Plenaries

Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands

Prof. Dr. Ir. Thijs J.H. Vlugt is a leading researcher in molecular thermodynamics, currently a full professor and chair of Engineering Thermodynamics at Delft University of Technology. He specializes in areas like CO₂ capture, hydrogen systems, adsorption in nanomaterials, and the thermodynamic properties of complex fluids, with over 330 publications, 19,000 citations, and an H-index of 74. His research centers on understanding molecular-scale processes to enable sustainable engineering applications, particularly in transport phenomena and adsorption in porous materials.

Prof. Vlugt also plays a key role in scientific leadership, serving on multiple academic committees, organizing international conferences, and co-leading RASPA simulation software workshops. His contributions are supported by prestigious grants and extensive collaborations with industry and academia, aiming to integrate molecular insights with large-scale engineering innovations.

IMDEA Energy Institute, Spain

With an unconventional multidisciplinary scientific background (Pharmacy BCs, 2001 and Material Science Ph.D, 2005; University Complutense of Madrid, Spain), she joined the Institut Lavoisier (France), first as postdoc (2005) and then as CNRS researcher in 2007. Since 2016, Patricia is Senior Researcher and Head of the Advanced Porous Materials Unit in IMDEA Energy (Madrid, Spain). Her research activity is focused to the development of new multifunctional materials and their application in energy, environment and health.

With a large frame of collaborations, she (h=74) is coauthor of 189 publications (142 in Q1; 71 in D1), 7 book chapters, 1 edited book and 9 patents, with >30700 citations (WoS; Oct 2024). She has participated in >150 conferences, including 45 invited presentations, 2 keynotes, and 10 plenary lectures. She has been awarded with several prizes and awards (e.g. Deusto University 2024, Young Doctoral de Alcala 2023, Silver Medal IAAM 2023, Female Talent RAC 2022, Young Researchers Leading Groups RSEQ 2020, Leonardo award 2017, Miguel Catalan 2016).

Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Krista S. Walton is the Associate Vice President for Research Operations and Infrastructure and Professor and Robert “Bud” Moeller Faculty Fellow in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. She received her B.S.E. in chemical engineering from the University of Alabama-Huntsville in 2000 and obtained her Ph.D. in chemical engineering from Vanderbilt University in 2005. Prof. Walton completed an ACS PRF Postdoctoral Fellowship at Northwestern University in 2006. Her research program focuses on the design, synthesis, and characterization of functional porous materials for use in adsorption applications including CO2 capture, atmospheric water extraction, and air purification. She has raised over $36M in external research funding as PI during her career. She has published over 135 peer-reviewed articles and presented dozens of plenary lectures, keynotes, and invited seminars. Walton has mentored 25 PhD graduates from her group and currently advises 8 PhD students and 4 senior researchers. Prof. Walton co-founded three spin-off companies from her research over the past decade and currently serves as an Associate Editor for AIChE Journal.  She was the founding Director and Lead PI of Georgia Tech’s DOE Energy Frontier Research Center, UNCAGE-ME. She recently served as a member of the 2022-2024 cohort of DARPA’s prestigious Defense Science Study Group. Prof. Walton’s accomplishments have been recognized by many national and international awards including the Department of Energy Ernest Orlando Lawrence Award for Atomic, Molecular, and Chemical Sciences (2020), the AIChE FRI/John G. Kunesh Award for Excellence in Separations Research (2016), the inaugural International Adsorption Society Award for Excellence in Publications by a Young Member of the Society (2013), and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2007).

Vrije Universiteit Brussel, Belgium

Gino Baron was professor and department head of Chemical Engineering at VUB until his retirement in 2008 and since then works as a technical expert in that department. Participating in a variety of projects, his main activities are designing, building and testing of new adsorption setups and writing the control software as well as performing material characterization. Recently, he has also developed setups to study hydrates for storage and separation of gases with a focus on hydrogen and methane clathrates.

Until retirement he had a rather unusual career with periods in pharmaceutical and brewing industry, and switching fields such as distillation, biotechnology, brewing, catalysis, biomass gasification, high temperature gas cleaning, liquid chromatography and adsorptive separations (gas and liquid phases). The common approach in most of these fields was similar: exploiting dynamics and order from the process to the molecular level to improve performance.

Gino Baron has been President of the IAS and Editor in Chief of the Adsorption Journal. He also was Vice-Rector for Research at his university.

DSM-firmenich, The Netherlands

Dr. Sá Gomes holds a doctorate in Chemical & Biological Engineering and an MBA in Finance from the University of Porto, Portugal, with post-doctoral research experiences at RWTH Aachen University in Germany and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.

He is celebrating two decades of professional experience in the field of Adsorption, Ion-Exchange, and Process Scale Chromatography. Over the course of his career, Dr. Sá Gomes has published 25 scientific papers, holds more than 10 active patents, and has delivered numerous lectures and courses. He has been directly responsible for the development and implementation of several advanced purification and separation processes on a global scale, spanning sectors of food and feed, pharmaceuticals, and base and performance chemical, particularly, along his tenure at BASF SE in Germany, where he held the roles of R&D Team/Project Manager, Principal Scientist (Global Expert in Adsorption and Chromatography), Global Technology Manager (operations process pharma at Nutrition and Health division), and Large Investment Project Manager.

More recently, as the Associate Director of Cargill’s New Ingredient and Process Development for global R&I Specialized Nutrition, he has led an advisory-level team expanding capabilities in protein, fibers, and lipids extraction, fermentation (both biomass and precision), downstream processing (DSP), encapsulation, and delivery, in addition to direct responsibility for establishing process technology roadmaps and the business unit’s Manufacturing and Asset Strategy.

Currently, Dr. Sá Gomes is the Director - Global Technology Owner for Downstream Processing at Global Technology & Industrialization - Taste, Texture and Health (TTH) - dsm-firmenich, based in Delft, NL.

Georgia Institute of Technology, USA

Professor Jones is the John F. Brock III School Chair and Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech.  He joined Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor in 2000 and previously served as Associate Vice President for Research from 2013-2019.

Dr. Jones leads a research group that works on materials, catalysis and adsorption.  He is known for his extensive work on materials that extract CO2 from ultra-dilute mixtures such as ambient air, which are key components of direct air capture (DAC) technologies. He served on the National Academies Consensus Study on Negative Emissions Technologies and Reliable Sequestration in 2017-2018, focusing on DAC, and more recently on the National Academies Consensus Study on Atmospheric Methane Removal: Development of a Research Agenda, from 2023-2024.

Jones also has produced an extensive body of work in catalysis. Dr. Jones was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal, ACS Catalysis, and is Vice-President of the North American Catalysis Society. He was tapped in 2020 to launch the new open access American Chemical Society journal, JACS Au. (Read as Jacks Gold)

Jones’ work in both catalysis and CO2 separation has been recognized with awards from numerous organizations including the ACS, ASEE, AIChE and North American Catalysis Society.  Jones was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2022 and the US National Academy of Inventors in 2023.