Keynote Speakers

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name

organisation

country

bio

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Dr Alan Finkel AO

Chief Scientist

Australia

Dr Finkel commenced as Australia’s Chief Scientist on 25 January 2016. He is Australia’s eighth Chief Scientist.

Dr Finkel has an extensive science background as an entrepreneur, engineer, neuroscientist and educator.

Prior to becoming Chief Scientist, he was the eighth Chancellor of Monash University and the eighth President of the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE).

Dr Finkel was awarded his PhD in electrical engineering from Monash University and worked as a postdoctoral research fellow in neuroscience at the Australian National University.

In 1983 he founded Axon Instruments, a California-based, ASX-listed company that made precision scientific instruments used at pharmaceutical companies and universities for the discovery of new medicines. After Axon was sold in 2004, Dr Finkel became a director of the acquiring company, NASDAQ-listed Molecular Devices.

In 2006, he focused his career in Australia and undertook a wide range of activities. He led the amalgamation that formed the Florey Neuroscience Institutes; he became Chair of the Australian Centre of Excellence for All-Sky Astrophysics (CAASTRO) and was a director of the ASX-listed diagnostics company Cogstate Limited. He was Executive Chair of the educational software company Stile Education, Chair of Manhattan Investment Group, Chief Technology Officer of Better Place Australia and Chair of Speedpanel Australia.

A winner of the Clunies Ross Award for facilitating international neuroscience research, Dr Finkel is committed to science education. He co-founded Cosmos Magazine, which in addition to magazine publishing operates a secondary schools science education program. At ATSE, he led the development and implementation of the STELR program for secondary school science, which has been adopted in nearly 500 Australian schools.

Dr Finkel also established the Australian Course in Advanced Neuroscience to train early career neuroscientists and is patron of the Australian Science Media Centre.

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Philip J Marriott

Monash University

Australia
FACS Foundation Lectureship for 2017

Professor Marriott obtained his PhD from LaTrobe University, Australia, then undertook postdoctoral research at the University of Bristol, UK, in Organic Geochemistry.

His first academic appointment (5 years) was at the National University of Singapore, School of Chemistry.

He returned to Australia, and in 2010 moved to his present position as Professor of Chemistry at Monash University, Melbourne.

He has had Australian Academy of Science professional visits to China and Portugal, and was recipient of a Korean National Research Foundation World Class University Distinguished Professorship. In 2015, he received a CNPq Special Researcher Award, to work with the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, and Embrapa, Brazil.

His primary research is in gas chromatography and mass spectrometry, specifically in comprehensive 2D GC and multidimensional GC, with mass spectrometry, covering fundamental method development and a broad applications base.

He has published 360 research papers and book chapters.

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Professor Martyn Poliakoff

University of Nottingham

UK

Martyn Poliakoff is a global leader in the field of green chemistry with a specific interest in the applications of supercritical fluids. These highly compressed gases possess properties of gases and liquids that permit interesting chemical reactions without the need for organic solvents, which endanger both health and the environment. He is a Research Professor in Chemistry at the University of Nottingham, where he started as a Lecturer in Inorganic Chemistry in 1979.

His contributions have enabled the development of supercritical carbon dioxide and water solvent systems to replace traditional organic solvents at the industrial scale. Away from the lab, as Foreign Secretary and Vice-president of the Royal Society from 2011-16, he worked to represent and to further the impact of UK and Commonwealth science around the world. He has championed collaboration between chemists and chemical engineers. He is a Foreign Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences and Associate Fellow of the Ethiopian Academy of Sciences.

Martyn is widely recognised thanks to his participation in a series of YouTube videos, The Periodic Table of Videos. This popular science project introduces the general public to the chemical elements of the periodic table. He received a knighthood in 2015 — the culmination of his pursuit of excellence in research, his service as an ambassador for UK science and his public outreach work.

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Mitsuo Sawamoto

Kyoto University

Japan

Professor Mitsuo Sawamoto of Kyoto University's Graduate School of Engineering will receive the 2017 Benjamin Franklin Medal in chemistry from the Franklin Institute in the United States. (He will share the award with Krzysztof Matyjaszewski of Carnegie Mellon University.)

The Franklin Institute Award is one of the oldest and most prestigious science and technology awards in the world, and Professor Sawamoto is the first Japanese to receive the award in the field of chemistry. Past award recipients have included Thomas Edison, Marie Curie, Albert Einstein, Stephen Hawkings, and Bill Gates, while winners from Japan in other divisions have included Sumio Iijima, Shuji Nakamura, Masatoshi Koshiba, and Yoichiro Nambu.

The work for which Professor Sawamoto received this award entailed the development of a new polymerization process involving metal catalysts. He was the first in the world to use a unique metal catalyst to achieve precision radical polymerization, which was for many years thought to be impossible. He thereby established a general theory of precision polymerization while at the same time paving the way for the precision synthesis of finely structured polymers. By doing so, he made pioneering contributions to the precision synthesis of various polymer materials that are useful for industrial and medical applications.

The award ceremony will be held on 4 May 2017 (US Eastern Standard Time) at the Benjamin Franklin National Memorial in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in the United States. The ceremony will be preceded by a symposium, public lectures, and other events, to be held on 1-4 May.

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H.E. Mr Ahmet Üzümcü

Director-General, Organisation For The Prohibition Of Chemical Weapons

H.E. Mr Ahmet Üzümcü was appointed Director-General of the OPCW in December 2009 by the Conference of the States Parties at its Fourteenth Session and began his first term of office on 25 July 2010. He was reappointed for a second term by the Conference of the States Parties at its Eighteenth Session, in December 2013. Immediately prior to his appointment as OPCW Director-General, he served as the Permanent Representative of the Republic of Turkey to the United Nations Office at Geneva.

Ambassador Üzümcü is a career diplomat with vast experience in multilateral diplomacy. During the past decade he has represented Turkey at the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Council, the Conference on Disarmament, the United Nations and other international organisations in Geneva. Ambassador Üzümcü chaired the Conference on Disarmament for four weeks in March 2008 and attended various disarmament-related meetings and conferences in Geneva, Brussels and elsewhere. He has a thorough understanding of and considerable expertise in political-military affairs, disarmament and proliferation issues.

Previously, Ambassador Üzümcü served as Deputy Undersecretary of State for Bilateral Political Affairs at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Turkey. From June 2002 to August 2004, he was the Permanent Representative of Turkey to the NATO Council in Brussels. He held the post of Ambassador of Turkey to Israel from 1999 to 2002. From 1996 to 1999, he headed the Personnel Department at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Ankara. Prior to that, he served in various posts at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs as well as at the Turkish delegation to NATO (1986-1989), the Turkish Embassy in Vienna (1979-1982) and as a Consul in Aleppo(1982-1984).

In addition to his diplomatic experience, Ambassador Üzümcü served in an international capacity as a staff member of NATO’s Political Directorate from 1989 to 1994, where he contributed to work on NATO’s Partnership for Peace initiative in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War and travelled extensively in Eastern European countries and the former Soviet Union.

Ambassador Üzümcü was born in Armutlu, Turkey, on 30 August 1951 and holds a bachelor's degree in international relations with a specialisation in public administration from the Faculty of Political Sciences, Ankara University. He speaks English and French fluently, is married and has a daughter.

Ambassador Üzümcü received the 2013 Nobel Peace Prize on behalf of the OPCW in December 2013. In January 2014, he was awarded the Medaglia d’Onore and the Sigillum Magnum by the University of Bologna in Italy. In December 2015, H.E. Mr Laurent Fabius, Minister of Foreign Affairs and International Development of France, decorated Director-General Üzümcü with the Légion d'honneur (rank of officer).

https://www.opcw.org/about-opcw/technical-secretariat/director-general/

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Junichiro Yamaguchi

Waseda University

Japan

JY was born in Tokyo, Japan, in 1979. He received his Ph.D. in 2007 from the Tokyo University of Science under the supervision of Prof. Yujiro Hayashi. From 2007 to 2008, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. Phil S. Baran at The Scripps Research Institute (JSPS postdoctoral fellowship for research abroad). In 2008 he became an Assistant Professor at Nagoya University working with Prof. Kenichiro Itami and was promoted to Associate Professor in 2012. He then moved to Waseda University as an Associate Professor (principal investigator) in 2016. His research interests include the total synthesis of natural products and the innovation of synthetic methods.

Awards:

Teijin Pharma Award in Synthetic Organic Chemistry, Japan in 2009, Young Scientist’s Research Award in Natural Product Chemistry, Japan, in 2011, The Chemical Society of Japan Lecture Award for Young Chemists in 2012, Japan Union of Chemical Science and Technology Chemistry Communication Award in 2013, The Chemical Society of Japan Award for Distinguished Young Chemists in 2013, Banyu Chemist Award in 2013, Thieme Chemistry Journal Award in 2014, Asian Core Lectureship Award, China and Thailand, 2014. Minister Award for Distinguished Young Scientists in 2017.

Selected Reviews and Papers:

(1) Rh-Catalyzed Regiodivergent Hydrosilylation of Acyl aminocyclopropanes Controlled by Monophosphine Ligands, Kondo, H.: Itami, K.; Yamaguchi, J. Chem Sci. 2017, Advance Article. DOI: 10.1039/C7SC00071E.

(2) Decarbonylative Diaryl Ether Synthesis by Pd and Ni Catalysis, Takise, R.; Isshiki, R. Muto K.; Itami, K.; Yamaguchi, J. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2017, 139, 3340.

(3) Toward an Ideal Synthesis of (Bio)molecules through Direct Arene Assembling Reactions (Accounts), Yamaguchi, J.; Itami, K. Bull. Chem. Soc. Jpn. 2017, 90, 367.

(4) Decarbonylative organoboron cross-coupling of esters by nickel catalysis, Muto K.; Yamguchi, J.; Musaev, D.G.; Itami, K. Nature. Commun. 2015, 6, 7508.

(5) Synthesis and characterization of hexaarylbenzenes with five or six different substituents enabled by programmed synthesis, Suzuki, S.; Segawa, Y.; Itami, K. Yamaguchi, J. Nature Chem. 2015, 7, 227.

(6) Concise Syntheses of Dictyodendrins A and F by a Sequential C−H Functionalization Strategy, Yamaguchi, A.; Chepiga, K.; Yamaguchi, J.; Itami, K.; Davies, H. J. Am. Chem. Soc. 2015, 137, 644.