Programme

Programme with information about the venue and rooms will be published here later.

Devin Roach

Blond bearded man smiling — Oregon State University (OSU), USA. Dr. Roach’s research interests focus on applying artificial intelligence to develop additive manufacturing approaches for diverse types of materials including thermosets, soils, or metals. He is also interested in developing and manufacturing smart/active materials such as shape memory polymers and liquid crystal elastomers for biomedical devices, soft robotics, and energy harvesting devices.

Morgan Barnes

Blond smiling women — University College London, UK. Barnes’ work spans chemistry, mechanics, and manufacturing to develop responsive shape-shifting polymers for soft robotics, biomedical devices, and microfluidics applications. She combines theory and experiment for the quantitative design of smart materials including switchable biomimetic instabilities and strong soft-robotic grippers.

Jiu-an Lv

Portray picture of an asian man in glasses — Westlake University, China. Dr. Jiu-an Lv’s research interest focuses on photodeformable liquid crystal polymer materials and their application in functional devices. The research directions include but are not limited to the following: 1) Design and preparation of novel deformable liquid crystal polymer materials; 2) Design and fabrication of flexible smart device; 3) Development and application of novel optomicrofluidics technologies.

Mingchao Zhang

Asian man in suit wearing glasses — National University of Singapore. The research focus is on the exploration and development of multiscale, multifunctional smart structures and materials with the remarkable ability to sense, actuate, and adapt to various physical and chemical stimuli. The aim is to rationally design versatile materials, and manufacture intelligent devices for soft robotics, wearable electronics, microelectromechanical systems, optics, and biomedical and healthcare applications.

Tayler S. Hebner

Smiling women with blond wavy hair — Purdue University, Indiana, USA. In the Hebner Lab, they develop synthetic soft matter systems with stimuli-responsiveness to replicate dynamic, responsive, adaptive behavior of live matters. Using a combination of polymer physics, chemistry, and biology, they focus on understanding the underlying principles of these dynamic systems and building a toolbox for the design of responsive polymers for soft robotics, medical devices, and tissue engineering.

Hamed Shahsavan

brunete man in suit wearing glasses — Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Waterloo, Canada. His research interest is the development of a variety of soft, stimuli-responsive, and programmable materials. In addition, he is interested in emerging fabrication strategies for the manufacturing of small-scale mobile robots and devices, such as direct laser writing, and micro-scale 4D printing.

Eugene Terentjev

Eugene Terentjev

Professor of Polymer physics at the University of Cambridge (UK)

Fellow and director of studies in natural sciences at Queens’ College.

Jan Lagerwall

Jan Lagerwall

Professor in Physics at the Physics & Materials Science Research Unit

of the University of Luxembourg

Ivan Smalyukh

Ivan Smalyukh (Photo by Casey A. Cass/University of Colorado)

Professor of Physics at the Department of Physics and Soft Materials Research Center,

University of Colorado Boulder, USA

Helen Gleeson

Professor Helen F. Gleeson

Cavendish Professor of Physics

at University of Leeds, UK