Keynotes

University of Miami, USA

Dr. Rezaei is Professor of Chemical Engineering in the Chemical, Environmental and Materials Engineering Department at University of Miami. She obtained her PhD degrees in Chemical Engineering from Monash University in Australia and LTU in Sweden in 2011. Her research focus broadly lies at the interface of chemical, materials science and environmental engineering, and the overall goal of her research group is development of advanced adsorbent materials and adsorption processes for separation, purification, and storage applications.

Rezaei’s research has been supported by National Science Foundation (NSF), National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), department of Energy (DOE), and department of Defense (DOD). She is the author of over 150 peer-reviewed journal articles and has received several awards including 2024 ACS ENFL Emerging Researcher. She is currently the Associate Editor of ACS Energy & Fuels journal.

Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

Dr. Frederico W. Tavares is a distinguished chemical engineer with a comprehensive academic and professional background. He holds a D.Sc. from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ) and has completed postdoctoral research in Chemical Engineering at the University of Delaware and UC Berkeley. Dr. Tavares is a full professor at UFRJ’s School of Chemistry, where he supervises numerous graduate theses and post-doctoral projects. His research contributions are substantial, with over 225 peer-reviewed publications, two authored books, and a citation record demonstrating significant influence in his field. Dr. Tavares holds editorial positions in journals such as the Journal of Molecular Liquids and has received prestigious recognitions, including the “Scientist of Our State” fellowship and the CNPq “Productivity in Research” grant at its highest level since 2017. He has been awarded several large project grants from industry and government, underscoring his impactful research in chemical thermodynamics, phase equilibria, and molecular simulation.

Nagoya University, Japan

Prof. Mizuki Tada has received her PhD at the department of chemistry of the University of Tokyo in 2005. She took up an assistant professor position at the University of Tokyo and moved to the Institute for Molecular Science as an associate professor in 2008. She is a full professor of chemistry at Nagoya University since 2013. She worked at RIKEN as the team leader of element visualization team at SPring-8 during 2014-2019. Her research interests are the surface design of metal-complex catalysts, heterogeneous catalysis on oxygen storage materials, and operando XAFS-CT imaging of functional materials (heterogeneous catalysts, MOFs, and fuel cells).

Rutgers University, USA

Dr. Alexander V. Neimark is a Distinguished Professor of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering at Rutgers University. He graduated and got his DSc degree from the Moscow State University. Before his move to US, Dr. Neimark worked in the lab of Professor Dubinin in the Institute of Physical Chemistry of Russian Academy of Sciences and with Professor Unger in the Gutenberg University in Mainz, Germany.

His research interests include thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, and molecular modeling of adsorption, transport, and interfacial phenomena in nanoporous and nanostructured materials and self-assembly in surfactant and polymeric soft matter systems.

He is a recipient of many national and international awards and honored appointments, including Guggenheim Fellow, Blaise Pascal International Chair, Humboldt Fellow, Fellow of American Institute of Chemical Engineers, Fellow of International Adsorption Society, Distinguished Visiting Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, and Leverhulme Professorship. Dr. Neimark published 290+ research papers with 42,000+ citations and Hirsh index h=76.

City University of Hong Kong, Honk Kong

Jin Shang is a tenured Associate Professor at the City University of Hong Kong, specializing in adsorption-based gas separation technology, finding applications in carbon capture, carbon removal, the extraction of toxic gases etc.

Prof. Shang discovered the molecular trapdoor mechanism, the fourth recognized method for adsorption-based separation showing the highest CO2 selectivity in natural gas purification.

He has received the 2024 Carbon Capture Award for Excellent Research and the 2022 ISTP-Bogen Young Scientist Award. With over 120 papers published and an h-index of 52, Prof. Shang is among Stanford's top 2% most highly cited scientists in 2022, 2023, and 2024.

The University of Western Australia, Australia

Eric May is Managing Director of the Future Energy Exports (FEnEx) CRC and was named the 2021 Western Australian Scientist of the Year. His research team works closely with industry, conducting projects in hydrogen liquefaction, LNG production and decarbonisation, gas separations, CCS and fluid property prediction. Eric was awarded the Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year as part of the 2012 Prime Minister’s Prizes for Science. In 2017, he co-established Gas Capture Technologies Pty Ltd, a spin-out company for patented technologies to capture methane from coal mines, land-fill gas and other sources.

Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati, India

Sasidhar Gumma obtained his PhD from Cleveland State University under the guidance of Prof Orhan Talu in 2003. Since January 2020, he is a Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Tirupati. Earlier he has been a faculty at the Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati and Cleveland State University. His research interests are in experimental measurements of adsorption equilibria, adsorption thermodynamics, structure-property relationships in metal-organic frameworks and other novel materials for various gas separations, and process development. He has served as a consultant to various industries such as Oil India Limited (OIL), National Thermal Power Corporation (NTPC), Bharat Heavy Electricals Limited (BHEL), Gas Authority of India Limited (GAIL), Tata Advances Systems Limited (TASL) and Defense Research and Development Organization (DRDO). He is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of the International Adsorption Society, Adsorption.

Technische Universität Dresden, Germany

Stefan Kaskel studied chemistry at Eberhard Karls University, Tübingen (Germany), and received his Ph.D. degree in 1997 from the same University in solid state chemistry, under the guidance of Prof. J. Strähle. As a Feodor-Lynen Fellow of the Alexander von Humboldt foundation he worked with J. Corbett at Ames Laboratory, USA (1998-2000) on intermetallic compounds. He was a group leader at the Max-Planck-Institut für Kohlenforschung in Mülheim a.d. Ruhr (2000-2004) in the group of F. Schüth and after his habilitation at Ruhr University (Bochum) in 2004 in the area of heterogeneous catalysis, he became full professor for Inorganic Chemistry at Technical University Dresden. Since 2008 he is also technology field leader at Fraunhofer IWS, Dresden (part time).

His research interests are focused on porous and nanostructured materials (adsorption, synthesis, characterization, structure, function) for applications in energy storage, catalysis, batteries and separation technologies. In 2021 he initiated the IUPAC task group on the standardized reporting of adsorption isotherms (https://iupac.org/project/2021-016-1-024). He has been working on MOFs and porous carbon materials, CVD, CNTs, adsorption, and printing. His major activity at Fraunhofer IWS is the development of lithium sulfur batteries. He received the nanotechnology award of the German Ministry of Science and Education in 2002, the JSPS award from Japan in 2016, and 2 ERC Advanced Grants. Stefan Kaskel has authored more than 650 publications (h-index 130) and has contributed as inventor to more than 60 patent applications. He was recognized multiple times as a Highly Cited Researcher of world’s most influential scientific minds by Clarivate Analytics.

Shinshu University, Japan

Dr. Hideki Tanaka received his PhD in Science from Chiba University in 2002. He subsequently completed postdoctoral research at the Venture Business Laboratory (VBL) at Chiba University and the Japan Science and Technology Agency (JST). He began his academic career as an Assistant Professor at Chiba University (2004-2006), before moving to Kyoto University, where he served as an Assistant Professor (2006-2011), Lecturer (2011-2016), and Associate Professor (2016-2019) in the Department of Chemical Engineering. In 2019, he joined Shinshu University as a Professor at the Research Initiative for Supra-Materials (RISM), and since 2024, he has been serving as a Professor at the Institute for Aqua Regeneration (ARG) at Shinshu University. He is actively engaged in elucidating adsorption phenomena through computational science and experimental studies, and the author of over 110 peer-reviewed journal articles. He also serves as a board member of both the International Adsorption Society and the Japan Adsorption Society.

Federal University of Ceará, Brazil

Diana Azevedo leads the research lab LPACO2 (Laboratory on Adsorption Research and CO2 Capture, Brazil), which essentially focuses on the interplay between adsorbent and process development in gas-phase applications. Her current research interests include CCUS and hydrogen storage. She is a Full Professor in Chemical Engineering at Universidade Federal do Ceará (UFC, Brazil), where she presently holds the position of vice-chancellor (2023-2027). She served as a member of the Board of Directors of the International Adsorption Society (IAS) on two occasions and has recently been appointed Fellow of IAS. She has championed the expansion of adsorption research in Latin America by chairing several scientific events, including the 1st Iberoamerican Symposium on Adsorption (IBA series) in 2012. She belongs to the Editorial Board of Adsorption and the Chemical Engineering Journal, having published nearly 170 papers in indexed journals with h-index 44. She is a member of the National Engineering Academy (ANE) in Brazil with a particular interest in gender balance initiatives in STEM careers.