Presents: 6th International Symposium on Electrochemistry
“Electrochemistry, meeting societal needs” 3 - 6 April 2023
Plenary speakers
Prof Marc Cretin (University of Montpellier)
Marc Cretin is Professor at the Faculty of Sciences, Montpellier University since 2012. His research interest is focused on electrochemistry and material for applications to waste water treatment and energy. He works more especially to the development of Electrochemical Advanced Oxidation Processes (EAOP) and Reactive Electrochemical Membranes (REM).
Prof Janeath Conradie (University of the Free State)
Jeanet Conradie is a research fellow and emeritus professor at the University of the Free State. She obtained her PhD in Chemistry in 2000 with a focus on chemical kinetics and electrochemistry. In 2002, she furthered her expertise in computational chemistry during a postdoctoral research visit at the University of Tromso in Norway. Conradie made history in 2009 as the first woman to be promoted to professor at the UFS Department of Chemistry. Her H-index is 40 and she is ranked amongst the top 2% scientists in the world on the lists published by Stanford University in the United States on 10 October 2022.
Her research interests include the synthesis, characterization, and computational and electrochemical analysis of ligands, transition metal complexes, transition states, and reaction intermediates for applications in drug design, DSSC, and catalysis. By combining experimental and computational methods, she seeks to establish mathematical relationships between experimentally measured parameters and properties calculated through density functional theory. These relationships allow for the design of custom-made complexes with specific reactivities for use in catalysts, battery fuel cells, and dye-sensitized solar cells.
Prof Sabeth Verpoorte (University of Groningen)
E.M.J. (Sabeth) Verpoorte has more than 30 years of research experience in the microfluidics or lab-on-a-chip field. Her introduction to this technology came in 1990, when she arrived from Canada as a postdoctoral researcher in the pioneering lab-on-a-chip group headed by Professor A. Manz at Ciba Ltd., Basel, Switzerland.
In July 1996 she became a team leader in the group of Professor Nico F. de Rooij at the Institute of Microtechnology (IMT), University of Neuchâtel, Switzerland, where her research interests concentrated on microfluidics for (bio)analytical applications. In Groningen, her interests since 2003 have come to include organ-on-a-chip applications, in addition to microfluidic devices for miniaturized analytical instrumentation. Sabeth was recently awarded an Honorary Doctorate by Tampere University (Finland) for her work on lab-on-a-chip and organ-on-a-chip research as well as for long-standing interdisciplinary collaborations.
Keynote speakers
Prof Vernon Somerset (Cape Peninsula University)
Prof. Vernon Somerset obtained his PhD in Electro-analytical Chemistry in 2007 at the University of the Western Cape, Bellville, Cape Town. With more than 20 years of experience in Environmental Chemistry research, he has worked on various projects focussing on the sources, transport pathways and fates of inorganic and organic pollutants in the environment. His research activities at the CSIR and CPUT, have been focusing on activities investigating different aspects of improving the analytical techniques for the quantification of the different pollutants in water, sediment and biota samples. This further includes the determination of bioaccumulation of organic and inorganic pollutants in sediment and invertebrates, to assess the ecotoxicity of these compounds and the possible threat to aquatic and human health.
Prof Krishna Bissety (Durban University of Technology)
Krishna Bisetty is a Professor of chemistry at DUT. His research interests include smart nanostructured electrode materials and modified electrode surfaces, electroactive polymers, electrochemical biosensors, with applications in the environmental, food and pharmaceutical areas. He is currently the leader of the Computational Modelling & BioAnalytical Research Group at DUT. Over the past 20 years his research, largely based on High Performance Computing (HPC), evolved towards synergies with experimental science in sensing technologies. He now enjoys considerable international recognition for his work in this area. The broader goals are to design, model and fabricate doped smart materials to improve drug delivery systems and biosensor technology.
Prof Philiswa Nomngongo (University of Johannesburg)
Philiswa Nomngongo is a South African professor of Analytical Chemistry and the South African Research Chair in nanotechnology for water. Professor Philiswa N. Nomngongo graduated with BSc Applied Chemistry, BSc (Hons) and MSc in Chemistry from University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) in 2008, 2009 and 2011, respectively. She then completed a PhD in Chemistry (specializing in Analytical Chemistry) from the University of Johannesburg (UJ), in 2014.
Her research focus is on metal analysis in the environment (water, soil and plants), food, petroleum and pharmaceuticals products as well as in cooking utensils. This is because even though certain metals at small amounts such as copper, iron, manganese, molybdenum, nickel and zinc, etc., are essential for plant growth, while others such as iron, zinc, copper, manganese, chromium, molybdenum and selenium, are necessary for animal and human health, if present in excessive concentrations they become toxic. Metal bioavailability and toxicity depend on their speciation. One of the challenges of determining the levels on metals in the above samples is the suitability of the analytical techniques (instruments). Before the metal levels in these samples can be determined, suitable pretreatment methods (sample preparation) must be used so as to convert the metals in forms that are appropriate for the measurements. Metal toxicity is dependent on the species (forms) in which they exist.
Prof Kwena Desmond Modibane (University of Limpopo)
Kwena D. Modibane is currently working at the University of Limpopo (UL) as an associate professor, and leader of the Nanotechnology Research Group (NanoRG@UL), South Africa. He is the DSI-NRF South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Green Hydrogen. His duties involve lecturing of third and second levels in the area of Analytical and Inorganic Chemistry; and specialized topics on electrochemistry, advanced separation techniques and spectroscopies at Honours level. He received the University of Limpopo Vice Chancellor's established Researcher Award for 2019 in the school. Prof Modibane is also a part-time Lecturer (since 2013) at the University of the Western Cape (UWC) for MSc Nanoscience Programme, where he teaches electrochemical energy, kinetics and thermodynamics of hydrogen energy storage and conversion processes, and photophysical chemistry. His current research outputs are on preparation of nanocomposites for various applications such as electrochemical hydrogen production, hydrogen storage, solar cells, supercapacitor and water treatment. He participates in a number of research activities aimed at keeping himself abreast with trends in his field, as reviewer for a number of journals that include Elsevier journals, Nature and Springer.
Prof Omolola Fayemi (North West University)
Prof Fayemi Esther Omolola is a Professor at North West University, department of chemistry. Her research focus is the fabrication of electrochemical based sensors with different nanocomposites (green-based, chemical-based, electrospun nanofibers nanocomposite for micro detection of different neurotransmitters (dopamine, choline, serotonin, ascorbic, biogenic amines, polyaromatic hydrocarbons, adulterants in food, Aflatoxins, heavy metals in waste water and organochlorine pesticides. Application of nanoparticles as corrosion inhibition.
Prof Gugu Hlengiwe Mhlongo (CSIR)
Professor Gugu H. Mhlongo obtained her B.Sc degree (Physics and Electronics) in 2004, BSc. Hon. and MSc. (Physics) in 2006 and 2008, respectively, from the University of Zululand; and PhD in 2011 from the University of the Free State where she is an affiliated Associate Professor. The Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) permanently retained her upon completing her doctorate. There she has conducted excellent work on novel functionalized nanostructured materials as nanosensor development. She has strong interests in magnetic, defect structure control and luminescence properties i.e., down-conversion and up-conversion studies, in which she has huge expertise. Prof. Mhlongo has been a visiting senior researcher at various institutes including NIMS in Japan, Kagoshima University in Japan, Polish Academy of Science in Poland, Institute Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas in Greece and Catolonia Institute for Energy Research (IREC) in Spain. She was appointed as part of South African delegation to BRICS Solid State Lighting (SSL) Joint Collaboration Working Group engagements in China between 2014-2017. She is currently part of South Africa leadership team on Materials Science and Nanotechnology BRICS working group and appointed as the research project coordinator considering her experience in field of gas sensors for agriculture and food safety. Mhlongo has published more than 50 papers and 5 conference proceedings (as a first, corresponding and coauthor), co-authored 2 book chapters. She has presented some of her research work as a guest, invited and keynote speaker in more than 20 local and international conferences.
Prof Pierre-Henri Aubert (CY Cergy Paris University)
Prof. Aubert received his PhD in 1999 at University of Franche-Comté. After several postdoc abroad – LUC (Belgium), UFl (USA), CEA Saclay (France) – he was appointed assoc. Prof. in 2005 at CY Cergy Paris University. His research interest concerns the electrochemistry of p-conjugated polymers focusing the energy storage, visible/IR electrochromic and biosensors fields. In 2017 he was promoted full Professor and develop new material as highly porous Covalent Organic Framework to cover new domains of material sciences. Actually he is co-PI of SENERGYLAB project, an International Associated Laboratory shared with Sensorlab in University of Western Cape (South Africa). He is co-author of >90 publications (IF 28), 9 patents and 5 book chapters.
Prof Frank Marken (University of Bath)
Frank Marken obtained a PhD at RWTH Aachen and was Feodor-Lynen Fellow at La Trobe University, Melbourne. He worked as Royal Society University Research Fellow at Oxford and at Loughborough University, then in 2004 moved to the University of Bath to a Senior Lecturer position, and in 2011 he was promoted to a personal chair in Physical Chemistry. Research is linked to the Centre of Sustainable and Circular Technologies (CSCT) and focused on materials and electrochemistry.
Prof P Baker (University of the Western Cape)
Priscilla Baker is the South African Research Chair Initiative (SARChI) Chair in Analytical Systems and Processes for Priority and Emerging Contaminants (ASPPEC) and a Senior Professor of Chemistry at the University of Western Cape (UWC). Having been elected as a fellow in 2018, Baker is an alumnus of University of Cape Town. Prof Baker is an analytical-electrochemist and has more than 15 years of experience in the development of organic and inorganic smart materials (polymer blends, hydrogels, Schiff base metal complexes) for application in sensors, electroanalysis and energy-generation systems. She is the co-leader of SensorLab™ (UWC Sensor Research Laboratories) since 2004, and the research centre’s team comprised 8 Academic staff, postdoctoral fellows and 40+ postgraduate students. Baker currently serves as the director of the South African Systems Analysis Centre (SASAC, November 2017-present), former Department of Chemistry HoD, (UWC, 2017-2018), chairperson of the South African Chemical Institute Electrochemistry Chapter (2006-2018) and current Regional Representative (Africa): International Society of Electrochemistry. Baker was announced Winner of the Department of Science and Technology, Distinguished Woman Scientist award in the category Physical and Engineering Sciences (2014) and in the same year she was awarded the Deputy Vice Chancellor’s Young Researcher Award, by the University of the Western Cape. Baker believes Current approaches to water screening for emerging and persistent chemical residues requires considerable effort, with high associated costs, sample processing and lengthy laboratory centered analysis times. Her research focuses on Electrochemistry as a clean, versatile and powerful tool for the detection of emerging and priority pollutants in water and other environmental matrices.
