Polymers 2024 - Polymers for a Safe and Sustainable Future

Catalan Institute for Water Research (ICRA), Scientific and Technological Park of the University of Girona, Spain, Water and Soil Quality Research Group, IDAEA-CSIC, Barcelona, Spain;
Full Professor IDAEA-CSIC, Spain since 1999 to date. From 2016 – to date Full Professor Chair (DSFP) in Biology. Awarded as Doctor Honoris Causa by the Universities of Ioannina, Greece, in 2014 and by the University of Lleida, June 2021 and Almeria, Spain in May 2022. Honorary and Guest Professor at ZAFU, Hangzhou, China in 2019 till March 2020 and Foreign Expert of East China University of Science & Technology, Shanghai, China, 2021-2022. From January 2022 till December 2026 he has been appointed Adjunct Professor in Sustainability Cluster, School of Engineering at the UPES, Dehradun, India. Damià Barceló has received the following awards: 2023. Prize of the Division of Analytical Chemistry (DAC) of the European Society of Chemistry (EuChemS) Euroanalysis, Geneva 2012 Recipharm Environmental Award, Sweden, 2012 Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water (PSIPW), 5th Award on Water Management & Protection, Saudi Arabia and in 2007 Prize King Jaime I on the Protection of Nature from Generalitat of Valencia, Spain. He has supervised > 65 PhD students, since 1992 – to date. He has been Instructor of short courses at PITTCON, SETAC NA and ExTech conferences since early 2000. Prof. Barceló expertise is on analysis, fate, risk and removal of emerging contaminants, nanomaterials and microplastics from water as well as sewage epidemiology of drugs and proteins using advanced mass spectrometric tehcniques. Since 2010 he is listed as highly cited scientist, ISI Highly Cited, with a Hirsch-Index of 179 and total number of citations over 142.300 thousand and more than 1600 publications (source Google Scholar). Research.com ranked in 2023 Prof. Barceló as 3rd and 23rd environmental scientist and chemist, respectively in the world.

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden;
Minna Hakkarainen is professor in Polymer Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden. She got her M.Sc. in Polymer Chemistry from University of Helsinki in 1992 and Ph.D. in Polymer Technology from KTH in 1996. Since 2011 she is full professor and since 2012 the Head of the Polymer Technology Division at KTH. Her research interest is sustainable polymers including biobased, degradable and/or recyclable polymers. Recently her main research focus was design of polymer materials for mechanical, chemical or biological recyclability by e.g. utilizing dynamic covalent chemistries or degradation triggers. She is in Editorial Advisory Board of several international journals such as Biomacromolecules, Polymer Testing, Macromolecular Materials and Engineering and SN Applied Sciences. She published >200 papers in international journals and she is a co-author of a text book on Applied Polymer Science.

University of Aveiro, Portugal;
Armando Silvestre (born 1968), Full Professor, University of Aveiro, Department of Chemistry and CICECO Aveiro Institute of Materials. PhD (1994) and Habilitation (2008) in Chemistry. He is currently Head of the Department of Chemistry, and member of CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials, Group 4- Biorefineries, Biobased Materials and Recycling. Armando has a large experience in coordination and participation in National and EU Projects (40 +) projects, with 14+ M€ of funding for University of Aveiro. Armando published 2 books, more than 25 book chapters, 12 patents, 415+ papers, H-index 71 , +18 200 citations (Scopus) Large experience in PostDoctoral (17) PhD (34 of which 6 in progress) and MSc (+50) students supervising, and in teaching and BSc, MSc and PhD level. His research interests are focused on the Biorefinery concept development namely through the sustainable extraction and upgrading of added-value compounds from biomass addressing mainly bioactive compounds through the use benign solvents(using ionic liquids, deep eutectic solvents ); new biobased polymers derived from 2,5-furandicarboxylic acid and new functional (nano)composite materials and biomaterials based on biopolymers and cellulose (nano)fibers.