Important dates

Rénato FROIDEVAUX is full professor of biocatalysis at Lille University in France. He is heading the team « Biotransformation, biocatalysis and enzyme » in the BioEcoAgro Joint Cross-Border Research Unit. His research concerns enzymatic biocatalysis (homogeneous and heterogeneous) applied to hydrolysis of agro-food proteins for obtaining bioactive peptides, enzymatic biocatalysis applied to the valorization of lignin for obtaining biobased aromatics. More recently, he developed the concept of "hybrid catalysis" which consists of combining chemical catalysis and enzymatic biocatalysis for biomass valorization. This interdisciplinary concept involves the search for new enzymes, the search for compatible reaction conditions between (bio)catalysts and the development of different types of reactors (one-pot one step, two-pots one-step) and Multi Catalytic Hybrid Materials (also called MMCH) for heterogeneous (bio)catalysis. Author and co-author of more than 50 articles mostly in JCR, 3 book chapters and 3 patents. Total citations almost 800 (WoS), H Index 16. He is a project leader and participant of more than 15 national and international research projects. He is responsible of an Industrial Chair called « Charles Viollette », financed by the European Metropole of Lille and the University of Lille. This chair brings together academic partners from Lille and Canada (INAF in Quebec) and industrial partners in the development of co-products from the agricultural and agro-food industries by biotechnological tools for the production of bioactive molecules for animal, human nutrition and plant health. He was a lecturer in enzyme biocatalysis from 2004 to 2009 in the Franco-Romanian Master's "Bioprocesses in the Agrifood field" between Al. I. Cuza University of Iasi and Lille University, then director of this master's until 2013. Currently, he works with the Technical University Hheorghe Asachi of Iasi (Dr Alexandra BLAGA) for the implementation of a double master'degree in (bio)chemical engineering.

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/