Plenary Speakers

"Organic Crystallization Chaperones"

Biography

Clemens Richert studied Chemistry at the Universities of Münster (Pre-Diploma, 1987) and Cologne (Diploma, 1990). For his diploma thesis (with E. Vogel) he synthesized functionalized porphycenes as photosensitizers for photodynamic therapy. He obtained Ph.D.'s in Human Biology from the LMU Munich (with K. Messmer, Institute for Surgical Research, 1993), and in Chemistry from the ETH Zurich, (with S.A. Benner, Laboratory of  Organic Chemistry, 1994). In 1995, he started independent studies as Assistant Professor at Tufts University, and in 1999, he accepted an associate professor position at the University of Konstanz. In 2002 he became professor at the University of Karlsruhe (TH), before moving to his current position at the University of Stuttgart in 2008, where he holds the chair in Biological Chemistry at the Institute of Organic Chemistry. His research interests include the organic, bioorganic, and medicinal chemistry of nucleic acids and other organic compounds, molecular recognition phenomena, chemical replication, structure elucidation, and prebiotic chemistry.

Peer Recognition

Clemens Richert is president of the German Nucleic Acid Chemistry Society (Deutsche Nucleinsäurechemie- gemeinschaft e.V.; DNG). He was awarded a Fritz ter Meer Undergraduate Fellowship (Bayer AG, Leverkusen), a Hanns-Seidel doctoral Fellowship (HS-Foundation, Munich), a Kekulé-Fellowship of the Federation of the German Chemical Industry, a Ph.D./Study award for his studies in chemistry (VCI, Frankfurt), a FIRST Award (NIH, USA), a CAREER Award (NSF, USA), the ORCHEM-Award (GDCh) and the Howard Lectureship (Australia)

Andrew Goodwin is Professor of Materials Chemistry at the University of Oxford. Born in Australia, he studied at the Universities of Sydney and Cambridge, obtaining separate PhDs in inorganic chemistry from the former and mineral physics from the latter. He moved to Oxford in 2009, where his research programme has focussed on the dual aspects of flexibility and disorder in functional materials. In 2023 he was elected to a Fellowship of the Royal Society.

"Crystal structure evolution tracking using in situ 3D ED and 4D-STEM"

Joke Hadermann studied Physics at the University of Antwerp, followed by a Ph.D. in transmission electron microscopy on the fluorinated high-Tc superconductors. After a postdoc

at CRISMAT in Caen, she became full professor at the University of Antwerp, within the laboratory EMAT. Joke is on the editorial board of of the IUCr journal Acta Crystallographica B, Journal of Solid State Chemistry and SpringerBriefs in Crystallography. She has been a member (and is still consultant) of the IUCr Commissions on Electron Crystallography, on Aperiodic Crystals and on Mathematical and Theoretical Crystallography and was in the executive commission of the European Crystallographic Association. While first focussed on atomic resolution imaging and spectroscopy, Joke drifted via precession electron diffraction to 3D ED. Currently, she is focussed on combining 3D ED with different in situ experiments. Her research involves the structure determination of a wide variety of inorganic materials, including, but not restricted to, perovskites, battery materials, solid oxide fuel cell electrodes and MOFs.

"In-situ, in Air, High Temperature Synchrotron Studies of Ceramics"

Waltraud M. Kriven received a Ph.D in Solid State Chemistry from the University of Adelaide in South Australia. The B.Sc. (Hons) and Baccalaureate degrees were in Physical and Inorganic Chemistry, and Biochemistry, also in Adelaide. Dr. Kriven spent one year as a Post Doctoral Teaching and Research Fellow in the Chemistry Dept. at the University of Western Ontario in Canada. She then spent three years jointly at the University of California at Berkeley, and at the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory. There, Dr. Kriven conducted post-doctoral research in transmission electron microscopy of ceramics and was a Lecturer, teaching Phase Equilibria in the senior undergraduate Ceramics Program of the Dept. of Materials Science and Mineral Engineering. For almost four years. Dr. Kriven was a Visiting Scientist at the Max-Planck-Institute in Stuttgart, Germany. There she studied the mechanism of transformation toughening of composite ceramics by 1 MeV HVEM, while working in the electron microscopy group headed by Dr. M. Rühle. Since then, Professor Kriven has been at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. She is a Full Professor and has held joint faculty positions in the Materials Research Laboratory (initially) and the Department of Materials Science and Engineering. She is also an Affiliate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Professor Kriven has internationally recognized expertise in the areas of phase transformations in inorganic compounds and their applications in structural ceramic composites, geopolymers, and low temperature synthesis of oxide ceramic powders. In addition she has made extensive contributions to oxide composites design, microstructure characterization by electron microscopy techniques and phase equilibria. The Kriven group has developed an in situ, hot stage (up to 2000°C) synchrotron furnace for studies of ceramics in air. Kriven has produced 340 research publications, 59 conference proceedings, edited or co-edited 27 books and 6 patents

"Ferroelastic minerals"

Ekhard Karl Hermann Salje, FRS (born 1946) is an Emeritus Professor, and formerly Professor of Mineralogy and Petrology and Head of the Department of Earth Sciences, Cambridge University.

Education and career

Ekhard Salje completed his University Teacher’s Dissertation in 1972, and by 1983 was the Head of Department at the Institute for Crystallography and Petrology at the Leibniz University Hannover. In 1985 he moved to Cambridge where was awarded a Professorship in Mineral Physics in the Department of Earth Sciences in 1992. He worked jointly in the Department of Physics Cavendish Laboratory. 
In 1998 he assumed the post of Head of Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge, which he retained until October 2008.
In October 2001 he became President of Clare Hall, a post he held until 2008.

Research

Professor Salje's research is focused in the field of mineralogy and mineral physics using approaches that combine theoretical and experimental methods. In particular, he is concerned with the stability of minerals and the transformation processes that occur within them in response to changes in temperature and pressure. His work includes the study of structural phase transitions, the formation of polaronic states in transition metal oxides like WO3, and ferroelasticity. The dynamics of phase transitions includes the movements of nano-domains which progress as avalanches in most cases. He discovered avalanche behaviour by experiment and computer simulation in ferroelastics, ferroelectrics and martensitic alloys. His work in the field of mineral physics was rewarded in 1996 when he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society. This has been followed by him being elected Chevalier dans l’ordre des Palmes Academiques (France) in 2004 and awarded the Cross of the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany in 2007. He is fellow of the Leopoldina (Nat. Academy of Germany) and the Royal Society of the Arts and Sciences of Barcelona.

As Programme Director of the Cambridge-MIT Institute he was responsible for joint research in the field of Future Technologies. He was chairman of the Cambridge e-science Centre and chairman of the steering committee of the Cambridge Environmental Initiative (CEI) which advises on environmental research in Cambridge. He was president of the British branch of the Alexander von Humboldt Association. He was chairman of the Cambridge European Trust and member of the Wissenschaftsrat (Germany).

Professor Salje has been visiting professor in Japan (mombusho chair), Max Planck Institute for Mathematics in the Sciences in Leipzig, Univers. Paris VI, Bilbao, Grenoble, Le Mans. He is hon. Professor at Xi'an Jiaotong University (China) and Ulam fellow at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.

"[FeFe] Hydrogenases: from structural insights into the mechanism to new applications in biotechnology"

Ingrid Span is Professor of Bioinorganic Chemistry at the Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg. She studied chemistry and obtained her PhD at the Technische Universität München. After a postdoc at Northwestern University in Chicago, she became an assistant professor at the Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf. She moved to Erlangen in 2021, where her research group focuses on studying biomolecules that require metal-containing cofactors for their catalytic function.

Her research aims at understanding the molecular bases of living processes using structural biology, spectroscopy, biochemistry, and biophysical methods. The incorporation of cofactors such as metal ions or metal clusters into the active site of proteins leads to exiting chemistry with incredible specificity. The combination of transition metal reactivity with the highly selective protein environment makes the field of bioinorganic chemistry extremely exciting.