ISOS2020

T. Don Tilley was born in Norman, Oklahoma, on November 22, 1954. After receiving his B.S. degree in chemistry from the University of Texas in 1977, he went to the University of California at Berkeley where he completed graduate studies in organolanthanide chemistry under the direction of Richard Andersen (Ph.D. 1982). After his graduate work at Berkeley he was appointed as an NSF-sponsored exchange postdoctoral fellow to work jointly with Bob Grubbs and John Bercaw at the California Institute of Technology (1981-2), and with Luigi Venanzi and Piero Pino at the ETH in Zürich (1982-3). During this period, he developed the chemistry of the (pentamethylcyclopentadienyl)-ruthenium fragment. In 1983 he began his independent research career as an Assistant Professor at the University of California at San Diego. There he was promoted to Associate Professor in 1988, and then to Professor in 1990. In 1994, he accepted appointments as Professor of Chemistry at the University of California at Berkeley and as Faculty Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory.

Professor Tilley's group has had a long-standing interest in silicon chemistry, and in particular the interactions of reactive silicon species, including silylenes, silylynes, silenes, and sigma-Si–H silanes, with transition metal centers. In general research in his group involves exploratory synthetic, structural, and reactivity studies on novel inorganic and organometallic systems, and discovery of new chemical transformations. Reactivity studies are guided by mechanistic investigations that shed light on how reactions proceed. Metal-mediated routes to new polymers are explored, and molecular, chemical approaches to the designed construction of advanced solid-state materials and heterogeneous catalysts are also being developed.

Kim Baines received her BSc in 1982 from St. Mary’s University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1982 and her PhD from the University of Toronto in 1987. She then spent one year as an NSERC postdoctoral fellow at the University of Dortmund, Germany. She joined the faculty at the University of Western Ontario (now Western University) in 1988 where she is now Professor of Chemistry and Assistant Dean
(International) for the Faculty of Science. Her research focuses on the synthesis and reactivity of low valent main group molecules, especially in Groups 13 and 14, with novel bonding paradigms with the goal of providing new compounds for innovative chemistry and materials. She was awarded a Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation in Germany in 2015 and the Montreal Medal from the Chemical Institute of Canada in 2016. She serves on the executive of the Canadian Society for Chemistry and is currently the Past-President.

David Scheschkewitz holds the Chair in General and Inorganic Chemistry of Saarland-University at Saarbrücken (Germany) since 2011. He obtained his PhD in chemistry from the Philipps-University of Marburg (Germany) in 1999 for research on aromatic boron heterocycles. After postdoctoral stints in Toulouse (France), Riverside (California) and Zürich (Switzerland) he carried out his habilitation at the Julius-Maximilians-University in Würzburg (Germany) with investigations on anionic silicon-silicon double bond systems. He was appointed as Senior Lecturer to Imperial College in May 2008 and moved to assume his current role as Chair of General and Inorganic Chemistry at Saarland University three years later. He received several prizes and awards, inter alia the Wöhler Young Investigator Award (2008), the Carl Duisberg-Memorial Award (2009) and the Lieseberg-Prize of the Heidelberg Chemical Society (2009).

His main scientific interests concern (1) the syntheses of heavy alkene homologues and the peripheral functionalization of heavier double bonds, (2) unsaturated yet stable small Group 14 clusters and their derivatization as well as (3) low-valent Group 14 ligands for transition metal complexes and their role in the activation of small molecules and catalysis.

Kazuyuki Kuroda received his doctorate degree in Applied Chemistry from Waseda University in 1979. He has been a full professor since 1989 at the same university. His carrier includes presidents of Japan Association of Zeolite, Japanese Sol-Gel Society, and Clay Science Society of Japan, and vice-presidents of the Ceramic Society of Japan and the Chemical Society of Japan. He has served as the program officer of the “Strategic International Collaborative Research Program (Eu-Japan)” on “Critical Raw Metals” and recent “Hyper Nanospace Materials” funded by Japan Science Agency. He has received several awards including the Academic Award of the Ceramic Society of Japan, The Commendation for Science and Technology by the Minister of Education, Culture, Science and Technology, The Chemical Society of Japan Award, and Lifetime Achievement Award of International Mesostructured Materials Association. His current research interests mainly include inorganic materials chemistry focusing on mesostructured materials, intercalation chemistry, silicate chemistry, inorganic polymers, sol-gel chemistry, inorganic-organic hybrids, and self-organized materials. Many researches have mainly been related to Si-containing materials.

https://www.college-de-france.fr/site/en-clement-sanchez/biography.htm

Research interests and fields of expertise

Sol-Gel chemistry from metal alkoxides precursors
Templated synthesis of inorganic gels and mesoporous coatings (self-assembly)
Designed construction of hybrid organic-inorganic materials (metal oxides based on Si, Sn, Ti, Zr...)
Optical, electrical and mechanical properties of hybrid materialsSoft chemistry based routes to nanostructured materials. Sustainable chemistry (chimie douce)
Bio-inspired approaches to hierarchically structured inorganic and hybrid organic-inorganic materials
Hybrid Biomaterials
Applications of hybrids in the domains of environment, health and energy

Carole Perry is a distinguished research professor at Nottingham Trent University. After completing her undergraduate and postgraduate studies at Oxford University she spent two years as an independent research fellow at St Hilda's College, Oxford University (1985-1987) before taking up her first lecturing position in the chemistry department at Brunel University (1987-1993). In 1993 she moved to Nottingham Trent University where she was made reader (2000) and then professor in 2003. She was head of the chemistry department from 2003-2008. Carole has been working on aspects of the chemistry of 'Si' since arriving in the Williams lab (R.J.P. Williams, F.R.S.) for her undergraduate project where she was handed a jar of white powder to investigate. The fibrous material of plant origin had been implicated in the aetiology of oesophageal cancer and was thus thought to be crystalline in nature like asbestos- this was not the case and so started her exploration of 'all things silica' over thirty-five years ago. Since then she has explored the nature of biological, geological and synthetic silicas, developed new methods to study the chemistry of the surface and explored the activity of the element (in some form) in nature and in synthetic and biological constructs. Current studies include the development of silk-silica constructs for bone repair, the generation of new bio-inspired materials for catalysis, the development of new microscopy techniques to probe the surface chemistry of silica structures within a living organism, investigations of the effect of silica and silica derived materials on cell behaviour and the role of 'silicon' in bone health.

Barry Arkles has been instrumental in introducing products derived from silicon chemistry into new commercial applications including advanced thermoplastic composites, oxygen permeable contact lenses, enzyme and cell immobilization, and interlayer dielectrics and barriers for semiconductors. He brings an academic approach to industrial endeavors. These efforts have resulted in over 200 publications and patents in addition to two highly successful silicon-based companies which have created hundreds of technology-based jobs. He currently is President and Chief Technical Officer of Gelest Inc.