Program & Speakers

Ehud Keinan Benno Gitter & Ilana Ben-Ami Professor of Chemistry. 

Born and educated in Israel, served in the Israeli Defense Force, married to Hana Keinan, 6 children and 7 grandchildren. 

Ph.D. from the Weizmann Institute of Science with Prof. Y. Mazur (1972-1977); Postdoctoral research at the University of Wisconsin at Madison with Prof. B. M. Trost (1977-1980). Published over 150 scientific papers, 25 patents, 3 books. 

President of the Israel Chemical Society (second term), Editor-in-Chief of the Israel Journal of Chemistry (published by Wiley-VCH), and President of the International Forum of Bio-Inspired Engineering (IFBIE, Boston, USA). He was the founder of two startup companies based on his technologies. He was the founder and first Head of the Institute of Catalysis Science and Technology (ICST) in the Technion. Member of the Executive Board of EuCheMS and Chairman of the Advisory Council of High School Chemistry Education, Ministry of Education.

Prizes and Awards

1985  Joseph and Madeleine Nash Career Development Chair, Fondacion Madelon, Zurich.

1990  New England Award for Academic Excellence

1992  Shannon Award, NIH

1995  CapCure Award

1997  Benno Gitter and Ilana Ben Ami Chair in Biotechnology

2001  Hershel Rich Innovation Award

2004  Technion Prize for security technologies

2006  Henri Taub Prize for Academic Excellence

2010  Fellow of the ‪American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS)

2012  Schulich Prize for the Promotion of Extraordinary Academic Activities

Troels Skrydstrup is currently a Professor at the Department of Chemistry, Aarhus University. He is also center leader of the Carbon Dioxide Activation Center at Aarhus University, and a key member of the Novo Nordisk Foundation CO2Research Center. He is an elected fellow of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters and was knighted by the Queen of Denmark in 2012. His awards include the Melvin Calvin Award 2018, the Bjerrum, Brønsted, Lang award in 2022, and recently also the prestigious Chinese Governmental Friendship Award (2024). Troels Skrydstrup has over 300 publications.

Research and Innovation: Recent efforts have been focused on the development of innovative isotope labeling techniques, methods for polymer disassembly and carbon dioxide capture and conversion, all through the application of transition metal chemistry.

S. Lanceros-Mendez is Ikerbasque Professor at BCMaterials, Basque Center for Materials, Applications and Nanostructures, Leioa, Spain, where he is the Scientific Director. He is Associate Professor at the Physics Department of the University of Minho, Portugal (on leave), where also belongs to the Center of Physics. He graduated in Physics at the University of the Basque Country, Leioa, Spain and obtained his Ph.D. degree at the Institute of Physics of the Julius-Maximilians-Universität Würzburg, Germany. His work is focused in the development of smart and multifunctional materials for sensors and actuators, energy, environmental and biomedical applications. 

Arjan W. Kleij received his MSc (honors, 1996) and PhD (cum laude, 2000) in chemistry from the University of Utrecht in the Netherlands. His PhD work was conducted in the group of Prof. Gerard van Koten, and focused on the application of dendrimer- and hyperbranched polymer-supported homogeneous catalysts. Part of his PhD was carried out at the University of Freiburg in a collaborative project with Prof. Holger Frey. In 2000, he moved to industry expanding his research experience, and worked for more than 3 years at Avantium as a project leader in its pharmaceutical division targeting biopolymer synthesis. At a later stage of his career (2005), he joined Hexion as a research scientist in the Epoxy & Phenolic Resins Division (EPRD). There, he focused on process optimization of chemical intermediates for coating and resin applications. He joined the group of Prof. Javier de Mendoza (UAM, Madrid, Spain) as a postdoctoral fellow in 2002, and continued postdoctoral work with Prof. Joost Reek at the HIMS institute at the University of Amsterdam (2003–2005, NL) in the field of supramolecular catalysis. In October 2006, he accepted a position as Group Leader at ICIQ in Tarragona (Spain).

In 2000 he received an NWO TALENT fellowship, was elected ICREA junior fellow in 2006, and featured in an “Author Profile section” of Angewandte Chemie in 2018. He joined Organic Chemistry Frontiers (RSC) as an Associate Editor (2019) and fulfills the same role at Green Synthesis and Catalysis (Elsevier) since 2021. In 2020 he was recognized with the Excellence Award of the Spanish Chemical Society (RSEQ), in 2021 elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) and in 2023 he received both the European Sustainable Chemistry Award (ESCA) and the Scientific Excellence Award of the Catalan Chemical Society. Since 2023, he is the scientific coordinator of the HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-DN-JD joint doctoral network “D-Carbonize”. He also was an invited professor at Tokyo University in 2022.

His previous and ongoing appointments include the editorial board of Green Chemistry (2025-), and the advisory boards of Advanced Synthesis & Catalysis (2025-), ChemSusChem (2020-), ChemCatChem (2021-) and ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering (2021). He also is/was a member of the editorial boards of ChemSusChem (2016–2019), the Journal of CO2 Utilization (since 2017) and Industrial Chemistry & Materials (since 2022). In 2016, he chaired the 1st Carbon Dioxide Conversion Catalysis (CDCC-1) conference in Portugal, and in 2019 the 4th EuCheMS Congress on Green and Sustainable Chemistry (EuGSC-4) in Tarragona. Since 2024, he is part of the governing board of the Division of Green Chemistry (GEQV) of the Spanish chemical society (RSEQ). In 2025, he co-chairs the first bilateral symposium on organic chemistry between the Netherlands and Spain (SHOCS-1) in Tarragona.

His main research interests are in the area of carbon dioxide and other biobased carbon valorization catalysis, the development of new reactivity using organic carbonates as modular precursors towards new engineering and circular polymers and fine chemicals, and the use of functional heterocycles towards challenging metal- and photo-catalyzed stereoselective transformations. Arjan has (co)authored 246 international (journal) publications and 6 patent applications, with total citations >19150 (h-index 75, i10-index 201).

Bruno Medronho (BM) graduated in Chemistry from the University of Coimbra in 2004 and completed his PhD in Macromolecular Chemistry (mixed fellowship), in 2009, in the same institution. During the PhD, BM received 2 years of scientific training in Lund University (Sweden) at the Division of Physical Chemistry. He has also been an invited guest researcher in Paderborn University, Germany and at Wellington University, New Zealand. Since 2012, BM has been coordinating a new research line at UAlg, focusing on “Biopolymer manipulation and novel bio-based materials”. In 2015, BM was awarded the IF “Investigador FCT” position (assistant researcher) and, in 2020, he was awarded the Principal Researcher position.

BM current research interest are related to the manipulation of lignocellulose biomass and agroforestry residues aiming to develop novel bio-based materials, such as cellulose-based textile fibers and films, hydrogels for agriculture, lignin-based resins and derivatives for cosmetics, foams and composites for bioremediation or single cell proteins for food applications.

Since 2019, BM is Visiting Professor at the Surface and Colloid Engineering group, FSCN research center at Mid Sweden University, Sweden. BM has been coordinator of the “Plant Genetics and Biotechnology” group (https://www.med.uevora.pt/pt/grupos-de-investigacao/464-protecao-de-plantas-genetica-e-biotecnologia/) within the “Mediterranean Institute for Agriculture, Environment and Development”. BM has published >90 ISI papers with  >5400 citations (WOS H-index of 39).

Marco S. Reis is an Associate Professor with Habilitation of Chemical Engineering at the University of Coimbra, Portugal. His research interests include process systems engineering, chemometrics, industrial data science, hybrid modelling, fault detection/diagnosis/prognosis, and predictive analytics. He was President of the European Network for Business and Industrial Statistics (ENBIS) (2015-2017) and is currently an Honorary Member of this society. He was awarded the Fulbright scholar fellowship (2020) and is the recipient of the Professor Almiro e Castro Award, which distinguishes the scientific merit of a Portuguese researcher or faculty under 45 years old (2018). ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4997-8865.