Keynote Speaker Ⅰ

Ajay Kumar Mishra

University of the Western Cape, South Africa

Title: Nano-engineered Materials for Wastewater Remediations

Abstract: Nano-engineered materials have been used extensively for a variety of applications. Environmental pollution raised bigger concerns on the discharge of textile waste. Nanotechnology is fast growing on research and bringing sustainable solution in the minimization of the waste. The minimization of the risk of risk and health hazards with the development of industry, environmental pollution and energy shortages have raised awareness of a potential global crisis. Nano-engineered materials can be better solution in finding solution of environmental sustainability more specific to the textile waste remediation due to the large surface areas, diverse morphologies, abundant surface states, and easy device modeling. It is a challenge of great importance to identify and design nano-engineered materials that are efficient, stable, and abundant for the remediation of textile waste. The current talk will be focused on the recent advancement and applications of nano-engineered materials for wastewater remediations.

Bio: Prof Ajay Kumar MishraMSc, MPhil, PhD, CSci, FRSC currently working as Professor at Department of Chemistry, University of the Western Cape, South Africa. He is actively working as Director: Academy of Nanotechnology and Waste Water Innovations (ANWWI), Johannesburg, South Africa; Professor at KIIT DU, Bhubaneswar, India; Visiting Professor at Robert Gordon University, Scotland, UK; Bashir State University, Ufa, Russia; Vaal University of Technology, Johannesburg, South Africa; and Adjunct Professor at Hebei University of Science and Technology and Jiangsu University, China. After completing his MPhil & PhD in Chemistry from the University of Delhi, India he has joined as postdoctoral fellow at University of the Free State followed by University of Johannesburg, South Africa during year 2006-2009. He started his academic career as Senior Lecturer in 2009 at University of Johannesburg where he was promoted to Associate Professor in 2011. He also served there as Director of the Centre of Nanomaterials before moving to University of South Africa in 2015 as full Professor. Prof Mishra is also a chair for IEEE Nanotechnology Council, South Africa Chapter since 2016 to date. Prof Mishra's active research profile named him in the list of the top 2% of the most-cited scientists since 2019 to date. He has more than 400 publications to his excellent academic profile what includes peer revied international journals articles, conference proceeding, book chapters and many others. Prof Mishra has been playing an effective role in many scientific advisory boards including promotion committee, editorial board member, panel member of funding agencies world wide and also the prestigious Shanti Swaroop Bhatnagar award reviewer panel board, India. He has edited around 40 books and delivered more than 139 plenary/keynote/invited/guest lectures in various research institutions/universities/conferences/seminars/workshops. He has successfully graduated 19 PhD's, 23 Master's students of which mostly graduated cum laude (more than 75%), and hosted around many international visiting researchers and postdoctoral fellows. Prof Mishra is also reviewers of several international journals besides playing an active role as an external examiner for national and international Masters/PhD students. He has secured number of international grants with considerable national and international recognition, as well as awards including “Fellow member” and “Chartered Scientist” by Royal Society of Chemistry, UK and Chancellor's Prize (Unisa), 2020 for excellent achievement in research.

Keynote Speaker Ⅱ

Mohd Rafie Bin Johan

Nanotechnology and Catalysis Research Center (NANOCAT), Universiti Malaya

Title: Multifunctional Catalyst System for sustainable production of bio-derived fuels and value added products.

Abstract: Rapid growing population and urbanization is increasing the world’s energy demand. Contemporarily, global energy supply originates from fossil drive substance, which are renown to release greenhouse gas to our environment. It is evident that greenhouse gases particularly CO2 are agent of global warming and eventually climate change. The exploration of renewable resource such as biomass is important against the fossil counterparts. These growing energy demand can be met by the efficient conversion of biomass. Developing one-pot reaction methodologies is crucial for sustainable production of bio-derived fuels and value-added chemicals, which typically requires a multifunctional catalyst system. The use of effective catalysts is a paradigm change to the worldwide goal of economic sustainability and environmental protection. Hence, this talk describes recent developments involving various catalysts such as metal-catalyst supported rice derived silica with reference to the catalytic conversion of furfural into useful products via tandem hydrogen-esterification, molten salts/ionic liquids for catalytic valorization of glycerine and glycerol pitch via esterification and etherification and novel nitrogen based organo-catalyst for Knoevenagel condensation reaction. The main aim is to provide an overview of the latest work on the use of multi-functional catalysts and its reusability for successful conversion to value added products.  biomass. The talk ends with conclusions and suggestions for future work which will assist researchers in utilizing these catalysts for the safe conversion into valuable chemicals and other products.

Bio: Professor Dr. Mohd Rafie Bin Johan is an award winning scientist and International Keynote Speaker. He is a true example of how theoretical and fundamental research leads to remarkable progress in the applied, engineering and industrial use of nano-designed advanced material. Professor Rafie graduated with a BSc (Physics) from Universiti Malaya and BEng(Chem) from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. He obtained his MPhil in Quantum Optics at Institute for Advanced Studies (UM) in 1997 and PhD in Theoretical Physics in 2005. From 1999 to 2001 he was also Head of Biomedical Engineering Program, Universiti Malaya. He moved to the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Malaya where from the year 2005 until 2009, as a senior lecturer and  Coordinator for Materials Engineering Program. In 2010, he was promoted to Associate Professor  and to Professor of Materials Engineering in 2015. He is transferred to Nanotechnology and Catalysis Research Centre (NANOCAT) in 2016 and was appointed as a Director of NANOCAT in 2017. Prof. Rafie is well recognized internationally in the field of Nanotechnology. He has been elected in Evaluation Panels  for national and international grants including Qatar Foundation and expert panel for Yang di Pertuan Agong Scholarship and COMSTECS for Islamic Organization Country for the best chemistry papers for Muslim Scientist. He has been invited as a speaker to numerous talks and conferences and also Guest Editor for Symmetry (ISI), editor for Asean Engineering Journal and Founder/Editor in Chief of Malaysian International Journal of Nanotechnology and Catalysis. In 2010, he was a visiting scientist at the Department of Materials Science & Engineering, University of Cambridge and  a visiting scholar at Abdus Salam International Center for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy in 2012. He had 35 PhD completed (27 on-going), 30 Master by Research and 5 Master by Coursework completed (10 on going). He had published more than 350 ISI papers with H index 40 (WoS) & 47 Google scholar with above 8000 citations. He had various research projects (National, International and Industry with a total amount of RM 20 million and several patents. He teached Philosophy, Advanced Materials, Nanotechnology & Quantum Mechanics. He was the recipient of prestigious Top Research Scientist Malaysia (TRSM) 2021 from Academy of Sciences Malaysia and Top in Tech Innovation Award 2021. He was awarded of UM Excellent Award for Best HICOE/UMCOE and elected as Fellow of Royal Society Chemistry FRSC (UK). Recently, he is promoted to Senior Professor (VK6).

Keynote Speaker Ⅲ

Miguel A. BAÑARES

CSIC - Institute for Catalysis, Spain

Title: Chemical and microbiological indoor air quality, operando studies on ceria-based catalysts for VOC's remediation and  catalytic filters to inactivate airborne pathogens

Abstract: Chemical air quality. Ceria is a widely employed material as active phase, promoter and support for elimination of volatile organic compounds (VOCs). It is widely accepted that toluene oxidation on ceria-based catalysts follows the Mars-van Krevelen mechanism. Metal nanoparticles dispersed on ceria help affect the generated oxygen vacancies . Vanadium and gold have remarkably different impacts on ceria performance for toluene oxidation. The nature of the active sites, configurational adsorption of toluene and the reactive oxygen species play important roles in the catalyst activity and selectivity leading to a large contrast in the catalytic behavior. The role of different dopants, Cu, Co, Pt and Au to enhance ceria performance is analyzed using operando methodologies and advanced synthesis procedures. 

Microbiological air quality. Airborne transmission has been identified as one of the major routes for infectious illnesses. Knowing the characteristics of the bioaerosols that transmit these diseases would help us prevent them. In this way, the development of an aerosol chamber can help to better understand the dynamics of virus-containing aerosols and could be a useful tool to evaluate air purification systems and filters. In this study, we have nebulized the bacteriophage phi-29, the human coronavirus 229E (hCoV-229E), SARS-CoV-2 and the hRV-14 inside the aerosol chamber. We have evaluated over viral viability the application of different pressures to generate bioaerosol and the stability of the bioaerosol generated inside the aerosol chamber and the viability of the recovered virus over time. Finally, we showed an example application in the chamber aerosol. The results from this Project have received funding by “la Caixa” Bank Foundation, with code LCF/PR/HR22/52420032, HR22-00813; this project is supported by the European Union under the HORIZON2020 Framework Programme Grant Agreement no. 952869

Bio: Editor-in-Chief, Catalysis Today (Elsevier)

Editors Wachs and Bañares, Springer Handbook of Advanced Catalyst Characterization, 2023

Editors Lang, Rallo and Bañares, Modelling the Toxicity of Nanoparticles, 2017

Bañares is co-author of 258 publications, with an h index 51; >8,000 citations (Scopus)

ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3875-4468 

Bañares research stands on the use of real-time Raman spectroscopy during catalysis combining in situ spectroscopic characterization of catalyst structure with simultaneous activity measurement, so that both, structure and performance are measured simultaneously; this is combined with computational description of the structure, spectra and reactivity of the catalysts. He coined the term “operando” to identify this advanced in situ spectroscopy, his new term is widely use in literature. He applies his research to the conversion of alkanes into olefins, oxygenates and nitriles. He also investigates catalysis for indoor air quality. He also investigates the chemical reactive bases of nanoparticle toxicity with double use, predictive risk assessment and to use it for microbial indoor air quality, inactivating viruses.

Doctor Honoris Causa, Université du Caen, Normandie, France, 2017; Bañares coined the term “operando”; co-FOUNDER, ADParticles (www.ad-particles.com) in 2011; “Chaire d’excellence”, at CNRS-ENSICaen, Caen, France, 2013-2015; “Otto Mønsted Visiting Professor” at Denmark Technical University, Denmark, 2014; 

Research revenue: € 5.6 millions direct to CSIC (excluding funding for third parties), plus human capital mobility funds. (€ 4 millions during 2019-2023).