Plenary Speakers
Veronique Gouverneur
University of Oxford
United Kingdom
Professor Veronique Gouverneur was born in Belgium. After her PhD work at the Université Catholique de Louvain, she left Belgium. In 1992, she moved to California, USA to a postdoctoral position at the Scripps Research Institute. In 1994 she returned to Europe and accepted a position at the University Louis Pasteur in Strasbourg (France). She was Associate Member of the Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires directed by Professor J-M Lehn during this time. Profesor Gouverneur is currently Professor of Chemistry (in 2008 she was promoted) at the University of Oxford. In 1998, she started her independent research career in the Chemistry Faculty and holds a tutorial fellowship in organic chemistry at Merton College Oxford. Her research aims at developing new approaches in the synthesis of fluorinated analogues of natural products, pharmaceutical drugs and molecular probes for PET imaging. She is the co-author of original work and patents in fluorine chemistry. Her research has been rewarded e.g. 2015 ACS Award for Creative work in Fluo-rine Chemistry, RSC Tilden Prize 2016, the Tetrahedron Chair for 2016, Elected Member of the Euro-pean Academy of Sciences (EURASC) 2017 and in 2019 the Prelog Medal, Elected Fellow of the Royal Society and the RSC Organic Stereochemistry Award.
Professor Beate Koksch received a Ph.D. degree from University Leipzig and pursued postdoctoral studies at TSRI La Jolla and postdoctoral lecture qualification at University Leipzig under the mentorship of Klaus Burger. She has been Professor of Chemistry at Freie Universität Berlin since 2004. Her group investigates fluorinated amino acids in the context of peptides and proteins, studies complex folding mechanisms in neurodegenerative diseases, and develops new multivalent scaffolds.
Beate Koksch
Free University of Berlin
Berlin, Germany
Wojciech Grochala
University of Warsaw
Warsaw, Poland
Professor Wojciech Grochala was born in Warsaw. He studied chemistry and carried out his Ph.D. studies at the University of Warsaw in Poland. In 1999 he moved to Cornell University (USA) and spent a postdoctoral year with Prof. Roald Hoffmann (Nobel Prize in chemistry 1981) where his attention attracted fluorinated non-organic species. Next, in 2000 he received postdoctoral associate position at the University of Birmingham (United Kingdom) in Prof. Peter P. Edwards group. He remained at Birmingham until 2001, before moving to the University of Warsaw in Poland where he performs the position (from 2005) a Head of the Laboratory of Technology of Novel Functional Materials at University of Warsaw. Moreover, in 2016 he has become the Professor at the Center for New Technologies (CENT), University of Warsaw (Poland). His scientific research is connected with chemistry and spectroscopy of inorganic, fluorine-containing compounds. He is particularly interested in applications of such compounds in materials science especially as superconducting materials, molecular devices for data storage or hydrogen storage materials. He was awarded the Silver medal of the 200th Anniversary of the University of Warsaw in 2016 and was a recipient of Świętosławski Prize from Polish Chemical Society in 2013.
Professor Jinbo Hu was born in 1973 in Zhejiang, China. After he completed his B.S. degree (1994) in Hangzhou University (now called Zhejiang University) and M.S. degree (1997) in Chinese Academy of Sciences, he did his Ph.D. work from 1997 to 2002 at the University of Southern California (USC) under the guidance of Professors G. K. S. Prakash and G. A. Olah. After his postdoctoral work at USC, he joined the faculty of Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIOC, CAS) in early 2005, where he is currently a full professor and the Head of the CAS Key Laboratory of Organofluorine Chemistry. His current research interests include organic fluorine chemistry and fluorinated materials. He is the recipient of RSC Fluorine Prize 2009, Tan Kah-Kee Young Scientists’ Award 2012, and the Novartis Chemistry Lectureship Award 2015/2016.
Jinbo Hu
Chinese Academy of Sciences
Shanghai, China