University of Milano Bicocca where he is presently Vice Rector for Research and where he has been Director of the Department of Materials Science for several years. He has published more than 500 papers and given about 400 invited talks on the electronic structure of oxides and their surfaces and interfaces, defects in oxides, supported metal clusters, and catalysis. His work has received 23.000 citations, with an h-index of 79 (source: Web of Science). He received several awards and is Fellow of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (2014), the Academia Europaea (2012), and the European Academy of Sciences (2009).

Stuart Macgregor is full Professor in the Institute of Chemical Sciences at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh. His research uses computational chemistry to model the structure and reactivity of transition metal systems, with a particular focus on C-H and C-F bond activation, sigma-alkane complexes and their applications in homogeneous catalysis and organometallic reactivity in the solid-state. His work is performed in close collaboration with a number of experimentalists. Previously Stuart received his PhD from the University of Edinburgh (1992) and was awarded a NATO Western European Fellowship to work with Odile Eisenstein at the Université de Paris-Sud in Orsay (1992-1994). After two years at the Australian National University he returned to Edinburgh and to take up a lectureship at Heriot-Watt University in 1997. He was promoted to full Professor in 2009 and acted as Head of the Institute of Chemical Sciences from 2010 to 2014. ORCiD: 0000-0003-3454-6776

Vito Lippolis graduated in Chemistry in 1991 at the University of Pisa (Italy) and in the same year gained the diploma in Chemistry at the ‘‘Scuola Normale Superiore’’ of Pisa. In 2000 he received his PhD degree from the University of Nottingham (UK) under the supervision of Professor Martin Schröder. In 2001 was appointed to the chair of inorganic chemistry at the University of Cagliari (Italy). He has published about 290 publications and numerous book chapters (H-Index 42 from Scopus). His research interests at the moment mainly include: supramolecular chemistry and crystal engineering, coordination chemistry of macrocyclic ligands and development of molecular sensors and ionophores for heavy metal ions and anions, luminescent materials, reactivity of chalcogen donor molecules towards halogens and inter-halogens. He is Member of the International Advisory Board of the International Conference on the Chemistry of Selenium and Tellurium (ICCST).

Roland K. O. Sigel studied Chemistry at the University of Basel, followed by a PhD at the University of Dortmund, Germany, and a postdoc at Columbia University, USA. He joined the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in 2003 as Assistant Professor, where he is now a Full Professor of Chemistry and Dean of the Faculty of Science since 2017. He received numerous awards including an SNF-Förderungsprofessur, the EuroBIC Medal, the SCS Alfred Werner Prize, and an ERC Starting Grant.
He is co-chair of ICBIC-19 in Interlaken (CH), the Swiss representative of the EuChems Division of Chemistry for Life Sciences, and elected Secretary of the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry, as well as the ICBIC conference series. His research deals with metal ion binding to large nucleic acids applying an interdisciplinary approach including (bio)chemical syntheses, single molecule and NMR spectroscopy. Roland has published more than 100 papers and is co-editing the series Metal Ions in Life Sciences.

Carlo Nervi after a brief period in the J. Heyrovský Institute of Physical Chemistry (Prague, CZ), developed his career in Torino University working in the field of Organometallic and Inorganic Electrochemistry. He is author of more than 100 papers in scientific journals and a monograph (“Inorganic Electrochemistry”, RSC, 2011). His scientific interestsinclude electrochemistry, batteries, DFT calculations in solution and in the solid state, and organometallic complexes for energy applications and CO₂ reduction.

Osamu Ishitani has been interested in artificial photosynthesis for a long time. His group has developed molecular technology for metal-complex photocatalysts for CO₂ reduction and hybridized them with various semiconductor materials. His other interests are photochemical properties of transition metal complexes and organometallics. He is full professor of Department of Chemistry at Tokyo Institute of Technology. He has been serving as the Asian editor of Journal of Photochemistry and Photobiology A: Photochemistry, the vice president of the Chemical Society of Japan and that of the Japanese Photochemical association as well.

Fabrizio Cavani received his Ph.D. in Industrial Chemistry in 1987. Then he worked at the Catalysis Centre of EniChem Synthesis, where he discovered the first use of a H-beta zeolite as a catalyst in the petrochemical industry, specifically for benzene alkylation with propylene. In 1990 he was appointed Assistant Professor at Bologna University, where since 2014 is Full Professor of Industrial Chemistry. Currently he is the Coordinator of the Interdivisional Group of Catalysis of the Italian Chemical Society, and Director of the Department of Industrial Chemistry “Toso Montanari” of Bologna University. His research is mainly in the field of heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysis, mainly oriented to application in the chemical industry. He is member of the Advisory board of the journal Green Chemistry (RSC) and of the Editorial Board of ChemSusChem (Wiley VCH).

Graham Hutchings is Regius Professor of Chemistry at Cardiff University and Director of the Cardiff Catalysis Institute. He studied chemistry at University College London. His early career was with ICI and AECI Ltd where he became interested in gold catalysis. In 1984 he moved to academia and has held chairs at the Universities of Witwatersrand, Liverpool and Cardiff. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2009, a Member of Academia Europaea in 2010. He was awarded the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 2013, the ENI Award for Advanced Environmental Solutions in 2017 and a CBE in 2018.