Santiago Alvarez was born in Panamá in 1950 & studied Chemistry in Barcelona where he obtained his PhD with Prof. Jaume Casabó.  He did postdoctoral work at Cornell University with Prof. Roald Hoffmann in 1983-84, & was appointed as Associate Professor at the University of Barcelona in 1984, later becoming Professor in Inorganic Chemistry in 1987.  He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, corresponding member of the Real Sociedad Española de Ciencias & a member of the European Academy of Science.  His research interests focus on bonding, stereochemistry, shape & symmetry of transition metal compounds.

With the pioneering of ultra microelectrodes Christian Amatore provided electrochemists with instrumental & conceptual means enabling them to tackle with important problems in organic, inorganic & organometallic chemistry or nanosciences. His recent works deal with the very frontiers of molecular electrochemistry, organometallic catalysis & of cellular biology. He has received many national & international honors & prizes & is a Full Member of the French Academie des Sciences & Chairman of the Chemistry Section of Academie des Sciences. He published more than 350 research articles which cumulate close to 12,000 citations & an H index of 57.

David Avnir is a Chemistry Professor & Head of the Institute of Chemistry at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, where he received all of his academic education. His current scientific activities include theoretical & experimental aspects of chirality, theoretical studies in symmetry, organically doped metals, sol-gel organic hybrid materials & biomaterials, & organic catalysis. Earlier major interests included fractal theory in chemistry & physics, & far-from-equilibrium phenomena. He has co-authored more than 300 papers, holds several key-patents in the sol-gel area. Recently he passed the mark of 11,000 citations with an h citation index of 52. Co-founder of Sol-Gel Technologies.

Christopher W. Bielawski received a BS degree in chemistry (1997) from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign under the aegis of Prof. Jeffrey S. Moore. He then began graduate studies at the California Institute of Technology working as an NSF pre-doctoral fellow in the laboratories of Prof. Robert H. Grubbs. Upon completion of his PhD in chemistry (2003), he became a NIH postdoctoral fellow in the research group of Prof. David A. Tirrell (also at Caltech). In 2004, he joined the Dept. of Chemistry & Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Austin as an assistant professor. His research interests include catalysis, polymer chemistry, organometallics, and molecular electronics.

 JPOC Award recipient

Aaron Ciechanover received his M.Sc. and M.D. from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, and his D.Sc. from the Technion.  There, as a graduate student with Dr. Avram Hershko, they discovered that covalent attachment of ubiquitin leads to degradation of the tagged substrate, which led later to the discovery of proteolysis as a novel major regulatory Aaron Ciechanover received his M.Sc. & M.D. from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, & his D.Sc. from the Technion.  There, as a graduate student with Dr. Avram Hershko, they discovered that covalent attachment of ubiquitin leads to degradation of the tagged substrate, which led later to the discovery of proteolysis as a novel major regulatory platform in the cell.  As a post doctoral fellow at M.I.T., he continued his studies on the ubiquitin system & made additional important discoveries.   Dr. Ciechanover is currently a Distinguished Research Professor at the Technion.  Among the many prizes that Dr. Ciechanover received are the Albert Lasker Award, the Israel Prize in Biology & the 2004 Nobel Prize in Chemistry.  Among many esteemed bodies, Dr. Ciechanover is a member of the Israeli National Academy of Sciences & Humanities, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences (Vatican), & the National Academy of the Sciences of the USA (Foreign Associate).                                    

Rainer Herges was born in the Saarland Germany, studied chemistry at the University of Saarbruecken & went to Prof. Ivar Ugi at the Technical University in Munich for his dissertation. After posdoc with Prof. Olah in L.A. he did his habilitation with Prof. Rague-Schleyer in Erlangen. Rainer Herges’ first permanent position as C3 was in Braunschweig (1996) & then (2001) C4-Prof. at the University of Kiel in Northern Germany.  His research interests are supramolecular chemistry, molecular machines, & rational synthesis of nanotubes, Moebius aromatics, & computational chemistry. .

Eiichi Nakamura was born 1951 in Tokyo, Japan. His experience includes his education from the Tokyo Institute of Technology (PhD 1978), postdoc Columbia Univ. (1978-1980); & work experience as Assistant Prof. Tokyo Institute of Technology (1980-1984), Associate Prof. Tokyo Institute of Technology (1984-1993), Prof. Tokyo Institute of Technology (1993-1995), Prof. Univ. of Tokyo (1995-present). ERATO program research director, JST (2004-2010).  Research filed: organic synthesis, physical organic chemistry, & nano-science. Honors: Elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1998; The Chemical Society of Japan Award, 2003; Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, 2005; Humboldt Research Award, 2006, Foreign Honorary Member, American Academy of Arts & Sciences, 2008.

Jeremy Sanders studied at Imperial College, London, & the University of Cambridge.  After a postdoctoral year at Stanford (USA)), he joined the Chemistry faculty in Cambridge in 1973; he became Professor in 1996, was Head of Chemistry from 2000-2006, & in 2009 he becomes Head of the School of Physical Sciences. He first became well known in the 1970s & 80s for development & application of NMR methods in chemistry & biology. More recently he has developed templated syntheses of receptors based on metalloporphyrins, the concept of dynamic combinatorial chemistry, & has discovered supramolecular nanotubes.

A. Dieter Schlüter received a doctorate in organic chemistry 1984 with Prof. G. Szeimies at the University of Munich (LMU). After post-doctoral work with Prof. K. P. C. Vollhardt (UC Berkeley) & Prof. W. J. Feast (U of Durham, England) he joined the MPI for Polymer Research in Mainz in 1986 (Prof. G. Wegner). In 1991 he received habilitation at the University of Mainz & was an associate professor at the University of Karlsruhe before accepting a chair professorship for organic & macromolecular chemistry at the Free University of Berlin in 1992, where he has been until spring 2004. Since then he is holding the chair of polymer chemistry at ETH Zurich.  

Peter R. Schreiner is professor of organic chemistry at the Justus-Liebig University Giessen. He received his doctorate (1994) in organic chemistry at the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg & a Ph.D. in computational chemistry from the University of Georgia (1995). He completed his Habilitation at the University of Göttingen (1999). Before becoming head of the Organic Institute in Giessen in 2002, he was associate professor of chemistry at the University of Georgia (1999–2002). Peter is the 2003 recipient of the WATOC Dirac Medal, received the ADUC-Prize in 1999, was a Liebig-Fellow (1997–1999), & held a Habilitandenstipendium of the DFG (1999). He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Wires-CMS, as the Assistant Editor for the Journal of Computational Chemistry, & is an international advisory board member of EJOC.