Prof. Dr. C. Heath Turner

Prof. Turner completed his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from NC State University. He spent several years in industry with Monsanto, Birmingham Steel, and Trinity Consultants. He joined The University of Alabama as an assistant professor in 2003, and he is now a Professor and the Department Head of Chemical and Biological Engineering, and Director of the UA Poly-SM Initiative. Over the past few years, he has been a visiting Faculty Fellow at NASA-Langley, the Naval Research Lab, and the Air Force Research Lab, Visiting Professor at Vanderbilt University, and an International Distinguished Professor at Shanghai University of Engineering Science. His current research is focused on developing kinetic Monte Carlo (KMC) simulation techniques for extending the time and length scales of atomistic simulation models for catalytic systems. This involves applications to catalysis, electrocatalysis, and tribochemical reactions.

Dr. Dominic Alfonso

Dr. Dominic Alfonso is a GS-15 Research Physical Scientist at the US Department of Energy National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL), and is currently a member of the Computational Materials Engineering team. He received a B.S. in Chemistry from the University of the Philippines and a Ph.D. in Chemistry from Ohio University. Following postdoctoral works at the International Center for Theoretical Physics, University of Louisville, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and University of Pittsburgh, he joined NETL in 2002. His research involves the implementation of computational techniques based on classical thermodynamic and kinetic theories, using ab initio calculated training sets to predict catalytic and materials properties. His specific areas of interest include heterogeneous catalysis and electrocatalysis, with the ultimate goal of understanding and designing materials with energy applications. He is a recipient of the 2010 Pittsburgh Federal Executive Board Silver Award for Contribution to Science and a co-holder of two US patents on nanomaterials for CO2 conversion.

Dr. Albert Poater

Dr Albert Poater (1979) finished his Ph.D. in Chemistry in 2006, supervised by Miquel Duran and Miquel Solà, at the University of Girona. After periods in Chile with Alejandro Toro-Labbé, in Montpellier with Odile Eisenstein, and a long postdoctorate at the University of Salerno with Luigi Cavallo, in 2010 he became an independent researcher as Ramón y Cajal and JIN in Girona, as well as a Visiting Researcher at KAUST in Saudi Arabia, and worked with Remi Chauvin at LCC-CNRS in Toulouse. As a whole, Dr. Poater has published over 200 papers, collecting nearly 8000 citations (H = 50), on DFT calculations on the mechanism of inorganic and organometallic catalysis, and predictive catalysis by tools to describe the reactivity. His computational research includes work on olefin metathesis by Ru-based catalysts or gold chemistry to undertake organometallic reactions, and is currently switching to green chemistry intended to remove and/or not generate CO₂, using either water oxidation catalysis or alcohol’s transformation to aldehydes with the generation of H₂ as the energy source. He serves as Editor and Board Member of several journals, and in 2019 he received the ICREA Academia Award.

Prof. Dr. Fernando P. Cossío

Fernando P. Cossío studied chemistry at the Universidad de Zaragoza (Spain) and received his Ph.D. in 1986 at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU, Spain, Prof. C. Palomo). After a postdoctoral stay at CNRS (Talence, France, Dr J.-P. Picard), he joined the UPV/EHU as Profesor Titular in 1988 and Catedrático in 2002. In 1994, after a short stay at UCLA in the laboratories of Prof. K. N. Houk, he decided to combine theoretical and experimental organic chemistry to investigate the origins of selectivity in chemical reactions. The author of ca. 250 publications, his research interests include pericyclic reactions, C–C bond-forming reactions, and medicinal chemistry (design and chemical synthesis of inhibitors of integrins and epigenetic enzymes). Recently, he has started a research project on the design and chemical synthesis of bicolor fluorescent probes for monitoring neutrinoless double beta decay nuclear reactions. At present, F. P. C. is the Scientific Director of Ikerbasque, The Basque Foundation for Science.