EAS Next Meetings

EAS Meetings

General Assembly of the European Academy of Sciences, with the Ceremony of Awards of the Blaise Pascal Medals 2008
(November 7th, 2008)
Invitation available [Show Pdf invitation]

Professors E. Evangelista and S. Cinti had a meeting with the Chancellor of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (PAS), Bishop Marcélo Sanchez Sarondo, at the Vatican on July 2nd, 2008.

The objectives of the meeting were to present the EAS and its policy aimed at creating scientific collaboration with PAS and similar Institutions, and to invite some representative of the PAS at the EAS General Assembly ,in Brussels on November 7th.

During the presentation the Chancellor pointed out the following items:

• - the PAS, along the centuries , since its foundation (1603), has been characterized by the scientific activity of its members (whose number is now 80) who, two times per year, meet for some days, to debate scientific subjects affecting general problems of life (last meeting was dedicated to the energy), and to pro-duce a final document that should be a base for the Pope's lectures;
• - numerous Academies would like to establish contacts with the PAS, but the different intrinsic activity nature between them (Academies are usually a group of people renowned for their scientific activity; the PAS engages the scientists in producing documents that could support the view of the Catholic Church in crucial problems) creates a remarkable difference.

During the discussion, a flash note of Professor Cinti concerning his scientific activity was discussed with special interest. This flash note regarded the coincidence of the 2008 Bl. Pascal medal motivation that could be of interest for PAS: an alternative perspective for the use of embrional stem cells. The Chancellor remarked that it is one of the major scientific interest of the PAS and that a collaboration could be possible in this field.

The Chancellor accepted the invitation and a Belgian member of PAS will repre-sent the institution at the EAS meeting in Brussels.

Prof. Enrico EVANGELISTA

Head of Material Science and Engineering Division

Prof. Saverio CINTI

Bl. Pascal Medal 2008 in Biology and Life Sciences       

Visit of the President in Italy
(May 14th and 15th, 2008)

Visit in Vatican: a meeting at Vatican, with Monsignore Pennacchini of the Secretary of State of Vatican, took place in Vatican, in order to have first contact with the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The roots of this Academy is the Academy of the Lincei , founded in Rome in 1603, the first exclusively scientific Academy in the world. [More]

Seminars and Conferences of interest

University of Milan, June 22 to 26, 2009 : Professor Vincenzo Capasso, member of the Organizing Committee, invites our members to the 10th European Congress of Stereology and Image Analysis

International Francqui Chair 2008-2009: Lecture of Professor Erik D. Demaine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "Linkage Folding: From Erdös to Proteins" (Tuesday March 5, 2009, 4PM ,Faculté Universitaire des Sciences Agronomiques de Gembloux , TBA) External link

International Francqui Chair 2008-2009: Lecture of Professor Erik D. Demaine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: " Origami, Linkages, and Polyhedra: Geometric Folding Algorithms (Thursday February 19, 2009, 4PM,Vrije Universiteit Brussels, TBA) External link (next lextures in FSAGx)

International Francqui Chair 2008-2009: Lecture of Professor Erik D. Demaine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: " (Theoretical) Computer Science is Everywhere (Wednesday December 3, 2008, 4PM,Université Catholique de Louvain-la-Neuve, TBA) External link (next lextures in VUB, and FSAGx)

International Francqui Chair 2008-2009: Inaugurating Lecture of Professor Erik D. Demaine, Massachusetts Institute of Technology: "Mathematics meets Art, Puzzles, and Magic: Fun with Algorithms" ( Wednesday November 19, 2008, 4PM, ULB, Salle Dupréel, Institut de Sociologie (1er étage) - 44 avenue Jeanne, 1050 Bruxelles). External link (next lextures in UCL, VUB, and FSAGx)

Prizes and Awards

Nobel Prize winners , elected to EAS

Fields Medal winners , elected to EAS

News Releases

May 10th-15th 2008 The member of EAS, prof. Oleg L. Figovsky is a chairman of the International Congress on Science and Innovation in Civil Engineering "SIB" that will take in Voronezh, Russia on November 10-15, 2008.

May 16th 2008 - Professor Vincenzo Capasso, member of our Scientific Committee, has received an Honorary Doctorate of Science in Technology of the University of Lapeenranta (Finland) in recognition of his achievements in promoting European collaboration between academia, technology and society in the field of industrial mathematics, in areas including applied research, educational development and network building.

Our Member and Blaise Pascal Medal 2003, Professor Eric de Clercq (Belgium), was elected European Inventer of the year 2008 (Ljubjana, 6-7 May).

February, 2008 - Professor Bernard Barbara our Head of Physics Division, is awarded the 'Gentner-Kastler-Preis' by the German Physics Society and the French Society of Physics, for his innovative contributions to magnetism of solids, nanostructures and molecules [Click Here]

January, 2008 - Professor Jean-Marie Andre (FUNDP, Chemistry Department), member of the EAS, becomes President of the Royal Academy of Belgium.

December, 2007 - Professor Oleg L. Figovsky, member of EAS in Materials Sciences, has been elected as Honorary Professor of the Voronezh State University (VGASU) for his fundamental and applied research in the field of nanotechnologies for industrial application.

November, 2007 - Professor Philippe G. Ciarlet has been elected as a Member of the Academy of Sciences in the Developing World (T.W.A.S., previously Third World Academy of Sciences).

October, 2007 - Professor Krishnaiyan Thulasiraman has been elected as a Fellow of the American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS).

October 8, 2007 - Professor Mario R. Capecchi from the University of Utah, Member of the European Academy of Sciences, was Nobel laureate in Physiology or Medicine. He was honoured together with Professor Oliver Smithies and Sir Martin J. Evans for their work on the development and application of gene targeting' in mice. This technique allows geneticists to target and mutate specific genes and, thus, study the functional role of these genes in the organism. Next to DNA sequencing it is perhaps the most important technique to understand genomes[Read More]

July, 2007 - Professor Nina Fedoroff, the Verne M. Willaman Chair in Life Sciences and Evan Pugh Professor at Penn State University, and an External Professor of the Santa Fe Institute, is one of eight scientists named by US President Bush to receive the 2006 National Medal of Science, the nation's highest award for lifetime achievement in scientific research. The honorees received medals at a White House ceremony on 27 July 2007.[Read More]

June, 2007 - Professor Oleg L. Figovsky was awarded the NASA TechBrief award "50 the best in nanotechnology - 2007"

May, 2007 - Professor Peter Jagers was elected as Vice President of the Royal Swedish Academy of Science.

New Members

Professor Ruslan Z. Valiev
Ufa State Aviation Technical University, Ufa, RUSSIA

Born in 1949 in Russia, Ruslan Valiev finished his studies on Physical Metallurgy at the Ural State Technical University (Russia), and received his Ph.D. with the State University of Kharkov (Ukraine) in 1977. Since 1995, he is Professor and Director of the Institute of Physics of Advanced Materials and since 2003 Head of Chair of Plastic Deformation and Nanotechnology, Ufa State Aviation Technical University in Ufa, Russia. In the early 1990's Prof. Valiev and his co-workers have pioneered the production of ultrafine-grained and nanostructured metals and alloys by the techniques of severe plastic deformation (SPD). These works have attracted high interest and intensive developing in many countries. His main present research interests comprise studies of unique mechanical and functional properties of SPD produced nanomaterials.

Since 1992, Ruslan Valiev has been Guest Professor at well-recognized research departments in USA, Japan and Europe, and in 2001 was granted a Research Award of the Humboldt Foundation (Germany) as well as AvH Re-invitation Award in 2007. He has acted as co-organizer of several international SPD meetings, among these the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Investigations and Applications of SPD which was held 1999 in Moscow and initiated the NanoSPD conference series. Ruslan Valiev is a member of several international professional committees, among these are the International Committee on Superplasticity, Orlando, USA, and the International Committee for Nanostructured Materials, Sendai, Japan and chairman of the International NanoSPD Steering Committee (www.nanospd.org). He has published a large number of publications and books, and gave numerous keynote lectures and invited talks at international conferences. Prof. Valiev enters the editorial board of a number of scientific journals (The Physics of Metals and Metallography, the Physics and Engineering of High Pressures, and others). Besides, he is holder of more than 20 patents related to SPD. Currently holds position #8 in the ranking of most cited authors publishing in materials science compiled by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) (PHILADELPHIA, USA). His value of h-index is 53 (signifying 53 publications each have at least 53 citations).

Professor Kerim Allahverdiev
TÜBITAK Marmara Research Center Materials Institute, Turkey & Institute of Physics Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciencesö, Azerbaijan

Kerim Allahverdiev, Azerbaijanian by birth, was born in 1944 and educated at the Moscow Power Engineering Institute (MEI), where he received degree in Electrical Engineering in 1967. His Institute diploma thesis was performed at the Lebedev Institute of Physics, Moscow and was devoted to the superconducting properties of layered Niobium Selenide crystals. In 1967 he finished 2 years English school in Moscow. In 1972 he received the degree of the Candidate of Physical Mathematical Sciences working at the Institute of Physics Azerbaijan National Academy of Sciences in close collaboration with the Lebedev Institute of Physics. In 1974-1975 he had Postdoctoral at the Clarendon Laboratory of Oxford University, UK. In 1982 he received a degree of Doctor of the Physical Mathematical Sciences submitting the thesis to the Institute of General Physics also, Moscow, working in close collaboration with the Institute of Spectroscopy and Institute of High Pressure Physics, Troitsk, Moscow Region. Since 1985 he is Professor in Physics. In 1992-1995 he is Professor in Physics at the Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. Since 1995 he is Senior Scientific Researcher at the Marmara Research Centre (MRC) of the Turkish Scientific and Technological Council (TUBITAK), Gebze, Turkey and Senior Research Scientist at the Institute of Physics Azerabaijan National Academy of Sciences.

As a visiting professor, researcher and invited lecturer, Prof. K. Allahverdiev has presented, taught seminars and engaged in scientific collaboration at more than 40 Universities and Research Centers around the world, including Moscow State University; Oxford University, Cambridge University; Sheffield University, UK; London University; Imperial College, UK; MPI FKF, Stuttgart, Germany; RWTH Aachen, Germany; Bochum University, Germany; Bayreuth University, Germany; Hamburg University, Germany; US Air Force Wright Patterson Lab., Dayton; Colorado State University, USA; University of Cincinatti, USA; Tsukuba University, Japan and Madrid University, Spain.

He has been directing academic research in the field of physics and practical applications of layered semiconductors for over 30 years. Research Achievements include: new effective nonlinear materials in the system of layered gallium selenide- type semiconductors; first observation and explanation the nature of the low-temperature ferroelectric and high-pressure phase transitions in ternary layered chalcogenides. New class of the ferroelectric-semiconductors was discovered in a frame of joint research with the Institute of Spectroscopy (Prof. E. Vinogradov et al.), Troitsk, Moscow Region; first experimental investigation of the influence of ultra-short laser pulses on the transient-transmission change of layered A3B6 crystals and observation of quantum beats as due to the coherently excited fully symmetric phonons. As a result, new type of ultra-fast light modulator was suggested; first observation of the second harmonic generation in gallium selenide at 10.6 µm an 1579 nm and resonant excitonic second-harmonic generation; influence of intercalation on the electronic and vibration properties of gallium selenide-type crystals.

K. Allahverdiev hands-on experience in: modern spectroscopy techniques-also under pressure (pump-probe experiments, Raman scattering, nonlinear harmonic generation and wave mixing, photo- and electro- luminescence, exciton spectroscopy and others; growth and characterization of single crystals, nanocrystals and polycrystalline materials; carrier transport and galvanomagnetic measurements, dielectric spectroscopy; supervising the students at graduate and undergraduate levels, advising Ph.D Theses; demonstrated ability in project management, communication and organization skill, energetic.
Professor Allahverdiev has received several awards, honors, membership and fellowships including Azerbaijan State Prize in Science (1988); Krupp's stipendium, Technical University Aachen (1989); Window-on- Science Award, US Air Force European Office of Aerospace R&D, USA (1996, 2001); Royal Society Award as visiting Professor (1987, 1989); Citation in the USSR Academy of Sciences List of Best Achievements of the Year for the determination of the interlayer parameters and the peculiarities of the phonon spectra of A3B6 semiconductors (1978). Same Citation for different achievements in 1983, 1989 and 1991. He is a member: of New York Academy of Sciences (1998); Azerbaijan National Academy of Creation (1988); Russian Engineering Academy of Sciences, named by A. M. Prokhorov (2008); Member of the Organizing Committee of the European High Pressure Research Group (EHPRG) (1987-1990, 1991-1994, 1996-1999); Member of the Editorial Board, Turkish Journal of Physics; Reviewer of the JOSA, JAP, Materials Research Bulletin and others.

Professor Allahverdiev has published more than 275 articles on the linear and nonlinear optical properties of layered semiconductors, 1 book and 7 review articles. He has 5 patents.

Although a very busy personality Professor Allahverdiev finds time for sport (football, swimming). Among his other hobbies are gardening, walking, music (classic and modern).

Professor Ni-Bin Chang
University of Central Florida (UCF), USA

Ni-Bin was born in 1960 in Taiwan and educated at the National Chiao-Tung University (NCTU) where he received his bachelor degree in Civil Engineering in 1983. After having worked as an environmental engineer for about four years in the Navy and the government agency, respectively, from 1983 to 1987 he received the prestigious national award for foreign advanced study. Later on, he received his Master's and Ph.D. degrees in the field of Environmental Systems Engineering at Cornell University in 1989 and 1991, respectively, in the US. He taught at many universities in Taiwan and USA (National Cheng-Kung University, National Taiwan University, Tong-Hai University, Texas A&M University-Kingsville). He is a professor with Civil, Environmental, and Construction Engineering Department, University of Central Florida (UCF) in the U.S. at present.

As a visiting professor, scientist, and invited lecturer, Dr. Chang has presented, taught seminars, and engaged in scientific collaboration at more than 30 universities and research establishments around the world, including the Peking University, Tonjig University, Tong-Hua University of Science and Technology, Cambridge University, University of Reading, University of Portsmouth, The Council of Environment in England, Karlsruhe University, Heidelburg University, Stuttgart University, Technical University of Darmstadt, and University Nova de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal. He was a visiting professor in the Institute of Engineering Thermophysics at Chinese Academy of Sciences (China) in 1998, and the former Department of Systems Engineering at University of Pennsylvania (USA) in 1999; and a visiting scientist in the Laboratory for Ecological Remote Sensing, USDA and National Risk Management Research Laboratory, USEPA in 2008. He gave graduate seminar talks in Georgia Institute of Technology (2008), University of Texas-San Antonio (2007), Louisiana State University (2006), University of Louisville (2005), Arizona State University (2005), and University of Louisiana (2004) in the U.S.

He has been directing academic research in the field of environmental and water resources systems analysis for over 20 years. His area of expertise covers many facets of environmental sciences and engineering including environmental resources management, sustainable systems engineering, environmental systems modeling, remote sensing, environmental informatics and decision making, and industrial ecology. In recent years, the focus of his research brings well-rounded interdisciplinary efforts in the area of environmental informatics and systems analysis. It emphasizes fusion of environmental hydrology, environmental/ecological engineering processes, computational methods, and information technologies to advance our understanding of large, complex, and integrated environmental and hydrologic systems. The spectrum of these systems ranges from the natural systems, to the engineered systems, and to the integrated natural and engineered systems where the green infrastructure plays a critical role. He has developed over 40 different types of simulation and optimization models for a variety of environmental and hydrological systems analyses. These findings demonstrate the pioneering work in developing and formally establishing the requirements for integrating sensor technology, remote sensing/GIS, cyber infrastructure, infrastructure asset management, low impact development, and sustainability sciences as applied to water resources and environmental management under the global change impacts. It promotes a holistic understanding of the physical world and the built environment via sensing, modeling, analysis, and prediction for various environmental and hydrologic systems under normal operation and disaster conditions.

Professor Chang has received several awards, honors and fellowships including Russell Ackoff Award in the US (1994), Annual Research Award, National Science Council in Taiwan (1994, 1995, 1996), Research Excellence Award, National Science Council in Taiwan (1999-2001), Young Engineer Award, Chinese Institute of Engineers (1999), and the Best paper award in the 6th International Conference on Environmental Informatics, Nov. 21-23, 2007, Bangkok, Thailand. His paper titled "Watershed-based Point Sources Permitting Strategy and Dynamic Permit-trading Analysis" was used by the European Commission's environmental news service for policy makers, distributed to over 6,000 subscribers via Science for Environment Policy News Alert (Feb. 10, 2008).

He was one of the founding fellows of the International Society of Environmental Information Management in 2002. He has authored and co-authored over 130 peer-reviewed journal articles, 9 books and 7 book chapters, and 128 conference papers with more than 1,000 citations. He served as the guest editor for seven special issues with Journal of Hydrological Engineering, ASCE, Journal of Civil Engineering and Environmental Systems, Journal of Environmental Informatics, Journal of Environmental Management, Stochastic Environmental Research & Risk Assessment, Practice Periodicals of Hazardous, Toxic, and Radioactive Waste Management, and Journal of Environmental Modeling & Assessment. He is the former editor-in-chief of the Journal of Environmental Informatics. At present, he is the editor or associate editor of Journal of Applied Remote Sensing, Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, ASCE, Journal of Water Quality, Exposure and Health, Frontiers of Earth Sciences in China, International Journal of Ecology & Development, and Journal of Environmental Informatics. He also serves on the editorial board of 11 international journals and ad hoc reviewers of 68 international journals. He has been pursuing the conference leadership to address the frontiers of environmental systems analysis all over the world serving as chair, co-chair, session chair and committee members for over 34 academic conferences.

Professor Viorel Barbu
"Al. I. Cuza" University, Iasi, Romania

Professor Viorel BARBU is Professor of Mathematics at the "Al. I. Cuza" University, Iasi, since 1980. He was Rector (President) of the University of Iasi (1981-1989) and Vice President of the Romanian Academy (1998-2002) ; he is Director of Institute of Mathematics of Romanian Academy in Iasi, since 1990 , and President of Romanian Academy Iasi Branch (since 2001).

His research activity is in the fields of partial differential equations, infinite dimensional equations and control theory. His works have been quoted and used by more than 1500 mathematicians in more than 2500 papers.

He was Visiting Professor at numerous foreign universities (C.N.R., University of Rome, Italy; Purdue University, USA; University of Cincinnati, USA; INRIA, Rocquencourt, France; Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa, Italy; Ohio University, USA; University of Bologna, Italy; Université Paris VI, France; University of Trento, Italy; University of Wuhan, China; University of Virginia, USA; Bonn University, Germany; Bielefeld University, Germany).

Member of the Romanian Academy since 1991, he is also Honorary member of Moldovian Academy of Sciences (2001) , Doctor Honoris Causa (Honor Degree) of University of Nebraska at Omaha (1993), Doctor Honoris Causa of University of Pitesti (2001), Doctor Honoris Causa of University of Galatzi (2001) , Doctor Honoris Causa of University of Craiova (2003) . He received the Prize of the Romanian Academy in 1972.

Professor BARBU is member of various editorial boards: Numerical Functional Analysis and Optimization, (Taylor&Francis, USA), Journal of Differential and Integral Equations (USA), Advances in Differential Equations (USA), Revue Roumaine de Mathematiques Pures et Appliquees (Romania), Abstract and Applied Analysis (USA), Set-Valued and Variational Analysis; Theory and Applications (Springer-Verlag), Abstract Analysis (USA).

He published, alone or with other authors, numerous books and monographs ( Nonlinear Semigroups and Differential Equations in Banach Spaces, Noordhoff, Leyden 1975; Convexity and Optimization in Banach Spaces (jointly with T. Precupanu), Sijthoff&Noordhoff, Leyden 1978, second edition D. Reidel, Dordrecht 1986; Hamilton - Jacobi Equations in Hilbert Spaces (jointly with G. Da Prato), Pitman Research Notes in Mathematics 86, London - Boston 1983; Optimal Control of Variational Inequalities, Pitman Research Notes in Mathematics 100, London - Boston 1984; Analysis and Control of Nonlinear Infinite Dimensional Systems, Academic Press, Boston, New York,1993; Mathematical Methods in Optimization of Differential Systems Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht 1994; Partial Differential Equations and Boundary Value Problems, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Dordrecht 1998; Handbook of Differential Equations, vol. 2, pp. 1-7, Eds. A. Canada et al., Elsevier, North-Holland, 2005; Tangential Boundary Stabilization of Navier-Stokes Equations (jointly with I. Lasiecka and R. Triggiani), Memoires AMS, 852, 2006).

Professor Jin Akiyama
University of Tokai, Tokyo, Japan

Jin Akiyama is Professor of Mathematics at Tokai University and Director-General of its Research Institute of Educational Development. Born in Tokyo in 1946, he earned his Ph.D. at Tokyo University of Science and, at the invitation of Dr. Frank Harary, began his (international) career in graph theory research as a visiting scientist at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in the 1970s. His major contributions to graph theory are in the areas of factors and factorizations of graphs, path invariants, and the study of common properties of a graph and its complement. A book on factors and factorizations which he has co-authored with Mikio Kano is being published by Springer-Verlag.

Professor Akiyama has published more than 150 papers on graph theory, discrete geometry, solid geometry, applied math, and math education in journals including Journal of Graph Theory, Discrete Mathematics, Discrete Applied Mathematics, Annals of Discrete Mathematics, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, Discrete Geometry: Theory and Applications, The American Mathematical Monthly, Mathematica and Graphs and Combinatorics. He is Founding Editor (1985) and editor-in-chief of Graphs and Combinatorics, and served as a member of the editorial board of Journal of Graph Theory for 17 years. He is author of close to 100 published books on graph theory, combinatorics, discrete geometry, and math education, many of which have been translated from Japanese into Mandarin and Korean.

As a visiting professor, scientist, and invited lecturer, Dr. Akiyama has presented, taught seminars, and engaged in scientific collaboration at more than 50 universities and research establishments around the world, including the Steklov Institute of Mathematics (Russia), Nankai University and Academia Sincia (China), Chulalongkorn University (Thailand), AT&T Bell Telephone Laboratories (USA), and many others. The many academic institutes and conferences at which he has given invited and plenary lectures include the International Conference on Intuitive Geometry (Budapest 2008); Differential Equations and Topology (Moscow 2008); the International Conference on Imaginative Mathematics (Moscow 2007); the Ghanaian Conference on Math Education (Accra, Cape Coast, Kumasi 2007); the 20th European Workshop on Computational Geometry (Seville, 2004); XVIII Coloquio de Teoria de las Graficas, Combinatorica, y sus Aplicaciones (Mexico 2004); the 10th ICME (Copenhagen 2004); the Conference on Recent Progress in Mathematics Education (Bandung 2004); the 9th Quadrennial International Conference on Graph Theory, Combinatorics, Algorithms & Applications (Michigan 2000); the Cambridge Combinatorial Conference in Honor of Paul Erd¨os (Cambridge 1988); and numerous others. He has organized ten international conferences, including the first Japan Conference in Discrete and Computational Geometry (JCDCG 1997), which has become the most prominent conference series in these fields and attracts the regular participation of their most renowned researchers. He edited several proceedings of JCDCG from Springer Lecture Notes Series.

Professor Akiyama is a member of the Organizing Committee of the UNESCO-sponsored traveling exhibition "Experiencing Mathematics", a trustee of the Heisei Foundation of Basic Science, and chairman of the Awards Committee for the Koshiba Prize, which encourages youngsters to become creative scientists. The committee includes Nobel Prizewinners Dr. Masatoshi Koshiba (Physics) and Dr. Hideki Shirakawa (Chemistry). Professor Akiyama's recent research topics in discrete geometry have an original slant and are chosen for their applicability. The appeal of the problems lies in that they are not difficult to explain, even to non-mathematicians, and their solutions, while difficult to discover, are very elegant and fascinating. A case in point is the result in his recent paper entitled "Tile-makers and Semi-tile-makers" published in American Mathematical Monthly (Vol.114). He proves that if you take a regular tetrahedron, then no matter how you cut its surface, provided that it remains in one piece and can be lain flat on a plane, then the result is a tile which tesselates the plane.

In 1999, Tokyo University of Science awarded Jin Akiyama the "The First Bochan Prize" for significant contribution to mathematics and mathematics education, and in 2003 the Japan Society of Mathematics Education honored him for significant achievement in mathematics education. For more than two decades, Japan's national television and radio network, NHK, broadcast Dr. Akiyama's lectures and programs, drawing a huge audience ranging from young children to senior citizens and popularizing mathematics among the general public.

Although a very busy personality, Professor Akiyama finds time to play the accordion and has performed in various concerts in Japan. Among his other hobbies include sailing in his yacht and making artistic patchwork with paper.

Professor Yiu-Wing Mai
University of Sydney, Australia

Professor Yiu-Wing Mai graduated from Hong Kong University in 1969 with First Class Honours and the Williamson Prize; he received the PhD degree in the same university in 1972. After his PhD, he worked as a Management & Technology Trainer, Hong Kong Productivity Centre (1973); Postdoctoral Research Assistant, University of Michigan (1974-75) and Imperial College (1976). He then moved to the University of Sydney where he has held the positions of Lecturer (December 1976-78), Senior Lecturer (1979-82), Associate Professor (1983-September 1987), Personal Chair (October 1987-), Sydney University; Associate Dean (Research & Development) of Engineering (1990-93, 1995-98), Pro-Dean of Engineering (1998-2004) and Director, Graduate School of Engineering (1995-98) and Australian Federation Fellow (2002-07). Professor Mai was Acting Head and Chair Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (1993-95); Head and Chair Professor of Materials Engineering at the City University of Hong Kong (2000-02). He now holds a University Chair at the University of Sydney and is Director of the Centre for Advanced Materials Technology (CAMT). He has also been appointed Honorary, Adjunct or Guest Professor at: Tsinghua University, Peking University, Xian Jiaotong University, Tianjin University, Tongji University, Harbin Institute of Technology, Sun Yat Sen University, Hunan University, South China University of Technology, Huazhong University of Technology, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Technical Institute of Physics & Chemistry - Chinese Academy of Science, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Hong Kong University, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, and City University of Hong Kong.

Professor Mai has received several awards, honors and fellowships including: Fellow of the Royal Society of London (elected 2008); Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science (elected 2001); Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (elected 1992); Fellow of the Hong Kong Academy of Engineering Sciences (elected 2003); Fellow of the World Innovation Foundation (elected 2003); Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (elected 1999); Centenary Medal (2003); Honorary Fellow of the International Congress on Fracture (2001); Honorary Member of the Gruppo Italiano Fracttura (2002); Australian Research Council Federation Fellowship (2002-07); Distinguished Visiting Professor, Hong Kong University (2003-04); President, International Congress on Fracture (2002-05); AFG Achievement Award, Australian Fracture Group, Inc. (2000); Founding President, the Asian-Australasian Association for Composite Materials (1997-98); ISI Highly Cited Researcher in Materials Science; UK Science Research Council Senior Visiting Fellowship (1980); RILEM Award and Robert L'Hermite Medal, International Union of Testing and Research Laboratories for Materials and Structures (1981); Fulbright Senior Scholar (1988); and Australian Academy of Science/Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Exchange Fellowship (1989, 1996) among others. In addition, in 1999, he was awarded a DSc from the University of Hong Kong, and a DEng from the University of Sydney.

Professor Mai's major research interests are: Materials engineering and science covering processing-structure-property relations, manufacturing and development of new materials including polymers blends, composites, biological materials, ceramics and cementitious materials; Fracture and fatigue mechanics of materials and structures; Smart materials; Eco-materials; Tribology and surface engineering; Nano-materials and nano-engineering. He holds 2 patents; co-authored 3 books; edited 4 monographs; published 34 book chapters, over 550 SCI journal and 250 refereed conference papers. As a highly cited researcher, he has made major contributions to several areas of materials science and mechanics research:
(a) Crack-wake shielding as a general toughening mechanism in quasi-brittle materials,
(b) Science and engineering of fibre-matrix interfaces and design of high strength-high toughness fibre composites,
(c) Fracture mechanics of stitching and z-pinning to improve delamination resistance of composite laminates, and
(d) Energy approach to fracture leading to development of the European Structural Integrity Society (ESIS) Test Protocol on Essential Work of Fracture for toughness measurements of ductile polymers in plane stress.

Professor Mai is Asian and Australasian Editor of Composites Science and Technology, Editor of Materials Forum and Key Engineering Materials; Associate Editor of IMechE Journal of Aerospace Engineering. He is also editorial board member of over ten major international journals on materials science and fracture mechanics.

Professor Emmanuel Gdoutos
Democritus University of Thrace, Greece

Dr. Emmanuel E. Gdoutos is Professor of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics and Director of the Laboratory of Applied Mechanics at the Democritus University of Thrace, Greece, and Adjunct Professor at Northwestern University. He is editor-in-chief of "Strain - An International Journal for Experimental Mechanics," and President of the European Structural Integrity Society (ESIS), and the Greek Group of Fracture. He served as Chairman of the European Association for Experimental Mechanics (EURASEM). He is Corresponding Member of the Academy of Athens, the most prestigious academic institute in Greece, member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Member of Academia Europaea, Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Engineering, Fellow of the Society of Experimental Mechanics (SEM), the American Academy of Mechanics (AAM), the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and the New York Academy of Sciences (NYAS), and Honorary Member of the Italian Group of Fracture. He received the award of merit from the European Structural Integrity Society and the Theocaris and Lazan awards from the Society of Experimental Mechanics of USA. He received M.S. and Ph.D. from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.

He serves on the editorial board of eight international journals (Theoretical and Applied Fracture Mechanics, Applied Composite Materials, Advanced Composites Letters, Experimental Mechanics, The Archive of Mechanical Engineering of Polish Academy, Facta Universitatis of the University of Nis, The Open Mechanics Journal, and Scientific Technical Review of the Republic of Serbia). He has awarded two Fulbright fellowships and an excellent teaching award from the University of Toledo.
He taught at many universities in Greece and USA (Democritus University of Thrace, National Technical University of Athens, Lehigh Univ., Univ. of California at Santa Barbara and Davis, Toledo Univ., Michigan Technological University. and Northwestern University). He visited more than fifty universities and research establishments all over the world in which he gave invited lectures, seminars and had scientific collaboration. He participated in more than sixty international conferences in the area of applied mechanics. He participated in many Erasmus and Tempus inter-university programs for the promotion of the scientific and educational cooperation among education institutes of countries of the European Union His research interest include: experimental mechanics, fracture mechanics advanced composite materials and sandwich construction.

His current research projects are concerned with sandwich constructions, tearing and fatigue of elastomers, nanotechnology, composite patch repair of metallic aircraft and design and analysis of a bridge made of composite materials. He conducted extensive research work funded by many national and international organizations. He supervised more than ten PhD. students and dozens of Master students in Greece and USA. Many of his students hold faculty positions in Greek and foreign universities.
He served as chairman of the Department of Civil Engineering of the Democtitus University of Thrace. He authored over 240 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings and 15 books. .
He served as guest editor of seven special issues of international journals. His book titled "Fracture Mechanics - An Introduction" is a widely used textbook for fracture mechanics courses. He chaired many conferences in Greece and abroad in the areas of theoretical and applied mechanics including the 16th European Conference of Fracture (ECF16) and the 13th International Conference on Experimental Mechanics (ICEM13). He presented invited and plenary lectures in academic institutes and conferences. He is listed in several Who's Who.

Professor Terence Langdon
University of Southern California (USA) and University of Southampton (UK)

Terence Langdon comes from Warminster in south-western Wiltshire in the U.K. He obtained a B.Sc. degree in Physics from the University of Bristol in 1961 and a Ph.D. degree in Physical Metallurgy from Imperial College, University of London, in 1965. Thereafter, he held research positions at the University of California in Berkeley, the U.S. Steel Corporation in Pennsylvania, the Cavendish Laboratory at the University of Cambridge and the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. He was appointed an Associate Professor at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles in 1971 and promoted to Professor in 1976. In 2003 he was appointed to his present position as the William E. Leonhard Professor of Engineering in the USC Viterbi School of Engineering at the University of Southern California. Currently he is Professor of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Earth Sciences at USC. In 2005 he accepted an additional appointment as Research Professor of Materials Science in the School of Engineering Sciences at the University of Southampton in the U.K. and in 2007 he was appointed as the Director of the Centre for Bulk Nanostructured Materials in the University of Southampton.
He has held various concurrent appointments including professorial positions at the University of Melbourne, Australia, the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico in Mexico City, the University of New South Wales, Australia, the Danish Technical University and Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan. He has been Visiting Scientist at the Risø National Laboratory in Roskilde, Denmark, and Visiting Senior Fellow at the International Center for Advanced Studies in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia.

He is an elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng) in the U.K., a Member of the European Academy of Sciences and a Foreign Member of the Academy of Sciences of the Bashkortostan Republic in the Russian Federation. He was awarded a D.Sc. degree in Physics by the University of Bristol in 1980 and the degree of Doctor honoris causa by the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2003. He is a Chartered Engineer, Chartered Physicist and Chartered Scientist in the U.K. He is a Fellow of The Institute of Physics, The Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining, The American Ceramic Society, ASM International, The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS) and The World Innovation Foundation. He is an Honorary Member of The Japan Institute of Metals. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Boards of California Nanotechnologies in Cerritos, California, and Materials Solution in Kobe, Japan.

Professor Langdon has received several awards including the Blaise Pascal Medal in Material Science from the European Academy of Sciences, the Hsun Lee Award from the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the Somiya Award from the International Union of Materials Research Societies, the Albert Sauveur Achievement Award and the Henry Marion Howe Medal from ASM International, the Structural Materials Division Distinguished Scientist/Engineer Award from TMS and the THERMEC Distinguished Award from the THERMEC International Conferences. He is a member of the editorial boards of Journal of High Temperature Materials and Processes, Journal of Materials Science, Materials Science and Engineering A, Materials Science Forum, Reviews on Advanced Materials Science and Scientia Iranica. He is a founding member of the International NanoSPD Steering Committee for Nanomaterials Processed by Severe Plastic Deformation.
Professor Langdon has a wide range of research interests including the mechanical properties of metals, ceramics and geological materials, high temperature creep. superplasticity and the processing of nanostructured materials through the application of severe plastic deformation. He has published extensively and is the author or co-author of more than 800 scientific papers and 8 books including over 500 papers in peer-reviewed journals. According to the Science Citation Index published by the Institute for Scientific Information (ISI) in Philadelphia, his scientific papers have received more than 17,000 citations corresponding to an average of approximately 32 citations for each paper. More than 40 papers have received over 100 citations. He has an h-index of 68 indicating that 68 of these papers each have at least 68 citations. He is listed by ISI as one of the most highly cited scientists in the field of Materials Science on their website www.ISIHighlyCited.com .

He was ranked by ISI as #3 world-wide for the total numbers of High Impact Papers published in Materials Science during the period 1981-2001, where High Impact Papers are defined as the 200 most cited papers in Materials Science for each separate year. More recently, he was ranked as #2 world-wide for publishing in the field of Materials Science based on the numbers of citations received for papers published during the 11-year period from January 1996 to December 2006. Currently, he has published the #3 and #4 most cited papers appearing in Acta Materialia (Acta Mater. 46, 3317, 1998 with 517 citations and Acta Mater. 45, 4733, 1997 with 436 citations) and the #1 most cited paper appearing in Scripta Materialia (Scripta Mater. 35, 143, 1996 with 618 citations).

Professor Paul Lecoq
CERN, Geneva, Switzerland

Paul Lecoq was born in 1949 in Lille, France and educated at the Polytechnic Engineer school in Grenoble (France), where he obtained his diploma with honors in 1972 and in parallel at the University Joseph Fourier in Grenoble, where he got his PhD with highest honors in 1974. Part of his thesis work has been accomplished in the Nuclear Physics department of the University of Montreal (Canada). Just after his PhD he was engaged at CERN as a fellow in 1974, then as a staff in 1977.
During all his career at CERN Paul Lecoq has been involved in at least 5 large international experiments, in which he played a major role at the detector design and implementation as well as at the overall technical coordination level. His experience on X-ray and Gamma ray detectors has been gained in particular as technical coordinator of the two largest ever built calorimeters for the L3 experiment in the eighties at the large electron-positron ring (LEP) at CERN under the leadership of the Nobel laureate Prof. Samuel Ting, with 12'000 Bismuth Germanate (BGO) crystals (1.5 tons), and for the CMS experiment at the large hadron collider (LHC) at CERN starting in 2008, with 76'000 Lead Tungstate (PWO) crystals (100 tons). This technical coordination activity was across up to 50 laboratories and institutions worldwide and several industries.

Paul Lecoq has become in the last 20 years a worldwide recognized expert in the domain of heavy scintillating crystals. After some interaction with the Nobel laureate Georges Charpak he has decided to create in 1990 an international and multidisciplinary collaboration (Crystal Clear) hosted by CERN, to regroup all the competences in different fields (solid state physics, crystallo-genesis, chemistry, solid state optics, particle physics, etc...) for the development of new inorganic scintillators for scientific and industrial applications. This collaboration has been instrumental in understanding the fundamental role of Ce3+ as an activator in many hosts, as well as in developing the high quality mass production of Cerium Fluride (CeF3), Lead Tungstate (PbWO4) and Lutetium Aluminum Perovskite (LuAP) crystals, on which Paul Lecoq owns a patent.

In order to support this research effort at the international level Paul Lecoq has initiated and chaired the SCINT series of international conferences on inorganic scintillators for physics and industrial applications: Chamonix, FR (1991), San Francisco, USA (1993), Delft, NL (1995), Shanghai, CN (1997), Moscow, RU (1999), Chamonix, FR (2001), Valencia, SP (2003), Alushta, Ukraine (2005), Winston Salem, USA (2007). The next one is scheduled in 2009 in South Korea.

Around 1997 Paul Lecoq started to work on the translational aspect of his research in the field of ionization detectors for calorimetry. He tried in particular to promote technology transfer activities from particle physics to medical imaging. This was going first to a reorientation of the Crystal Clear program opening the fundamental research on new scintillators to the construction of medical imaging prototypes such as the ClearPET small animal PET scanner with a LuAP/LSO phoswich and the ClearPEM dedicated positron emission tomography for functional breast imaging. The next step was to organize a series of workshops and conferences, such as EuroMedIm2006, the first European conference on molecular imaging technologies.

In parallel Paul Lecoq has been tirelessly trying to setup a European Centre for Research in Medical Imaging (Cerimed) and to promote it at the European level. This centre, seen as an environment of synergystic exchange between all the disciplines involved in medical imaging and industry is now an approved project, which received funding from the French central and regional government to build a 2700m2 infrastructure on the site of the university hospital La Timone in Marseilles. Paul Lecoq is now acting as technical director of this Centre, which will be fully operational in 2011 (http://cerimed.web.cern.ch) In summary the scientific leadership of Paul Lecoq has developed along the following lines:

Since 1991: Organizer of a worldwide R&D effort for the development of new scintillators for physics, medical and industrial applications. Initiator and Spokesman of the Crystal Clear international collaboration for this R&D. Co-leader of 2 other R&D projects financed by the European Communities. Technical coordinator of a national convention in France involving industry and universities on the same subject

Since 1992: Organizer of a cycle of international conferences on "Heavy scintillators for scientific and industrial applications" First one in Chamonix, France in 1992 (200 participants), 9th one in Winston Salem (NC, USA) in 2007 (300 participants)

1994-2007: As Technical coordinator of the CMS electromagnetic calorimeter at the LHC Large Hadron Collider, responsible for the technical development and the mass production of 76'000 Lead Tungstate crystals (100 tons)

1994-2000: Organizer of the development and mass production organization of Lutetium Aluminum perovskite crystals, in particular for PET scanner applications
Since 2000: Strong involvement in the development of dedicated breast imaging camera combining several modalities for a multiparametric evaluation of breast tumors (anatomic, structural and functional)

Since 2002: Feasibility study and setting-up of an international medical imaging research centre, presently being built in Marseille (Cerimed)

Professor Georges Van den Abbeele
University of California Santa Cruz (USA)

Georges Van den Abbeele, Belgian by birth, is since three years Dean of the social sciences at UC Santa Cruz. He obtained his Ph.D. in Romance Studies in 1981 at the Cornell University, Ithaca, New York. He became Associate Professor of Literature at the university of California in 1985, Professor of Foreign Languages in 1996, Professor of Humanities in 2005.

The research activities and teaching interests of Professor Van den Abbeele concern mainly three headings : Francophone studies ( Philosophy, Litterature and Culture); the past of California, Asian and latino immigration, problems met by a sustenable development; the history of the European idea from the mid-wars to the present. The rethinking of human and social studies in a contemporary context including philosophy, anthropology and the impact of cognitive studies. He played a decisive role in creating Research Institutes in the fields of his interests ( West Pacific Research institute, Humanities centers).

He has published and edited 11 books and more than 100 articles in scientific journals and encyclopedias.

He was awarded the Blaise Pascal Medal 2008 for Social Sciences.

Professor Saverio Cinti
Faculty of Medicine, Universita Politechnica Delle Marche, Ancona (Italy)

1949 Born at Ancona 18th December
1974 MD - University of Padua
1979 Specialist Internal Medicine University of Verona
1982 Specialist in Surgical Pathology -University of Milan Associate Professor of Human Anatomy- Faculty of Medicine, University of Ancona.
1984- Director Institute of Normal Human Morphology (Anatomy and Istology) , Faculty of Medicine, University of Ancona. Director Electron Microscopy Unit of the Dpt of Pathology of the Ancona General Hospital.
1986 Professor of Human Anatomy
1989- Didactic Dean Faculty of Medicine
1997-03 Vice-President of the European COST ACTION 918: "Body Weight and Energy expenditure"
2005-6 President of section Marche of SIO (Italian Society for the study of Obesity)
2007 Member of European COST ACTION BM0602: "Adipose tissue: a key target for prevention of the metabolic syndrome" Honorary member of Italian Society of Nutrition and Sport
2008-10 President Italian Society of Obesity
AWARDS 2008 Blaise Pascal Medal European Academy of Sciences

Professor Cinti is author of one book, of chapters in various books and of 168 original publications (with more than 1500 citations). He is Co-Editor in Chief of the journal "Adipocytes" and presented lectures at numerous international conferences. He pursues international collaborations with many Universities, in Austria,Czech Republic, Denmark, France, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, UK, USA.

Professor J. Derek Woollins
Dept of Chemistry, University of St Andrews, UK

Derek Woollins was born in Cleethorpes and educated at the local grammar school before studying chemistry at the University of East Anglia (Norwich) where he went on to carry out his PhD under the supervision of Andrew Thomson and Roger Grinter. He carried out postdoctoral work with Bill Cullen (UBC, Vancouver), Barnett Rosenberg (MSU, Michigan) and Norman Greenwood (Leeds, England) before being appointed as a lecturer at Imperial College London. After 12 years at Imperial College he moved to Loughborough as the Chair in Inorganic Chemistry where he stayed for five years before moving to St Andrews as the Chair in Synthetic Chemistry in 1999. He is currently Head of the School of Chemistry in St Andrews.

His early work developed high yield reproducible synthesis of complexes containing naked S-N anions. Having originally used metathesis reactions he developed the use of liquid ammonia as both a solvent and reagent to prepare M-S-N compounds in simple efficient routes which avoid the need for explosive starting materials like S4N4. This latter benefit was especially marked when he opened up the field M-Se-N chemistry . His synthetic methodologies were sufficiently good that he was able to prepare 15N labelled compounds. His group subsequently developed a range of nmr studies in S-N chemistry – establishing the utility of 14N and 33S nmr. for molecular characterisation as well as speciation in liquid ammonia. He also developed the interface with materials chemistry, a good example of this is the elegant direct reduction of S4N4 using cobaltocene to give the charge transfer system [Cp2Co][S3N3] .

He also developed the chemistry of imidophosphinates . He studied the coordination chemistry of the PIII and mixed 'hemilabile' PIII/PV as well as the PV systems which give six-membered ME2P2N rings that adopt a number of different geometries ie., boat, chair and are capable of supporting unusual metal geometries. Amongst the most exciting compounds obtained was the first square planar Sn(II) complex , trinuclear Cu(I) systems and air stable tellurium complexes

He played a major part in the development of P-Se heterocyles, synthesising the new reagent [Ph(Se)PSe2P(Se)Ph]. This compound is now commercially available and known as 'Woollins Reagent' (WR, Aldrich Cat No 57254-3). WR is useful for a variety of organic transformations and heterocycle formations

In recent times he has also been successful in elucidating the structure of the long known but poorly understood (SCN)x as part of a wider study which included fundamental characerisation of (ECN)2 as well as developing the coordination chemistry of triselenocarbonate dianion and related systems

Recently Woollins has set about investigating 1,8 substituted naphthalene derivatives. This naphthalene based work has been conducted on the premise that the 'natural' E..E in a 1,8 substituted species is ca 2.4 … and that this distance and a bonding interaction will be favoured over ring strained alternative geometries when heavier elements are placed close to each other using the 1,8 scaffolding. Thus the premise is to take disubstituted but ring strained naphthalene [ie the naphthalene is twisted from ideal aromatic planar geometry or the E groups are pushed apart with non trigonal geometries at carbon] systems and react them to release the ring strain and to form the appropriate E-E bond. The combination of a weak E-E bond coupled with the energy gained from release of ring strain should enable unsusal systems to be obtained.

Woollins has published over 425 research papers in main group chemistry and two books

Professor Guillermo Velarde
Polytechnical University of Madrid, Spain

Professor Guillermo Velarde was born in Madrid. He obtained his Master degree in 1952 and his Doctor degree in 1959 at the Polytechnical University of Madrid. In 1956 he started working in the Theoretical Physics Section of the Spanish Atomic Energy Commission (Junta de Energía Nuclear, JEN). Few months later he was sent to the United States to study nuclear physics and reactor theory at Pennsylvania State University and Argonne National Laboratory. Afterwards, he started working in Atomics International of California in a project for the design of a heavy water reactor.

When he returned to Spain to the JEN in the Fall 1963, he began research in the field of transport theory, slowing down and thermalisation of neutrons. In 1966 he was appointed professor and in 1973 got the chair of nuclear physics at the Polytechnical University of Madrid, teaching the speciality of quantum mechanics. Simultaneously to this academic activity, Professor Velarde continued his work as researcher of the JEN where he was appointed Director of Advanced Technology in 1974. This direction included the following divisions: Electronics, Engineering, In-Service Reactor Theory and Calculations, and Fusion.

Papers published by J. Nuckolls et al. in 1972 encouraged him to work in inertial nuclear fusion and he started this research in direct-driven targets based on the micropellet of DT with a layer of plutonium. To carry out these studies he organized a small but very competent group with half a dozen of scientists selected among his most brilliant students of his courses on Quantum Mechanics. Their research led to the development of NORCLA code, the first non-classified coupled code, including time-dependent hydrodynamics and realistic neutron-gamma transport with adequate energy source from fusion and fission materials. NORCLA was made of two modules: NORMA (for hydrodynamics) and CLARA (for fusion-fission sources and neutron-gamma transport).

In 1976, Professor Velarde submitted to the 19th Nuclear Energy Agency Committee in Reactor Physics held in Chalk River (Canada) a paper entitled Neutronic of Laser Fission-Fusion Systems in which the first calculation with NORCLA was postulated. This was one of the first papers published on inertial confinement fission-fusion. Since then, this code has been enlarged including two-dimensional transport and different codes for atomic physics, safety and materials.

In 1981, the JEN decided to devote all its efforts to the magnetic confinement fusion research. For this reason Professor Velarde left the JEN and founded the Institute of Nuclear Fusion (DENIM) at the Polytechnical University of Madrid. Afterwards the group that had been working with him in inertial fusion left also the JEN and joined the DENIM.

Among other data of interest, Professor Velarde was Commissioner of the Spanish Commission on Space Research (1978-1981). Chairman of the Inertial Fusion Energy Coordinating Committee of the European Union (1999-2007) and Chairman of seven international conferences. He has published 328 papers on nuclear physics, neutron transport theory and inertial confinement nuclear fusion. He has written the book Quantum Mechanics (McGraw Hill-2002) and is co-editor of other seven books. Among his publications, it is worth to remark the last one, co-edited with Natividad Carpintero-Santamaría, Inertial Confinement Nuclear Fusion: A Historical Approach by its Pioneers (Foxwell and Davies UK Ltd-2007) which describes for the first time the work carried out by the leading and pioneer scientists in this field during the last 50 years at the main international nuclear laboratories.

One the most touching moments of his life was when he was invited to Moscow by the Academician Oleg Krokhin to address the memorial lecture on Nobel Laureate Nicolai G. Basov at the Russian Academy of Sciences in 2002. At the end of this ceremony, Mrs. Basova gave him Basov's own watch as a token of the sincere friendship that both scientists (Basov and Velarde) shared along their lives.

Professor Velarde was director of the Institute of Nuclear Fusion from 1981 to 2004, being now its President. His Institute has been visited by about 200 international scientists, among them, Edward Teller and five Nobel Prizes: Rudolph Mossbauer, Leo Esaki, Nicolai G. Basov, Jack Steinberg and Carlo Rubbia and, upon the request of Professor Velarde, the Polytechnical University of Madrid granted the Honoris Causa Doctorate to Professors Mossbauer, Esaki, Basov and Rubbia.

In 1997 he was awarded with the Edward Teller Award as recognition of his research in inertial fusion energy and in 1998 Professor Velarde received the Archie H. Arms Award for this work in emerging nuclear energy systems.

Professor Charles J. Joachain
Université Libre de Bruxelles, Belgium

Born in Brussels on May 9, 1937, Professor Charles J. Joachain obtained his Ph.D. in Physics in 1963 at the Université Libre de Bruxelles. From 1964 to 1965 he was a Postdoctoral Fellow of the Belgian American Educational Foundation at the University of California in Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, and from 1965 to 1966 a Research Physicist at these institutions. At the Université Libre de Bruxelles he was appointed chargé de cours associé in 1965, chargé de cours in 1968, professeur extraordinaire in 1971 and professeur ordinaire in 1978. He was chairman of the Department of Physics in 1980 and 1981. He was also appointed professor at the Université Catholique de Louvain in 1984. In 2002, he became professeur ordinaire émérite at the Université Libre de Bruxelles and professeur honoraire at the Université Catholique de Louvain.

The research activities of Professor Joachain concern two areas of theoretical physics: quantum collision theory and the interaction of intense laser fields with matter. He has published over 200 research articles and four books.

Professor Joachain has been a visiting professor in several universities and laboratories in Europe and the United States, in particular at the University of California in Berkeley and the Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, the Université Pierre et Marie Curie (Paris VI), the University of Rome La Sapienza and the Max Planck Institute for Quantum Optics in Garching.

Professor Joachain has received many scientific distinctions and prizes, in particular the Prix Louis Empain in 1963 and the Alexander von Humboldt Prize in 1998. He was President of the Belgian Physical Society from 1987 to 1989. He is Fellow of the Institute of Physics (UK) since 1974 and Fellow of the American Physical Society since 1977. He is Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Durham since 1989. He is a member of the Académie Royale des Sciences, des Lettres et des Beaux-Arts de Belgique and of the Academia Europaea.

Professor Santiago Alvarez

Universitat de Barcelona, Spain

Professor Alvarez was born in Panama (Republica de Panama) in 1950, where he developed his interest for Chemistry. He moved to Barcelona in 1968 to study Chemistry at the Universitat de Barcelona (UB), where he pursued graduate studies with a grant of the Agustin Pedro y Pons Foundation. He obtained a Ph. D. with a thesis on vibrational spectroscopy under the advice of Prof. Jaume Casabo and in collaboration with V. Tabacik in Montpellier (France). For some time he carried out research on the synthesis and characterization of molecular metals and worked later for one year in theoretical inorganic chemistry in the group of Roald Hoffmann at Cornell University, granted by the Fulbright-MEC postdoctoral program. He was appointed as Profesor Titular (Associate Professor) in the Universitat de Barcelona in 1984 and was promoted to Catedratico (Full Professor) of Inorganic Chemistry in 1987.

His main research interests have been in bonding and stereochemistry of transition metal compounds, combining computational chemistry and structural database analysis. In particular he has dealt with the structure and bonding of several families of coordination and organometallic molecules, the structure and electrical properties of solid state compounds, the magnetic coupling of two or more paramagnetic atoms in complex molecular structures. He has produced over two hundred research papers. The most recent line of activity of his research group consists on the definition and application of the continuous shape measures and the continuous symmetry measures to the systematic description of molecular, supramolecular and crystal structures, developing new stereochemical tools such as the shape maps, the minimal distortion paths, the path deviation functions and the generalized interconversion coordinates.

He was Director of the Department of Inorganic Chemistry of the UB between 1992 amd 1995 and is advisor to the Board of Governors of the UB since 2004. He has been a member of the Editorial Board and of the International Advisory Board of Dalton Transactions, and participated in a IUPAC working party for the study of terminology of theoretical chemistry in 1993. His most recent awards include the Distincio de la Generalitat de Catalunya per a la Promocio de la Recerca Universitaria, Premio de Investigacion en Quimica Inorganica de la Real Sociedad Espanola de Quimica and the Premio Solvay de Investigacion en Ciencias Quimicas. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry since 2005 and a corresponding member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Sciences since 2006.

He has been active in organizing scientific meetings, such as the euromediterranean conference of inorganic chemistry FIGIPS-6 in 2001 and several international advanced courses on Synchrotron Radiation and X Ray Absorption, Dessign and Assembly of Molecules and Networks, Photochemistry and Luminiscence of Coordination Compounds or Structural Databases in Chemistry. Starting in 2003, he has organized the international meetings NoSIC (Not Strictly Inorganic Chemistry), in which participants discuss on topics on the borders of Chemistry and other areas of knowledge, such as art, history, language, music or gastronomy. He publishes a section in the Revista de la Societat Catalana de Quimica entitled El Bagul dels Llibres (the ark of books), that reviews the most salient books on topics close to the edges of chemistry and humanistic knowledge. He has also recently published a book entitled Els atoms en l'espai (Atoms in Space), that provides a Catalan translation of the founding papers of stereochemistry by Van 't Hoff and Le Bel, complemented with an assay on the precedents and consequences of such publications.

Professor Professor Li Ta-tsien
Fudan University, China

LI Ta-tsien is since 1980 Professor at the prestigious Fudan University in Shanghai, one of the best universities in China. He began his scientific career as a student of the famous mathematician GU Chao-hao, also at Fudan University. After he got his Ph.D. in 1966, he spent the terrible years of the so-called "Cultural" Revolution in total isolation. It is only after 1975 that he could begin to resume the usual scientific activities. In this respect, the two years that he spent from 1979-1981 as a Research Fellow at the celebrated College de France in Paris were decisive. It is the late Professor Jacques-Louis Lions, one of the most eminent and influential applied mathematicians of the twentieth century, who had invited LI Ta-tsien in Paris, a sure sign that he had an excellent opinion of him! There he became acquainted with the theory of partial differential equations and control theory, together with some of their manifold applications, such as nonlinear elasticity or gas dynamics (more specific details are provided below).
After his stay in France, LI Ta-tsien began what was to become an exceptionally brilliant career. As a result, he is now recognized as one of the most eminent applied mathematicians in China, and more generally, in Asia. I will now briefly evoke some of the domains where LI Ta-tsien has made major contributions (it would be too long to describe all of them!).

LI Ta-tsien is one of the best specialists, worldwide, of the theory and numerical analysis of nonlinear hyperbolic partial differential equations, a domain where major difficulties abound, as well as a domain of fundamental importance in applications. These include in particular nonlinear elasticity and gas dynamics. Guided by the objective of acquiring a better understanding of the theory and physics of shocks that occur in gas dynamics, LI Ta-tsien has developed a new theory of local existence of classical and discontinuous solutions for the most general quasi-linear hyperbolic systems with two variables, including those where a free boundary occurs. In this fashion, he was able to specify the local structure of discontinuous solutions. This work immediately attracted the attention of Andrew Majda, a famous specialist of the subject, who stated that [quote] "In a series of interesting papers, Li and Yu have discussed general free boundary value problems for hyperbolic equations, including the full perturbed Riemann problem and steady supersonic flow in two dimensions past a curved wedge... This is the only other work known to the author on hyperbolic free boundary value problems" [unquote].

In another series of fundamental contributions, LI Ta-tsien has established the existence of classical solutions for the Cauchy problem for general quasi-linear hyperbolic system, with "sufficiently small" initial data. This work constitutes a double achievement: First, it provides optimal estimates of lower and upper bounds for the "life-span" of a classical solution; second, it can be applied to the system of nonlinear elastodynamics. The late Professor Jean Leray, one of the most famous mathematicians of the twentieth century, then made the following comment on this work: [quote] "The work of LI Ta-tsien provides precise and elegant answers to manifold questions raised by many researchers" [unquote]. In addition, LI Ta-tsien was able to obtain a complete characterization of the life-span of classical solutions for nonlinear wave equations, thus improving over previous results of Fritz John, Lars Hormander, and Sergiu Klainerman.

More recently, LI Ta-tsien was able to obtain the first satisfactory mathematical modeling of "diagraphy of wells by resistivity", a method of fundamental importance in petroleum exploitation. This work led him to introduce a new family of boundary value problems, called "boundary value problems with equipotential surface". He then studied such problems, both theoretically and numerically, in particular by successfully applying homogenization theory to the modeling of an electrod composed of many parts. It is a measure of the success and power of his approach that it is currently used in more than ten petroleum fields over the world! In this respect, the review journal "Zentralblatt fur Mahematik" recently praised the book that LI Ta-tsien wrote on the subject, stressing that this approach has proved to be very useful to anyone interested in "mathematical geology".

To this day, LI Ta-tsien has published five monographs and more than research 190 papers. He received the State Natural Science Prize, the State Education Commission Prize for Scientific and Technical Progress, the Shanghai Scientific and Technical Progress Prize and various other Prizes.

Ta-tsien is already a Member of the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences, of the Third World Academy of Sciences, and of the French Academy of Sciences, he is also Co-Director of Mathematics Center of State Education Ministry and Institut Sino-Francais de Mathematiques Appliquées, President of the SMAI of China, Director for China of the CIMPA and Officer-at-large of ICIAM.

Professor Roderick Sue-cheun Wong
City University of Hong Kong, China

Professor Roderick S C Wong was born in Shanghai, China. He obtained his BA degree in Mathematics from San Diego State College in 1965 and his PhD from the University of Alberta in 1969. He started his career as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Manitoba, where he stayed for almost 25 years. In 1973, he was promoted to Associate Professor and in 1979 to Full Professor. In 1986, he was appointed Head of the Department of Applied Mathematics, a post he held until he left the University of Manitoba in 1994.

Prof Wong joined City University of Hong Kong in early 1994 to take up the post of Professor of Mathematics. He was concurrently appointed Head of the then newly formed Department of Mathematics. In 1995, he led the efforts for the establishment of the Liu Bie Ju Centre for Mathematical Sciences and was appointed Director of the Centre. From 1998 to 2004, he was the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Engineering, and from 2004 to 2006, the Dean of Research and Graduate Studies. In April 2006, he was appointed Vice-President (Research)/Dean of Graduate Studies.

Prof Wong was the Vice-President of the Canadian Applied Mathematics Society in 1988 and the President in 1989 and 1990. During 1988-1991, he served on the Grants Selection Committee for Pure and Applied Mathematics, Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada. From 1991-1993, he was the Vice-President of the Canadian Mathematical Society, and from 1995-1997, he was the President of the Hong Kong Mathematical Society. Prof Wong was the Co-Editor-in-Chief of "Methods and Applications of Analysis" from 1993-1999. He has been the Co-Editor-in-Chief of "Analysis and Application" since 2001, and is currently serving on the Editorial Board of more than ten journals.
  The honours bestowed on Prof Wong include the Killam Research Fellowship (1982-1984), one of the most prestigious awards for researchers given by the Canada Council, and the Rh Award for Outstanding Contributions to Scholarship and Research (1984) from the University of Manitoba. Prof Wong is holding the Fellowship of the Royal Society of Canada, an honour he obtained in 1993 through election. In 2002, he was elected to the Academy of Science of Turin (Italy) as a foreign member. In 2004, he was awarded the Chevalier dans l'Ordre National de la Legion d'Honneur. He has also been awarded an honorary professorship by Shanghai University, Dalian University of Technology, and Northeastern University of the Mainland China.

Prof Wong's research interests cover the areas of asymptotic analysis, perturbation methods, special functions and orthogonal polynomials, integral transforms, integral equations, and ordinary differential equations. During the period of 1970-1996, his research work was continuously funded by the Natural Science and Engineering Research Council of Canada, and other external grant bodies such as Atomic Energy of Canada Ltd, Provincial Government of Manitoba, etc. Since he returned to Hong Kong, he has been awarded five Competitive Earmarked Research Grants by Hong Kong Research Grants Council on five consecutive applications. Prof Wong has published over 100 papers in international journals, and is the author of the book Asymptotic Approximations of Integrals published by Academic Press (1989) and reprinted by SIAM in its Classics in Applied Mathematics Series (2001).

Professor Asuncion Fernandez Camacho
Instituto de Ciencia de Materiales de Sevilla Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas and Universidad de Sevilla, Spain

Born May 1958 in Vigo, Spain, Professor Asuncion Fernandez graduated in Chemistry at the University of Cadiz (1980) and in Physics at UNED (Spanish Open University) (1984). From 1980 to 1983 she carried out her PhD work at Max-Planck Institut für Strahlenchemie in Mülheim a.d. Ruhr (Germany) under the guide of Prof.H.Kisch. During this period she got fellowships from the Max-Planck Society and the Alfried Krupp Foundation. She obtained her Dr. re. Naturforschung Degree at the University of Dortmund in June 1983. The topic of this first stage research was the photocatalytic production of hydrogen from water in the presence of semiconductor catalysts.

She returned to Spain and joined the Inorganic Chemistry Department of the University of Seville as post-doctoral researcher and continued her research on the application of semiconductor nanoparticles as photocatalysts. In 1986 the Materials Science Institute of Sevilla  (ICMS) was created as a join centre of the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) and the University of Sevilla and Asuncion Fernandez became a tenured scientist of this Institute in 1987. She successively became Researcher in 1997 and full Professor of CSIC in 2002. She has managed the research group "Nanostructured Materials and Microstructure" since 1991 and is the Director of the ICMS since July 2001.

The research activities of Asuncion Fernandez have been mainly focussed on the physico-chemical study of materials with grain sizes bellow 50 nm (nanomaterials). In particular she worked in the fields of: Semiconductor photocatalysis, surface chemistry and plasma assisted methods for the synthesis of thin films and coatings. Her fundamental investigations have aimed to control the synthesis of nanoparticles and nanostructured thin films; as well as, to apply microstructural characterisation techniques for the study of nanostructured materials at the nano-scale. Important achievements have been done in the preparation and characterization of:

i) Gold nanoparticles stabilised through thiol derivatised organic- and bio-molecules;
ii) nanocomposite coatings for low friction and high wear resistance applications and
iii) new nanostructured materials for hydrogen storage.

She is author or more than 165 papers in International Journals and 4 internationalized patents, 37 contributions in collective and non SCI volumes and numerous scientific presentations including about 30 invited lectures in International symposia and in Industry or University centres. She leaded more than 30 research projects financed by National and European programs and supervised 9 PhD Thesis. She also leaded more than 12 experiments approved at European Synchrotrons and supervised 8 post-doctoral fellows.

Asuncion Fernandez is concerned to improve exchanges between scientific communities world wide. She did numerous stays and visits at different research Institutions and Universities: Max-Planck Institut fur Strahlenchemie Mulheim a.d. Ruhr (Germany); Ecole Centrale de Lyon (France); Berliner Elektronenspeicherring Gesellschaft fur Synchrotron Strahlung, Berlin (Germany); Daresbury Laboratory, Warrington (England); Laboratory pour l'utilisation du Rayonnement Electromagnetique LURE, Orsay (France); Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft, Berlin (Germany); Institut f¨r Anorganische Chemie II der Universität Erlangen-Nurnberg (Germany); European Synchrotron Radiation Facility ESRF, Grenoble (France); Chemistry Department, University of Cambridge, Cambridge (England); University of Surrey (England); Instituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (INFN), Frascati (Italy); Institut de Recherches sur la Catalyse CNRS, Lyon (France); The Philips Electron Optics Application Laboratory, Eindhoven (Netherlands); Department of Materials Science, University of Oxford (England); H.E.F. (Research Centre), St.Ettienne (France); Laboratoire de Physique de l'Etat Condensé, UPRES CNRS 6087, Université du Maine (France); among others.

She is associated editor of the "Journal of Metastable and Nanocrystalline Materials". Trans Tech Publications. ISSN 1422-6375, electronic journal. She has been president of the "Physics and Mathematics Committee" of the CNEAI (Spanish National Evaluation Committee for Research activity) (2005-2006); member of the "Production technology Committee" for the Andalusian Research Program, regional evaluation for research activity (2003-2005); referee for evaluation of research projects of the regional government of Galicia (Spain) (2007); director of the Transmission Electron Microscopy general facilities at the Research Centre Isla de la Cartuja since October 1996. Her awards include: "Premio Extraordinario de Licenciatura" (M.Sc. award), University of Cadiz; fellowship of the Max-Planck Gesellschaft for Ph.D. students (Dec.1980-Sep.1981); fellowship of the Alfried Krupp Stiftung for Ph.D. students (Oct.1981-Jun.1983); award for young researchers from "Real Academia Sevillana de Ciencias"-"Royal Academy of Sciences of Sevilla" 1994; Award "Fundacion Domingo Martinez" (1996-97), award "Andaluza que abre caminos 2004" recognition to relevant Andalusian women.

Professor Vladimir L. Arlazarov
Institute for System Analysis, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow

EDUCATION and DEGREES

1961 - M.S. in Mathematics, Moscow State University, Russia.
1968 - Ph.D. in Computer Science, University of Gorky, Russia.
1987 - Doctor of Science and Full professor in Computer Science, Moscow, Russia.
2003 - Corresponding Member of Russian Academy of Science, Moscow, Russia.


EMPLOYMENT
1961 - 1968, Engineer, senior engineer, Institute of Theoretical and Experimental Physics, USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
1968 - 1977, Head of the Software Laboratory, Institute of Control Problems, USSR Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
1977 - present, Head of the Computer Science department, Institute for System Analysis, Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow.
PART-TIME EMPLOYMENT
1969 - present, Professor in Moscow Physics and Technology Institute, Moscow.
1993 - present, President and CEO of Cognitive Technologies, Ltd., Moscow.

RESEARCH INTERESTS
Discrete Mathematics
1970 - 1979, Identification of graphs, invariants of graphs, enumeration of regular graphs.

Data Bases
1977 - 1984, Head of the INES data base management system project, one of the most important developments for IBM-360-compatible computers of the early 80s (INES was installed in over 2500 organizations). Theoretical works on data bases.

Artificial Intelligence
1963 - 1977, Chess game programming. Development of the KAISSA chess program. Winner of the First World Computer Chess Championship (with G.Adelson-Velsky, M.Donskoy), Stockholm, 1974.
1988 - 1993, Development of the Optical Character Recognition systems. The OCR system developed in the Institute for System Analysis is the leader in the Cyrillic OCR market.
1993 - present, Speech recognition systems, Creation of speech corpora, Text-to-speech systems.
1995 - present, Handwritten Recognition, Forms Recognition, Pattern Recognition.

Document Management and Workflow
1997 - present, Theory and Development of Document management and Workflow systems.

PUBLIC ACTIVITIES
Member of the scientific council of Institute for System Analysis of Russian Academy of Sciences.
Member of dissertation councils of Institute for System Analysis of Russian Academy of Sciences and of Russian State Oil and Gas University.
Member of the editorial board of periodical "SYSTEMS RESEARCH. Methodological Problems".
Member of the editorial board of periodical "Proceeding of Institute for System Analysis".

PARTICIPATION IN SCIENTIFIC AND COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENTS
Chief designer of instrumental data base management system INES which was installed on more then 2000 mainframes in former USSR.
Head of development of automated control system on international scientific and technical contacts USSR (ASU MNTS).
Chief designer of Information and analytical system "Academinform" developed for Presidium of Russian Academy of Science.
Head of development of first commercial Russian OCR systems Tiger and Cuneiform.
Head of development of Document Management system Euphrates.

RESEARCH ACTIVITIES AND PUBLICATIONS
More than 100 scientific publications, including 7 monographs.
Author of more than 60 Russian Patents in computing technologies.
Author of United States Patent in speech recognition (with D. Bogdanov, E. Komissarchik, A. Ivanov and others).

LECTURES ON ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE AND DATA BASES
Universities of Canada, 1985 (Alberta, Edmonton, MacGill Montreal, Waterloo, Toronto).
France, 1988 (Paris-6 University, Institute of Mathematics, Grenoble, INTRA). CWI, Amsterdam, Holland, 1991.

AWARDS
Gold medal of IFIP for the victory of the KAISSA chess program at the 1974 World Championship.
The USSR Council of Ministers prize for the INES development and implementation. The medal "For Labour Valour" (the USSR state award).
The medal "Labour Veteran" (the USSR state award).
5 awards of Russian Fair of national economy achievements (VDNCh) for implementations of automatic control systems, mathematical knowledge based planning systems, hybrid computing system and others.
Member of several Russian IT professionals Top-100 lists.

Professor Alan Kin-tak Lau
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong

In 1987, Dr. Lau joined The Hong Kong Aircraft Engineering Company Ltd. (HAECO) as a craft apprentice for three and a half years in the aircraft maintenance division.

Afterward, he received his Bachelor and Master Degrees of Engineering in Aerospace Engineering from the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT University, Australia) in 1996 and 1997, respectively. Within this period, he was working in General Aviation Maintenance Pty. Ltd. Australia and Corporative Research Centre for Advanced Composite Structure (CRC-ACS) Australia as Engineer Trainee and Research Assistant, respectively for designing a repair scheme for composite performs.

He then received his Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) from The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 2001.
Thereafter, he was appointed as Assistant Professor and then promoted to Associate Professor in 2002 and 2005, respectively. Based on his outstanding research performance in the fields of advanced composites, FRP for infrastructure applications, smart materials and structures and nano-materials, he has received numerous awards which include The Best Paper Awards on Materials (1998), The Sir Edward Youde Memorial Fellowship Award (2000), Young Scientist Award (2002), Young Engineer of the Year Award (2004), Faculty Outstanding Award for Research and Scholarly Activities (2005) and Award for Outstanding Research in Nanocomposites for Space Applications, USA (2006). As his age of 33, due to his significant contribution to the field of science and engineering, he was elected as Corresponding Member of European Academy of Sciences with the citation "for profound contributions to materials science and fundamental developments in the field of composite materials" in 2002, and has now elected as Full Member of the Academy. Dr. Lau has published over 160 scientific and engineering articles and his publications have been cited over 450 times to date.

He has also successfully converted his research findings into real-life practical tools and therefore a total of 7 patents have been granted to him. Since 2002, Dr. Lau has conducted more than 30 industrial-based consultancy projects with different governmental agencies and private sectors. Besides, he has also been handling many industrial-based collaborative projects, which assist the local small and medium sized enterprise (SME) transformation.

He has also been actively organizing different local and international activities for the industry. Currently, he has been serving more than 40 local and international professional bodies as Chairman, Committee Member, Editor and Key Officer to promote the engineering profession to the public.

He has been elected as Chairman of the Fifteenth International Conference on Nano/Composite Engineering, and International Workshop on Multifunctional Materials in 2007 and 2008, respectively. Currently, Dr. Lau has been elected as Chairman of The Institution of Engineering Designers, Hong Kong Branch and Vice President of Engineers Australia, Hong Kong Chapter. He is Fellow of Engineers Australia (FIEAust) and the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (FIMechE).

Professor Piero Baglioni
University of Florence (Italia)

Piero Baglioni is full professor of Physical Chemistry and lecturer of "Physical Chemistry of Disperse Systems and Interfaces" at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Florence. He has been appointed as Visiting Scientist/Professor by some prestigious Laboratories such as the Department of Chemistry of the University of Houston, the Weizmann Institute, the Collège de France, and the M.I.T.

He is the Director of the National Consortium for Nanosystems (CSGI); he is in the Advisory Board and reviewer of several international journals, and International organization (European Science Foundation, ESF, National Science Foundation, NSF) . He is member of the scientific board of several national and international Institutions, industries (Italcementi, FAST, HMI, etc.) and Journals, coordinator of several National and European Union's projects.

Piero Baglioni is the author of more than 250 publications on books and largely diffused international journals. He is also the author of 12 patents for the preparation of aqueous suspensions at high concentration of particulate, for the therapy and photodynamic diagnosis of tumors, for the conservation of the cultural heritage, for the setup of a new process for the treatment of textile industrial waste, for production of emulsions from Bio Crude Oil, for production of nanoparticles and novel nano-coatings via flame-spraying, and using homogeneous and heterogeneous solutions.

Piero Baglioni produced several innovations in the field of both inorganic and organic colloids. Within the broad field of modern colloid and surface chemistry, his research is mainly concentrated into the following areas:
(1) Self-assembly of bio-inspired surfactants (nucleolipid and ascorbic acid derivatives) and of biomolecules (cyclodextrins)
(2) Core-shell nanostructures with tunable magnetic properties
(3) Inorganic nanophases applied to Cultural Heritage conservation and to nanocoating of materials (building materials, textiles, etc..)
(4) Interaction potentials in protein solutions
(5) Nanostrucutured surfaces for biosensors application
(6) Additive effects on microstructure and hydration in cement pastes
(7) Confined water in inorganic and biological matrices.

Professor François Pichault
University of Liege, Belgium

After a Phd in sociology under the joint supervision of Pr Michel Crozier (CSO, Paris) and P.Lebrun (Liège), François Pichault began his academic career as an assistant professor at the University of Liège. In 1986, he founded and became the President of LENTIC; a research centre focussed on the socio-organizational aspects of innovation and changes processes. This centre, grouping about 15 research fellows from different disciplinary backgrounds (economics, sociology, management, psychology, communication, etc.), has reached an international notoriety and is integrated in numerous academic networks at the European level.

During the winter 1990, Pr Pichault spent a sabbatical leaf at Mc Gill University (Montreal), with Pr Mintzberg. After this meeting, he published with his colleague Jean Nizet (Catholic University of Louvain) several books devoted to the configurational analysis of organizations and HRM policies.

As a visiting teacher, he worked in various universities and academic institutions like: Catholic University of Louvain, Royal Military Institute of Brussels, HEC Paris, University of Paris-Dauphine, University of Grenoble III (UNESCO Chair), etc. Since 2004, he is affiliated professor at ESCP-EAP, Paris.

He was involved in various cooperation programmes with St Joseph University (Lebanon), Abomey-Calavi University (Benin), IFAG (Bulgaria), State University of Minsk (Belarus), etc. He is currently Director of Research of HEC-Management School, at the University of Liège.

Pr Pichault can be defined as a social scientist among business practitioners, combining theoretical knowledge with empirical experience in organizations submitted to change processes. With his team, he has been in charge of various action researches in Belgian and foreign companies belonging to various sectors such as: steel, IT, glass, electricity, automobile, food, biotechnology, plastics, bank and insurance, railways, express cargo, international organizations, Belgian public agencies, non profit organizations, etc. Such an empirical experience helped him to develop a critical and in-depth view on the main evolutions of the labour market, with a special interest for technological innovations, new organizational forms (network organizations) and flexible labour patterns and their social perceptions. His original perspective has been presented in more than ten books and several dozens of scientific papers.

Professor Claude Imbert
Ecole Normale Supérieure de Paris (France)

Professor Claude Imbert is a philosopher by training. She obtained her Ph. D. at the Ecole Normale Superieure of Paris, a first degree in mathematics and mathematical logic (Harvard University and Institut Poincaré, Paris), and a first degree in old languages and literature (Greek and Latin).
Professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Paris, later Chairman of its department of philosophy, she specialized in history of logic and epistemology. She became member of several scientific commissions of historians of sciences and philosophers of sciences. She was also associate professor at the University of California (Davis), associate Professor at the University John Hopkins (Baltimore), Scholar of the Getty Foundation (Los Angeles), Fellow at Trinity College (Cambridge, 2003), associate Professor at Fudan University (Shangaï).

Elected as President of the Jury of the Institut Universitaire de France in 2006, she is now Professor Emerita.
Her research works and publications were mostly devoted to history and anthropology of logic systems (Greek logic, Port-Royal, Kant, Frege, Wittgenstein, Levi-Strauss); history of painting and symbolic systems; epistemology, cognitivism; contemporary philosophy. She published several books as author or co-author on these subjects, and numerous articles in French, Portuguese, Brazilian, American, English, German, Chinese, Japanese, Rumanian and Italian journals.

For her institute, she was in charge of various foreign missions, in United States, United Kingdom, Spain, China, Chili, Columbia, Brazil, Germany, Italy, Portugal, India, Argentina, Canada, Tunisia, Israel, Australia and Switzerland.

She is now, for the Ecole Normale Supérieure, responsible of the seminars, in which she proposes challenging questions pervading human and social sciences when they are facing a second modernism. Her present seminars are organized with Universities of U.S., China, U.K., Italy, Germany, Brazil, Tunisia and France.

She always gave a great importance to popularizing social sciences, and notably philosophy; she gave numerous conferences and participated in various emissions of radio and television and conferences.

She obtained French and foreign awards et recognitions (Prix de l'Académie des sciences morales et politiques (Dagnan Bouveret-2000), Distinguished Overseas Scholar Fellowship, China (Fudan University, Shangaï- 2003); Commandeur dans l'Ordre des palmes académiques (2002); Officier de la Légion d'honneur (2006)).

Professor Krister Holmberg
Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Krister Holmberg was born and brought up in Göteborg, Sweden. He graduated with a MSc degree in Chemical Engineering from Chalmers University of Technology in 1970 and continued studies towards a PhD degree at the same university. He did his thesis work in organic chemistry, studying various aspects of the Diels-Alder reaction under the supervision of Professor Erich Adler.

After having completed his PhD in 1974 he moved to Helsingborg to work as a researcher at Leo, a pharmaceutical company later bought by Pharmacia (which was subsequently acquired by Pfizer). At the end of 1976 he moved to Berol Kemi, a major Swedish chemical company, where he became head of R&D of their division for paint binders. He worked for the chemical industry until 1991, first at Berol Kemi's division for paint binders, then at Eka Kemi and then back at Berol Kemi, now as Research Director of the company. During these years he gradually moved from organic synthesis to surface chemistry. During the latter years at Berol Kemi (which during this time changed names to Berol Nobel and subsequently to Akzo Nobel Surfactants) he built strong ties to Göteborg University. Between 1984 and 1991 he was Adjunct Professor of biotechnological surface chemistry at the university. During these years he supervised several students, employees at the company, to a PhD exam in surface chemistry related to biotechnological problems. One major theme was bioorganic synthesis in microemulsions and other organized surfactant systems. Another research area was "temporary biocides", cationic amphiphiles with a weak bond in the structure. The idea was to design biocides with controlled half life.

In 1991 Krister Holmberg was offered a position as Director of the Institute for Surface Chemistry (YKI) in Stockholm, Sweden. YKI is a well-known institution in surface chemistry with some 80 member companies around the world and with a staff of around 100. At YKI he continued his research on biological surface chemistry. Together with coworkers at the institute and in collaboration with scientists in Gainesville, Florida, Huntsville, Alabama and Lyon he developed methods to make protein-resistant surfaces of interest for medical and biotechnical applications. The technique proved to be particularly interesting for solid phase immunoassay. A procedure was developed to immobilize antibodies to such surfaces and these antibodies retained activity better than antibodies attached by the conventional procedure.

Krister Holmberg moved to Chalmers University of Technology in 1998 to become Professor of Surface Chemistry. Since 2003 he is also the Dean of Chemical and Biological Engineering. He has established a large research group active in many areas of applied surface chemistry. Preparation of nanomaterials using self-assembled surfactants as templates became an important research field and he collaborates closely with groups in Paris and in Gainesville, Florida. The microemulsion technique is used to make nanoparticles composed of single noble metal or metal alloys and micellar solutions of block copolymers in water are used for making mesoporous oxides, such as silica, alumina and titania and also mesoporous graphite. Nobel metal nanoparticles are inserted into the pores of the mesoporous graphite. Heterogeneous catalysis is the main application of this work.

Microemulsions and other microheterogeneous systems are also used as reaction media for organic and bioorganic synthesis. Such reaction systems are ideally suited to overcome incompatibility problems sometimes encountered in organic synthesis. In this respect the microemulsion approach can be seen as an alternative to phase transfer catalysis. Krister Holmberg showed that very high reactivity can be obtained by combining the two approaches.
In recent years Krister Holmberg has combined organic synthesis with nanomaterials. The pores of mesoporous oxides, which are water-filled, are used as host for a homogeneous catalyst, a metal organic compound or an enzyme, and the catalyst-loaded particles are kept as a suspension in a hydrocarbon were the substrate is dissolved. A rhodium-based catalyst with water soluble ligands was used for carbon-carbon coupling reactions and a lipase was used for esterifications and transesterifications.

Krister Holmberg has published over 200 research papers, he is the author or editor of six books and he is the inventor or coinventor of 35 patents. He was Chairman of the Swedish Chemical Society between 1999 and 2005. He is a member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences and of the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences. He received l'Ordre National du Mérite au grade de Chevalier in 2000 and the Oscar Carlson Award in 2006.

Professor Alain Tressaud
Research Director at ICMCB-CNRS, University Bordeaux 1 (France)

Born September 1943, in Périgueux, France, Alain Tressaud graduated from Bordeaux University, 1964 where he got a "Doctorat en Chimie" in 1967 and a "Doctorat-des-Sciences Physiques" in 1969. His mentor in solid-state chemistry was Prof. Paul Hagenmuller, Director of Laboratoire de Chimie du Solide, Bordeaux, the initiator of the new born European school of solid-state chemistry. A post-doctoral stay, as a NATO fellow, in the laboratory of Neil Bartlett at Berkeley, CA,  initiated an interest in high oxidation-state fluorine chemistry.

Research appointments at CNRS began in 1966 and he became successively: "Maître de Recherche" , 1976, Research Director (2nd class 1982, 1st class 1992). He has managed the Fluorine Group in Bordeaux for several decades, and is now responsible at ICMCB-CNRS for the running of the Functionalized Materials Group, which comprises about thirty researchers involved in Fluorine, Hybrid materials and Nanoparticles topics.

He is the author of more than 300 papers in International Journals and 12 internationalized patents, 7 books as editor or major contributor, numerous scientific presentations, including about 100 invited lectures in International symposia and in Industry or University centres.

The research activities of Alain Tressaud have been mainly focused on fluorine chemistry and fluorinated materials, first at the Laboratoire de Chimie du Solide, and later at the Institute for Condensed Matter Chemistry of Bordeaux (ICMCB-CNRS), University  Bordeaux1. His fundamental investigations have aimed at improving our understanding of the dependence of magnetic, electronic and optical properties of solids on structure and bonding. Important achievements have been new synthetic routes to binary and complex fluorides; the preparation of novel oxidation-state transition-element compounds; and the demonstration of dramatic dependence of electronic properties on structural changes induced by pressure in mixed oxidation-state species. These studies, from which he has acquired international recognition, have suggested improved materials for uses in fields such as catalysis, energy storage, and optronics.

He has been an Invited Scientist at the University of California, Berkeley-USA; Philipps Universität, Marburg-Germany; Universidad La Laguna-Spain; NPL, New Delhi-India; Kyoto University and Aichi Institute Technology-Japan, and since 1998 has been an Associate Scientist of the Institute Jozef Stefan, Ljubljana, Slovenia. He is Founder and Chairman of the French Network on Fluorine Chemistry and co-Founder of the French-Japanese Seminars on Fluorine chemistry. His book series "Advances in Fluorine Science" (since 2005) of which he is founding editor-in-chief, was motivated by important society issues: environment, health, new technologies. He is a member of the scientific board of the Journal of Fluorine Chemistry, and has served as Guest Editor for that and other journals. In 2006 he was in charge of the scientific aspects of the celebration of the centenary of Henri Moissan's Nobel Prize.

Alain Tressaud is concerned to improve exchanges between scientific communities worldwide. For this purpose he has been involved as chairman or as a member of the scientific board in numerous International Symposia: Intercalation Chemistry (ISIC), Fluorine Chemistry (ISFC, ESFC), A.C.S. national meetings, French-Japanese Seminars, Intersiberian International Seminars (ISIF).

Professor Frans Carl De Schryver
K.U. Leuven (Belgium)

Frans De Schryver was born in St. Niklaas (W) on September 21st 1939. He obtained the degree of doctor in sciences in 1964. Afterwards he had post-doctoral training in polymer chemistry at the University of Arizona 1964-1966 (under the guidance of prof. C.S. Marvel) and stayed for a short time at the University of Stuttgart in 1970 (under the guidance of prof. Th. Förster) and at the Max-Planck-Institut für Biophysikalische Chemie, Abt. Spektroskopie in 1971 (under the guidance of prof. A. Weller).
At the K.U.Leuven he was appointed docent (1969), professor (1973) and full professor (1975) and became in October 2004 emeritus. He has been for many years involved in the area of photochemistry and photophysics. His research has focused on fundamental aspects of photochemistry and photophysics and their use in the study of physicochemical properties of complex systems. During the last 10 years he contributed primarily to the emerging field of time and space resolved (photo)chemistry including scanning probe microscopy, optical microscopy and single molecule spectroscopy., He has published over 600 papers.

He was a visiting professor in many Universities and held appointments as a long time associate at The Université Catholique de Louvain and the Stellenbosch University. He is a member of the Koninklijke Vlaamse Academie van België voor Wetenschappen en Kunsten and was president of the Klasse van de Natuurwetenschappen (2002). He received following awards: Fulbright Research Fellowship in 1964, was a Laureate of Koninklijke Academie voor Wetenschappen van België, a Senior Research Awardee of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in 1993, Recipient of the Chaire Bruylants in 199. He was a Porter Medalist, awarded jointly by the European, Inter-American and Japanese Photochemical Societies, and a Recipient of a Francqui Chair in 1998. He received the Havinga Medal and was holder of the Förster Memorial Lecturer in 1999. He was further awarded the Frontiers in Biochemistry Award in 2000, the Max-Planck-Forschungspreis für Chemie in 2001, the International Award of the Japanese Photochemical society and the special medal of The University of Groningen in 2005. He is Editor in chief of Photchemical and Photobiological Sciences, associated editor of ChemPhysChem and member of the Editorial Board of Angewandte Chemie and Chem Phys Lett.

Professor Sir John Meurig Thomas
University of Cambridge, UK

Professor Sir John Meurig Thomas was born and brought up in a Welsh mining valley; and his interest in science was aroused as a teenager when his physics mistress talked about the life and work of Michael Faraday, who has remained one of his scientific heroes. He graduated with a Bachelor's degree from the University of Wales, Swansea, and completed his PhD at the University of London. His first academic appointment (1958) was at the University of Wales, Bangor, where inter alia he demonstrated the profound influence that dislocations and other structural imperfections exert upon the chemical, electronic and surface properties of solids. He became Professor and Head of Chemistry at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1969, where he broadened his interests in solid-state, surface and materials chemistry and pioneered the application of electron microscopy in chemistry. In 1978 he became Head of the Department of Physical Chemistry, University of Cambridge, where his development of new techniques in solid-state and materials science, and his design and synthesis of new catalysts progressed greatly. From 1986 to 1991 he was Director of the Royal Institution of Great Britain, London, where he occupied the chair that was created for Michael Faraday. He was also Director of the Davy Faraday Research Laboratory.

At Cambridge he extended his earlier electron microscopic and surface studies of minerals and intercalates to encompass the synthesis and structural determination of zeolitic materials by a combination of solid-state NMR, neutron scattering and real-space imaging. At London he added synchrotron radiation to his armoury and devised techniques which combine X-ray spectroscopy and high-resolution X-ray diffraction to determine the atomic structure of active sites of solid catalysts under operating conditions. He introduced and pioneered so-called single-site heterogeneous catalysts, which offers a widely applicable method of designing new solid catalysts to meet the challenges of clean technology. He also designed new microporous and mesoporous catalysts, onto the inner surfaces of which active centres (for isomerizations, epoxidations, chiral hydrogenations and chiral amination) were grafted from organo-metallic precursors. With his PDRA, Dr Raja, he devised molecular sieve catalysts that convert n-alkanes to n-alkanols, cyclohexane or cyclohexene to adipic acid, n-hexane to adipic acid and cyclohexanone to its oxime and caprolactam, all in air under solvent-free conditions. One of his inventions, the single-step, solvent-free catalytic synthesis of ethyl acetate, is the basis of a 220,000 ton p.a. industrial plant in the U.K., the largest of its kind in the world. One of his most significant recent catalytic innovations - the boosting of the enantioselectivity of asymmetric organometallic catalysts by constraining them within mesoporous supports - has been multiply patented (2003) by German industry as a means of producing enantiomerically enriched hydroxycarboxylic esters. His work on the production of caprolactam (precursor to nylon-6), published in PNAS (2005), is a significant advance in "green" chemistry.

He is the author of over 1000 research papers and twenty-five patents, of two definitive university texts on heterogeneous catalysis (1967 and 1997), and of Michael Faraday and the Royal Institution: The Genius of Man and Place (1991; Japanese translation, 1994; Italian translation, 2007), and co-editor of many other monographs. His awards include the Davy Medal and the Bakerian and Rutherford Lectureships of the Royal Society, the Faraday Medal, Longstaff Medal, the Sir George Stokes Gold Medal and four others of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the Messel Gold Medal of the Society of Chemical Industry, the Semenov Centenary Medal of the Russian Academy of Science, the Willard Gibbs Gold Medal of the American Chemical Society and the first recipient of the Award for Creative Research in Homogeneous and Heterogeneous Catalysis, also of the American Chemical Society. An FRS since 1977, in 1999 he was elected Honorary Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering for work that "has profoundly added to the science-base of heterogeneous catalysis leading to the commercial exploitation of zeolites through engineering processes". He is a Foreign Member or Hon. Foreign Fellow of sixteen other national and international academies and holds numerous honorary doctorates from Australian, British, Canadian, Dutch, Egyptian, French, Italian, Japanese, Spanish and US universities. In 2000 The Electron Microscopy and Microanalysis Society of America held a symposium in his honour at their annual convention in Philadelphia. Stanford University awarded him the Linus Pauling Gold Medal in 2003 for his contributions to the advancement of science, and the Italian Chemical Society their Guilio Natta Gold Medal for meritorious work in catalysis. He is one of the world's most highly cited chemists. In recognition of his contributions to geochemistry, a new mineral, meurigite, was named after him in 1995 by the International Association of Mineralogy (the only living chemist to be so honoured).

He is founding co-editor-in-chief of Catalysis Letters (1987), Topics in Catalysis (1992), and Current Opinion in Solid-State and Materials Science (1996). He has done much to popularise science among young people and adult lay audiences, giving numerous lecture-demonstrations, radio, television, and National Portrait Gallery talks: his Royal Institution Christmas Lectures on crystals were broadcast on BBC national TV in 1987. He served (1982-85) as a science advisor in the U.K. Government Cabinet Office Committee, as Chairman of CHEMRAWN (chemical research applied to world needs), and Trustee of the Science Museum and of the Natural History Museum, London. In 1991 he was knighted for his services to chemistry and the popularisation of science. Currently he is Honorary Professor of Solid State Chemistry at the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy, University of Cambridge and Emeritus Professor of Chemistry at the Davy Faraday Laboratory. He also holds Visiting Professorships at Cardiff, Southampton and South Carolina and is an Honorary Professor at Osaka Prefecture University, Japan and Jilin University, China. From 1993 to 2002 he was Master (Head) of Peterhouse, the oldest college in the University of Cambridge. He is Vice-President of Cambridge University Musical Society.

Professor Brian F. Johnson
University of Cambridge, UK