PLENARY SPEAKERS

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PLENARY SPEAKERS

Prof. Jose Maria Kenny

 

University of Perugia, Italy

 

Biodegradable polymers and biocomposites: a challenge for our future

 


Prof. Dieter Bimberg

 

"Bimberg Chinese-German Center for Green Photonics", CAS, China, TU Berlin, Germany

 

Green data communication: Intelligent physics and engineering will contribute to a sustainable society

 

Dieter Bimberg received the Ph.D. magna cum laude from Goethe University, Frankfurt, Germany. He held for 7 years a Principal Scientist position at the Max Planck-Institute for Solid State Research, Grenoble, France. After serving as a Professor of electrical engineering, Technical University of Aachen, Germany, he assumed the Chair of Applied Solid-State Physics at Technical University of Berlin. He is the Founding Director of its Center of NanoPhotonics. He was holding guest professorships at the Technion, Haifa, U.C. Santa Barbara, CA, USA, and at Hewlett-Packard in Palo Alto, CA. He was Distinguished Adjunct Professor at KAU, Jeddah 2012-2018. In 2018 he assumed the directorship of the “Bimberg Chinese German Center for Green Photonics” at the Changchun Institute of Optics, Fine Mechanics and Physics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
He is a member of the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, the EU Academy of Sciences, a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the US Academies of Engineering and of Inventors, Fellow of the Chinese Optical Society, a Life Fellow of the American Physical Society the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, IEEE, a Fellow of the Chinese Optical Society, a Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association and a honorary member of the Ioffe Institute of the RAS. He is recipient of many important international awards, like the UNESCO Nanoscience Award, the Max-Born Award and Medal of IoP and DPG, the Heinrich-Welker-Award, the Nick Holonyak Jr. Award, the Oyo Buturi and MOC Awards of the Japanese Society of Applied Physics, the Jun-Ichi Nishizawa Medal and Award of IEEE, the Stern-Gerlach Award of DPG (the highest German physics award), to mention a few. He received honorary doctorates of the University of Lancaster, UK, and the St. Petersburg Alferov University of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
He has authored more than 1600 papers, 71 patents and patent applications, and six books. The number of times his research works has been cited exceeds 67,000 and his Hirsch factor is 113 (@ Google Scholar). His research interests include physics and technology of nanostructures, nanostructure based photonic and electronic devices, and energy efficient data communication.


Prof. Iam Choon Khoo

 

William E. Leonhard Professor of Electrical Engineering
The Pennsylvania State University, USA

 

Chiral soft-matter photonic crystals for advanced reconfigurable photonic applications

 

Prof. Iam Choon Khoo Bio. Prof. Iam Choon Khoo received his Ph. D. in Physics [quantum optics] from the University of Rochester. He is currently William E. Leonhard Professor of Electrical Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. He is the adviser/mentor of 33 Ph. D. graduates and has served as an external Ph. D. examiner for several oversea universities: Trinity College (Physics), Dublin, Ireland (2001); Chalmers University (Physics), Sweden (2002); Cambridge University (Electrical Engineering), UK (2005); The University of Wollongong, (School of Mathematics and Applied Statistics) Australia (2013); Tampere University of Technology (Physics/Photonics), Finland (2018). His research programs/interests are on nonlinear optics/photonics and optical physics of liquid crystalline materials, nonlinear fiber arrays and tunable plasmonic and meta-nanostructure. He is the author/co-author/co-editor of 8 books including two widely cited (>2900) books on liquid crystals photonics and nonlinear optics, 3 patents, 14 book chapters and several review articles, and 297 publications; he is the founding editor-in-chief of 28 volumes (1991-2019) of J. Nonlinear Optical Physics and Materials, and the chair of the Liquid Crystals Conferences since its inception till present. He has given 433 (233 Invited and 35 Keynote/Plenary) talks at international conferences sponsored by IEEE, OSA, SPIE, The Electromagnetic Academy, and several European and Asian-Pacific organizations. He is a Fellow of four technical societies: IEEE, OPTICA [formerly OSA]; UK Inst. of Phys; Electromagnetic Academy. He has served a 3-year term [1/2008 – 12/2010] as Chair of the US Advisory Committee/International Commission for Optics at the National Academies (Sciences and Engineering), a 5-year term [2005-2010] as Vice President in the International Commission for Optics and a 3-year term [2001-2004] as Vice President for Technical Affairs in IEEE-Photonics Society. Among other honors and awards, he received the 2024 SPIE Maria Goeppert-Mayer Award in Photonics.


Prof. Ibrahim Abdulhalim

 

Ben Gurion University, Israel

 

Nano-porous materials as photonic metamaterial structures for sensing, energy saving, and light modulation devices

 

Ibrahim Abdulhalim has been a professor in the Department of Electrooptics and Photonics Engineering at Ben Gurion University since 2005, during which time he also served as the department head from 2007 to 2015. He earned his D.Sc in Physics from the Technion in 1988. Throughout his career, he has contributed to both academic institutions and companies, including roles at the Optical Computing Systems Center at UC in Boulder, Colorado, the Optoelectronics Research Center (ORC) at Southampton University, the Thin Films Center at the University of Western Scotland, as well as positions at KLA-Tencor, Nova, and GWS Photonics. Abdulhalim's current research focuses on various areas, including LC devices for imaging, energy-saving, and optoelectronics, nanophotonics and plasmonics for bio-chemical sensing and energy devices, and biomedical optical imaging techniques. With a prolific publication record, he has authored over 300 articles, two books, 10 chapters, and holds more than 30 patents. Recognized for his contributions, Abdulhalim is a fellow of the Institute of Physics (IoP) and the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE). He is also a senior member of OPTICA and serves as a topical editor for Applied Optics, as well as on the editorial board for the Journal of Sensors and the Journal of Biosensors.


Dr. Ling PENG

 

CNRS Research Director
Aix-Marseille University, CNRS, UMR, France

 

Modular and adaptive self-assembling dendrimers for biomedical applications

 

Dr. Ling Peng is a research director at the Interdisciplinary Center on Nanoscience in Marseille (CINaM), which is a part of the French National Scientific Research Center (CNRS) in France. She completed her undergraduate studies in polymer chemistry under the guidance of Prof. Chen Rongshi at Nanjing University in China. She then pursued her PhD in organic chemistry with Prof. Albert Eschenmoser at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, Switzerland. Following her PhD, Dr. Peng conducted her postdoctoral research in Pharmacy with Prof. Maurice Goeldner at Strasbourg University in France. In 1997, she joined CNRS as a research scientist and was promoted to CNRS Research Director in 2008. She became a 1st class Research Director in 2015.

Dr. Peng has gained international recognition as a leading figure in developing innovative dendrimer materials for biomedical purposes. Notably, she pioneered the work to design and synthesize bio-inspired and self-assembling dendrimer materials for biomedical applications. This groundbreaking approach has facilitated dendrimer synthesis for efficient delivery of imaging agents, anticancer drugs, and nucleic acid therapeutics for cancer detection and treatment. Her recent research has revealed that dendrimer systems can harness in situ generated extracellular vesicles for efficient drug delivery, effectively addressing challenges posed by tumor heterogeneity and dynamic evolution. Since 2016, Dr. Peng’s research team has been recognized and supported by La Ligue contre Le Cancer, the largest cancer foundation in France, for her innovative research in developing nanomedicine against cancer.

Dr. Peng's pioneering work in self-assembling supramolecular dendrimer chemistry have served as inspiration and catalyst, revolutionizing the field of dendrimer materials in the context of biomedical engineering and applications. In acknowledgement of her remarkable scientific achievements, she was awarded with the Prize of Dr & Mme Henri Labbé by the French Academy of Sciences in 2017 and was granted the Distinguished Member of the French Chemical Society in 2020.


Prof. Jin Zhong Zhang

 

Distinguished Professor
University of California, USA

 

Novel optical and dynamic properties of metal halide perovskite nanostructures: from quantum dots to clusters

 

Jin Zhong Zhang received his B.Sc. degree in Chemistry from Fudan University, Shanghai, China, in 1983 and his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from University of Washington, Seattle in 1989. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at University of California Berkeley from 1989 to 1992. In 1992, he joined the faculty at UC Santa Cruz, where he is currently distinguished professor of chemistry and biochemistry. Zhang’s recent research interests focus on design, synthesis, characterization, and exploration of applications of advanced materials including semiconductor, metal, and metal oxide nanomaterials, particularly in the areas of solar energy conversion, solid state lighting, sensing, and biomedical detection/therapy. He has authored over 400 publications and four books. Zhang is currently executive editor for JPCL and associate editor for ACS Physical Chemistry Au published by ACS. He is a Fellow of AAAS, APS, RSC, and ACS. He is the recipient of the 2014 Richard A. Glenn Award of the ACS Energy and Fuel Division.


Prof. Hans Fecht

 

Ulm University, Germany