Jeffrey studied chemistry and philosophy at Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas and worked in the research group of Prof. Michael P. Doyle (moved to University of Maryland, College Park in 2003). He began his graduate studies in organic chemistry at the California Institute of Technology in 1996. In 1998, he moved with his research advisor, Prof. Erick M. Carreira, to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland, where he completed his Doc. Nat. Sci. in 2001. Following a two year Japan Society for the Promotion of Science Postdoctoral Fellowship with Prof. Keisuke Suzuki at the Tokyo Institute of Technology in Tokyo, Japan, he joined the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UC-Santa Barbara in 2003. In Fall 2007, he moved to the University of Pennsylvania as Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry. In Fall 2009, he moved to the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in Zürich, Switzerland, as a full Professor in Laboratory of Organic Chemistry. Since starting his academic career, Jeffrey’s work has been recognized by numerous awards including a Camille and Henry Dreyfus New Faculty Award (2003), an NSF CAREER Award (2004), a Beckman Young Investigator Award (2006), an Amgen Young Investigator Award (2006), a Research Corporation Cottrell Scholar Award (2006), the AstraZeneca Excellence in Chemistry Award (2006), Eli Lilly Grantee Award (2006–2008), a David and Lucille Packard Foundation Fellowship (2006–2011), the Bristol Myers Squibb Unresticted Grant in Synthetic Organic Chemistry (2007), an Arthur C. Cope Scholar Award (2008), and and Elias J. Corey Award for Outstanding Original Contribution in Organic Synthesis by a Young Investigator (2011).
Hiroaki Suga was born in Okayama City, Japan in 1963. He received his B. Eng. and M. Eng. from Okayama University and Ph. D. in Chemistry from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1994. After three years of post-doctoral work in Massachusetts General Hospital working with Jack Szostak, he was appointed as a tenure-track Assistant Professor in the Department of Chemistry in the State University of New York at Buffalo to carry his independent research group. In 2002, he was promoted to tenured Associate Professor. In 2003, he moved to the Research Center for Advanced Science and Technology in the University of Tokyo as Associate Professor, and soon after he was promoted to Full Professor. In 2010, he changed his affiliation to the Department of Chemistry, Graduate School of Science. His research interests are in the field of chemical biology and biotechnology related to RNA, translation, and peptides. He also conducts several drug discovery programs in collaboration with industrial partners,including own start-up biotechnology company, PeptiDream Inc. Tokyo.
Kazunari Domen received B.S. (1976), M.S. (1979), and Ph.D. (1982) honors in chemistry from the University of Tokyo. Dr. Domen joined Chemical Resources Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1982 as Assistant Professor and was subsequently promoted to Associate Professor in 1990 and Professor in 1996. He has moved to the University of Tokyo as Professor in 2004. Domen has been working on overall water splitting reaction on heterogeneous photocatalysts to generate clean and recyclable hydrogen. In 1980, he reported NiO-SrTiO3 photocatalyst for overall water splitting reaction, which was one of the earliest examples achieving stoichiometric H2 and O2 evolution on a particulate system. In 2005, he has succeeded in overall water splitting under visible light (ë < 500 nm) on GaN:ZnO solid solution-based photocatalyst. His research interests now include heterogeneous catalysis and materials chemistry, with particular focus on surface chemical reaction dynamics, photocatalysis, solid acid catalysis, and mesoporous materials.
Jinwoo Cheon is a Professor of Chemistry at Yonsei University and Head of the Nanomaterials Division of the Nano-Medical National Core Research Center of Korea. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in chemistry from Yonsei University in Seoul, Korea. He then moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign where he earned his Ph.D. in organometallics and materials chemistry from Prof. G. Girolami in 1993. After receiving post-doctoral training at the University of California, Berkeley, with Prof. J. Arnold and Dr. E. Bourret in the field of molecular precursor chemistry for semiconducting materials and also at UCLA with Prof. J. Zink studying the photochemistry of inorganic materials, he joined the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) as an assistant professor in 1998. In 2002, he moved to Yonsei University where he was appointed professor of chemistry. Professor Cheon was elected as a junior member of the Korean Academy of Science and Technology in 2003 and is a recipient of the Korean Chemical Society Award in Inorganic Chemistry (2004), the National Science Prize for Junior Faculty (2002), and the Korean Chemical Society-Wiley Young Chemist Award (2001). His research areas include the fabrication and shape control of inorganic nanocrystals, nanoscale biomagnetics, and the applications of nanocrystals for biomedical sciences.
Masahiro Asami received B.S. (1978) and M.S. (1980) from the University of Tokyo. After receiving M.S., he joined Fuji Photo Film Co. Ltd. (shifted to FUJIFILM Corp. in 2006) and started his research work in silver halide photographic science. He was promoted to Senior Research Associate in 2001. Then in 2006, he moved to Intellectual Property Division as General Manager, and in 2008 he was promoted to Corporate Vice President. Since 2009 he was appointed as General Manager of Frontier Core Technology Laboratories. His research interests cover not only physics of photosensitive microcrystal but also material science for development of highly functional films.
After two years of undergraduate studies in the laboratory of the late Professor John A. Osborn at the University of Strasbourg (France), Clément Mazet carried out his PhD research work under the guidance of Professor Lutz H. Gade in the same University. In 2003, he moved to Basel (Switzerland) where he worked as a post-doctoral fellow in the group of Professor Andreas Pfaltz. In 2006 he was awarded a Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship** and spent nearly two years working with Professor Eric N. Jacobsen at Harvard University (MA, USA). He joined the Organic Chemistry Department of the University of Geneva in November 2007 to build up his independent research group as a ‘Maître Assistant’. In 2011, he was awarded a prestigious Swiss National Foundation Professorship (SNF Professorship). He currently assumes the chairmanship of conferences organization of the Department of Organic Chemistry. His research interests include mechanistic and synthetic chemistry with particular emphasis on asymmetric catalysis.
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Speakers 2012