Zhang Lianjin (UB, France)
Zhang Lianjin was born in 1987 in China. She completed her Masters degree in Yonsei University (Korea) and her project was focused on stereoselective radical reactions. After graduation, she worked as quality management in Jilin Han Zheng Ginseng Cooperation (China). In September 2014, she joined the group of Prof. Hee-Seung Lee at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, KAIST (Korea) for pursuing a PhD. Her research interests involve foldamer based stimuli-responsive functional materials and dynamic foldamer assembly.
Qiang Wen (WIS, Israel)
Qiang was born in China in 1991. He obtained his Bachelor Degree with specialization in Material Chemistry from TianJin University in 2012. Then he obtained his Master Degree from Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Science, under the supervision of Prof. Xin Zhao. His master project focused on porous organic polymers (such as covalent organic frameworks) and their applications as catalyst supporters. He started his PhD study in Prof. Milko van der Boom's group at the Weizmann Institute of Science in October 2015. His research interests are porous organic polymers, metal organic frameworks, halogen bonding and two-dimensional polymers.
Guillermo Monreal Santiago (RUG, Netherlands)
Guillermo Monreal Santiago was born in 1992 in Madrid, Spain. He studied chemistry at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid until 2013, when he spent the last year of his degree as an Erasmus student in the KTH university (Stockholm, Sweden). There, he worked on the synthetic applications of enantiopure cyanohydrin derivatives in the laboratory of Prof. Christina Moberg. After receiving his BSc degree (with Honours), he continued his studies obtaining a MSc degree in the Universidad Complutense de Madrid, performing his thesis in the laboratory of Bioorganometallic Chemistry under the supervision of Prof. Mar Gómez Gallego. He joined the Otto group in October 2015 to pursue his PhD in self-synthesising and stimuli-responsive hydrogels, under the Marie Curie network "ResMoSys".
Ligia Mesquita (UNIKL, Germany)
Lígia Mesquita was born in Coimbra, Portugal. In 2010 she obtained her BSc in Biochemistry at the University of Coimbra where she performed an internship at IBILI - Biomedical Institute for Research on Light and Image in the area of Oncology. She then enrolled a Master’s Programme in Industrial Pharmaceutical Chemistry, in the Faculty of Pharmacy at the University of Coimbra where she developed a Master thesis entitled “New Sustainable Processes Catalyzed by Acids with Interest in Pharmaceutical Industry”. In 2013 she started to work as a researcher on ITQB - Institute of Chemical and Biological Technology in the development of dinuclear Cu(II) and Zn(II) complexes as potential inhibitors of oncogenic protein-protein interactions. In October of 2015 she moved to Kaiserslautern, Germany to start her PhD at the Technische Universität Kaiserslautern under the supervision of Professor Stefan Kubik. Her project involves subcomponent self-assembly of cyclopeptide-containing molecular cages.
Antanas Karalius (KTH, Sweden)
Antanas Karalius was born in 1989 in Vilnius, Lithuania. He studied chemistry at Vilnius University. His Bachelor’s project was focused on the synthesis of novel, bioactive, heterocyclic molecules. After this, he continued his studies to obtain a Master’s degree, while focusing on the topic of applied biocatalysis for natural product modification. He received his Master’s with great honors (magna cum laude). In September 2015 he started his PhD studies, under the supervision of Prof. Olof Ramström, at KTH – Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, focusing on stimuli-responsive nanocarriers for intracellular drug delivery as part of the Marie Curie innovative training network "ResMoSys".
Marion Kieffer (UCAM, UK)
Marion Kieffer was born in Strasbourg, France. After two years of preparatory classes at the ENSCR, she entered the ESPCI ParisTech, from which she obtained her “Diplome d’Ingenieur” in Physics, Chemistry and Biology in 2014, a degree equivalent to an Advanced Master of Science and Technology. During this time, she also worked for Michelin on Dynamic Void Volume analysis of carbon black. She joined the Nitschke group in 2014 for an MPhil and is now working toward a PhD on a Marie Sklodowska-Curie ESR fellowship studying fluorinated supramolecular architectures.
John Carpenter (UCAM, UK)
John is from Co. Meath, Ireland. He undertook his undergraduate studies in Trinity College Dublin, studying Nanoscience - Physic and Chemistry of Advanced Materials. He graduated with a First Class Honours degree in 2015. As part of his studies he has completed a number of research projects including a ERASMUS project in the research group of Prof. Nicola Pinna in Humboldt Universität Berlin, investigating the physical and optical properties of a host of hybrid organic-inorganic nanomaterials. He joined the Nitschke Group in 2015. Outside of chemistry John enjoys playing Gaelic football, rugby and pretty much any other sport available at the time.
Camilla Facciotti (WU, Netherlands)
Camilla Facciotti was born in 1990 in a small city close to the Garda Lake in Italy, called Peschiera Del Garda. She moved to Verona to study Biotechnology and obtained her bachelor degree with a thesis entitled “Study and characterization of Selenium nanoparticles from Stenotrophomonas malthophilia bacteria, through AFM technique”, under the supervision of Prof. Romeo. During her Master in Science and Technology of Bio-Nanomaterials at the Ca’ Foscari University of Venice she became interested in UpConverting Nanoparticles and wrote her thesis on the “Development of lanthanide doped alkaline earth fluorides core-shell nanoparticles for nanothermometry and drug delivery”, under the supervision of Prof. Speghini. She spent also part of her master at the Institut national de la recherche scientifique of Montreal, Canada with Prof. Vetrone. Since September 2015 she has been working as a Marie Curie PhD in the BioNT group with Prof. Velders at the University of Wageningen, the Netherlands. Her goal is to investigate light responsive supramolecular reversible assembly of polymer-based micelles for Fluorescence and Magnetic Resonance Imaging and drug delivery.
Giuseppe Alonci (UNISTRA, France)
Giuseppe Alonci was born the 25/06/1990 in Reggio Calabria, in the south of Italy. He obtained his Bachelor Degree in Chemistry (110/110) in December 2012 at the University of Pisa, under the supervision of prof. Giuseppe Fachinetti. Thanks to a Consortia Placement and a Human Frontier Science Program Scholarship, he spent five months in Strasbourg and in December 2014 he obtained his master degree (110/110 cum laude), defending a thesis supervised by Prof. Piero Leoni and Prof. Frédéric Bolze on new platinum cluster-based bimodal probes for correlative light-electron microscopy. Giuseppe started my PhD in the group of prof. Luisa De Cola at the University of Strasbourg in September 2015. His research interests involve the preparation of new stimuli-responsive hydrogels for biomedical applications. In my spare time he tries to disseminate chemistry to the public and he enjoys flying small aircrafts and photography. He speaks English (C1), French (A2) and Japanese (beginner).
Vanessa Baj (NOVO, Denmark)
Vanessa Baj, the PhD researcher at Novo Nordisk/DTU in Copenhagen is 24 years old and comes from Italy, specifically a small village near Milan where she lived with her family
and her dog. She studied chemistry at the Public University of Milan for 5 years from 2010 to 2015. Her Bachelor’s thesis dealt with the use of FTIR spectroscopy in reflection to identify natural organic pigments in artwork. After that she decided to change the orientation of her Master’s degree to an organic topic and it was about the synthesis
of a small array of Tanshinone analogues endowed with anticancer activity. She enjoyed medicinal/organic chemistry and so she is pleased to work in a similar context. She loves reading, watching TV series and her passion is travelling.
Suzanne Jansze (EPFL, Switzerland)
Suzannne was born in the Netherlands. In 2014 she obtained her MSc Molecular Life Sciences degree (specialized in physical and organic chemistry) from Wageningen UR, after a thesis at the group of BioNanotechnology and internship at Aberdeen University, UK. After obtaining the degree she worked for Wageningen UR as a teaching assistant. In February 2015 she moved to Lausanne, Switzerland to start her PhD at the EPFL under the supervision of Professor Kay Severin. Her work entails the synthesis of nanostructures and novel materials based on polyfunctional clathrochelates.
Previous network members
Albano Galan (UB, France)
Albano Galán was born in 1989 in Madrid, Spain. He studied Chemistry at University Autónoma de Madrid (UAM) where he worked in the development of novel methodologies to prepare tetrasubstituted chiral pyrrolidines under the supervision of Prof. Juan Carlos Carretero and Javier Adrio. He moved to the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ) to study towards a PhD under the supervision of Prof. Pablo Ballester working in the preparation of molecular containers based on calix[4]pyrrole structures. He joined the group of Prof. Ivan Huc at the Institut Européen de Chimie et Biologie (IECB) in Bordeaux as a Marie-Curie ESR ITN Fellow.