Confirmed Speakers

Athina Anastasaki is an Assistant Professor at ETH Zurich and Head of the Laboratory of Polymeric Materials. She undertook her PhD studies at the University of Warwick under the supervision of Professor Dave Haddleton. Upon completing her PhD, she accepted a Monash-Warwick research fellow position between the Pharmaceutical department at Monash University and the University of Warwick, jointly supervised by Professor Thomas Davis and Professor Dave Haddleton. She then received an Elings Fellowship, followed by a Global Marie Curie Fellowship to conduct research with Professor Craig Hawker at the University of California, Santa Barbara. Her group focuses on controlled radical polymerization, depolymerization and polymer self-assembly. Athina also serves as an Associate Editor of the RSC Journal Polymer Chemistry.

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Sadahito Aoshima is a Professor of Macromolecular Science at Osaka University in Japan. He was born in Mito, Japan, in 1959, and received his B.S. (1981), M.S. (1983), and Ph.D. (1987) degrees in polymer chemistry from Kyoto University under the supervision of Professor Toshinobu Higashimura. After a subsequent postdoctoral research with Professor Higashimura, he started his academic carrier at Tokyo University of Science in 1988. During 1993-1994, he spent a year at Cornell University as a visiting scientist, working with Jean M. J. Fréchet. In April 2000, he moved to Osaka University as an Associate Professor, and was promoted to a full professorship in October 2000. His recent research interests focus on the development of living cationic polymerization and the precise synthesis of various stimuli-responsive polymers.

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Prof. Dr. Matthias Barz studied chemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg-University (JGU) Mainz (Germany) and Seoul National University (South Korea). After having received his PhD in polymer chemistry from the JGU in 2010, he joined the labs of Dr. Maria J. Vicent at the CIPF (Valencia, Spain) and Prof. T. Kirchhausen at Boston Children’s Hospital (Boston, USA). In 2013 returned to the JGU and became independent junior research group leader at the Institute of Organic Chemistry. Since 2020 he is full professor at the Leiden Academic Center for Drug Research (LACDR) at Leiden University (Leiden, The Netherlands). His group focusses on the development of reactive polypept(o)ides, polymers combining functional polypeptides with stealth-like polypeptoids, for applications in nanomedicine, such as cancer immune therapy, cancer theragnostic (pre-targeting) and antibacterial therapies.

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Prof. Dr. Remzi Becer has completed his PhD at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands (2009).
He received a Marie Curie Research Fellowship (2009–2011) and joined University of Warwick, UK. He was awarded a Science City Senior Research Fellowship (2011–2013) to start up his independent research group at the same university.
He was appointed (2013–2018) as a Senior Lecturer at Queen Mary, University of London. He is currently a Professor in Sustainable Polymer Chemistry at the University of Warwick (2019‐) and acting as an editor of European Polymer Journal (2018‐).
For more information visit www.becergroup.com and follow on Twitter @remzibecer.

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Dr. Edmondo M. Benetti graduated in chemistry at the University of Padova (Italy) in 2004 and carried out his PhD at the University of Twente (The Netherlands), working in the Department of Materials Science and Technology of Polymers (2009). He joined the Department of Materials at ETH in 2009 as a PostDoc (ETH fellow) working in the group of Prof. Nicholas Spencer and Prof. Marcus Textor. From 2014 to 2021 he has been a Senior Scientist in the Laboratory for Surface Science and Technology at ETH (Swiss National Science Foundation “Ambizione” fellow), and Group Leader at the Swiss Federal Laboratories for Materials Science and Technology (EMPA). In 2021 he moved to the University of Padova, in Italy, where he became full professor in polymer chemistry. Here he coordinates the activities of the Polymer Surfaces Group, concentrating on controlled polymerization methods applied for the modulation of the interfacial physicochemical properties of polymer assemblies.

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Cyrille received his PhD from the University of Montpellier II. His PhD was performed in collaboration with Solvay-Solexis for the preparation of new adhesives. At the end of his PhD, he undertook a position with Dupont Performance Elastomers, dealing with the synthesis of fluorinated elastomers. Later, he joined the University of New South Wales in the School of Chemical Engineering, where, in 2009, he was awarded an Australian Research Council Fellowship (ARC-APD). In 2012, Cyrille has been awarded an Australian Research Council-Future Fellowship. In January 2017,Cyrille has been promoted as full Professor at the University of New South Wales and co-Director of Australian Centre for Nanomedicine. More recently, he serves as Deputy Head of School (research). Cyrille’s research interests mainly cover the preparation of functional macromolecules, where he develops new polymerization techniques using photocatalysts. These macromolecules find applications in various areas, including in nanomedicine and in energy storage. The research of his group has been recognized by several research awards, including 2018 IUPAC-Polymer International Young Researcher award, 2016 ACS Biomacromolecules/Macromolecules Young Researcher Awards, 2016 Journal of Polymer Science Innovation Award, Le Fevre Memorial Prize for Chemistry; 2015 Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Science (one of the six Prime Minister Prize), etc.

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Dagmar R. D’hooge (associate professor) focuses on the design of polymerization and polymer processing techniques. The functional material design and related process intensification is performed up to industrial scale, using advanced in-house developed multi-scale modeling tools in combination with experimental validation. He was a postdoctoral researcher in the Matyjaszewski Polymer Group (Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA) in 2011 and in the Macromolecular Architectures (MacroArc) Research Team (Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Karslruhe, Germany) in 2013. He is also a former postdoctoral researcher of the Fund for Scientific Research Flanders (FWO Vlaanderen). Since 2017, he is a visiting Associate Professor at Stanford University.

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Donghui Zhang is a Professor of Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the Louisiana State University (LSU). She obtained B.S. in Chemistry from Peking University in 1998 and Ph.D. in Organometallic Chemistry from Dartmouth College in 2003 and did one and half year postdoctoral research at University of Minnesota on the synthesis and characterization of polymers from biorenewable feedstocks. She joined LSU in 2007 after a two-year stint as a research faculty in New Mexico State University. She serves on the editorial advisory board of Biomacromolecules. Her research interests include development of controlled ring-opening polymerization methods, synthesis and characterization of polypeptoid and polypeptide polymers, investigation of the self-assembly of sequence-defined peptoid oligomers and polypeptoid polymers in solution and at interfaces

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Rudolph FAUST is Professor Emeritus, Chemistry Department, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA.
Research Field: ● Living polymerizations ● Synthesis, morphology and structure-property relationship of macromolecular and supramacromolecular materials ● Polymerization kinetics és mechanism ● Biomaterials ● Surface phenomena Education and former professional experience: Diploma Chemist, 1975, Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences, Budapest. Ph. D., Colloid chemistry, 1978, Eötvös Loránd University of Sciences, Budapest, Postdoctoral study (University of Akron): Macromolecular chemistry, cationic polymerization, 1983-1988.

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Holger Frey studied chemistry in Freiburg (Germany), then spent 4 years at Carnegie-Mellon University (USA), Universiteit Twente (NL) and at the Institut Charles Sadron (France) with his Diploma (1990) and PhD work (1993), focusing on polysilylene copolymers and their optoelectronic properties. After his Habilitation 1998 at Freiburg University, he became professor (2002) and subsequently (2003) full professor of Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg-University Mainz (Germany). His research focuses on established and novel biobased monomers for carbanionic and oxyanionic polymerization, aiming at multiblock architectures, gradient copolymers and new thermoplastic elastomers. Another focus of his group´s work lies on polyether structures for biomedical and pharmaceutical application. He is also generally interested in in situ methods to achieve in depth understanding of living, statistical copolymerizations. He has published more than 400 peer-reviewed publications and filed 45 patents. Holger Frey is an Associate Editor of the RSC journal Polymer Chemistry.

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Dr Theoni Georgiou is currently an Associate Professor in Polymer Chemistry at the Department of Materials at Imperial College London. She obtained a B.Sc. in Chemistry and a Ph.D. in Polymer Chemistry from the Department of Chemistry at the University of Cyprus in 2001 and 2006, respectively. Following her PhD studies, under the supervision of Professor Costas Patrickios, she joined Professor Antonios (Tony) Mikos’ group at Rice University in USA as a postdoctoral fellow. In 2007 she moved to UK when she was awarded a five year RCUK Fellowship in Colloidal Nanotechnology at the Department of Chemistry at the University of Hull that led to a Lectureship in 2012. In 2014 she joined Imperial College. Since 2017 she is a member of the Materials Chemistry Division Council of the Royal Society of Chemistry and of the European Polymer Federation (EPF) council. She has also been an active member of the Macro Group UK committee and since 2019 she is the acting Chair. In 2017 she was awarded the 2016 Macro Group UK Young Researchers Medal for “contributions to polymer science which show outstanding promise for the future”. Her current research interests lie in the area of polymer chemistry and specifically in designing well-defined polymeric materials and investigating how the structural characteristics of the polymers affect the material’s end properties and applications with emphasis on bioapplications.

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Prof. Haddleton David Haddleton has been working in the area of controlled polymer synthesis for over 25 years since being employed at ICI. His PhD from the University of York in 1986, 1 year at the University of Toronto in 1987 and 1 year at the University of Southern Mississippi in 1988.. He has published over 400 papers and has a google h-index = 88 with over 26000 citations. He has graduated over 80 PhD students from Warwick. Current work in the group is in different aspects of developing new polymerisation methodology and using this for novel polymers for industrial applications, polymers for personal care applications, (hair and skin care) and for biomedical and nano medicinal applications (new and targeted peptide and protein conjugation). Recent work includes new conjugation strategy, glycopolymers, monomer sequence control and polymerisation in biological media. He has formed two companies and is currently CSO of a transdermal drug delivery company Medherant Ltd.

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Nikos Hadjichristidis Distinguished Professor of Chemical Sciences at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia. The research of Professor Hadjichristidis focuses mainly on the synthesis of novel homopolymers and copolymers with well-defined complex macromolecular architecture (star, comb, dendritic, cyclic, etc), by using anionic polymerization (AP) high vacuum techniques as well as, combinations of AP with other polymerizations (C1 and C3, ROP, ROMP, ATRP, etc.). These polymers are ideal models for checking theories (e.g., de Gennes tube theory and hierarchical motion theory in branched polymers), understanding/improving the performance of industrial polymers (e.g., PE and PMMA), and are potential candidates for high-tech applications (e.g., nanolithography, high-temperature membranes, and drug delivery). Lately, Professor Hadjichristidis started research on biodegradable polyethylene, vitrimers, circular polymer economy and non-covalent (hydrogen bonding, stereocomplexation)-based macromolecular architectures. He has published more than 600 scientific papers in peer-reviewed journals, 35 patents, is the editor of four books, including the Macromolecular Engineering, 2nd Edition, 5-volume book (Wiley 2022), and author of one book on “Block Copolymers” (Wiley 2003). Professor Hadjichristidis is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK, 2022) and has received several awards including the Hermann F. Mark Medal (Austria, 2020); the University of Athens, Chemistry Department Award of Excellence for Outstanding Contribution to Research, Teaching, Mentoring, and Administration in Chemistry (Greece, 2018); the Macro Group Medal for Outstanding Achievements (UK, 2016); the American Chemical Society National Award for Polymer Chemistry (USA, 2015); the American Chemical Society, Rubber Division, Chemistry of Thermoplastic Elastomers Award (USA, 2011), the American Chemical Society, Polymeric Materials Science, and Engineering Division, Cooperative Research Award (USA, 2010); and the International Award of the Japanese Society of Polymer Science (Japan, 2007).

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Christine JEROME completed her PhD in the field of electropolymerization in 1998 at the University of Liege, Belgium. In 2000, she joined the University of Ulm in Germany as a recipient of the Humboldt scholarship and studied the synthesis of functional magnetic nanohybrids. She became Research Associate by the National Foundation of the Scientific Research in 2001 and Professor in 2006 at Liege University. Today full Professor and director of the Center for Education and Research on Macromolecules, her research interests include biosourced and advanced functional macromolecular systems for medicine and energy.

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Masami Kamigaito studied polymer chemistry at Kyoto University and earned his B.S. (1988), M.S. (1990), and Ph.D. (1993) degrees from Kyoto University under the direction of Prof. Toshinobu Higashimura. After conducting postdoctoral research with Prof. Mitsuo Sawamoto, he joined the faculty of Kyoto University in 1995, where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1999. In 2003, he moved to Nagoya University as an Associate Professor working with Prof. Yoshio Okamoto and was promoted to professor in 2004. During 1997–1998, he was a visiting scholar at Stanford University working with Prof. Robert M. Waymouth. His current research interests include controlled radical and cationic polymerizations, sequence-controlled polymers, new polymerizations, precision polymer synthesis, and sustainable polymers based on renewable resources.

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Kristian Kempe is a Senior Lecturer at the Department of Materials Science & Engineering and the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Monash University, Australia. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Friedrich-Schiller University Jena, Germany (2011) under the direction of Prof Ulrich S. Schubert. Afterwards, he was an Alexander von Humboldt Fellow at The University of Melbourne in the group of Prof Frank Caruso, and a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Warwick with Prof David M. Haddleton. Since 2016 Kristian has been leading a group at Monash University, first as a NHMRC-ARC Dementia Research Development Fellow, and currently as an ARC Future Fellow and Senior Lecturer. His current research interests include, responsive, biocompatible and biodegradable polymers; poly(2-oxazoline)s, polymer-peptide conjugation strategies and the design of functional particle systems and hydrogels for applications in nanomedicine and materials science with particular focus on brain drug delivery and immune system interactions.

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Jae-Suk Lee is the Distinguished Visiting Professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, where he was a faculty member from 1994 to 2020. J.-S. Lee earned B.S. at Chonnam National University (1979) and M.S. in Chemical Engineering at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST, 1981) working with Won-Kyoo Lee. After working at Chonnam National University as an Assistant Teacher (1981–1984), he earned a Ph.D. in Polymer Science at Tokyo Institute of Technology (TIT, 1989) with Seiichi Nakahama. After working as a Special Researcher, Visiting Researcher, and Frontier Researcher with Hiroyuki Sasabe, Makoto Kaibara, Edgar A. O'Rear, and Wolfgang Knoll at the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (RIKEN, 1989–1992, 1993–1994), Oklahoma University (1992–1993), he has been a faculty member of GIST since 1994. He worked as a Visiting Professor with Joseph E. McGrath at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (1999–2000) and with Chi H. Lee at the University of Missouri (2006–2007). His awards have included the Polymer Paper Award (the Korea Polymer Society, 2006), LG Polymer Academy Award (the Korea Polymer Society, 2013), Science and Technology Medal (the government of Korea, 2014), and 6 GIST Awards. He served as Deputy Director of the Grubbs Center (2016–2020). He was elected a Fellow of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology (2016) and a Fellow of the Korea Polymer Society (2019). After serving as Vice President of the Korea Polymer Society (2015), he was the President of the Korea Flexible & Printed Electronics Society (KFPE) (2021). His research interest is focused on the anionic polymerization of isocyanates and on the synthesis of electrolytes for fuel cells, batteries, and filtering membranes. He has 250 publications and over 84 patents based on his research. Lee’s group discovered new initiators for living anionic polymerization of isocyanates and studied their helical structures, functionalization, and applications. Furthermore, block copolymers were synthesized by anionic polymerization to improve the functionality of the materials. For the electrolytes, they discovered some proton exchange membranes, anion exchange membranes, and electrolytes for batteries and capacitors. The electrolytes were also applied to the preparation of nanofibers to reduce fine particles and protect bacteria.

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Dr Meike N. Leiske holds a doctor assistant position in the group of Prof. Richard Hoogenboom at Ghent University (Belgium). Her research field focuses on biomimetic polymers and their derived materials aiming for tumor drug delivery. The main goal of this research is the development of smart nanomaterials, which can intrinsically target motifs on cell surfaces to facilitate cellular specificity. Prior to her work in Ghent, Meike obtained her Ph.D. at the Friedrich Schiller University (Jena, Germany) under the supervision of Prof. Ulrich S. Schubert in 2018 for her work on poly(2-oxazoline)s for biomedical applications. From 2018 to 2021, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences in Melbourne (Australia) in the groups of Prof. Thomas P. Davis and Dr Kristian Kempe. In 2019, she received a prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for her work on zwitterionic site-specific polymers.

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Dr Evelina Liarou received her BSc in Chemistry from the University of Patras in Greece. In 2016 she obtained her MSc from the University of Athens, working on the synthesis of stimuli-responsive smart polypeptides through Ring Opening Polymerization. In 2020 she obtained her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Warwick, UK where she was working on Controlled Radical Polymerization strategies and their oxygen tolerant nature, under the supervision of Prof. Haddleton. After receiving a postdoctoral fellowship from the Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO) in 2020, she is currently working on well-defined dynamic polymer systems in the group of Prof. Du Prez at Ghent University, Belgium.

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Krzysztof (Kris) Matyjaszewski is J.C. Warner University Professor of Natural Sciences and director of Center for Macromolecular Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. In 1994 he discovered Cu-mediated atom transfer radical polymerization, commercialized in 2004 in US, Japan and Europe to prepare various advanced materials. His research is focused on synthesis of well-defined macromolecules and hybrid materials via controlled polymerizations using radical, and ionic mechanisms to prepare advanced materials for optoelectronic, biomedical, environmental, and energy-related applications. He has co-authored 1,200 publications, cited >170,000 times (h-index 200) He is a member of National Academy of Engineering, National Academy of Sciences and National Academy of Inventors as well as European, Australian, Polish and Russian Academies of Sciences. He received 2021 Grand Prix de la Fondation de la Maison de la Chimie, 2011 Wolf Prize in Chemistry, 2009 Presidential Green Chemistry Challenge Award, as well as eleven honorary degrees.

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Axel Müller obtained his Ph.D. from Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, Germany. From 1999-2012 he was full professor of Macromolecular Chemistry at the University of Bayreuth. After retiring from Bayreuth he moved back to Johannes Gutenberg University as a Fellow of the Gutenberg Research College. His research interest focuses on the kinetics and mechanisms of controlled/living polymerizations, the design of complex polymer and hybrid structures and self-organized nanostructures obtained from these polymers in bulk and solution. He has published about 440 peer-reviewed research papers and reviews, 21 patents and he edited six books. He is was Editor-in-Chief of the journal Polymer until June 2019. Recent awards include the Hermann Staudinger Prize of the German Chemical Society (2012) and the International Award of the Society of Polymer Science, Japan (SPSJ, 2018).

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Makoto Ouchi received his Ph.D. degree at Kyoto University in 2001 under the direction of Prof. Mitsuo Sawamoto. He then joined Toyota Central R&D Labs to pursure the project of development of poly(lactic acid)-based automobile resin. In 2004, he moved to Kyoto University to start his academic carrier as Assistant Professor. He was promoted to Associate Professor in 2010 and concurrently appointed a PRESTO researcher of Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST) for the project of “Molecular Technology” (2013–2017). In August 2017, he was promoted to Professor at department of Polymer Chemistry, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University. His current research interests include sequence-controlled polymers, topological polymers, and on-demand degradable polymers.

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Judit E. Puskas, Ph. D., P. Eng, Distinguished Professor AIMBE, IUPAC and NAI Fellow External member, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Co-inventor of the polymer coating on the Taxus drug-eluting coronary stent, implanted in over 10 million people. Professor Puskas’ research has been focusing on green polymer science, ionic polymerizations and related processes, and rubbery biomaterials. She is the winner of the 2017 Charles Goodyear Medal, the most prestigious award given by the Rubber Division of the American Chemical Society. She received a PhD in plastics and rubber technology in 1985, and an M. E. Sc in organic and biochemical engineering in 1977, from the Technical University of Budapest, Hungary. She has over 10 years of industrial experience in Hungary and Canada. She was a professor at the University of Western Ontario in Canada and later at the University of Akron before joining the Ohio State University, ranked 52nd among 1000 universities globally.

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Helmut Schlaad has been working in the field of living/controlled polymerization for more than 25 years. He received his PhD under the supervision of Axel H. E. Müller at the University of Mainz in 1997. Afterwards he spent one year with Rudolf Faust at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA. In 1999, he started his works for habilitation at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids in Potsdam-Golm, Germany, mentored by Markus Antonietti, which he completed in 2004. After 10 years being senior scientist at the May Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces, he was promoted to professor (W2) at the University of Potsdam, Germany, in 2014. His research activities include the synthesis of bio-sourced polymer materials by ionic, controlled radical and ring-opening metathesis polymerization techniques, stimuli-responsive and degradable polymers, and polymer self-assembly.

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Prof. Schubert studied chemistry at the Universities of Frankfurt and Bayreuth. After a postdoctoral stay with Nobel Prize winner Prof. Lehn in Strasbourg (France), he finished his “Habilitation” at the Technical University of Munich, and accepted a full professorship at the Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands), combined with management functions at the Dutch Polymer Institute (DPI). Since 2007, Prof. Schubert has held a chair for organic and macromolecular chemistry at the University of Jena. He coordinates the priority program SPP2248 (since 2020), the Collaborative Research Center 1278 (since 2017) and the research group FuncHeal (since 2022) of the German Research Foundation and the ITN PolyStorage of the EU (since 2019). Prof. Schubert was awarded the Federal Cross of Merit by Federal President Steinmeier in 2018. With over 1100 peer-reviewed publications he is one of the most highly cited scientists in his field of research (h-Index 128, 82,000 citations in google scholar).

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Marianne Stol is a staff scientist at Kraton Polymers. She obtained her PhD at Utrecht University studying organometallic chemistry in 2005. Also, in 2005 she started working for Kraton as a scientist. Her research interest is anionic polymerization and translation of polymer design into process. In practice structure, property and synthesis are all aspects that need to be considered together when working on innovation in polymer materials. She has (co)authored several patents and leads polymer and process innovation projects within Kraton Polymers.

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Daniel Taton obtained his PhD in polymer chemistry in 1994 from the University Pierre & Marie Curie (Paris 6). He holds a professorship position at the University of Bordeaux, France and he develops his research activities at the Laboratory of Organic Polymer Chemistry (LCPO) of which he is the deputy director since 2018. These activities are focused on both " catalysis of polymerization " and "polymerization for catalysis". He is interested -primarily, but not exclusively- in N-heterocyclic carbenes (NHCs) for organocatalyzed polymerizations to access a variety of metal-free polymers. His team has also developed recyclable polymeric supports. The in situ generation of carbenes confined in custom-designed polymer supports provides unique catalytic activity in benchmark reactions of molecular chemistry, including in aqueous media. Daniel is authors of roughly 150 publications in peer-review journals, 15 book chapters and 14 patents

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Dr. Yanmei Wang is a full professor of Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China (USTC). Her work focuses on the design and synthesis of polymeric materials for separation of biomacromolecules. She got her Bachelor and Master degree in chemical physics at USTC respective in 1987 and 1990, and completed her PhD at Zhejiang University in polymer chemistry and physics in 1997. Following her PhD studies, Dr Wang was a USTC Post Doctorial Fellow developing new soap-free emulsion polymerization. As a specialist in Department of Chemistry, State University of New York at Stony Brook (2001-2002), she focused on the synthesis of polymer which is used as separation medium for the sequencing of DNA. As a invited professor of LAMBE laboratory (2011, 2013) at University of Évry (France), She made some collaborative researches on the cationic polymerization.

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Frederik Wurm leads the Sustainable Polymer Chemistry Group at the University of Twente (Enschede, NL) and acts as an Editor for the “European Polymer Journal”. The broad research interests of Frederik Wurm cover the molecular design and development for new synthetic strategies of novel polymeric materials and focus in recent years on the synthesis of novel biodegradable polymers and the modification and formulation of biopolymers. The SPC group designs materials with molecular defined functions for degradable polymers and nanocarriers for agricultural or biomedical applications, with a special interest in phosphorus-based polymers and lignin. Frederik received his Ph.D. in 2009 (JGU, Mainz, D). After a two-year stay at EPFL (CH) as a Humboldt fellow, he joined the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research (Mainz, D) and finished his habilitation in Macromolecular Chemistry in 2016. In 2020, he was appointed as a full professor at UT. He has published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles and his research was awarded several times.

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Yusuf Yagci is a full professor of Department of Chemistry at Istanbul Technical University, Turkey. He received his Ph.D. (1979) degree from Liverpool University (UK). He joined Istanbul Technical University in 1980 where he continued all his academic activities till now. His research field include controlled/living polymerizations, ionic polymerization and photopolymerization. He is the recipient of several awards including The Society of Polymer Science, Japan (SPSJ) International Award (2008), Organization of Islamic Countries (OIC) Ministerial COMSTEC International Award (2010), OIC Science & Technology Award (2017), and Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (2017), Belgian Polymer Group International Award (2018), Japan Photopolymer Science and Technology Award (2018), Alexander von Humboldt Research Award (2018).

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