Geoffrey Mitchell is Chief Scientific Officer at Visionary Equation lda, a high tech startup company based in Marinha Grande, Portugal , a researcher at the Centre for Rapid and Sustainable Product Development at the Polytechnic of Leiria in Portugal. He is Adjunct Professor at the Sri Jayachamarajendra College of Engineering, in Mysore India, Visiting Medical Physicist, Oxford University Hospitals Trust, Oxford UK and Emeritus Professor of Physics at the University of Reading in the UK. His eclectic research work bridges material science, physics, biology, chemistry, computer simulation and technology and he is passionate about the opportunities which arise in manufacturing. He has pioneered the development of in-situ time-resolving neutron and x-ray scattering procedures to evaluate the structural and morphological transformations involved during manufacturing including Reaction Injection Moulding, Thermoforming, 3D printing and Injection Moulding of semi-crystalline thermoplastic polymers and biopolymers. He plans to use this to develop a multiscale digital twin for injection moulding. He has applied this approach to 3D printing to develop the concept of morphology mapping. He is actively engaged in the digitialisation of materials He is a strong advocate for Climate Change and the challenges of sustainability. He has edited a number of books, the most recent “Controlling the Morphology of Polymers” and “Electrospinning – Principles, Practise and Possibilities” with a second edition to be published in 2024. He currently writing a book in partnership with Professor Mahadevappa Kariduraganavar at Karnatak University in Dharwad India on “Design, Processing and Degradation of Plastics.
Maria Laura Du Lorenzo is now director research scientist at the Institute of Chemistry and Technology of Polymers of the Italian National Research Council (ICTP-CNR, Italy). In 1998 she was a Research Associate at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville and the Oak Ridge National Laboratory (USA). Her main research interests focus on the thermal analysis of homopolymers and multi-component polymeric materials. Major investigations concern structure-property relationships, transition kinetics (crystallization, melting, glass transition), morphology, mechanical, and barrier properties. Dr. Di Lorenzo is Head of the Laboratory of Thermal Analysis at ICTP-CNR. Dr. Di Lorenzo received the “First AIM Award for Young Researchers”, from the Italian Association of Science and Technology of Macromolecules (AIM) in 2007 and the “A. Lucci Award”, from the Italian Association of Calorimetry and Thermal Analysis (AICAT), for “her innovative contribution to the development of calorimetric and thermoanalytical instruments for the characterization of polymer-based materials” in 2002.
María del Carmen Garrigós Selva, Chemistry PhD (2003). Full Professor in Analytical Chemistry in the University of Alicante (Spain) from 2008. Current head of the Polymer and Nanomaterials Analysis Research Group. She currently has got four positive evaluations from the National Committee of Evaluation of the Research Activities dependent from the Spanish Government. She has participated in 43 research competitive research projects with public financing (17 of them as Principal Investigator), being the most relevant 5 consecutive projects financed by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (2009-2024) as well as four international projects under the H-2020 calls (two of them as the Principal Investigator) from 2016 to 2022. In addition, she has participated in more than 130 research and innovation projects with different national and international companies, most of them as Principal Investigator.
She has been author of 2 books on Food Analysis and co-author in 17 book chapters in biopolymers, additives analysis and development of methods for food analysis. Moreover, she has participated in 25 publications on academical research. Author or co-author of 93 research papers published in journals in Analytical Chemistry, Food Technology and Polymer Science, 67 of them published in journals in the first quarters of the respective topics. The total number of citations is 3226, accounting for 457 citations per year in the last 5-year span and h index 32. She has participated in the scientific committees in many international conferences, particularly in the International Conference on Biobased and Biodegradable Polymers (BIOPOL), where she was co-chair in the 8th edition. She has supervised 5 PhD thesis presentations and she is currently supervising 4 more to be presented in the next future.
Her main research areas are:
J. González began his scientific career at the Complutense U. of Madrid in 1992. He joined UC3M in 1993 to carry out his PhD thesis on polymer composite materials, being specialized in characterization of polymers and composites. He carried out several research stays at the institute of Tecnologia Quimica e Biologica of the Universidade Nova de Lisbon (1999); University of Technology of Tampere in Finland (2001); University of Basque Country (2001); Macromolecular Department of Case Western Reserve University (2002); University of California Santa Bárbara (2005) and the National Institute of Standards and Technology (Gaidersburg, USA 2015). He obtained a position as tenured at UC3M in 2003. In 2022 he gets the Full professor position at the UC3M. In 2006 he created the research group "Group of Polymeric Composite Materials and Interphases", with the new line of research, "Multifunctional Nanocomposite Materials based on Thermoplastic matrices”. One of its biggest challenges has been to achieve uniform dispersion of nanoparticles within thermoplastic polymers. He studied macromolecular dynamics through the use of spectroscopic techniques and he developed nanoscale experimental methods for determining key parameters in the area of materials science, such as the coefficient of thermal expansion. In recent years he has collaborated with the Group of Chemistry of the University of Navarra studying antibacterial nanocomposite materials. At this time, one of his main aims is focused on developing new methods of preparation of nanocomposite materials based on a technique called "Solution Blow Spinning", SBS, which allows preparing polymeric nonwoven nanofiber mats with potential applications in medicine among others. He is a member of the Royal Spanish Chemical Society and of the Specialized Polymers Group. He is member of several international comeetes of scientists. He has participated in more than 25 national, regional or European research projects. His entire scientific career has allowed him to publish more than 110 articles in SCI journals, several book chapters, more than 95 communications to conferences