
Xu Deng
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.

Jordan Dinglasan
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.

Kun Liu
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.

Rob Macfarlane
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.

Orlando Rojas
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).

Anwesha Sarkar
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.

Siow Ling Soh
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.

Outi Tammisola
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.

Zhenghe Xu
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).

Lukas Zeininger
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.