University of Alberta

Lingyun Chen is a Full Professor in the Department of Agricultural, Food and Nutritional Science at the University of Alberta. Her research focuses on the fundamental understanding of plant protein structures underlying their functional properties. Leveraging this knowledge, she has developed a series of molecular modification strategies using physical and enzymatic approaches to enhance the functionality, texture, sensory attributes, and nutritional quality of plant protein ingredients for innovative food applications with many health benefits. By designing protein organizations at the molecular level, she has also pioneered the fabrication of plant protein-based networks such as hydrogels, nanofibers, and micro- and nanoparticles for biomaterial and industrial applications. Dr. Chen’s research has led to over 230 publications and numerous invited presentations at international and national conferences. She was a Canada Research Chair (Tier 2) from 2014 to 2024 and received the 2020–21 Killam Annual Professorship at the University of Alberta. An active leader in the protein science community, Dr. Chen currently serves as Chair of the Protein and Co-Products Division of the American Oil Chemists’ Society (AOCS) and Vice Chair of the Agricultural Sustainability Subdivision of the American Chemical Society. She is also the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Sustainable Food Proteins.

University of Maryland

Siddhartha Das is currently a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Maryland, College Park. His research focuses on the science and engineering of soft and colloidal materials, small-scale fluid mechanics, and additive manufacturing. He received his B.S. (or B-Tech.) and Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kharagpur. He completed post-doctoral research at University of Twente and University of Alberta (as Banting Postdoctoral Fellow). He has published 200+ journal papers in world-renowned journals (such as Nature Materials, PNAS, PRL, JACS, APL, Matter, Nucleic Acid Research, Nature Communications, Advanced Materials, and ACS Nano), graduated more than 20 M.S., Ph.Ds., and postdocs, and received numerous awards and accolades, which include (1) promotion to Associate Professorship with an early tenure, (2) election as Fellows of Royal Society of Chemistry, Institute of Physics, and Institution of Engineering and Technology (U.K.), (3) selection as emerging investigator by journals such as Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics and Soft Matter, (4) selection as pioneering investigator by the journal Chemical Communications,  (5) IIT Kharagpur Young Alumni Achiever Award, (6) Hind Rattan award (which translates to “Jewel of India” award), (7) Junior Faculty Outstanding Research Award from the School of Engineering, University of Maryland, and (8) Being recognized in the Stanford’s list of top 2% scientists for years 2020, 2021, 2022, and 2023.

University of Electronic Science and Technology of China

Xu Deng studied Materials Science and Engineering at Tianjin Polytechnic University in China and Gyeongsang National University, South Korea. For his Ph.D. he went to the Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research, Germany. After his PhD in 2014, Xu Deng worked as a postdoctoral fellow at UC Berkeley and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. In 2015, he joined the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China as a professor. Dr. Deng is interested in understanding wetting dynamics and physical chemistry at interfaces. He has published more than 120 articles as the first author or corresponding author in leading journals. In 2021, Dr. Deng was admitted as a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC). In 2022, he was awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Germany.

Vive Crop Protection

Jordan Dinglasan is one of the co-founders of Vive Crop Protection and is currently Vive’s VP of Research and IP. He developed the polymer nanoparticle technology that Vive uses today as one of its main commercial product platforms. He obtained his MSc and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Toronto under Prof. Al-Amin Dhirani. After graduation and a short postdoctoral stint in 2006, he and a few other colleagues at his lab decided to take a chance and spun-out a company based on the technology they were working on. To date, Vive Crop is one of the few companies in North America that has successfully commercialized nanotechnology in the highly regulated Ag Industry. Jordan and his team at Vive continue to develop and deliver nano-enabled products to the marketplace.

York University

Dr. Cuiying Jian is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at York University. Prior to joining York, she worked as a postdoctoral fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Jian received her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Alberta, and holds an M.S. in Mechatronics Engineering and a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering, both from Harbin Institute of Technology. Dr. Jian is a trailblazer in developing sustainable and economically viable green applications for carbon-intensive materials, with a particular focus on heavy hydrocarbons for use in energy storage devices, wastewater management, and solar energy harvesting. Within the Jian Research Group at York University, intensive investigations are conducted into the behaviors and properties of carbon-rich materials under diverse conditions, such as in solution, at interfaces, and under elevated pressures and temperatures. Dr. Jian is the recipient of the 2025 CSME I.W. Smith Award and the 2024 Petro-Canada Emerging Innovator Award.

Jilin University

Kun Liu is a professor at the State Key Laboratory of Supramolecular Structure and Materials, College of Chemistry in Jilin University. He obtained his B.Sc. from Jilin University in 2001. In 2003, he came to University of Toronto and did his Ph.D. with Prof. Ian Manners in the field of organometallic polymers. As a postdoctoral fellow, he joined Prof. Eugenia Kumacheva’s group in 2008 and worked on self-assembly of inorganic nanoparticles. He moved back to Jilin University and started his own research group there in the late of 2012. His current research is mainly focused on the interfacial interactions between macromolecules and inorganic colloidal nanoparticles, including but not limited to polymer grafted nanoparticles, plasmonic (Au and Al) nanoparticles, chiral nanostructures, and 2D polymers.

MIT

Prof. Rob Macfarlane has been a faculty member at MIT since 2015, and is currently the Paul M. Cook Associate Professor of Materials Science in the department of materials science. Prior to joining MIT, he obtained his PhD in chemistry in 2013 at Northwestern University, after which he was awarded Kavli Nanoscience Institute post- doctoral fellowship at Caltech. Prof. Macfarlane is the recipient of multiple awards for his research, including a 2016 AFOSR Young Investigator Award, a 2017 NSF CAREER Award, the 2017 ACS Unilever Award, and a 2019 3M Non-Tenured faculty Award. He is an expert in the fields of self-assembly, nanocomposites, materials chemistry, and nanomaterials processing, and his research lab sits at the interface of these fields to establish new materials fabrication techniques. His lab’s research focuses on developing systems-level approaches to materials synthesis, where structural features at the molecular, nano, and macroscopic length scales act together as integrated design handles to control a material’s hierarchical ordering. These materials range from inorganic nanoparticles to synthetic polymers to biomacromolecules like DNA, and the structures have potential utility in diverse applications ranging from energy storage to protective coatings.

University of British Columbia

Professor Orlando Rojas is a Canada Excellence Research Chair at the University of British Columbia and the Director of the Bioproducts Institute. He is internationally renowned for his work in soft matter, biobased and sustainable materials. Among his many prestigious honors is the Anselme Payen Award, the highest recognition in cellulose and renewable materials research. He is also an elected Fellow of both the American Chemical Society (2013) and the Finnish Academy of Science and Letters (2017). Earlier in his career, Dr. Rojas held the title of Finland Distinguished Professor and was named an inaugural North Carolina State University Faculty Scholar. He was a recipient of the European Research Council Advanced Grant, one of the most prestigious research grants in Europe. Prof. Rojas’ contributions to biobased colloids have garnered an h-index of 104 and over 48,000 citations. He ranks among the top 1% of researchers globally by citations (Clarivate, Web of Science).

University of Leeds

Anwesha Sarkar is Professor of Colloids and Surfaces at the University of Leeds, UK. She is the Director of Research and Innovation for the School of Food Science and Nutrition and the Project Leader for the National Alternative Protein Innovation Centre (NAPIC). Her international research trajectory spans from academic institutions to industries in India, New Zealand, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Prof. Sarkar has been the recipient of the prestigious Institute of Food Technologists (IFT) Research and Development Award 2024 and also the Society of Chemical Industry (SCI) McBain Medal 2024. She was recognized by the Women of Achievement Award 2021 and the winner of the prestigious Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC) Food Group Junior Medal 2019.

University of Toronto

Molly Shoichet is University Professor, a distinction held by less than 2% of the faculty. She is the inaugural Pamela & Paul Austin Chair in Precision and Regenerative Medicine, and Scientific Director of Precision Medicine (PRiME) and BioHubNet at the University of Toronto. Shoichet served as Ontario’s first Chief Scientist in 2018 where she worked to enhance the culture of science. Dr. Shoichet has published over 850 papers, patents and abstracts and has given nearly 600 lectures worldwide. She currently leads a laboratory of 30 and has graduated 270 researchers. Her research is focused on drug and cell delivery strategies in the central nervous system (brain, spinal cord, retina), 3D hydrogel culture systems to model cancer and colloidal drug aggregates. Dr. Shoichet co-founded four spin-off companies, is actively engaged in translational research and science outreach. Dr. Shoichet is the recipient of many prestigious distinctions and the first (and until recently the only) person to be inducted into all three of Canada’s National Academies of Science of the Royal Society of Canada, Engineering and Health Sciences. Professor Shoichet is an Officer of the Order of Canada and holds the Order of Ontario. Dr. Shoichet is the L’Oreal-UNESCO For Women in Science Laureate for North America, 2015, Foreign Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the US National Academy of Inventors, recipient of the Killam Prize in Engineering, 2017 and Fellow of the Royal Society (UK). Dr. Shoichet is the NSERC Herzberg Gold Medal awardee, 2020 (the highest award in science/engineering in Canada) and recipient of the Margolese National Brain Disorders Prize. Dr. Shoichet received her SB from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (1987) and her PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in Polymer Science and Engineering (1992).

National University of Singapore

Siowling Soh is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the National University of Singapore. He received his Ph.D. from Northwestern University and was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Harvard University in the group of Prof. George Whitesides. His research interests include smart functional soft matter, such as polymeric molecules, polymers, hydrogels, and interfaces of polymers. He studies charged systems including electrostatics and separation of charge at the surface of polymers in contact with solid, liquid, or gas. Based on the fundamental science, a wide range of applications are developed, including smart drug delivery systems, soft machines, molecular separation, polymer recycling, energy harvesting, and functional surfaces.

KTH Royal Institute of Technology Stockholm

Outi Tammisola is Professor of fluid mechanics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden. Prior to joining KTH as faculty, she worked as an Assistant Professor in University Of Nottingham and a postdoctoral researcher in University of Cambridge. She has received several prestigious grants in the area of non-Newtonian fluid flow, including, a European Research Council Starting Grant on wetting and surface interaction of complex fluids, and coordinates the EU Doctoral Network YIELDGAP on yield-stress fluids spanning 9 universities and 5 industrial partners. Her focus is on pioneering high-performance computing and synergetic experiments for viscoelastic and yield-stress fluids, focusing on three areas: (i) wetting, droplet impact and interactions with surfaces (including role of surfactants), (ii) particle, droplet and suspension dynamics,  (iii) instabilities and turbulence. This research often reveals drastic differences compared to Newtonian fluids such as water.

Southern University of Science and Technology

Zhenghe Xu graduated with B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees in Minerals Engineering from Central-South Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (Changsha, China) in 1982 and 1985, respectively; and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Blacksburg, Virginia) in 1990. As an associate professor and then professor in the Department of Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alberta (Edmonton, Canada) from 1997 to 2017, Dr. Xu was Canada Research Chair in Mineral Processing (2006-2017) and NSERC-Industry Research Chair (2002-2017). Dr. Xu joined the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen (China) as a Chair Professor in the Materials Science and Engineering and Founding Dean of College of Engineering (2017-2024). Dr. Xu was elected to Fellow of Canadian Academy of Engineering in 2008, Fellow of Royal Society of Canada in 2015 and International Member of Chinese Academy of Engineering. Dr. Xu’s main research area is interfacial sciences as applied to natural resources processing and utilization. He published over 530 peer-reviewed scientific journal papers with more than 25,200 citations (web of Science).

Max Planck Institute of Colloids & Interfaces

Lukas Zeininger leads the Emmy Noether Group in Responsive Soft Materials & Interfaces at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces and is the recent recipient of the German Colloid Society’s “Richard Zsigmondy” Prize. Previously a postdoctoral fellow in the Swager Lab at MIT, his research bridges colloid chemistry, materials science, and interface engineering, with a focus on creating bio-intelligent soft colloids. Lukas and his team employ a fundamental physicochemical approach to engineer polymers and emulsions that autonomously respond to environmental stimuli, mimicking energy-dissipative natural systems. By designing soft colloids that operate outside thermodynamic equilibrium, his group develops materials that intelligently adapt to their chemical environment, enabling new and improved applications in sensing, catalysis, biomimicry, and soft robotics.