Program

Prof. Katja LOOS is Professor at the Zernike Institute for Advanced Materials of the University of Groningen, holding the chair of Macromolecular Chemistry and New Polymeric Materials. She currently serves as the President of the European Polymer Federation for the period of 2023 to 2025.
She specialized in Organic Chemistry and Polymer Chemistry during her university studies at the Johannes Gutenberg Universität in Mainz, Germany and the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, USA. She moved into the field of Enzymatic Polymerizations during her doctoral research at the University of Bayreuth, Germany and the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul, Porto Alegre, Brazil. After a postdoctoral research stay at Polytechnic University in Brooklyn, NY, USA she started an independent research group at the University of Groningen.
Katja Loos pioneered the field of enzymatic polymerization, especially the biocatalytic synthesis of polysaccharides and polyamides, and the synthesis and self-assembly of PVDF containing block copolymers. Already early in her career Katja Loos was awarded two travel scholarships of the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) and she received the very prestigious Feodor Lynen Fellowship award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to conduct her postdoctoral research. During her independent research career, on the basis of her unique approach in combining modern polymer synthesis, (macro) molecular self-assembly, and utilization of the arising structures the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO) has awarded her the prestigious VIDI grant in 2009 and VICI grant in 2014 and the German Research Council (DFG) the Eleonore Trefftz guest professorship within the scope of its excellency initiative. Among others she was awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, the IUPAC Distinguished Women in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering Award and the Team Science Award of the Dutch Research Council (NWO). In 2023 she received the title of Knight of the Order of the Netherlands Lion.
Katja Loos is a Fellow of the Dutch Polymer Institute (DPI) and the Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC).

Prof. David HADDLETON has been working in the area of controlled polymer synthesis for over 25 years since being employed at ICI. His PhD “Photochemistry of some organometallic ethene compounds” was under the supervision of Robin Perutz at the University of York in 1986. He spent one year at the University of Toronto as a PDRA. He joined ICI in 1988 and spent one year at the University of Southern Mississippi working with polymer liquid crystals. Moving back to the UK in 1988 he spent 5 years working on GTP and anionic polymerisation prior to moving to Warwick in 1993 and was promoted to full Professor in 1998. He has published over 500 papers and has a google h-index >85 with over 25000 citations. He has graduated over 75 PhD students from Warwick. Current work in the group is in different aspects of developing new polymerisation methodology and using this for novel polymers for industrial applications, polymers for personal care applications, (hair and skin care) and for biomedical and nano medicinal applications (new and targeted peptide and protein conjugation). Recent work includes new conjugation strategy, glycopolymers, monomer sequence control and polymerisation in biological media. He has formed two companies and is currently CSO of a transdermal drug delivery company Medherant Ltd. https://warwick.ac.uk/fac/sci/chemistry/research/haddleton/haddletongroup/