Invited speakers
Ruth Cardinaels
Position: Associate Professor at KU Leuven (Belgium), Part-Time Full Professor at Eindhoven University of Technology (TU Eindhoven)
The research of Prof. Cardinaels is based on the idea that “Formulating multi-phasic materials and engineering their microstructure is essential to integrate various functionalities in the materials of the future”. Thereto, her group studies multiphasic polymer-based soft matter systems by means of rheological, rheo-optical and rheo-dielectric techniques thereby focusing on in-situ time-resolved characterizations during processing. Dedicated experimental setups such as flow cells, processing equipment and customized rheometers are designed and developed.
Prof. Cardinaels is co-author of around 120 international journal papers and 4 patents (>3400 citations, h-index 33). She was a visiting researcher at Princeton University (2013) and MIT (2024). Currently she is the president of the Belgian Group of Rheology, associate editor for the journal Physics of Fluids and holder of an ERC Starting grant on polymeric electromagnetic metamaterials created by flow-induced structure printing. She teaches courses on rheology, polymers and transport phenomena in the programmes of chemical and mechanical engineering.
Frank Caruso
Position: Melbourne Laureate Professor at the University of Melbourne, Australia
Professor Caruso’s research interests focus on developing advanced nano- and biomaterials for biotechnology and medicine. He received his PhD degree in 1994 from the University of Melbourne and thereafter conducted postdoctoral research at the CSIRO Division of Chemicals and Polymers in Melbourne from 1994–1997. He was an Alexander von Humboldt Research Fellow and group leader at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Germany from 1997–2002. He has held ARC Federation Fellowships (2003–2012), an ARC Laureate Fellowship (2012–2017), an NHMRC Senior Principal Research Fellowship (2018–2022), and an NHMRC Leadership Fellowship (2023–present) at the University of Melbourne. He is an Executive Editor of Chemistry of Materials and on the Editorial Advisory Board of several other scientific journals. He was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science in 2009, the Royal Society of London in 2018, and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering in 2024. He has authored >590 publications in peer-refereed journals, 39 patents, 3 book, 12 book chapters (>69,000 citations, h-index 133, Web of Science). He is co-founder of Messenger Bio Pty Ltd (2021), a company that focuses on mRNA technologies.
Susana Fernandes
Position: Professor at University of Pau and Adour Countries, France
Prof. Susana Fernandes obtained her two PhDs simultaneously in 2010 from both University of Aveiro and University of Pau and Adour Countries (UPPA), which was followed by a PostDoc at the University of Aveiro. Meanwhile, she also secured a PostDoc position and later was appointed as Researcher at the University of the Basque Country. From 2014 to 2016, she was Researcher and Marie Curie Intra-European Fellow at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology. In 2017 she was awarded with the Future Research Leaders Grant from the Swedish Research Council, and she moved to the Uppsala University. She joined UPPA in 2018 as Associated Professor and Chair in Marine Bioresources and By-products Valorization and in Marine Inspired Materials (Chair E2S UPPA – MANTA: marine materials). Since September 2023 she is Professor in Natural Polymers at UPPA. She is a chemist with expertise in research areas pertaining to functional and bio-inspired (bio)materials and to marine biological materials. She has authored around 70 publications in international journals, 3 patents, 1 book, 6 book chapters (4000 citations, h-index 38).
Mikael Hedenqvist
Position: Professor at KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Professor Mikael Hedenqvist is the head of the Polymeric Materials division at KTH. Editor in Chief for Polymer Testing. Main research areas are physical properties of synthetic and renewable polymers, polymers from renewable resources (proteins and polyaccharides), mass transport and mechanical properties, modelling of polymers and polymer properties, packaging, ageing properties, electrical properties, blends, composites, foams, and processing of polymers. He has coauthored around 360 publications and two textbooks; Fundamental Polymer Science and Applied Polymer Science (Springer Nature). He holds 7 patents and 5 patents filed, and with an h-index of 67 and nearly 16000 citations.
Frederik R. Wurm
Position: Full Professor at the Universiteit Twente, Enschede (The Netherlands)
Frederik R. Wurm (Prof. Dr. habil.) is the chair of the group “Sustainable Polymer Chemistry” (SPC) at the Universiteit Twente. The group is located in the Faculty of Science and Technology (TNW) in the Department of Molecules and Materials (M&M). The SPC group designs polymeric materials with molecularly defined functions that lead to macroscopic properties. In recent years, especially biobased and biodegradable materials have been the focus of Frederik’s research and building the main line of the SPC group. The expertise of the SPC group covers the synthesis of (bio)degradable polymers and nanocarriers for agricultural or biomedical applications but also other potential applications are currently studied – always with a focus on the molecular control of the properties of the final materials. Frederik’s favorite biopolymer is lignin, which is also the core of several research projects, e.g. biodegradable nano- and microcarriers for agriculture. SPC also researches new synthetic strategies and applications of (bio)degradable polyphosphoesters (PPEs) or develops new protocols for well-defined polyamines by living polymerization of aziridines. Frederik has published over 250 peer-reviewed papers and more than 19,000 citations (h-index: 66, November 2025).
Rheology of multi-phasic polymer systems as a tool in the development of functional materials
Ruth Cardinaels (KU Leuven, Belgium)