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)

"Truchet-tile architectures in materials chemistry"

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

"From crust to core - material properties of the deep Earth"

Since 2024
Professor for Interaction of Geomaterials and Living Organisms (Chair), Department of Earth and Environmental Sciences, Ludwig-Maximilians-University (LMU) Munich
Director of the Mineralogical State Collection of the Bavarian State Collections of Natural History (Staatliche Naturwissenschaftliche Sammlungen Bayerns, SNSB)

2015 - 2024
Professor of Mineralogy and Crystallography, Institute for Geology and Mineralogy, University of Cologne

2008 - 2015
Leader of a DFG-funded Emmy-Noether Research Group, GFZ Potsdam

2004 - 2008
Postdoc, GFZ German Research Centre for Geosciences, Potsdam

2002 - 2004
Postdoc, Physical and Theoretical Chemistry Laboratory, University of Oxford, UK

2000 - 2002
PhD Student, Institut Laue-Langevin Grenoble, France

1999 - 2002
Research Assistant, Institute of Physics, Technical University of Chemnitz

"[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.