Russell Morris, Chair
University of St Andrews, UK
Russell Morris was born and raised in north Wales, and completed his education at the University of Oxford where he gained B.A. and D. Phil degrees. He is currently Bishop Wardlaw Professor of Chemistry at the University of St Andrews.
His research interests lie in the synthesis, characterisation and application of porous and layered materials including zeolites and metal-organic frameworks. He developed ionothermal synthesis – the use of ionic liquids as reactive media for the preparation of solids. This has had an impact across a wide range of chemistry. His recent work on developing the ADOR approach to the preparation of zeolites offers routes to exciting materials that would not be possible using standard techniques. Morris also pioneered the use of porous materials for the storage and delivery of biologically active gases for medical applications and there are several start-up companies developing his technology to market.
He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh (FRSE), and a Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales (FLSW). He is the recipient of several awards including the Royal Society Brian Mercer Award for Innovation, The Baron Axel Cronstedt Prize from the European Federation of Zeolite Associations (2017) and the Royal Society of Chemistry Tilden Medal and Prize (2019). In 2020 he will be Vice-President of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.
Paola Ceroni, Associate editor
University of Bologna, Italy
Paola Ceroni is full professor at the University of Bologna. In 1998 she obtained her PhD degree in Chemical Sciences at the University of Bologna, after a period in the United States (Prof. Allen J. Bard’s laboratory). Her PhD thesis was awarded by the Semerano prize from the Italian Chemical Society. In 2015 she was visiting scientist at the University of Pensylvania (Prof. Vinogradov’s laboratory, Philadelphia, US) for 3 months. Current research is focused on photochemistry and electrochemistry of supramolecular systems with particular emphasis towards luminescent nanocrystals. Her research on luminescent silicon nanocrystals was funded by an ERC Starting Grant PhotoSi (2012-2017) and an ERC Proof of Concept SiNBiosys (2017-2019). She is fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. She is co-author of 190 scientific papers in refereed international journals and of a book entitled: “Photochemistry and Photophysics : Concepts, Research, Applications” (2014, Wiley-VCH).
Vadapalli Chandrasekhar, Associate editor
Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Hyderabad, India
Chandrasekhar obtained his Ph.D. degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, in 1982. After a post-doctoral stint at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, he joined the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur in 1987 where he holds the position of a Professor. He is currently on lien from Kanpur to the Tata Institute of Fundamental Research Hyderabad as a Distinguished Professor and Centre Director. His research interests include organometallic chemistry of main-group compounds and molecular materials. His research work is documented in 360+ publications. He is a fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, India and also the World Academy of Sciences, Trieste, Italy. He is the recipient of several awards including the Shanthi Swarup Bhatnagar Award (Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, India) and the Friedrich Wilhelm-Bessel Award (AvH Foundation, Germany) He has been on the editorial board of several journals including, Organometallics.
Maarit Karppinen, Associate editor
Aalto University, Finland
Maarit Karppinen received her doctor degree in inorganic chemistry from Helsinki University of Technology in 1993. After holding shorter-term teaching and research fellow positions in Finland, she accepted first a one-year visiting professorship and later in 2001 a regular associate professor chair in Japan at the Materials and Structures Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology, where she brought the deep chemistry contribution to the strong multidisciplinary research group focusing on functional oxide materials. In 2006 she returned back to Alma Mater as a full professor to combine her expertise in fundamental new-material research to the long traditions of the laboratory in leading ALD thin-film research. In 2008 she became the head of the Chemistry Department; this leadership was then transformed to the newly established Aalto University, formed by merging Helsinki University of Technology with two other universities from the Helsinki area. For 2009-2013 she was also holding the prestigious Academy Professor position in Finland. Currently she is internationally renowned for her pioneering research on complex perovskite oxides and ALD/MLD fabricated inorganic-organic thin films; for this latter field she received her ERC Advanced grant in 2013, followed by two ERC Proof-of-Concept grants. Her group’s work is truly interdisciplinary, covering both the design and synthesis of new materials and their characterization for a variety of functionalities. She was nominated as a VIP Visiting International Professor at Ruhr-University Bochum in 2016, and Aalto Distinguished Professor in 2017.
Mi Hee Lim, Associate editor
KAIST, South Korea
Mi Hee Lim received her BS in Chemistry from Ewha Womans University, Seoul, Korea, in 1999 and her MSc in 2001 under the direction of Professor Wonwoo Nam. In 2002, she moved to MIT where she obtained her PhD under the supervision of Professor Stephen J. Lippard. She then pursued her postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Professor Jacqueline K. Barton at Caltech. In 2008, she began her independent career as an Assistant Professor of Chemistry and Research Assistant Professor in the Life Sciences Institute at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USA. In 2013, Mi Hee moved to the Ulsan National University of Science and Technology (UNIST), Ulsan, Korea, as an Associate Professor with tenure. In 2018, Mi Hee joined the Department of Chemistry at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea.
Her research interests lie in bioinorganic chemistry, especially focusing on identifying how metal-involved biological networks are linked to dementia, such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s diseases, and establishing new directions for developing chemical reagents as tools, diagnostics, and therapeutics for such diseases. Mi Hee is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and has received numerous awards including the Society of Biological Inorganic Chemistry (SBIC) Early Career Award (2018), the Award for "30 Young Scientists of Korea" to Lead Basic Science Research for the Next 30 Years (2016), the Korean Chemical Society (KCS)-Wiley Young Scientist Award (2015), NSF CAREER Award (2013), the Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (2012). Mi Hee is on the Editorial Advisory board for Chemical Science, Chemical Communications, Chem, and Journal of Biological Inorganic Chemistry.
Neal Mankad, Associate editor
University of Illinois at Chicago, USA
ORCiD 0000-0001-6923-5164
Neal P. Mankad received his S.B. in chemistry from MIT in 2004 after conducting undergraduate research with Prof. Joseph P. Sadighi on copper N-heterocyclic carbene complexes. In 2010, Neal earned a Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Caltech as an NSF graduate research fellow under the supervision of Prof. Jonas C. Peters, working on biomimetic and bioinspired complexes of copper and iron. During 2010-2012, he was an NIH postdoctoral research fellow at the University of California, Berkeley, with Prof. F. Dean Toste studying fundamental organometallic chemistry of gold. Since 2012, Neal has been an independent faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), where his group focuses on synthetic inorganic and organometallic systems relevant to chemical sustainability. Selected research awards earned by Neal include the Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and the NIH Maximizing Investigators’ Research Award (MIRA). He has also gained distinction for excellence in teaching, including from the UIC Teaching Recognition Program.
Eric Rivard, Associate editor
University of Alberta, Canada
Eric Rivard completed his Ph.D. at the University of Toronto under the supervision of Professor Ian Manners in 2004. After NSERC-sponsored postdoctoral work with Professors Jonas Peters (Caltech) and Philip Power (University of California, Davis), and a research stay with Professor Cameron Jones (Monash University), he joined the University of Alberta in 2008 where he is now a Full Professor. He has given over 200 invited lectures worldwide and has published around 150 articles. He was the inaugural 2016 Michael Lappert Lecturer from the RSC, an RCMS Visiting Professor at Nagoya University (2016), an Alexander von Humboldt Experienced Researcher Fellow (2017), held visiting fellowships in 2015 and 2023 from the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS), was a Visiting Professor at National Taiwan University (2023), and won the 2018 Strem Chemicals Award for Pure and Applied Inorganic Chemistry (Canadian Society for Chemistry). The Rivard group studies fundamental low-coordinate and main group chemistry, catalysis, semiconducting material synthesis, and the development of phosphorescent materials and conjugated polymers based on inorganic elements.
Wolfgang Tremel, Associate editor
Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Germany
Wolfgang Tremel studied chemistry and medicine at the universities of Bielefeld and Münster. After completing his PhD in chemistry he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Hahn-Meitner Institute Berlin, the DESY/HASYLAB in Hamburg and at Cornell University before returning to Münster as a habilitand. After a research semester at Iowa State University he joined the Chemistry department of the Johannes Gutenberg University in Mainz as an associate professor (1991) . Since 1996 he is full professor for Inorganic Chemistry. Wolfgang served as Dean and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Chemistry Pharmacy, and he was for several years speaker of the materials science center in Mainz. His research focuses on the synthesis, structural and physical characterization as well as potential applications of new materials, in particular on the chemistry of hybrid materials and organized matter.
Takashi Uemura, Associate editor
University of Tokyo, Japan
Takashi Uemura obtained his PhD at Department of Polymer Chemistry, Kyoto University in 2002. He then began his academic career as Assistant Professor and Associate Professor at Department of Synthetic Chemistry and Biological Chemistry in Kyoto University. In 2018, he moved to the University of Tokyo where he holds the position of Professor. He was also a researcher of PRESTO program (2006–2010) and has been a research director for a CREST program (2013-2020) of the Japan Science and Technology Agency. He has received a number of awards, including the Chemical Society of Japan (CSJ) Award for Young Chemists, the Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology, Kao Research Initiative Award, and JSPS Prize.
His research interest focuses on the preparation of synergistic nanohybrids between porous coordination compounds and polymeric materials, in particular, polymer chemistry in confined nanospaces.
Li-Min Zheng, Associate editor
Nanjing University, China
Li-Min Zheng received her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from Nanjing University in 1992. Afterwards she joined Nanjing University as a faculty member, and became a lecturer (1992-1997), associate professor (1997-2002) and professor (2002-now). She was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich in Switzerland (1994-1996) and a visiting scholar at the University of Houston in the United States (1999-2000), ETH Zurich in Switzerland (2007) and Kyoto University in Japan (2012). She has published over 230 research papers. Her current research interest focuses on inorganic-organic hybrid materials, especially the crystalline and low-dimensional materials based on metal phosphonates with applications including magnetic, optical and proton conductive properties.
Jaqueline Kiplinger
Los Alamos National Laboratory USA
Sascha Ott
Uppsala University, Sweden
Sascha Ott was born in Heilbronn, Germany, and did his undergraduate studies at Freiburg University, Germany and at the Flinders University of South Australia in Adelaide. He obtained his PhD from University College London, UK, in 2002 on ruthenium polypyridine chemistry in oligoacetylene scaffolds. Following a postdoc in bioinorganic chemistry with Prof. Licheng Sun at Stockholm University, Sweden, he started his independent career at Uppsala University where he was appointed Professor in Synthetic Molecular Chemistry in 2016.
Research in the group is centred on different topics at the interface of organic chemistry and molecular inorganic chemistry. Amongst these are works on low-coordinate and low-valent phosphorus in an organic chemistry context, and the development of main group element reagents to drive organic transformations. The group also has a strong interest in molecular redox catalysts of energy relevance, more recently in the confinement of metal-organic frameworks.
