Luisa De Cola is since November 2020 Professor at the University of Milan and head of the unit Materials for Health at the Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche Mario Negri, IRCCS, Italy. She is also part time scientist at the INT-KIT, Karlsruhe, Germany.

She was born in Messina, Italy, where she studied chemistry. After a post-doc in USA she was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna (1990). In 1998 she was appointed Full Professor at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

In 2004 she moved to the University of Muenster, Germany. In 2012 she has been appointed Axa Chair of Supramolecular and Bio-Material Chemistry, at the University of Strasbourg. She is recipients of several awards, the most recent being the Izatt–Christensen Award in Macrocyclic and Supramolecular Chemistry (2019), the gold Medal Natta (2020). She has been Nominated “Chevalier de la Légion d' Honneur” by the President of the French Republic, François Hollande, and she is a member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina, of the Accademia dei Lincei and fellow of the American Institute For Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE).

She is the editor in chief of Chemistry Europe.

Her main interests are labels for diagnostics, and nano- and porous structures for biomedical applications.

She has published 400 papers, filed 40 patents and has a Hindex of 85.

Affiliations: Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology, Member of Leibniz Health Technologies, Member of the Leibniz Centre for Photonics in Infection Research (LPI), Germany

Talk Title: Surface enhanced Raman spectroscopy and its application in biochemical and biomedical research

Bio:

Dr. Dana Cialla-May studied Chemistry at Friedrich-Schiller University Jena (Germany). She received her PhD title for her studies in the field of surface and tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy. In 2011 she became group leader at Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology Jena (Germany). The research topics of her group ‘Surface Enhanced Vibrational Spectroscopy’ include the development of powerful SERS substrates and their application towards clinical, food and environmental analytical tasks. The combination of SERS with sample preparation as well as with microfluidics is addressed in her research. Her research focuses on surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy (SERS) in bioanalytical detection schemes, including drug monitoring and analysis in complex biological matrices.

Talk Title: Single molecule sensing on whispering gallery modes

Bio:

Frank Vollmer is Professor in Biophysics at the University of Exeter, UK. He obtained his PhD in `Physics & Biology' from the Rockefeller University in NYC, USA, in 2004. He was Rowland Fellow at Harvard University from 2004 to 2009, Scholar-in-Residence at the Wyss Institute at Harvard in 2010, Group Leader (untenured Associate Professor) at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Germany from 2011-2016 and Instructor in Medicine at Brigham and Women’s Hospital/Harvard Medical School where he directed a satellite laboratory from 2011-2016. Since 2016 he is Professor in Biophysics at the School of Physics, University of Exeter, UK. He received the Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award in 2017 and in 2021 the Rosalind Franklin Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics (IoP). Since 2021 he is Fellow of the IoP.

Affiliation: Leverhulme Research Centre for Forensic Science, School of Science and Engineering, University of Dundee, UK

Affiliations: School of Chemistry, University of Glasgow, UK

Talk Title: Chiral nanophotonics

Bio:

Professor Malcolm Kadodwala, the Gardiner Chair of Chemical Nanophotonics at the University of Glasgow's School of Chemistry He is recognized for pioneering the application of chiral nanophotonics in chemistry.His seminal paper, published in Nature Nanotechnology over a decade ago, garnered over 1100 citations on Google Scholar. This groundbreaking work demonstrated the power of chiral plasmonics for biodetection, sparking an explosion of research in the field. Since then, Professor Kadodwala has remained at the forefront, delivering over 50 invited, keynote, and plenary talks at international conferences, meetings, and workshops dedicated to chemical chiral nanophotonics.Professor Kadodwala's dedication extends beyond his home institution. In 2015, he held a prestigious JSPS Visiting Professorship at the Institute of Molecular Sciences in Japan. He further broadened his international collaborations with a Visiting Professorship at the Department of Physics at Osaka Metropolitan University in 2018. His commitment to research excellence is further evidenced by his Leverhulme research fellowship awarded from 2019 to 2021.

Klaus Koren, a Chemist with a passion for Biology, earned his PhD in 2012 under the guidance of Prof. Ingo Klimant at TU Graz. His research concentrated on crafting materials and molecules for O2 sensing. Transitioning to the study of biological systems, he joined Prof. Michael Kühl's laboratory at Copenhagen University as a postdoc. Koren's primary interest lies in comprehending the impact of local chemical conditions on living systems and how these systems reciprocally influence chemical microenvironments over time and space.

Currently, he spearheads the Sensor Laboratory at Aarhus University, where he and his team dedicate their efforts to designing chemical sensors capable of studying diverse biological systems, ranging from soils and biofilms to aquatic organisms like corals. Koren's interdisciplinary work at the intersection of analytical chemistry and biology has earned him several honors, including the Fritz Feigl prize, and has yielded over 70 publications.

Affiliation: Department of Chemistry "Giacomo Ciamician", University of Bologna, Italy 

Affiliation: Department of Applied Physics and Science Education, Molecular Biosensing (MBx), Eindhoven University of Technology, The Netherlands

Talk Title: Nanoplasmonic approaches to single-molecule biosensing

Bio:

Peter Zijlstra is an associate professor of Molecular Plasmonics in the research cluster for Molecular Biosensing at the TU/e department of Applied Physics. He develops approaches for single-molecule sensing with the aim to study individual biomolecules in complex environments across all timescales. In particular, his research focuses on single-molecule detection using plasmonic, nanophotonic and fluorescent approaches. His research group combines concepts from nanophotonics, super-resolution microscopy and electromagnetic modelling to develop novel sensing concepts and study biomolecular interactions.