Mcbain Medal 2020

Elena Simone graduated with an MSc in Chemical Engineering from the University of Pisa (Italy) and then moved to Loughborough University (UK) to study for a PhD in the Department of Chemical Engineering. After obtaining her doctorate degree she stayed in the same institution for a postdoc. Elena joined the School of Food Science and Nutrition at the University of Leeds in September 2016 as Lecturer in Food Crystal Engineering.

Gianluca Di Profio

National Research Council of Italy – Institute on Membrane Technology (CNR-ITM)

He is a physical chemist, appointed as senior researcher at the CNR-ITM. Gianluca is the Coordinator of the H2020 FET-OPEN project AMECRYS - Revolutionising Downstream Processing of Monoclonal Antibodies by Continuous Template-Assisted Membrane Crystallization (2016-2021), funded by the EC. Gianluca is co-founder and chief scientific director of the Seligenda Membrane Technologies S.r.l., a joint spin-off company of CNR and UNICAL, registered as an innovative start-up in 2020. He is co-author of around 100 scientific papers, 15 chapters in books, 1 book and 1 patent.

Professor in Particle Technology at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Imperial College London. The Heng group’s research studies the surface properties of crystalline solids (impact of processing, manufacturability and formulation). He is currently an EPSRC Manufacturing the Futures Fellow and serves as Editor-in-Chief (elect) for Chemical Engineering Research and Design, Thematic Editor of Particuology and an Editorial Board Member of Proceedings of the Royal Society of London A.

Dr Robertson completed her PhD on metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) at Imperial College London in 2012. Since then her work has spanned synthetic and physical chemistry, materials science and engineering through positions at Clariant Oil Services, the University of Bath and the Max Planck Institute for Colloids and Interfaces. This year she was awarded the Young Crystallographer of the Year Award by the British Crystallographic Association for her work on in situ monitoring of crystallisation processes, uncovering polymorphic transitions during the flow crystallisation of pharmaceuticals through Raman spectroscopy and powder and single crystal X-ray diffraction.

Professor and Head at the Department of Chemical Sciences, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata. His research work focuses on building strong capability in interdisciplinary areas of fundamental and applied Crystal Engineering. His group is credited for the pioneering work on mechanically flexible molecular crystals and structure - mechanical property relationships. Dr Reddy has graduated in Crystal Engineering from University of Hyderabad and took up Post-doctoral Research at the Institute of Nanotechnology, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany (2007 – 2008).

Professor Diao is a Beckman Fellow, Dow Chemical Company Faculty Scholar, Lincoln Excellence for Assistant Professor (LEAP) Scholar at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Diao group, started in 2015 at Illinois, focuses on understanding assembly of organic functional materials and innovating printing approaches that enable structural control down to the molecular and nanoscale. For her work on printed electronics, Ying Diao was named to the MIT Technology Review’s annual list of Innovators Under 35 as a pioneer in nanotechnology and materials. She is also a recipient of NSF CAREER Award and NASA Early Career Faculty Award.