INVITED LECTURERS

Professor Suzana Nunes 

Honorary Membership of European Membrane Society 

King Abdullah University of Science and Technology  

Thuwal, Saudi Arabia

Title: "Molecular separation by pervaporation and nanofiltration with thin composite membranes"

Bio: Suzana Nunes is Professor of Chemical and Environmental Science and Engineering at KAUST, Saudi Arabia. Her research is dedicated to the development and characterization of new polymeric materials, and their fabrication into membranes for liquid, gas, and vapor separations. She targets sustainable separations in the chemical, petrochemical, and pharmaceutical industries. She is an honorary member of the European Membrane Society, is an elected member of The World Academy of Science, and in 2023 she received the L’Oreal-UNESCO for Women in Science International Award.  She has a PhD in Chemistry from the University of Campinas, Brazil, where she later served as Assistant and Associate Professor. She was a Humboldt postdoc Fellow in polymer physical chemistry at the Johannes Gutenberg University, Mainz, Germany, and before KAUST, she has led research on membranes for renewable energy at Helmholtz Association in Germany.    

Professor Frank Blockhuys 

Structural Chemistry Group 

University of Antwerp, Antwerp, Belgium

Title: "Surface Modification of the Group 4 Metal Oxides: Structure, Properties and Applications of Phosphonic-Acid-Modified Titania"

Bio: Frank Blockhuys received his Master’s degree in Chemistry from the University of Antwerp (Belgium) in 1994 and subsequently obtained his Ph.D. from the same university in 1999. After post-doctoral work at the University of Edinburgh (Scotland, UK), he was appointed Professor of Structural Chemistry in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Antwerp in 2003. His research interests have included topics as diverse as the solid-state structures of organic semiconductors and the application of these materials in opto-electronic devices, and quantum chemical mass spectrometry. Besides his ongoing interest in the structure of and bonding in main-group systems, he is currently focussing on the structure and properties of surface-modified metal oxides using computational techniques, as part of a consortium working on the synthesis, characterisation and application of these hybrid organic-inorganic materials.

Dr. Athanasios Chatzitakis

Department of Chemistry, Centre of Materials Science and Nanotechnology

University of Oslo, Norway

Title: "Advanced catalysts for electrochemical energy conversion"

 Bio: Athanasios Chatzitakis received his doctoral degree in 2013 from the Department of Chemistry at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki (AUTh), Greece. In 2015, he joined as a post-doctoral researcher the Group for Electrochemistry at the Department of Chemistry, Center for Materials Science and Nanotechnology (SMN), University of Oslo (UiO), Norway. He is now Senior Researcher in the Group for Electrochemistry at UiO and his activities include the development of catalysts for electrocatalytic energy conversion applications. These include photo-electrochemical systems, bio-inorganic interfaces, supercapacitors, plasmonic photocatalysis, surface protonic conduction and photocatalytic air and water remediation.