PCCP 25th anniversary symposium

Knut R. Asmis is Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Wilhelm-Ostwald-Institut für Physikalische und Theoretische Chemie at Leipzig University (Germany) and currently the Speaker of the DFG Research Training Group 2721 „Hydrogen Isotopes: 1,2,3H“. He received his Dr. rer. nat. in Physical Chemistry from the Université de Fribourg in Switzerland in 1996.
After a postdoctoral stay at the University of California, Berkeley, he moved to the Freie Universität Berlin in 1999 and earned his Habilitation in Experimental Physics in 2006. From 2005 to 2014 he was a research group leader and from 2009 to 2014 a permanent staff scientist at the Fritz-Haber-Institut der Max-Planck-Gesellschaft in Berlin. In 2023 he recieved the van 't Hoff Prize of the Deutsche Bunsengesellschaft in recognition for his seminal studies of gas phase clusters. His current research interests focus on the experimental characterization of the structure, reactivity, and dynamics of isolated clusters and single nanoparticles.

Chris Batchelor-McAuley is currently Assistant Professor in Physical Chemistry at Trinity College Dublin, having taken up this position in 2022. Prior to moving to Ireland he was a Fellow of the Oxford Martin School at the University of Oxford, where he also studied and completed his D.Phil under the supervision of Prof. Richard Compton. His work spans from fundamental to applied, embracing areas including energy conversion, medical sensing and nanochemistry. Underpinning all of his work is a focus on investigating reactions at interfaces and the coupling of these processes to solution phase mass-transport phenomena. He has co-authored more than 200 journal publications and the pedagogical textbook ‘Understanding Voltammetry: Problems and Solutions”

Dr. Beyer studied chemistry at ETH Zurich and received his PhD in 2018 for precision measurements of Rydberg states of molecular hydrogen. He then spent two years at Yale to work with D. DeMille on parity violation in molecules and developing lasers for novel laser-slowing schemes. In 2020 he moved to Amsterdam to start his research group, focussing on precision measurements of hydrogen molecular ions to test quantum electrodynamics. He explores the use of Rydberg states to prepare molecular ions in selected rovibronic states. In 2023 he received an ERC StG to start an experiment on laser cooling helium dimer molecules.

F. Matthias Bickelhaupt holds Chairs in Theoretical Chemistry at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and Radboud University, Nijmegen, and is Head of the VU Department of Chemistry & Pharmaceutical Sciences. Among others, he is the Dutch Research Council's VICI award winner and member of the Royal Holland Society for Sciences and Humanities. Furthermore, he is Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Chemistry Europe Fellow, and Member of Merit of the Royal Netherlands Chemical Society (KNCV). He is known for his work on developing quantitative models and the theory of chemical bonding and reactivity, with applications in physical, (in)organic, and biological chemistry.

M. Lucia Curri earned her degree in chemistry in 1993, completed her Ph.D. in 1997 at the University of Bari, and conducted research at the Italian National Research Council - CNR - until 2018, then she was appointed full professor of physical chemistry at the University of Bari Aldo Moro.
She serves as the Vice President of the National Interuniversity Consortium for Science and Technology of Materials (INSTM) and is a Fellow of the Royal Chemical Society.
Her research is focused on developing original strategies for the design, preparation and functionalization of colloidal nanocrystal based inorganic and hybrid materials, both for fundamental studies and photocatalytic, optoelectronic, energy, and biomedical applications.

Dr. Ioana M. ILIE serves as an Assistant Professor within the Computational Chemistry group at the University of Amsterdam. Having obtained her PhD in Computational Biophysics from the University of Twente, she furthered her academic pursuits as a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich, focusing on the intricate biochemical aspects of proteomics. The research in her group is centered around multiscale simulations of biomolecular systems. Specifically, her team employs rational design and multiscale simulations to achieve three main objectives: (1) understanding and controlling the aggregation mechanisms of polypeptides and their interactions within the biological environment, (2) designing peptide-based therapeutics for neurodegenerative diseases, and (3) developing intelligent (bio)materials with responsive properties.

Spiridoula Matsika is a Professor of Chemistry at Temple University. She received a B.Sc. in Chemistry from the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens, Greece in 1994, and a Ph.D. in Chemical Physics from The Ohio State University in 2000. After completing her Ph.D. she spent three years as a postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University. She joined Temple University in Philadelphia in 2003 where she has been since then.   Her research interests focus on the theoretical description of electronically excited states, nonadiabatic dynamics, and conical intersections in molecular systems. She is particularly interested in photophysics and photochemistry of molecular systems, and in electron driven processes.

Bert Weckhuysen, a Distinguished University Professor at Utrecht University (The Netherlands), received his Master and PhD degrees from Leuven University (Belgium) in 1991 and 1995. He has worked as a postdoc at Lehigh University (USA) and Texas A&M University (USA). He has (co-) authored more than 700 scientific journal publications and has received many awards, including the Royal Dutch Chemical Society Gold Medal, Netherlands Catalysis and Chemistry Award, Emmett Award in Fundamental Catalysis, International Catalysis Award, Bourke Award from the Royal Society of Chemistry, Spinoza Award from the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research, Tanabe Prize in Acid-Base Catalysis, and most recently the Chemistry Europe Award. He is a Knight in the Order of the Netherlands Lion, and an elected member of a.o. the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences, Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Sciences and Arts, and European Academy of Sciences.

Prof. Gijs Wuite obtained his PhD in biophysics in 2000. Since 2001 he leads his own group at the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam and in 2009 was appointed to full professor. In his research he has successfully applied quantitative physical tools to investigate fundamental problems in biology, and to search for the unification of apparently unrelated biological phenomena. Moreover, he has been at the front of recent new and fast developments of biophysical techniques that have enabled visualization, manipulation and control of complex biological reactions He has been awarded several ERC grants (Consolidator - 2010; PoF – 2013 &2014; Advanced – 2020). In 2014 he co-founded LUMICKS, a fast-growing company specialized in dynamics single molecule instruments and in 2018 he won the Dutch Physics Valorization prize & in 2019 the Amsterdam Impact Award, for successfully launching of this company.