Plenary Speakers

K. George Thomas (IISER)

K. George Thomas is a Professor and J C Bose National Fellow at the School of Chemistry of the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Thiruvananthapuram, India.

Research activities of KGT group focus on understanding the photochemistry and photophysics of molecular assemblies, plasmonic systems and semiconductor quantum dots, and chiral nanostructures using various steady-state and time-resolved techniques.

George Thomas is a recipient of several awards and distinctions: the most significant ones are the J C Bose National Fellowship, one of the highest national research fellowships of India and the prestigious Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in Chemical Sciences in 2006, the highest annual science prize awarded by the Government of India for a researcher below the age of 45 years.

He is an elected fellow of the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi and the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, two of the national science academies of India.

He was the President of the Asian and Oceanian Photochemistry Association (2019-2021) and was a member of the editorial advisory committee of the Journal of Physical Chemistry of the American Chemical Society (2012- 2015).

Email: kgt@iisertvm.ac.in

Website (Group):            https://www.kgtlab.in

Website (IISER TVM):  https://www.iisertvm.ac.in/faculty/kgt

Yuan-Pern Lee (NYCU)

Prof. Yuan-Pern Lee has a Ph. D. from U. C. Berkeley (1979) and conducted postdoctoral research at NOAA, Boulder, Colorado. He became an associate professor in Chemistry, National Tsing Hua University, Taiwan in 1981, and a chair professor in Department of Applied Chemistry, National Chiao Tung University (NCTU) since 2004. He was Dean of Science, NCTU in 2005−2008.

He is interested in spectroscopy, kinetics, and dynamics of free radicals or unstable species that are important in astrochemistry, atmospheric chemistry, or combustion chemistry. The techniques employed include step-scan FTIR (both emission and absorption), matrix isolation with p-H2, quantum-cascade laser absorption, cavity ringdown, IR-VUV photoionization/time-of-flight detection, laser-induced fluorescence, and ultrafast laser techniques.

He became a National Chair Professor (Minister of Education) in 1997, a Fellow of the American Physical Society in 1999, the Academician of Academia Sinica in 2008, and Fellow of the World Academy of Science (TWAS) in 2011. His recent awards include Honda-Fujishima Lectureship Award of Japanese Photochemistry Association (2016), Humboldt Research Award (2016), Pimentel Prize for Advances in Matrix Isolation (2018), and the Presidential Science Prize in Taiwan (2019).

Kazunari Domen (UTokyo)

Kazunari Domen received B.S. (1976), M.S. (1979), and Ph.D. (1982) honors in chemistry from the University of Tokyo.

Dr. Domen joined the Chemical Resources Laboratory, Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1982 as Assistant Professor and was subsequently promoted to Associate Professor in 1990 and Professor in 1996.

He moved to the University of Tokyo as Professor in 2004, and received a cross appointment with Shinshu University as Special Contract Professor in 2017. He was appointed University Professor of the University of Tokyo in 2019.

His research interests include heterogeneous catalysis and materials chemistry, with particular focus on surface chemical reaction dynamics, photocatalysis, solid acid catalysis, and mesoporous materials.

Recently, his effort is focused on development of photocatalysts for water splitting and construction of practical solar hydrogen production system.

He has published more than 800 original and review articles and the citation number is about 90,000 and h-index is 139 (December 2022; Web of Science).