Advances in supramolecular gels Faraday Discussion

Professor Emily Draper is currently UKRI Future Leader Fellow within the School of Chemistry at the University of Glasgow, UK. She received her PhD from the University of Liverpool before carrying out a Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellowship at Glasgow. Her research interests include the controlled assembly of small organic molecules into functional materials for chromic displays, mechanoresponsive thin films and alternative cell growth media. She focuses on the use of small-angle scattering, rheology and electrochemistry to characterise these materials. Her other research interests lie within the retention and promotion underrepresented groups within the supramolecular community.

Prof Karen Edler is Professor of Materials Chemistry in the Chemistry Department at Lund University, Sweden. Previously, she was Professor of Soft Matter and Associate Dean (Research) for the Science Faculty at the University of Bath, UK. She worked at Bath in the Department of Chemistry from 1999, first as a postdoc, then a Dorothy Hodgkin Royal Society Research Fellow (2000-2004). In 2014 she was appointed as the first female professor in Chemistry at Bath. She moved to Lund in May 2022.
Prof Edler’s research focuses on understanding formation of sustainable functional hierarchically structured materials. This includes characterisation of solutes and self-assembly of amphiphiles in novel deep eutectic solvents, oxide nanoparticles and porous materials, (bio)surfactant characterisation, sustainable Pickering emulsions and thickeners for greener aqueous formulations and lipid nanodiscs for membrane protein & drug encapsulation. Her group uses self-assembly, driven by interactions between nanoscopic species (micelles, nanoparticles, polymers) in solution and at interfaces to form hierarchically ordered materials. Understanding interactions between these species is central to control over structure and thus function. She uses X-ray & neutron reflectivity, liquid diffraction and small angle scattering to study interactions and structures, and a range of other complementary techniques are applied to determine formation mechanisms and structures across many length scales. Extensive collaborations with other groups in industry and academia apply the novel materials synthesised in her group to applications from photocatalysis, to drug delivery and “green” gels/emulsions.

Professor Silvia Marchesan leads the Superstructures Labs at the University of Trieste (Italy), where a team of enthusiastic researchers focusses on the design of supramolecular systems and gels in green solvents, such as water and acetonitrile, for various applications spanning from health to catalysis, through multidisciplinary and collaborative projects. One of the key expertise within the group pertains the design of minimalistic peptides, whereby amino acid chirality plays a key role in their assembling ability and properties. She is a member of the editorial board of ACS Nano, and of the Advisory board of Chem, Soft Matter, ChemComm, J. Mater. Chem. B, ACS Appl. Bio Mater. and other materials journals. She received several awards, including the RSC Soft Matter Lectureship in 2021.

Aline is Professor of Biomolecular Engineering in the School of Engineering and Associate Dean for Business Engagement and Innovation within the Faculty of Science and Engineering at the University of Manchester. She is Director of the NW Industrial Biotechnology Innovation Catalyst – a £5m flagship programme supercharging the growth of careers, business and our regional economy, while delivering a low carbon economy – and Academic Innovation Lead for Innovation District Manchester and the new University of Manchester Innovation Academy.

She studied Chemistry at Strathclyde University and carried out her PhD research at Durham University, followed by postdoctoral work in the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge University where she held a Junior Research Fellowship with Murray Edwards College. In 2002, she joined Manchester and was promoted to Chair in 2014. In her role she has led academic and commercial R&D teams working at the life-science interface where her research interests converge on understanding the self-assembly of peptides, proteins and polymers across the length scales for material design and application. This work has led to several academic awards, including recognition from the Royal Academy of Engineering, Women in Engineering, The Leverhulme Trust and Great British Entrepreneur Awards. She has a strong track record of raising funds and translating academic research into the commercial and clinical setting through industrial collaboration with a range of industrial partners from SMEs to corporates, and through establishing a spin out company, Manchester BIOGEL. Under her leadership the company raised £4M+ in investment from Innovate UK, Venture Capital, Private and Catapult Venture Funds, grew to a team of 10 and became revenue generating. This led to Manchester BIOGEL being listed as one of the Top 10 BioTech Start-Ups in Europe by Start-Up City in 2021, winning Best New Life Science Product 2021 and navigating a successful exit, with the company technology being sold onto Cell Guidance Systems in 2023.
 
Aline is also Elected Trustee of the Royal Society of Chemistry, Trustee of The Humane Research Trust, Member of the Industrial Committee for the Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine International Society (TERMIS) and Director of the Bio-Based and Biodegradable Industries Association (BBIA).

Meital Reches is a Full Professor at the Institute of Chemistry and the Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. After completing her Ph.D. studies at Tel Aviv University in 2007 and spending three years as an EMBO and an HFSP postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard University, Prof. Reches established her independent research group at the Hebrew University in 2010.
Research in the Reches group focuses on understanding the interactions of biological entities such as proteins, bacteria, viruses, and cells with surfaces. In addition, her group develops peptide-based coatings to control these interactions.
For her innovations, Prof. Reches was awarded with the Marie Currie Alumni Association Best Innovator Award, the Kaye Award and the Tenne Family Prize in Nanoscale Sciences. 

Tell Tuttle's research is focused on the concept of "reducing molecular search spaces" - a phrase that was coined in the group. The group works closely with experimental colleagues to address practical problems in the areas of molecular structure (development of new materials), molecular recognition (drug design), molecular reactivity (new catalysts and new paradigms in organic reaction mechanisms) and molecular properties (development of organic photovoltaics). The understanding derived from the computational and theoretical methods employed in our research results in the generation of predictive models that are used to design molecular-based solutions to a range of problems from chemistry to biomedicine to nanotechnology to organic electronics.