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Organised by the Materials Research Society of Singapore
19th – 21st Sept 2022
National University of Singapore, University Town, Singapore
Theme 1
MATERIALS FOR ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION
The atmospheric level of carbon dioxide (CO2) has increased up to 414.5 ppm, which has forced the public to take the global warming issue seriously. Developing eco-friendly and carbon neutral materials is essential to meet the ambitious target of global net zero emission by 2050. In this symposium, we will present and discuss the recent studies in the following topics:
Chair: Kai Dan (A*STAR, Institute of Materials Research and Engineering)
Co-Chair:
Invited Speakers:
This symposium will focus on the advances in the field of new materials and device concepts for photovoltaic energy conversion. Material systems covered would include halide perovskite materials as well as organic semiconductors, chalcogenides, and hole/electron transport layers. In addition to photovoltaic devices, photocatalysis and photoelectrochemical devices for sustainable fuel production are also topics of interest.
Chair: Nripan Mathews (Nanyang Technological University)
Co-Chair:
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This symposium will cover the advances of perovskites and other emerging solar materials and their applications in solar cell. Materials includes new perovskites (e.g., 2D perovskite, lead free, low bandgap and wide bandgap), inorganic semiconductors, organic charge transporting materials, etc. Fundamental aspects will focus on the light management, charge transport, charge recombination, phase segregation, long term stability for improving the performance of the next-generation solar cells. The symposium will feature several live panel discussions involving the invited speakers on open questions in the fields of scaling up perovskite PV, tandem perovskite solar cells, and stability issue in wide-bandgap perovskite, etc.
Chair: Yi Hou (National University of Singapore)
Co-Chair:
Invited Speakers:
Theme 2
MATERIALS FOR CLEAN ENERGY & TRANSPORTATION
The scope of this symposium will focus on new and novel energy conversion materials, catalysis for sustainable production of chemicals/fuels, clean environment, components and devices, including novel materials designs, new catalysts synthesis, electrodes, structure features at varying nano-, meso-, micro- and macro-scales, and their wide applications.
Chair: John Wang (National University of Singapore)
Co-Chair:
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Limiting global warming requires major discoveries in energy storage technologies. Among the most prominent technologies in our society, rechargeable batteries have reshaped our lives, while constant improvements in materials and chemistries of new battery architectures will dictate our energy future. This symposium builds upon recent developments in energy storage technologies toward battery materials that can reliably provide the necessary power and energy for a broad range of application. Several topics in the battery field will be covered ranging from the design of new materials to the engineering of battery devices. This symposium will target experimental and computational approaches oriented to materials discovery, the development of new characterization tools to provide insight in electrochemical processes occurring at the materials and at the device levels.
Chair: Piero Canepa (National University of Singapore)
Co-Chair:
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This symposium will include presenters who will present on the state-of-the-art in the area of CO2 electroreduction for the conversion of CO2 into value-added products. Topics will include development of catalysts for improved activity and selectivity, demonstration of new cell and electrode designs, and predictions from first principle calculations.
Chair: Andrew Wong (National University of Singapore)
Co-Chair: Liu Bin (Nanyang Technological University)
Invited Speakers:
Theme 3
MATERIALS FOR COMMUNICATION
The symposium aims to bring together well-known academicians, physicists, engineers, and researchers to discuss different aspects of self-assembly processes and their applications. It also provides a premier platform to present and share the advances in this field, trends, challenges encountered and solutions.
Some key topics covered are as follows,
Chair: Lee Pooi See (Nanyang Technological University)
Co-Chair:
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The proposed symposium will gather leading experimentalists, technologists and computer scientists who are exploring the design and realization of new domain-specific electronic systems that can outperform state-of-the-art CMOS processors by processing information in ways that best leverage on the physical behaviour of the material systems and device technology. The call-for-participation will seek out (i) experimental and theoretical research groups who are exploring new materials and device technologies (e.g., mem-transistors, mem-capacitors, and (anti)ferroic devices), and (ii) engineering and computing research groups who are designing innovative computing schemes that leverage the physical phenomenon in emerging materials and devices to process data/information. Specifically, we will be inviting: (1) experimental and theoretical research groups to report on their latest findings on mem-transistors, mem-capacitors, (anti)ferroic materials and devices, (2) circuit/microarchitecture researchers to report on innovative electronic systems that leverage the abovementioned devices to perform computation using approaches such as stochastic/analog computing, reservoir/neuromorphic computing, and Ising/Boltzmann machines.
Chair: Kelvin Fong (National University of Singapore)
Co-Chair: Anh Tuan Do (A*STAR, Institute of Microelectronics)
Invited Speakers:
The Symposium will focus on recent advancements in materials for photonic applications, including:
Chair: Ramon Jose Paniagua Dominguez (A*STAR, Institute of Materials Research and Engineering)
Co-Chair:
Invited Speakers:
Theme 4
MATERIALS FOR HEALTHY LIVING AND AGING
This symposium aims to bring together researchers from academia and industry to discuss the current challenges in human healthcare and recent development of advanced materials for bioimaging, disease diagnostics and therapy. It will give a broad survey of major advances being made in the design of smart and functional materials or small molecules for imaging, diagnosis or treatment of human diseases.
Topics of interest include, but not limited to:
Chair: Zhang Yong (National University of Singapore)
Co-Chair:
Invited Speakers:
Theme 5
MATERIALS FRONTIERS
Reports of extreme weather events, increasing emissions and environmental disasters are stark reminders of the urgent challenge humanity faces. As world leaders struggle to establish a consensus on concrete emission targets, the focus is shifting towards scientists for solutions. Technologies for carbon capture and sequestration and clean energy harvesting have long been the centrefold for a sustainable future, but can quantum enabled technologies also play a key role? What are its near-term goals? How do we advance from proof-of-principle demonstrations to real-world applications? Will quantum computers catalyse the development of emerging clean technologies and reduce energy utilization? Can advances in precise metrology help humanity deal with a changing world? Is quantum research itself sustainable or will hungry energy consumption such as in low temperature experiments add to emissions? Join us to find out!
Chair: Johnson Goh (A*STAR, Institute of Materials Research and Engineering)
Co-Chair:
Invited Speakers:
Nature is a tremendous source of inspiration for creating materials and structures that sense and adapt, are multifunctional, or have outstanding properties, all this while processing its materials in ambient conditions of temperature and pressure. Recent research has deciphered mechanisms and principle of natural materials and structures in order to transpose them to artificial materials, to fit the requirements of engineering applications.
Although many examples of biomimicry and bioinspired materials exist, there are still many challenges to overcome, such as how to create complexity from small amount of building blocks, how to scale up, and how to utilise this knowledge to build a more sustainable future.
Examples of topics that this Symposium will cover are:
Chair: Hortense Le Ferrand (Nanyang Technological University)
Co-Chair:
Invited Speakers:
The symposium will cover new advances and developments in the fields of fundamental magnetism, magnetic materials and applied magnetism.
Topics of interest will include
Chair: Ho Pin (A*STAR, Institute of Materials Research and Engineering)
Co-Chair: Chen Jingsheng (National University of Singapore)
Invited Speakers:
Theme 6
MATERIALS FOR EDUCATION & COMMUNICATION
Climate change exacerbated by increase in greenhouse gases, land, air and water pollution, loss of biodiversity and rise of zoonotic resulted in a major global sustainability challenge. Besides, consumption of materials has rapidly increased in the last years, reaching an unsustainable material footprint per capita. Materials’ extraction, manufacturing, consumption, and end-of-life options significantly impacted the economic, social, and environmental conditions. Majority of economies is still dominated by a linear path where extraction–consumption–disposal makes processes highly unsustainable. At the same time, development of materials to address environmental, social and economic challenges is a powerful fundamental tool to facilitate achievement of sustainable development goals (SDGs), which, in accordance with the circular economy principles, aim to save resources and maintain the products for as long as possible, then recovering and regenerating materials at the end of their life. These materials can be produced in required volumes without depleting non-renewable resources and without disrupting the established steady-state equilibrium of the environment and key natural resource systems. Developing and implementing new environmentally friendly approaches to materials synthesis as well as reconsidering and valorising waste can largely contribute into resolving the global challenges. Moreover, materials play an essential role in bringing novel solutions to enhance food and energy security, environment sustainability, address biomedical and health challenges and mitigate climate change. The Symposium will focus on two areas: sustainable methods of materials production and sustainable purpose-driven deployment/use of materials.
The main topics to be discussed during the Symposium are:
Chair: Iuna Tsyrulneva (Nanyang Technological University)
Co-chair: Javier Fernandez (Singapore University of Technology and Design)
Invited Speakers:
Co-Chairs:
B.V. R Chowdari (MRS-S)
Pieremanuele Canepa (NUS)
Ho Pin (A*STAR IMRE)
Advisors:
Tim White (NTU)
Feng Yuan Ping (NUS)
Technical Advisors:
S. N. Piramanayagam (NTU)
Yang Le (A*STAR IMRE)
Members:
Lum Yanwei (NUS/A*STAR IMRE)
Tan Yu Jun (NUS)
Renshaw Wang Xiao (NTU)
Hortense Le Ferrand (NTU)
Vignesh Suresh (A*STAR IMRE)
The University of Chicago, USA
Dr. Y. Shirley Meng is currently a Professor in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at The University of Chicago. She serves as the Chief Scientist of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS) Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Meng is the principal investigator of the research group – Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC). She received her Ph.D. in Advance Materials for Micro & Nano Systems from the Singapore-MIT Alliance in 2005. She held the Zable Chair Professor in Energy Technologies at University of California San Diego (UCSD) from 2017-2022.
Dr. Meng received several prestigious awards, including the Faraday Medal of Royal Chemistry Society (2020), International Battery Association Battery IBA Research Award (2019), Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists Finalist (2018), American Chemical Society ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces Young Investigator Award (2018), C.W. Tobias Young Investigator Award of the Electrochemical Society (2016) and NSF CAREER Award (2011).
Dr. Meng is elected Fellow of Electrochemical Society (FECS), Fellow of Materials Research Society (FMRS) and Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She is the author and co-author of more than 260 peer-reviewed journal articles, two book chapters and five issued patents. she is the Editor-in-Chief for Materials Research Society MRS Energy & Sustainability
RMIT University, Australia
Professor Madhu Bhaskaran is a multi-award winning electronics engineer and innovator – she has won medals from leading Australian academies and was also named one of the Top 10 Technology Innovators under 35 in Asia-Pacific, by the MIT Technology Review.
She co-leads the Functional Materials and Microsystems Research Group at RMIT University which she established in 2010. She is Deputy Director – Research for the ARC Research Hub for Connected Sensors for Health. She is also a Chief Investigator and Node Leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence in Transformative Meta-Optical Systems.
Her work on electronic skin and wearable sensors has been patented and her group now works collaboratively with multiple industry and design partners to commercialise the technology for healthcare and aged care.
She is a migrant Australian and a passionate advocate for diversity and is on the Advisory board for STEM Sisters and is co-chair of Women in STEMM Australia.
Korea University, Seoul, Korea
Dr. Ok is a full professor and global research director of Korea University, Seoul, Korea. He has published over 900 research papers and books, 92 of which have been ranked as Web of Science ESI top papers (90 have been selected as “Highly Cited Papers” (HCPs), and two as “Hot Papers”). He has been a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher (HCR) since 2018 in Cross Field, Environment and Ecology, and Engineering. In 2019, he became the first Korean to be selected as an HCR in the field of Environment and Ecology. Again in 2021, he became the first Korean HCR in two fields: Environment and Ecology, and Engineering. He is working at the vanguard of global efforts to develop sustainable waste management strategies and technologies to address the rising crisis in electronic and plastic waste, and pollution of soil and air with particulate matter.
Dr. Ok has also served in a number of positions worldwide including, as an honorary professor at the University of Queensland (Australia), a visiting professor at Tsinghua University (China), an adjunct professor at the University of Wuppertal (Germany), and a guest professor at Ghent University (Belgium). He maintains a worldwide professional network by serving as a Co-Editor-in-Chief of Critical Reviews in Environmental Science and Technology, an Editor of Environmental Pollution, a member of the editorial advisory board of Environmental Science & Technology, and an editorial board member of Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Chemical Engineering Journal, and Environmental Science: Water Research & Technology, and several other top journals.
He currently serves as the Director of the Sustainable Waste Management Program for the Association of Pacific Rim Universities (APRU) and the Co-President of the International ESG Association. Moreover, he has served on the Scientific Organizing Committee of P4G Nature Forum: Climate Change and Biodiversity, and Nature Forum: Plastics and Sustainability. Dr. Ok has also served as the chairman of numerous major conferences such as Engineering Sustainable Development series (ESD series), organized by the APRU and the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE). In 2021, Dr. Ok hosted the first Nature conference among South Korean universities in Seoul on waste management and valorization for a sustainable future together with Chief Editors of Nature Sustainability (Dr. Monica Contestabile), Nature Electronics (Dr. Owain Vaughan), and Nature Nanotechnology (Dr. Fabio Pulizzi). Prof. Ok will host the first Nature Forum on Environmental, Social & Governance (ESG) for Global Sustainability: the “E” Pillar for Sustainable Business.
University of Hamburg, Germany
Wolfgang Parak is Professor at the University of Hamburg. He has studied physics and obtained his PhD in Munich. After a postdoctoral fellowship at Berkeley he returned 2003 to Munich to start his own group. Before moving to the University of Hamburg in 2017 he spent 10 years as professor at the Philipps University Marburg. The research of Wolfgang Parak is dedicated towards the development of new surface chemistries of inorganic nanoparticles and towards the characterization of their physicochemical properties. In particular, the development of an amphiphilic polymer coating is nowadays used by many different groups worldwide. Nanoparticles with such high colloidal stability are the bases of experimentally correlating their physicochemical properties with their interaction will cells (involving uptake and cytotoxicity), which has been the research topic of the Parak group for the 2 decades. The group also uses polymeric polyelectrolyte capsules fabricated by layer-by-layer assembly for biological applications (in vitro sensing and delivery).