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Plenary Speakers
Please see below our confirmed plenary speakers for POLY-CHAR [Auckland] 2023

Prof. Martina Stenzel
University of New South Wales, Australia
Martina Stenzel studied chemistry at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, before completing her PhD in 1999 at the Institute of Applied Macromolecular Chemistry, University of Stuttgart, Germany. She started as a postdoctoral fellow at UNSW in 1999 and is now a full Professor in the school of chemistry as well as co-director of the Centre for Advanced Macromolecular Design (CAMD).
Her research interest is focused on the synthesis of functional nanoparticles for drug delivery applications. Martina Stenzel published more than 300 peer reviewed papers mainly on polymer and nanoparticle design.
She is scientific editor of Materials Horizons and serves currently on a range of editorial boards. She received a range of awards including the 2011 Le Fèvre Memorial Prize of the Australian Academy of Science. Martina Stenzel is currently chairing the National Chemistry Committee of the Australian Academy of Science and she is also a Fellow of the Academy.

Prof. Ben Zhong Tang
Center for Aggregation-Induced Emission, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.
Hong Kong Branch of Chinese National Engineering Research Center for Tissue Restoration and Reconstruction and Department of Chemistry, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China.
Ben Zhong Tang is Stephen K. C. Cheong Professor of Science, Chair Professor of Chemistry, and Chair Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Tang received B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from South China University of Technology and Kyoto University, respectively. He conducted postdoctoral research at University of Toronto. He joined HKUST as an assistant professor in 1994 and was promoted to chair professor in 2008. Tang has published >1,400 papers.
Prof. Tang’s publications have been cited >97,000 times with an h-index of 144. He has been listed by Thomson Reuters as a Highly Cited Researcher in both areas of Chemistry and Materials Science. He received the State Natural Science Award (1st Class; 2017) from Chinese Government, Scientific and Technological Progress Award from the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation (2017) and Senior Research Fellowship from the Croucher Foundation (2007). He is now serving as Editor-in-Chief of Materials Chemistry Frontiers (RSC & CCS).

Prof. Yongfang Li
Professor in Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICCAS) and in Soochow University
Yongfang Li is a professor in Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICCAS) and in Soochow University. He received his Ph. D. degree in department of Chemistry from Fudan University in 1986, then did his postdoctoral research at ICCAS from 1986 to 1988. He became a staff in 1988 and promoted to professor in 1993 in ICCAS. He did his visiting research in Institute for Molecular Science, Japan from 1988.10. to 1991.4. and in University of California at Santa Barbara from 1997.6. to 1998.6. He was invited to be a professor in Soochow University in 2012, and was elected as a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013.
Prof. Li’s present research field is photovoltaic materials and devices for polymer solar cells. He has published more than 700 research papers and the published papers have been cited by others for more than 44000 times with an h-index of 105.

Prof. Liu Bin
National University of Singapore
Professor Liu Bin, Provost’s Chair, was appointed Vice President (Research and Technology) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) on 1 September 2019. She has been the Head of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering since July 2017.
Liu Bin graduated with a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Nanjing University, and PhD in Chemistry from NUS. She had postdoctoral training at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She joined NUS as an Assistant Professor in 2005, and was promoted to full Professorship in 2016.
Liu Bin is a leader in the field of organic functional materials, who has been well-recognised for her contributions in polymer chemistry and applications of organic nanomaterials for biomedical research, environmental monitoring and energy devices. She is named among the World’s Most Influential Minds and the Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Materials Science by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics. She is a prolific researcher with over 350 publications and holds 30 patents with 16 of them licensed to different companies in US, UK and Asia. In 2014, she co-founded Luminicell, an NUS spin-off company that produces organic luminescent nanoparticles for use in medical and biological applications.
Liu Bin has an impressive list of accolades to her name, including the National Science and Technology Young Scientist Award 2008, L’Oréal Women in Science National Fellowship in 2011 and the 2016 President’s Technology Award. Most recently, she was awarded the prestigious 2019 American Chemical Society ACS Nano Lectureship Award, which honors three award recipients from around the world who have significantly impacted the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology.
Liu Bin is a Fellow of the Singapore Academy of Engineering, Asia Pacific Academy of Materials, and Royal Society of Chemistry. She serves on the editorial advisory boards of more than a dozen top peer-reviewed chemistry and materials journals. Since 2019, she serves as the Deputy Editor to launch and develop ACS Materials Letters, a flagship materials journal of the American Chemical Society. She is passionate about nurturing the next generation research leaders and encouraging more women to pursue careers in science and engineering.

Prof. Vincent Craig
Department of Applied Mathematics at the Australian National University
Prof. Vincent Craig leads the colloids group in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Australian National University. He completed both his B.Sc. (Honours in Chemistry in 1992) and Ph.D. degrees (jointly in Applied Maths and Chemistry in 1997) at the ANU before postdoctoral positions at UC Davis, California and the University of Newcastle, NSW.
He was awarded an ARC Postdoctoral fellowship in 1998, an ARC Research Fellowship in 2001 and an ARC Future Fellowship in 2009. His research contributions are in a number of areas including surface force measurement where he has extended the range of materials that can be studied and has made significant contributions to our understanding of the influence of roughness, our understanding of the forces between hydrophobic surfaces and boundary slip. In the field of surfactant adsorption he has revealed that the kinetics of surfactant adsorption can be very slow when aggregates are present on the surface but not in bulk. In his studies on electrolytes he has described and codified the effect of ions on bubble coalescence and demonstrated the existence of the fundamental ion specific series that apply across all solvents and is now applying this understanding to polyelectrolytes.
POLY-CHAR [Auckland] 2023 Key Dates
- 5 May 2022 - Call for Abstracts OPEN
- 15 July 2022 - Registrations OPEN
- 19 September 2022 - Call for Abstracts CLOSE
- 19 September 2022 - Call for Abstracts reviewed
- 4 October 2022 - Authors notified
- 9 October 2022 - Accepted authors MUST register
- 15 October 2022 - Draft programme online

Prof. Dr. Zhenan Bao
Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, US
Confirmed
Click here for more information.

Prof. Ben Zhong Tang
Center for Aggregation-Induced Emission, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.
Confirmed
Click here for more information

Prof. Yongfang Li
Professor of Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICCAS) and in Soochow
Confirmed
Click here for more information.

Prof. Liu Bin
National University of Singapore
Confirmed
Click here for more information.

Prof. Vincent Craig
Department of Applied Mathematics at the Australian National University
Confirmed
Click here for more information.

Prof. Martina Stenzel
University of New South Wales, Australia
Confirmed
Click here for more information.
POLY-CHAR [Auckland] 2023 Key Dates
- 5 May 2022 - Call for Abstracts OPEN
- 15 July 2022 - Registrations OPEN
- 19 September 2022 - Call for Abstracts CLOSE
- 19 September 2022 - Call for Abstracts reviewed
- 4 October 2022 - Authors notified
- 9 October 2022 - Accepted authors MUST register
- 15 October 2022 - Draft programme online

Prof. Dr. Zhenan Bao
Department of Chemical Engineering, Stanford University, US
Zhenan Bao joined Stanford University in 2004. She is currently a K.K. Lee Professor in Chemical Engineering, and with courtesy appointments in Chemistry and Material Science and Engineering. She has been the Department Chair of Chemical Engineering from 2018. She founded the Stanford Wearable Electronics Initiative (eWEAR) and is the current faculty director. She is also an affiliated faculty member of Precourt Institute, Woods Institute, ChEM-H and Bio-X. Professor Bao received her Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from The University of Chicago in 1995 and joined the Materials Research Department of Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies. She became a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in 2001. Professor Bao currently has more than 700 refereed publications and more than 100 US patents with a Google Scholar H-index 185.
Bao is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Inventors. Bao was elected a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Science in 2021. She is a Fellow of AAAS, ACS, MRS, SPIE, ACS POLY and ACS PMSE.
Bao served as a member of Executive Board of Directors for the Materials Research Society and Executive Committee Member for the Polymer Materials Science and Engineering division of the American Chemical Society. She was an Associate Editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry journal Chemical Science, Polymer Reviews and Synthetic Metals. She serves on the international advisory board for Advanced Materials, Advanced Energy Materials, ACS Nano, Accounts of Chemical Reviews, Advanced Functional Materials, Chemistry of Materials, Chemical Communications, Journal of American Chemical Society, Nature Asian Materials, Materials Horizon and Materials Today. She is one of the Founders and currently sits on the Board of Directors of C3 Nano Co. and PyrAmes, both are silicon valley venture funded companies.
Bao was a recipient of the VinFuture Prize Female Innovator 2022, ACS Award of Chemistry of Materials 2022, MRS Mid-Career Award in 2021, AICHE Alpha Chi Sigma Award 2021, ACS Central Science Disruptor and Innovator Prize in 2020, ACS Gibbs Medal in 2020, the Wilhelm Exner Medal from the Austrian Federal Minister of Science in 2018, the L’Oreal UNESCO Women in Science Award North America Laureate in 2017. She was awarded the ACS Applied Polymer Science Award in 2017, ACS Creative Polymer Chemistry Award in 2013 ACS Cope Scholar Award in 2011. She is a recipient of the Royal Society of Chemistry Beilby Medal and Prize in 2009, IUPAC Creativity in Applied Polymer Science Prize in 2008, American Chemical Society Team Innovation Award 2001, R&D 100 Award, and R&D Magazine Editors Choice Best of the Best new technology for 2001.

Prof. Martina Stenzel
University of New South Wales, Australia
Martina Stenzel studied chemistry at the University of Bayreuth, Germany, before completing her PhD in 1999 at the Institute of Applied Macromolecular Chemistry, University of Stuttgart, Germany. She started as a postdoctoral fellow at UNSW in 1999 and is now a full Professor in the school of chemistry as well as co-director of the Centre for Advanced Macromolecular Design (CAMD).
Her research interest is focused on the synthesis of functional nanoparticles for drug delivery applications. Martina Stenzel published more than 300 peer reviewed papers mainly on polymer and nanoparticle design.
She is scientific editor of Materials Horizons and serves currently on a range of editorial boards. She received a range of awards including the 2011 Le Fèvre Memorial Prize of the Australian Academy of Science. Martina Stenzel is currently chairing the National Chemistry Committee of the Australian Academy of Science and she is also a Fellow of the Academy.

Prof. Ben Zhong Tang
Center for Aggregation-Induced Emission, State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China.
Hong Kong Branch of Chinese National Engineering Research Center for Tissue Restoration and Reconstruction and Department of Chemistry, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, Hong Kong, China.
Ben Zhong Tang is Stephen K. C. Cheong Professor of Science, Chair Professor of Chemistry, and Chair Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering at The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Tang received B.S. and Ph.D. degrees from South China University of Technology and Kyoto University, respectively. He conducted postdoctoral research at University of Toronto. He joined HKUST as an assistant professor in 1994 and was promoted to chair professor in 2008. Tang has published >1,400 papers.
Prof. Tang’s publications have been cited >97,000 times with an h-index of 144. He has been listed by Thomson Reuters as a Highly Cited Researcher in both areas of Chemistry and Materials Science. He received the State Natural Science Award (1st Class; 2017) from Chinese Government, Scientific and Technological Progress Award from the Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation (2017) and Senior Research Fellowship from the Croucher Foundation (2007). He is now serving as Editor-in-Chief of Materials Chemistry Frontiers (RSC & CCS).

Prof. Yongfang Li
professor in Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICCAS) and in Soochow
Yongfang Li is a professor in Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (ICCAS) and in Soochow University. He received his Ph. D. degree in department of Chemistry from Fudan University in 1986, then did his postdoctoral research at ICCAS from 1986 to 1988. He became a staff in 1988 and promoted to professor in 1993 in ICCAS. He did his visiting research in Institute for Molecular Science, Japan from 1988.10. to 1991.4. and in University of California at Santa Barbara from 1997.6. to 1998.6. He was invited to be a professor in Soochow University in 2012, and was elected as a member of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013.
Prof. Li’s present research field is photovoltaic materials and devices for polymer solar cells. He has published more than 700 research papers and the published papers have been cited by others for more than 44000 times with an h-index of 105.

Prof. Liu Bin
National University of Singapore
Professor Liu Bin, Provost’s Chair, was appointed Vice President (Research and Technology) at the National University of Singapore (NUS) on 1 September 2019. She has been the Head of the Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering since July 2017.
Liu Bin graduated with a bachelor’s and master’s degree from Nanjing University, and PhD in Chemistry from NUS. She had postdoctoral training at the University of California at Santa Barbara. She joined NUS as an Assistant Professor in 2005, and was promoted to full Professorship in 2016.
Liu Bin is a leader in the field of organic functional materials, who has been well-recognised for her contributions in polymer chemistry and applications of organic nanomaterials for biomedical research, environmental monitoring and energy devices. She is named among the World’s Most Influential Minds and the Top 1% Highly Cited Researchers in Materials Science by Thomson Reuters and Clarivate Analytics. She is a prolific researcher with over 350 publications and holds 30 patents with 16 of them licensed to different companies in US, UK and Asia. In 2014, she co-founded Luminicell, an NUS spin-off company that produces organic luminescent nanoparticles for use in medical and biological applications.
Liu Bin has an impressive list of accolades to her name, including the National Science and Technology Young Scientist Award 2008, L’Oréal Women in Science National Fellowship in 2011 and the 2016 President’s Technology Award. Most recently, she was awarded the prestigious 2019 American Chemical Society ACS Nano Lectureship Award, which honors three award recipients from around the world who have significantly impacted the fields of nanoscience and nanotechnology.
Liu Bin is a Fellow of the Singapore Academy of Engineering, Asia Pacific Academy of Materials, and Royal Society of Chemistry. She serves on the editorial advisory boards of more than a dozen top peer-reviewed chemistry and materials journals. Since 2019, she serves as the Deputy Editor to launch and develop ACS Materials Letters, a flagship materials journal of the American Chemical Society. She is passionate about nurturing the next generation research leaders and encouraging more women to pursue careers in science and engineering.

Prof. Vincent Craig
Department of Applied Mathematics at the Australian National University
Prof. Vincent Craig leads the colloids group in the Department of Applied Mathematics at the Australian National University. He completed both his B.Sc. (Honours in Chemistry in 1992) and Ph.D. degrees (jointly in Applied Maths and Chemistry in 1997) at the ANU before postdoctoral positions at UC Davis, California and the University of Newcastle, NSW.
He was awarded an ARC Postdoctoral fellowship in 1998, an ARC Research Fellowship in 2001 and an ARC Future Fellowship in 2009. His research contributions are in a number of areas including surface force measurement where he has extended the range of materials that can be studied and has made significant contributions to our understanding of the influence of roughness, our understanding of the forces between hydrophobic surfaces and boundary slip. In the field of surfactant adsorption he has revealed that the kinetics of surfactant adsorption can be very slow when aggregates are present on the surface but not in bulk. In his studies on electrolytes he has described and codified the effect of ions on bubble coalescence and demonstrated the existence of the fundamental ion specific series that apply across all solvents and is now applying this understanding to polyelectrolytes.