Plenary Speakers

We are delighted that the following world renowned figures delivered plenary lectures at Macro2010.

Plenary lectures took place in the iconic Clyde Auditorium, affectionately known as the "armadillo".

Mr Sebastian Conran

Deconstructing Value

Monday 12 July, 11:45 - 12:45

Sebastian trained in Industrial Design Engineering at Central School of Design. In 1979 he joined Wolff Olins - then Britain's leading corporate/brand identity consultancy, taking creative responsibility for key accounts. In 1982 he joined Mothercare to take responsibility for the design and development of all childcare merchandise. Mothercare soon became an international benchmark brand in its product identity design. 

In 1987 he started his own merchandise and brand development consultancy, Product Identity Design, working with a variety of leading international businesses on a wide range of projects. In 1999 he merged his design studio with the Conran Group to form Conran & Partners, where Sebastian was the Director responsible for all the product and graphics work. In 2009, Sebastian re-established Sebastian Conran Associates to create functional and beautiful products for premium international business.

Sebastian's technical innovations and inventions have been involved in dozens of patents in a wide variety of fields and his work has been awarded many design, marketing and innovation awards. 

He has taught design at the Royal College of Art and gives frequent lectures. He is an elected member of Chartered Society of Designers, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Institute of Packaging, Trustee of the Design Museum and the Conran Foundation, and ambassador to the children's charity I CAN. He also judges and sponsors many design awards. A founding contributor to Blueprint magazine he has written numerous articles and books on design.

Professor Jean M. J. Fréchet

Wednesday 14 July, 08:45 - 09:45

Professor Jean M.J. Fréchet was born in France and studied as an undergraduate in Lyons before moving to the United States to pursue his postgraduate studies at the State University of New York, College of Forestry, and at Syracuse University. Professor Fréchet joined the University of California at Berkeley in 1997 where he holds joint appointments in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering. 

Professor Fréchet is also involved with the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, as principal investigator in the Materials Science Division and as Scientific Director of the Organic and Macromolecular Facility for the Molecular Foundry. 

Professor Fréchet has published around 800 scientific papers. His research is in the area of nanoscience and nanotechnology, focussing on the design, synthesis and applications of functional macromolecules. Current topics include new synthetic approaches to macromolecules with controlled architecture; the design, synthesis, and applications of dendritic and other functional polymers; engineered polymer systems and molecular machines;  novel materials for directed nanoscale patterning,  energy harvesting, and conversion; organic electronics; bioinspired catalysis with synthetic macromolecules; polymers in separation and molecular recognition; and functional macromolecules for targeted drug delivery, diagnostics, and immunotherapy.

Professor Sir Richard Friend FRS

Friday 16 July, 11:30 - 12:30

Richard Friend is the Cavendish Professor of Physics at the University of Cambridge. He has pioneered the study of organic polymers as semiconductors, and his research group has demonstrated that these materials can be used in wide range of semiconductor devices, including light-emitting diodes and transistors. 

He co-founded Cambridge Display Technology Ltd in 1992 to develop light-emitting diode displays and Plastic Logic Ltd in 2000, to develop polymer transistor circuits that are now being developed as flexible active-matrix backplanes for e-paper displays. He is currently working on organic thin-film solar cells.

His research has been recognised by the award of several international awards, most recently the 2009 King Faisal International Prize for Science. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society and of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and was knighted in 2003 for services to physics.

Professor Ming Jiang

Friday 16 July, 10:00 - 11:00

Ming Jiang graduated from the Chemistry Department at Fudan University, China in 1960. Since then he has served within the Chemistry, Materials and Macromolecular Science Departments at Fudan University as assistant, lecturer, and then as associate professor. He was promoted to professor in 1988. Professor Jiang was also visiting scientist at the University of Liverpool, UK from 1979 to 1981. 

Professor Jiang was elected Member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2005. He has published over 220 papers in polymer science and is currently a member of the international advisory boards of Macromolecules, Macromolecular Rapid Communications and Polymer Journal. In addition, he is the longstanding deputy-chief-editor of the Chemical Journal of Chinese Universities. His research is mainly in physical chemistry of polymers and supramolecular chemistry with emphasis on macromolecular self-assembly. 

Professor Laura Kiessling

Title TBC

Friday 16 July, 09:00 - 10:00

Professor Kiessling received her undergraduate training in Chemistry at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. There she conducted undergraduate research in organic synthesis with Professor Bill Roush. She received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Yale University where she worked with Stuart L. Schreiber on the synthesis of anti-tumor natural products. Her postdoctoral training at the California Institute of Technology in the research group of Peter B. Dervan led her to explore the recognition of duplex DNA through triple helix formation. She began her independent career in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1991. 

Laura was recently inducted into the National Academy of Sciences. Her honors and awards include a Guggenheim Fellowship, an ACS Frances P. Garvan-John M. Olin Medal, a Harrison-Howe Award, an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award and a Horrace S. Isabell Award.

The Kiessling group develops and implements synthetic methods to access biologically-active compounds for hypothesis-driven and discovery-driven research.

Professor Kiyohito Koyama

Tuesday 13 July, 08:45 - 09:45

Professor Koyama received his undergraduate and masters degrees from Yamagata University. He then received his PhD from the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1982.

Professor Koyama is now Director and Vice-President of Yamagata University and Professor within the Graduate School of Science and Engineering. He also serves on the editorial boards of the Journal of Polymer Engineering.

The Koyama Laboratory researches rheology, polymer processing, electrorheology and ultrasound.

Professor Ludwik Leibler

Thursday 15 July, 08:45 - 09:45

Professor Leibler received his PhD in Theoretical Physics from Warsaw University in 1976, and then spent two years as a post-doctoral fellow with Professor Pierre-Gilles de Gennes at the College de France. 

He was a researcher in Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) initially in Strasbourg (1979-1984) then in Paris (1984-1996). There he worked on theoretical and experimental aspects of polymer self-assembly and dynamics, interfaces, gels and charged polymers. 

From 1996 to 2003 he was the founding director of a joint laboratory between CNRS and chemical company Elf-Atochem (later ATOFINA). This unique endeavour assembled researchers from academia and industry to tackle longstanding problems including the development or super-tough polymers and super-repellent surfaces. 

In 2001 he became Professor of Soft Matter and Chemistry at Ecole Supérieure de Physique et Chimie Industrielles in Paris where his research interests include influence of molecular disorder on mesoscopic structure and properties of polymer materials, impact resistance, fracture and adhesion, design of stimuli responsive materials and supramolecular chemistry. 

He has received awards for teaching and research from various organizations including Médaille d'Argent from CNRS, Polymer Physics Prize of American Physical Society, American Chemical Society Polymer Chemistry Award, Grand Prix IFP de l'Académie des Sciences et Grand Prix Pierre Süe of the French Chemical Society.  He is a Foreign Associate of National Academy of Engineering (USA).

Professor Han Meijer

Mechanical Performance of Polymers

Monday 12 July 10:15 - 11:15

Han E.H. Meijer has been named as the recipient of the DSM Performance Materials Award 2010. Professor Meijer is Professor of Polymer Technology and Scientific Director of the Research School Eindhoven Polymer Laboratories at the Eindhoven University of Technology, in The Netherlands. The award recognizes Professor Meijer's exceptional contributions to the advancement of the materials sciences. 

Professor Meijer is one of the world's leading scientists in the field of polymer processing, polymer mechanical properties and rheology. His major work includes prediction of polymer structuring during processing and the relation between resulting structure and mechanical performance.

Han Meijer graduated in mechanical engineering at the University of Twente, and in 1980 he obtained his PhD from the same institution, with a thesis on extruder screw theory and new designs for enhanced melting performance under the supervision of Professor Jan Ingen Housz.

He started his professional career in basic and explorative research at DSM Research, and, among other things, helped to create the continuous solution making and spinning process for the company's high-performance Dyneema fibers.

In 1985 he was appointed visiting professor of Applied Rheology in the department of Chemical Engineering and Chemistry at the Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands. In 1989 he accepted the position of full professor of Polymer Technology in the department of Mechanical Engineering at the same university.

Professor Meijer is a highly regarded speaker at conferences and has published more than 175 papers and 22 books and book chapters. He is a member of several editorial boards and various scientific advisory committees.