Plenary Speakers

Toshinori Tsuru received his Ph.D. degree in 1991after he graduated from The University of Tokyo in 1983. He moved to Hiroshima University in 1995, and was promoted to a full professor in 2006. He has been dedicated to membrane science and technology for more than 40 years. His research experience started with nanofiltration in terms of membrane preparation and the transport mechanism of electrolytes through charged porous membranes. Upon joining Hiroshima University, his interests have expanded to inorganic and organic/inorganic hybrid membranes, involving the preparation of subnano-nanoporous Si-based membranes, characterization, transport mechanism, and the applications to gas and liquid phase separation. He has authored and co-authored over 300 SCI papers and 50 book chapters. He served as the President of The Membrane Society of Japan in 2013 and 2014, and is also an editorial board member in Journal of Membrane Science. He is selected as Distinguished Professor at Hiroshima University.

Davide Mattia, FIChemE, CEng, is Professor of Chemical Engineering and Deputy Dean in the Faculty of Engineering and Design at the University of Bath. He earned a MEng in Materials Engineering in 2002 from the University ‘Federico II, Napoli, Italy, and a PhD in Materials Engineering from Drexel University, Philadelphia, USA, in 2007. He joined Bath in 2008 as a Lecturer and was promoted to a full Professor in 2016. His current research focuses on using membranes to address environmental challenges, including the sustainable manufacturing of materials and the removal of organic micropollutants from water. He is a past Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellow, holds an EPSRC Established Career Fellowship in Water Engineering and is PI on the £9Mn EPSRC Programme Grant SynHiSel on highly selective membranes. He has authored more than 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals and holds several patents on membrane-related inventions. He is the co-founder of Naturbeads Ltd. a start-up manufacturing biodegradable cellulose microbeads as a replacement for plastic microparticles used in a wide range of products.

Prof. Dr. Wilhelm A. Meulenberg is head of the department Gas Separation Membranes at the Institute of Energy and Climate Research IEK-1 at Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH, Germany.

He graduated 1994 in two different studies - Metallurgy and Materials Technology and Mineralogy at the RWTH Aachen, Germany. There he also obtained his Ph.D. in 1999. Topic of his Ph.D. was the manufacturing characterization of ceramic shell moulds for investment casting at the Institute of Gesteinshüttenkunde of RWTH Aachen, Germany.

Since then, he has been working at Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH in various areas of materials development and component manufacturing for high temperature fuel cells and ceramic gas separation membranes.

From 1999 to 2001, he worked in the development of high temperature fuel cells at the Institute of Materials and Processing for Energy Applications IWV-1. From 2001 to 2003, he was personal scientific assistant to the Executive Board at Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH.

In 2003, he started to build up the field of inorganic gas separations at the Institute of Energy and Climate Research IEK-1, where currently he is the head of the department. Recent research is focussed on the field of mixed ionic electronic conductors for gas separation and membrane reactors for the production of synthetic fuels and chemicals in membrane reactors. In addition, he works in the field of porous membranes for separation of hydrogen and CO2 from different gas mixtures. His Google Schoolar h-index in 2023 is 38 (i10=92) with more than 5700 citations.

In parallel, he had a position from 2010 - 2019 at the University of Queensland, Australia - an Adjunct Associate Professorship. Since 2016 until today, Wilhelm Meulenberg is Full Professor at the University of Twente, Netherlands for ionic conductors.

Jaap Vente is leading the TNO programmatic approach to assist the industry in their transition to become climate neutral. For this purpose we work together with our clients and partners to generate common visions on the transition pathways and technological solutions. Essential activities within the TNO unit Energy and Materials Transition, include sustainable industrial heat systems, renewable hydrogen production, industrial CO2 capture, sustainable fuels and feedstock based on circularity, biomass and CO2.

Before his current function, Jaap was developing and commercializing membrane systems based on an organic-inorganic hybrid silica material and supported dense metals, and sorption based CO2 capture and conversion technologies. He is co-author of over 80 scientific publications, and co-inventor of 10 patents. His scientific background lies in materials science and solid state chemistry, membrane technology and chemical engineering.

Theo Tsotsis is the Robert E. Vivian Professor in Energy Resources in the Mork Family Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Southern California (USC), where he served as the Department’s inaugural Chair in 2005. His research interests are in the areas of transport, adsorption and reaction in complex porous media, reaction engineering, reactor design, and membrane separations. He is the author of over 290 technical papers, numerous book chapters, eight U. S. and one European patent, and one book. He has also edited two Technical Meeting Proceedings volumes. He has worked on a broad array of problems, ranging from the abstract and theoretical (symmetry breaking instabilities, reaction rate oscillations) to the practical and applied (CO2 capture and storage, and membrane reactors and bioreactors). Professor Tsotsis was the co-founder of USC's NSF/IGERT Center in Environmental Engineering. He is a Fellow of the AIChE.

Jerry Y.S. Lin is a Regents' Professor at Arizona State University.  He was department chair of chemical engineering at ASU from 2006-2009 after his 13-year appointment as a faculty member at University of Cincinnati.  Prof. Lin's main research areas are membrane science, adsorption/catalysis, and energy storage.  He has published about 400 papers mostly in chemical engineering journals and is an inventor of 9 US and European patents and 5 pending US patents.   Prof. Lin's research was recognized by several national awards including AIChE Institute Award for Excellence in Industrial Gas Technologies in 2009 and AIChE Gerhold Award in 2021. He is an elected Fellow of American  Society for Advancement of Science (AAAS),  American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) and North American Membrane Society (NAMS).  Prof. Lin is currently co-Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Membrane Science and JMS Letters.

Dr. Anita Buekenhoudt graduated in 1983 at the UAntwerpen as master in physics. In 1990 she obtained a PhD in solid-state physics at the University of Leuven. After a two year post-doc, she joined the Flemish Institute for Technological Research, VITO in Mol. There she is active in the Business Unit Separation and Conversion Technology as project manager and head of the project team “Membranes in Chemistry”. Her work focuses on the development, characterization and application of porous membranes in a broad range of challenging liquid separations relevant for the chemical industry. For this purpose her team develops new processes and if relevant, own innovative ceramic membranes. She has attracted and managed several national and international funded R&D projects, and industrial contract work on this topic. She is author of about 80 publications, 5 book chapters, > 70 international presentations, and inventor of 11 patents.

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