Plenary Speaker

Prof. Jeremy J. Baumberg FRS, FRSC, is the Harald Aspden Professor of Fundamental Physics at the University of Cambridge, directing a key UK NanoPhotonics Centre. He develops optical materials structured on the nanoscale, with strong experience at Hitachi, IBM, and his spin-offs combining academic insight with translation. He is a leading innovator in Nano (h-120), leading to awards including the IoP Faraday gold Medal (2017) and Royal Society Rumford Medal (2014). He is currently chair of the UK EPSRC Council. His recent popular science book “The Secret Life of Science: How Science Really Works and Why it Matters” focusses on research culture. np.phy.cam.ac.uk.

Mischa Bonn, born in 1971 in the Netherlands, serves as Max Planck Director at the Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz, Germany, where he has headed the Department of Molecular Spectroscopy since 2011. Before that, he held appointments at the Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics (AMOLF) in Amsterdam and Leiden University. Following undergraduate studies in Physical Chemistry at the University of Amsterdam, Mischa obtained his PhD from AMOLF / University of Eindhoven. Post-doc positions in ultrafast surface dynamics and Terahertz spectroscopy were held at the Fritz Haber Institute (Max Planck) and Columbia University, respectively. The central theme of Mischa’s research is the characterization and control of the structure and dynamics of electrons and molecules at interfaces, with a particular focus on water.

  Teresa Head-Gordon is an international leader in theoretical chemistry, creating methodological advances at the interface between quantum and statistical mechanics, and AI and machine learning. Her fundamental work includes theory and methods to understand water and aqueous solvation, molecular interactions, interfaces, chemical reactivity and (bio)catalysis, drug discovery, and protein biophysics with notable impacts on energy, environment, and human health applications. She is Director of CalSolv at UC Berkeley, a Co-Director of the NSF Molecular Sciences Software Institute, and has taken on many leadership and advisory roles for various directorates within NIH, DOE, NSF, and NAS panels and scientific decision bodies in Europe. Honors include IBM SUR award; Schlumberger Fellow, Cambridge University, UK; Fellow, AIMBE; Fellow, ACS; Fellow, ReSolv German Center of Excellence, Humboldt Research Award, and election to the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science. She has given multiple public and citizen lectures in the US and Europe on the Ethics of Emerging Technologies: The Era of Artificial Intelligence, a lecture taken from her popular ethics course at UC Berkeley.

Xing Yi Ling is the President’s Chair Professor in Chemistry at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. She obtained her PhD in Chemistry from the University of Twente, the Netherlands, and carried out postdoctoral research at the University of California, Berkeley. She serves as Editor-in-Chief of ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces and the Applied Materials portfolio, a family of eight materials-focused journals. She is in the editorial boards of Angewandte Chemie, Chemistry of Materials, Nanoscale Horizons and etc. Her research focuses on the development of nanomaterial-based sensors, particularly surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) nanosensors integrated with chemistry and machine learning, for ultrasensitive, selective, and rapid point-of-care bio/chemical detection and biomedical diagnostics.  

Wei Min received his B.S. from Peking University in 2003 and Ph.D. from Harvard University in 2008 studying single-molecule biophysics with Prof. Sunney Xie. After continuing his postdoctoral work in Xie group, Dr. Min joined the faculty at Columbia University in 2010, and was promoted to Full Professor there in 2017. Dr. Min's contribution has been recognized by a number of honors, including Biophotonics Technology Innovator Award from SPIE (2023), Raman Award for the Most Innovative Technological Development (2022), Craver Award of Vibrational Spectroscopy (2022), Scientific Achievement Award from Royal Microscopical Society (2021), Pittsburgh Conference Achievement Award (2019), Analyst Emerging Investigator Lectureship (2018), Coblentz Award of Molecular Spectroscopy (2017), the ACS Early Career Award in Experimental Physical Chemistry (2017), Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award (2015), Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship (2013), and NIH Director's New Innovator Award (2012).

Bin Ren is a professor in Chemistry at Xiamen University, Dean of College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, and Vice director of the State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces. He received his bachelor and PhD degree both from Xiamen University and started independent research work in the same university from 1998. He spent his sabbatical year in Fritz-Haber Institute with Dr. Bruno Pettinger as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow in 2002-2003. He received ISE-Elsevier Experimental Electrochemistry Award and Electrochemistry Award of Analytical Chemistry Division of the American Chemistry Society. He is an Associate Editor of Analytical Chemistry (ACS) and is a Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry. He is the principal investigator of several key national grants, including The Innovative Research Group Project and National Major Scientific Instruments and Equipment Development Project of NSFC. His research is mainly focused on the development of Raman-based methodology (including tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy and surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy) and instrumentation for in situ and operando study of electrochemical systems with high time and spatial resolution.  He has published over 400 peer-review papers with citation over 38000 and h-index of 91.

Martin T. Zanni is the F. Fleming Crim WARF Professor and Meloche-Bascom Professor of Chemistry at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. He received his PhD from the University of California-Berkeley, working with Dan Neumark, and was an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Pennsylvania with Robin Hochstrasser. He is one of the early pioneers of 2D IR spectroscopy and has made many technological innovations that have broadened the capabilities and scope of multidimensional spectroscopies and microscopies. He utilizes these new techniques to study topics in biophysics, chemical physics, photovoltaics, and surfaces. He has received many national and international accolades for his research. Notably, he is the only person to have received the ACS Nobel Laureate Signature Award as both a student and a mentor and the first person to receive the Craver, Coblentz, and Lippincott Awards. He founded PhaseTech Spectroscopy Inc., which is the first company to commercialize 2D IR and 2D Electronic spectroscopies. He was elected into the National Academy of Sciences in 2025.