Frontiers in physical chemistry for lignin valorisation Faraday Discussion

Professor of Chemistry at North Carolina State University. He has also served as a Finland Distinguished Professor of Chemistry with the department of Chemistry of the University of Helsinki, Finland and Distinguished visiting Professor with the center for Advanced Materials and the Department of Chemistry King Abdulaziz University, Jedah, Saudi Arabia. Professor Argyropoulos’ efforts span four decades of internationally recognized contributions to the science and green chemistry of wood biopolymers for materials, chemicals & energy purposes. His work focuses at promoting our understanding of the structure and reactivity of such polymers and the development of novel NMR and material science techniques for the structural elucidation and upgrading of these biopolymers. The efforts of his research group have been published in excess of 250 scientific papers, numerous scientific conferences invited presentations and patents. Professor Argyropoulos is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the International Academy of Wood science and the Chemical Institute of Canada.

Thomas Elder is a Research Scientist with the United States Department of Agriculture, U.S. Forest Service. He received the Ph.D. degree from Texas A&M University. He is an Emeritus Professor in the College of Forestry, Wildlife and Environment and Affiliate Professor in Biosystems Engineering at Auburn University. He is also an Adjunct Professor at the Center for Renewable Carbon at the University of Tennessee−Knoxville. He has been a visiting scientist at the University of
Wisconsin, the University of Copenhagen, and the University of Natural Resources and Life Sciences, Vienna (BOKU). His research is concerned with the chemical characterization and utilization of wood. He is active in the application of computational chemistry to the reactions and structure of lignin.
 

Dr Agi Brandt-Talbot is a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in the Department of Chemistry at Imperial College London and leads the Sustainable Carbon Solutions research group. Dr Brandt-Talbot is interested in sustainable chemistry and the circular economy, including creating sustainable materials from lignin. She has authored 36 scientific articles with more than 6000 citations (H factor 27) and holds 5 patents. She is a co-founder of Imperial spin-out Lixea who is developing a waste-free wood fractionation technology that generates lignin and cellulose from biomass waste. More recently, Agi discovered a patented cost-effective technology to generate lignin fibres for sustainable composites. Dr Brandt-Talbot received a BSc in Chemistry and Biochemistry and an MSc in Chemistry from Ludwig-Maximilians-University Munich, Germany. She has a PhD from Imperial (Department of Chemistry and Life Sciences) and was a Research Associate in the Department of Chemical Engineering before being awarded an Imperial College Research Fellowship to start her own research group. She is a Member of the Royal Society of Chemistry (MRSC) and the Honorary Treasurer of the RSC Molten Salts and Ionic Liquids Discussion Group.