Matteo Lusi obtained a degree in Chemistry from the University of Bologna (Italy) and PhD from the University of Bristol (UK). As postdoc he worked in Stellenbosch University (ZA) New York University - Abu Dhabi (UAE) and the University of Limerick (IE). In 2015 he received a Starting Grant from the Science Foundation of Ireland and he is currently a lecturer in the University Limerick.
His scientific interests fall within the fields of crystallography and crystal engineering with a particular focus on molecular solid solutions (mixed crystals) and sold-state reactions.
His has worked on the solid state synthesis of hybrid organic-inorganic salts, coordination polymers and organometallic complexes. He has also investigated the use of molecular and polymeric complexes for the separation of volatile compounds. More recently his research has investigated non-stochiometric multicomponent forms as a mean to tune properties and composition of pharmaceutical ingredients.
Ulrich Griesser is Associate Professor of Pharmaceutical Technology at the Institute of Pharmacy, University of Innsbruck, Austria where he graduated as a pharmacist and obtained his PhD degree for research on the solid-state characterization of drug substances. He worked as postdoc at the Department of Industrial and Physical Pharmacy at Purdue University, IN (USA) supported by an Erwin-Schrödinger-stipend and performed research stays at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev and the University (IL) and Durham University (UK). His research interests centre on the solid-state properties of drug substances and agrochemicals with focus on the detection, analysis, stability, structural features and processing behaviour of polymorphs, and hydrates as well as solvates and co-crystals. He is heading the preformulation and polymorphism research group at the University of Innsbruck, where important instrumentation, methods and basic concepts in hot stage microscopy have been developed in the past and which is renown as an educational centre for thermo¬microscopy. The research activities of the group encompass fundamental and applied research themes based on computational approaches as well as a wide range of analytical technologies to understand and improve the material properties of biologically active small organic molecules and excipients. A major research topic is the systematic investigation of hydrates and moisture interactions which led to co-development of a widely used high-throughput water vapor sorption instrument and recently succeeded in the development of materials that open new perspectives for the production of solid dosage forms including 3D-Printing.
L. Maini
Lucia Maini obtained a degree and PhD in Chemistry from the University of Bologna (Italy). She has been Associate Professor at the University of Bologna since 2014, where she carries out her research in the field of molecular crystalline engineering. Her research interests are focused on the solid state characterization and structural determination by X-ray diffraction from single crystal and powder of pharmaceutical polymorphs, organic semiconducting materials, ionic cocrystals and hybrid coordination polymers. She is really interested also in the use of mechanochemical syntheses for the production of new compounds. She is an active member of the group "Conoscere la Chimica" devoted to the popularization of science.
IUCr Scientific Freedom Policy Statement. The Organizing Committee of “Magnetic Crystallography” Course of the International School of Crystallography shall observe the basic policy of nondiscrimination and affirms the rights of scientists throughout the world to adhere or to associate with international scientific activity without regard to such factors as ethnic origin, religion, citizenship, language, political stance, gender, sex or age, in accordance with the Statues of the International Council for Science. At this course no barriers will exist which would prevent the participation of bona fide scientists.
Alejandro Pedro Ayala is a professor in the Physics Department at the Federal University of Ceará, Brazil. He has extensive expertise in vibrational spectroscopy and crystallography. His research spans two main areas of materials sciences: (i) crystal engineering to design novel pharmaceutical solids with desired physicochemical properties and (ii) novel multifunctional materials focusing on physical properties under extreme conditions of temperature and pressure. Alejandro Ayala’s research has been published in over 200 scientific papers.
He studied Physics at the Universidad Nacional de Córdoba, Argentina, and has a Doctorate in Physics from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata, Argentina. Currently, he is a Ph.D. advisor of the Graduate Schools of Physics and Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Federal University of Ceará. He also leads the Structural Crystallography group at this University.
Len Barbour is a Distinguish Professor of Chemistry at Stellenbosch University. His research focuses on the discovery, design, assembly and characterisation of new functional materials with interesting properties. In particular, he is interested in exploring and understanding structure-property relationships relating to (i) porous materials and (ii) materials that undergo unusual thermal behaviour (e.g. anomalous thermal expansion, thermosalience, phase transitions, etc.).
Dario Braga is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Bologna. He is author or co-author of about 500 publications and of several patents on crystal forms. He has organized a number of international conferences and schools, including the Erice’s school in 1999 and 2007 and the ten editions of the Bologna’s convention on crystal forms. Dario Braga is an expert in solid state techniques and methods. The current scientific interests of his group span from the investigation of crystal polymorphism of APIs and of organic and organometallic molecules, the screening of crystal forms (polymorphs, hydrates, salts, co-crystals etc.) and the preparation, mainly by mechanochemical methods, of ionic co-crystals with the focus on chiral resolution via metal atom coordination. In 2005, together with his group, he founded the academic spinoff company PolyCrystalLine. He is recipient of the Raffaello Nasini medal awarded by the Italian Society of Chemistry, the Federchimica prize, and the Gold Medal of the Italian Crystallographic Association. Dario Braga is currently Member of the Science Institute of the Academy of Science and President of the Institute of Advanced Studies of the University of Bologna.
Doris E. Braun is a Senior Scientist at the University of Innsbruck (Austria). She received her Diploma in Pharmacy (2004) and her PhD in natural sciences (2008) from the University of Innsbruck for work on crystal polymorphism and structure property relationships of drug compounds under the supervisor of Prof. Griesser. In the same year she was granted an abroad fellowship from the Austrian Science Fund, which transferred her to University College London in 2009. In Prof. Price's group she learned about crystal structure prediction. After being awarded a Hertha Firnberg (2012) and an Elise Richter position (2015), she returned to the University of Innsbruck, where she obtained her "Venia docendi" in pharmaceutical technology in 2019.
Her research focuses on the phenomenon polymorphism, with special emphasis on novel experimental and computational strategies for the characterisation and design of single- and multicomponent solid-state forms.
Michele R. Chierotti graduated in Chemistry at the University of Turin (2002) with a thesis carried out at the "IVIC" (Instituto Venezolano de Investigaciònes Cièntificas) (Caracas, Venezuela) (supervisors Prof. R. Gobetto and Prof. AJ Arce). He obtained his doctorate in Chemistry (2006) from the University of Turin with a thesis partly researched at the Chemistry Department of the University of Durham (United Kingdom) (supervisors Prof. R. Gobetto and Prof. R.K. Harris). In 2010 he became a permanent researcher. Since 2015 he is associate professor at the Chemistry Department of the University of Turin.
His main interest concerns the field of Crystal Engineering with a supramolecular approach to rational design, synthesis and characterization of new crystal forms (polymorphs, cocrystals, salts ...) of pharmaceutical compounds with desired properties. He is also interested in the synthesis and characterization of coordination polymers and Metal-Organic-Frameworks (MOF) with luminescent or gas storage properties. He is an expert in advanced solid-state NMR (SSNMR) experiments combined with powder X-ray diffraction and quantum mechanical calculations for the structural solution of microcrystalline powder samples. His interests also concern the characterization (detection, strength and network analysis) of weak interactions, mainly hydrogen and halogen bonds and π-π contacts, and the study of the salt-cocrystal continuum.
Professor Jacqueline Cole holds the Royal Academy of Engineering Research Professorship in Materials Physics at the University of Cambridge, where she is Head of Molecular Engineering. She concurrently holds the BASF / Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair in Data-driven Molecular Engineering of Functional Materials. This is partly funded by the ISIS neutron and Muon Source, STFC Rutherford Appleton Laboratory, Oxfordshire, UK, with whom she holds a joint appointment. At Cambridge, she carries a joint appointment between the Physics Department (Cavendish Laboratory) and the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at Cambridge.
Graeme Day received his BSc in Chemistry, Mathematics and Computing Science from Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Canada, after which he studied for an MSc in Theoretical Chemistry from the University of Oxford and obtained his PhD in 2003 from University College London. He then moved to the University of Cambridge for postdoctoral work and was awarded a Royal Society University Research Fellowship in 2005, which he held in Cambridge until 2012. In 2012 he moved to the University of Southampton as a Reader and was promoted to Professor of Chemical Modelling in 2014.
Graeme's research interests centre on the development and application of computational methods for understanding and predicting the structures and properties of molecular materials. An area of particular interest is crystal structure prediction, and its applications in structure determination, polymorph discovery and the design of materials with targeted properties. These research areas all stem from a fundamental interest in understanding and modelling intermolecular interactions.
Graeme is the author or co-author of over 95 publications, including 5 book chapters. He serves on the advisory board for the Royal Society of Chemistry’s journal Molecular Systems Design and Engineering, is on the steering committee of the UK Materials Chemistry High End Computing Consortium and is a member of the EPSRC peer review college. Graeme was awarded the CCDC Chemical Crystallography Prize for Younger Scientists in 2006 and the Molecular Graphics & Modelling Society, Silver Jubilee Prize in 2008, both for his contributions to crystal structure prediction methodologies. His current research is funded by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) and the European Research Council (ERC).
After studying chemistry at JMU Würzburg I received a doctorate degree on Highly Conductive Radical Anion Salts of DCNQIs and moved on to Stanford University for a postdoctoral stay working on porphyrin chemistry. In 1991 I joined the colorants research division of BASF working on organic pigments and establishing crystal engineering across several business areas, e.g. agrochemicals.
Since 2000 my focus was on materials for Organic Semiconducting Devices including phosphorescent emitters for OLED, absorbers for OPV and semiconductors for OTFT. Within the MSC-ITN project UHMob we investigate the influence of vacuum field strong coupling on supramolecular ordering and crystallization.
As Erasmus students, Yves Geerts went to Strasbourg, France, to conduct an undergraduate research project supervised by Nobel Laureate Jean-Pierre Sauvage and devoted to the synthesis and photophysical properties of Cu (I) complexes. After working on polymer tribology for DSM, in the Netherlands, he started doctoral researches on the morphology of polymer blends under the supervision of Georges Geuskens. He obtained from ULB his doctoral title in Sciences with summa cum laude, in 1993. Attracted by synthetic polymer chemistry, he went, for a first post-doctoral stay, supported by a Marie-Curie fellowship, and supervised by Klaus Müllen at the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz. He obtained a Fulbright fellowship and joined MIT to synthesize electroluminescent block copolymers in the group of the Noble Laureate Richard Schrock. He returned then for two more years to Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research as research associate. During this period, he was involved in the synthesis of poly[2]catenanes, conjugated oligomers and discotic liquid crystals. In 1997, he accepted a tenured position of research associate of the National Fund for Scientific Research (FNRS). Since 1999, he is professor of chemistry and the head of the Laboratory of Polymer Chemistry (LPC). Soon after, he started to be active at the European level with the coordination of the FP5-DISCEL project (2001-2004) that was followed by the FP6-NAIMO project (2004-2008). More recently, he has coordinated the FP7-ONE-P project (2009-2011) project that has put together 28 industries, universities and research centers to implement a coherent work plan aiming at developing the missing materials for the industrialization of organic electronics in Europe. He has obtained a mandate of research professor from the Francqui Foundation, for the 2011-2015-time period. Currently, he is coordinating MSCA ITN UHMob.
Bart Kahr was born in New York City in 1961. He studied chemistry with I. D. Reingold at Middlebury College, with Kurt Mislow at Princeton University (Ph.D., 1988), and with J. M. McBride at Yale University. He was a faculty member at Purdue University from 1990 to 1996 and at the University of Washington, Seattle from 1997 to 2009. After which, he returned to his hometown where he is currently Professor of Chemistry in the Molecular Design Institute at New York University.
Kahr's research group studies the growth, structure, and physical properties of complex organized media. Current projects emphasize crystal growth mechanisms, polycrystalline pattern formation, the development of new methods of metrology using polarized light, and analysis of chiroptical anisotropy structure-property relationships. He also practices the experimental history of chemistry and crystallography, that is those aspects of the development of science of can only be informed by contemporary laboratory experiments. More recently, he has been advocating for changes in the way that universities and government agencies manage scientific misconduct.
Prof. Tom Leyssens performed his PhD in theoretical chemistry at the UCL (Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium). He then left for a short post-doctoral research stay at the Max-Planck Institute in Mulheim, a position he left to take up a Team Leader position at UCB Pharma (Braine l'Alleud Belgium). During his three years in industry, Tom Leyssens was responsible for the Development and Upscaling of robust Processes, specifically targeting crystallization processes of pharmaceutically active compounds. He took his passion for crystallization of pharmaceutical compounds with him, when he took up an academic position in 2009 at the UCL (Belgium), where he is currently still running a lab in crystallization and crystal engineering.
Tom Leyssens' research mainly concerns multi-component crystalline systems, and the development of applications hereof. His current interest mainly lies in co-crystal systems, and their use. In this context, he is interested in using co-crystallization as a separation tool (chiral resolution, purification). From a crystal engineering point of view, his group is currently also investigating how co-crystallization can impact the photo- and thermochromic behaviour.
After the study of physics at the Vienna University of Technology, Austria and a PhD in the year 1993, I went as a JSPS fellow for a post-doc position at the University of the Ryukyus, Okinawa, Japan. The scientific work in the field of molecular crystals at surfaces started for me in the year 1995 at the Graz University of Technology. In close collaboration with people working in the field of organic electronics, surface scientists and solid state theoreticians the thin film formation of small molecules, polymers, liquid crystals, self-assembled monolayers a.o. on various types of substrates are investigated. A special focus of the work was always the structure of the organic film at the interface towards the surface of the substrate. Regular visits at synchrotron facilities were required to perform thin film growth studies. These scientific activities are carried out within a number of national and international research networks. A number of research grants was awarded e.g. from the Austrian Science Foundation. Activities in terms of dissemination and discussion of scientific results are the organization of international conferences, symposia at the Material Research Society Meetings, and the organization of workshops and school series in the field of substrate mediated crystallization and organic electronics. A long term close collaboration with industry resulted in the development of scientific equipments which lead to commercially available products.
Susan Reutzel-Edens is a Senior Research Advisor in Small Molecule Design & Development at Eli Lilly and Company and adjunct professor at Purdue University. After earning her PhD at the University of Minnesota (1991) under the direction of the late Professor Margaret C. Etter, she joined Eli Lilly, where she founded the solid form design program and for two decades led a team of cross-functional scientists charged with finding commercially-viable crystalline forms for small-molecule drug products. She has contributed to the development of more than 150 compounds, is a named inventor on 12 US patents, and has published over 50 papers and book chapters on key aspects of solid form development. Her research interests include crystal polymorphism, materials design and engineering, crystal nucleation and growth, structure-property relationships, crystal structure prediction and digital design of drug products. She was elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry in 2018, and currently serves on the CrystEngComm Editorial Board, as a topic editor for Crystal Growth and Design, and is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences and the Scientific Advisory Board of the Cambridge Crystallographic Data Centre.
Rosanna Rizzi is currently Researcher at Institute of Crystallography (IC) of CNR in Bari, Italy. Rosanna Rizzi earned the Laurea degree in Physics, from Bari University and at IC she started her scientific career.
The scientific interests of Dr Rizzi are mainly focused on the development and implementation, in crystallographic software, of innovative theoretical, methodological and computing algorithms devoted to the best interpretation of the experimental powder diffraction information. Specifically, she is involved in the qualitative analysis of mixtures and in characterization and crystal structure solution of medium and small organic, inorganic and metal-organic polycrystalline compounds.
Dr Rizzi is co-author of three crystallographic software distributed at the international scientific community: 1) QualX for qualitative analysis; 2) EXPO for structure solution and refinement by using powder data; 3) OChemDB the free on-line Open Chemistry Database portal for searching and analysing crystal structure information.
On the experimental side, Dr Rizzi is head of the X-Ray powder diffraction laboratory at the IC, where high-quality data collection at room temperature is performed.
Dr Rizzi is author of about 90 publications in international refereed journals, book chapters, and she has collaborated in the writing of two chapters of International Tables for Crystallography, Volume H: Powder Diffraction.
She is a member of the Associazione Italiana di Cristallografia (AIC) and of the International Centre for Diffraction Data (ICDD).
She acts as a referee for several international journals and is a member of the Editorial board of the MDPI journal Crystals.
Naír Rodríguez-Hornedo is Professor of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the University of Michigan. She obtained a PhD in Pharmaceutical Sciences from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and was a faculty member at the University of Arizona. Professor Rodríguez’s research program is based on molecular-mechanistic approaches to: (i) design novel pharmaceutical materials with desirable composition, structure and pharmaceutical properties, and (ii) understand crystallization pathways and phase transformations that are important in controlling pharmaceutical processes and bioperformance. Her work illustrates how cocrystals fine-tune solid and solution properties of drugs, with huge implications for improving solubility, processability, stability, and bioperformance. Professor Rodriguez’s contributions to pharmaceutical cocrystals began in 2003 and at the present have received over 1,000 citations. She has chaired or co-chaired numerous conferences and workshops around the world. Professor Rodríguez has also served as a Member of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration Advisory Committee for Pharmaceutical Sciences, as well as in editorial boards of Crystal Growth and Design, Molecular Pharmaceutics, Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences.
Boris Rybtchinski received his B.Sc. degree from Kiev State University in Ukraine. He then moved to Israel, where he earned his Ph.D. degree at the Weizmann Institute (with Prof. D. Milstein). He conducted postdoctoral research at Northwestern University (with Prof. M. Wasielewski) and joined the Weizmann Institute in 2005. Currently, he is an Associate Professor at the Department of Organic Chemistry. He has received a number of awards, including a Kennedy Prize, a Rothschild Postdoctoral Fellowship, an Israel Parliament (Knesset) Prize of Excellence, and the Sir Charles Clore Prize and delivered a 2013 Werdelmann Lecture. His research interests include fundamental and applied aspects of water-based noncovalent nanomaterials.
1984-1991: M.Sc. (Diplom) in Chemistry at the University RWTH Aachen with parallel enrollment in the physics curriculum. Thesis title "Geometrical shape of molecules in the solid state" (Geometrische Formen von Molekülen im Festkörper).
Jonathan W. Steed was born in London, UK in 1969. He obtained his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees at University College London, working with Derek Tocher on coordination and organometallic chemistry directed towards inorganic drugs and new metal-mediated synthesis methodologies. He graduated in 1993, winning the Ramsay Medal for his Ph.D. work. Between 1993 and 1995 he was a NATO postdoctoral fellow at the University of Alabama and University of Missouri, working with Jerry Atwood. In 1995 he was appointed as a Lecturer at Kings College London and in 1998 he was awarded the Royal Society of Chemistry Meldola Medal. In 2004 he joined Durham University where he is currently Professor of Inorganic Chemistry. Steed is co-author of the well-known book Supramolecular Chemistry (2000, 2009 and 3rd Ed in 2021) as well as Core Concepts in Supramolecular Chemistry and Nanochemistry (2007) and more than 350 research papers. He has published a large number of reviews, book chapters and popular articles as well as two major edited works, the Encyclopaedia of Supramolecular Chemistry (2004) and the 8-volume Supramolecular Chemistry: from Molecular to Nanomaterials (2012). He was Associate Editor for New Journal of Chemistry (2001–2009) and Chemical Communications (2010–2019) and is now Editor-in-Chief of the American Chemical Society journal Crystal Growth & Design. He is the recipient of the Vice Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Postgraduate Teaching (2006), The Royal Society of Chemistry Corday Morgan Prize (2010) and is a Wolfson Research Merit Award Holder (2018). His research interests are in crystallization and supramolecular materials chemistry.
Andy Stewart received his PhD from The University of Glasgow (UK) in 2003 where his work involved the development of structure solution of electron diffraction data from zone axis diffraction patterns using maximum entropy techniques. During his PhD, he proposed 3D electron diffraction experiments which mimic the X-ray crystallography data collection in the TEM. He then moved to Cornell working on x-ray three beam interference techniques for solving the phase problem in proteins at resolutions lower than atomic resolution and then Stony Brook University where he worked on x-ray coherent diffractive imaging as applied to cryo-frozen un-sectioned yeast cells. From 2009 onwards he has moved back to working with electrons and has focused on the development and application of electron diffraction tomography for structure solution of a wide range of crystal types from geological to biological and everything in-between. He is currently leading an international initiative to bring open data formats to the TEM community. Since 2017 he was appointed as a lecturer in microscopy at the Bernal Institute & Department of Physics, School of Natural Sciences, University of Limerick, Ireland
Lynne S. Taylor is the Retter Professor of Pharmacy in the Department of Industrial and Physical Pharmacy and a Professor of Chemical Engineering (by courtesy) at Purdue University where she was previously Associate (2007-2012) and Assistant Professor (2003-2007). Prior to moving to academia, she spent several years working at Astra and then AstraZeneca in Sweden developing new drugs. Lynne received a Bachelor of Pharmacy degree with First Class Honors from the University of Bath in the United Kingdom. Her doctoral thesis work at the University of Bradford, UK, was in the area of Pharmaceutical Technology. In between her degrees, she spent some time working in pharmacy in both the UK and Zimbabwe. After her PhD, Lynne was a postdoctoral researcher with Professor Zografi at the School of Pharmacy, University of Wisconsin-Madison. Research in Lynne’s group is directed toward exploring the science underlying the preformulation, formulation and manufacturing of drugs and other bioactive substances, in particular poorly water soluble compounds. She has published more than 260 peer reviewed articles. Research in the Taylor group is currently supported by several federal funding agencies, industry and private foundations. Lynne has received a number of awards including the Coblentz Society Craver Award in Applied Vibrational Spectroscopy (2014), the Journal of Pharmaceutical and Biomedical Analysis Outstanding Manuscript award (2007), the Ebert prize for the best manuscript in the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (2012) and the Pharmaceutical Research meritorious manuscript award (2012). Lynne is a member of the Editorial Advisory Boards for the Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences, Molecular Pharmaceutics, and Pharmaceutical Development and Technology and is a Fellow of both the Royal Society of Chemistry and the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists.
Carolyn Brock is a Professor Emerita of Chemistry at the University of Kentucky, where she started as an Assistant Professor immediately after finishing her Ph.D. (1972) at Northwestern University under the direction of James Ibers. In the earlier part of her career she determined many crystal structures, but she has always been interested in the systematics of packing in molecular crystals and in relationships between closely related phases. Sabbaticals with Jack Dunitz at the ETH (1980-81; 1988-89) led to a number of projects that relied on mining the Cambridge Structural Database. She is currently most interested in molecular crystals that have approximate symmetry, particularly when it is confined to layers or rods; a project to identify approximate symmetry in P1 structures (manuscript in progress) has found that it is pervasive. She served on the Board of Governors of the CCDC (2001-09), was a Co-Editor of IUCr journals (1993-2011), was Editor of Section B of Acta Cryst. (2002-11), and is now Editor-in-Chief of the International Tables for Crystallography. (2010-). She also chairs the IUCr’s Commission on Crystallographic Nomenclature (2014-).