Klaus-Dieter Weltmann is the Chairman of the Board and Scientific Director of the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology e.V. (INP), He received his PhD in applied physics working on nonlinear dynamics in low temperature plasmas. In 1994, he was Visiting Scientist at West Virginia University. In 1995, he joined ABB Corporate Research Ltd., Switzerland, working on the development of switchgear. In 1998, he became the head of the High Voltage Systems Group of ABB. In 2000, he was appointed to lead the Research & Development unit Gas Insulated Switchgear at ABB High Voltage Technologies Ltd., Switzerland and later in 2002, he became Business Unit R&D Manager. Since 2003 he is Director of the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology e.V. Since 2005, Weltmann investigates the use of plasmas in the field of life science with a special focus on the innovative field of plasma medicine. He initiated two major projects (ZIK plasmatis, Campus PlasmaMed) as well as the foundation of the "National Center for Plasma Medicine" in 2013, which bundles all plasma medicine activities in Germany. In cooperation with the University of Greifswald, Weltmann initiated and filled the world's first professorship in plasma medicine. Internationally, Weltmann is co-founder and co-director of the Applied Plasma Medicine Center in Seoul (Korea). Weltmann built up external branches of his institute at the University of Rostock and the Clinical Centre of Karlsburg, involving local partners. Following his innovative concept, physicists, biologists, chemists, engineers and medical doctors are gathered for cooperation within the clinical centres under the same roof. Weltmann co-edited the book "Comprehensive Clinical Plasma Medicine. Cold Physical Plasma for Medical Application", published by Springer in 2016. He was awarded the Plasma Physics Innovation Price of the European Physics Society in 2014 for his outstanding contributions to plasma physics, particularly in the field of Plasma Medicine. Other current main projects driven by Weltmann at INP cope with Plasma Agriculture ("Plasma for Food") and new methods and technologies for energy storage (Campfire). They benefit of important funding from the Federal Republic of Germany. Weltmann helds more than 45 patents. He aims to push the transfer of developed prototypes to products. This purpose is mainly pursued by the 5 institute's spin-offs.
Vasco Guerra is Associate Professor at the Department of Physics of Instituto Superior Técnico (IST) and Head of the modelling and simulation activities of the N-PRiME group of Instituto de Plasmas e Fusão Nuclear (IPFN). He is graduated in Engineering Physics at IST in 1991 and received the PhD degree in Physics from Universidade Técnica de Lisboa (IST) in 1998. Vasco held a visiting professor grant from the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Science in 2020 and was invited professor at Sorbonne Université in 2016. His research focuses on the modelling of non-equilibrium kinetics of low-temperature molecular plasmas. He is currently involved in the study of the fundamentals and mechanisms of CO2 plasmas interacting with surfaces, in the framework of the H2020 ITN Program PIONEER. In 2016, he was awarded the William Crookes Plasma Prize, co-sponsored by the European Physical Society and the Institute of Physics Publishing, “for the outstanding contribution to the modeling of molecular low-temperature plasmas.
Prof. Pietro Favia, Ph.D, is Associate Professor (General Chemistry) at the Department of Chemistry, University of Bari. Associate to the former CNR Institute of Inorganic Methods and Plasmas, now CNR NANOTEC. Coordinator of the Ph.D. School in Chemical and Molecular Sciences of the University of Bari.
Expert of Plasma Processing of Materials, author of more than 180 papers, reviews, editorials and patents, Prof. Favia is founding partner of the Spin Off Plasma Solution srl, and editor in Chief of Plasma Processes and Polymers (Wiley-VCH).
Research interests include:
Cristina Canal Barnils (Barcelona 1977) is Associate professor at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, at the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC), head of the PlasmaMedLab(obriu en una finestra nova): Plasmas for BioMedical Applications Laboratory and of the Medical Technologies: Biomaterials & Tissue Engineering research group at the IRSJD(open in new window).
Before joining UPC, she did different research stages at pre and postdoctoral level in different national and international research centres. She has participated and lead a number of research projects, as well as technology transfer projects in the areas of Textile materials, Biomaterials and Cold Plasmas. Her research has led to above 60 publications, and several invited conferences. Her research has been recognized with different awards, including the L’Oreal-Unesco fellowship “For Young Women in Science” (2012), the “2018 Early Career Award in Plasma Medicine“ and the ICREA Acadèmia 2020.
Her interests are focused in cold plasmas for biomedical applications, particularly: i. Surface modification of biomaterials to control parameters such as adhesion or biological behaviour; ii. Control of drug release from biomaterials; and iii. Therapeutical appications of cold plasmas, for instance, in bone cancers.
She is currently ERC APACHE project(open in new window) Starting Grant leader in a project in the field of atmospheric pressure plasma therapy, her main axis of research being currently focused in the atmospheric pressure plasma therapy of bone cancer treatment in combination with biomaterials.
Dr. Sylvain Coulombe is a registered Engineering Physicist and Professor of Chemical Engineering at McGill University since 2001. From 1997 to 2001 he was a Senior Research Scientist with GE Global Research (USA). From 2018 to 2021 he was Associate Vice-Principal, Innovation and Partnerships with McGill University. He is an expert in chemical process electrification using plasmas. He develops plasma sources and processes for nanomaterial and nanostructure synthesis, electrical power-to-X, circular fuels and materials, and powder processing. He has co-authored more than 300 peer-reviewed publications and conference contributions. He is Director of the McGill Centre for Innovation in Storage and Conversion of Energy since January 2022. He teaches courses in plasma engineering, resource recovery and circular use, transport phenomena, and process instrumentation and control.
Holger Kersten is a Professor at the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics at University of Kiel, Germany since 2006. Prior Professor Kersten was the head of the plasma processes group at the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP Greifswald) in Greifswald, Germany. The focus of his research includes basic studies on the interaction of plasmas with surfaces, complex plasmas and their applications in plasma technology. In 1999, he received the Greifswald Plasma Physics Prize in recognition of his research. Professor Kersten was furthermore the president of the German Society for Plasma Technology from 2009 to 2013. He is currently an Editor-in-Chief of the European Physical Journal Techniques and Instrumentation (EPJTI) and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Kiel University.
Talk Title: Plasma cleaning and treatment of art objects
Eloisa Sardella is a researcher of the National Council of Research-Institute of Nanotechnology (CNR-NANOTEC) Bari, Italy. She is author of more than 60 journal paper and book chapters and her research has led to several invited talks at international conferences. Her research focuses on non-equilibrium plasma processing of materials both with low and atmospheric pressure that find application in different fields from biomedical to food packaging. After more than 10 years of experience in modifying surfaces of planar and porous materials as well as micro- and nanoparticles, in the last years she moved to the innovative area of plasma medicine focusing her research on the application of atmospheric plasma processes directly on living cells, on liquids of biological interest and on food with a particular focus on the characterization of chemical species produced by plasma and discovery of their role in biomedicine.
Jochen Schein studied electrical engineering at the Ruhr University and had his Phd in plasma technology in 1996. From 1996 to 1998 he was a postdoc in plasma diagnostics at the Department for Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota (USA). He then moved to Alameda Applied Sciences Corp. as a Principal Scientist. in California (USA), where he worked in the field of satellite propulsion. From 2004 to 2006 he was a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on the National Ignition Facility's fusion experiments in that laboratory. Since August 2006 he is a professor at the Institute for Plasma Technology and Mathematics within the Faculty for Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich. His research interests are in plasma physics, plasma technology and satellite propulsion.
Mark J. Kushner received the BS in Nuclear Engineering and the BA in Astronomy from the University of California at Los Angeles; and the MS and Ph.D. in Applied Physics from the California Institute of Technology. After a post-doctoral appointment, Mark served on the technical staffs of Sandia National Laboratory, Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and Spectra Technology before joining the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he was the Founder Professor of Engineering and held several administrative positions. Mark served as Dean of Engineering at Iowa State University before joining the University of Michigan in 2008. His research addresses the fundamentals of low temperature plasmas and their applications. Mark has held several leadership positions in professional societies, conferences and in scientific publishing, as well as participating in national assessments of plasma physics.
Michael Keidar is A. James Clark Professor of Engineering. His research concerns plasma physics and engineering with application in plasma medicine, advanced spacecraft propulsion, and plasma-based nanotechnology. He has authored over 300 journal articles, 300 conference papers, author of textbook “Plasma Engineering” and Editor of book “Plasma Cancer Therapy”. He received 2017 Davidson award for plasma physics. In 2016 he received AIAA Engineer of the Year award for his work on micropropulsion resulted in successful launch of nanosatellite with thrusters developed by his laboratory. He received Plasma Medicine Award in 2021 for his contribution to plasma medicine. Prof. Keidar serves as an Editor in Chief of Journal of Electric Propulsion, Associate editor of AIP Advances, Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions in Radiation and Plasma Medical Sciences and member of editorial board of many journals. He is elected Fellow of National Academy of Investors, Fellow of American Physical Society and Fellow of American Institute of Astronautics and Aeronautics. He is elected President of the Electric Rocket Propulsion Society.
Professor at Paul Sabatier Toulouse University, Director of LAPLACE (~350 members, 150 permanent staff), manager during 5 years of a research team (~30 members) – Responsible ~10 research contracts (academic and in partnerships with industry) – Specialist in theory and simulation of cold plasma physics – Author of more than 60 papers in peer reviewed journals, more than 80 international conferences, 3 patents, 10 invited lectures, 3 book chapter – 15 PhD thesis supervised.
Dr. Rajdeep Singh Rawat is a Professor in Physics at Natural Sciences and Science Education, NIE, NTU. Rajdeep’s main research interest involves performing fundamental studies on pulsed plasma devices such as Dense Plasma focus (DPF) and Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) and their applications to wide variety of areas such as: neutron source for novel material testing for first wall of fusion reactor and explosive material detection, radioisotopes synthesis, soft x-ray lithography, soft and hard x-ray imaging, material modification, and nano-structured material synthesis. He has extensive experience in various basic plasma and nuclear diagnostic techniques. His current research focus is graphene and transition metal nitrides/oxides based three dimensional porous nanostructured hybrid assemblies for energy storage and conversion applications; magnetic materials for data storage; and FE-FM heterointerfaces for voltage controlled switching and Insulator-Graphene/Metal heterointerfaces for Rashba effect tuning, development of high spin Hall angle spin Hall materials for spintronics applications.
After joining at NTU, he has participated in 40 research grants since 2001 with 24 as principal investigator with 17 of them from external/industrial sources, and graduated 4 MSc and 13 PhD students and currently supervising 5 PhD students. He has published about 240 Journal papers and over 70 conference papers with >6550 citations and H-index of 43. He also holds a patent on “New Fast Absolute Neutron Detector”. He is also the President of Asian African Association for Plasma Training (which has 54 member institutions in 23 countries) since 2012 and President of International Physics Olympiad since 2018.
Dr. Ita Junkar is a chemical engineer who obtained her PhD in 2010 and is currently employed as a senior researcher at Jožef Stefan Institute. Her main filed of work are biomaterials and modification of surfaces by highly reactive gaseous plasma. She developed several methods for surface treatment of materials by highly reactive gaseous plasma, mainly for the use in bio-applications. She has five granted patents, two filled at the European patent office. She is actively involved in the interdisciplinary research activities mostly based on surface modification of biomaterials and has many years’ experience in working with medical doctors and microbiologist in the field of biomaterials.
Expert in plasma processing and chemical characterization of surfaces for various industrial application. Nowadays the research activity is mainly focused on the following fields:
Dr. Qi Hua Fan received his Ph.D. in applied physics from the University of Aveiro in 1999. He is currently an Associate Professor at Michigan State University with joint appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science. He is also a member of the Fraunhofer Center for Coatings and Diamond Technologies. Dr. Fan’s research interests include plasma sources for large-area coatings and plasma processing of nanostructured materials for energy harvesting, energy storage, and electro-optical devices. Dr. Fan teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses in ECE and CheMS departments. Typical courses include Plasma-Assisted Materials Processing, Thin Film Optics and Engineering, and Materials Science.