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Keynote Speakers
Prof. Alexander Korsunsky
Vice President,
Trinity College, Oxford University,
UK
Editor in Chief, Materials & Design
Alexander Korsunsky received his degree of Doctor of Philosophy (DPhil) from Merton College, Oxford, following undergraduate education in theoretical physics. His current appointment is Professor of Engineering Science at the University of Oxford and Trinity College. He has given keynote plenaries at major international conferences on engineering and materials. He has developed numerous international links, including visiting professorships at Universitá Roma Tre (Italy), ENSICAEN (France) and National University of Singapore.
Prof Korsunsky’s research interests concern developing improved understanding of integrity and reliability of engineered and natural structures and systems, from high-performance metallic alloys to polycrystalline ceramics to natural hard tissue such as human dentin and seashell nacre.
Prof Korsunsky co-authored books on fracture mechanics (Springer) and elasticity (CUP), and published over 200 papers in scholarly periodicals on the subjects ranging from neutron and synchrotron X-ray diffraction analysis and the prediction of fatigue strength to micro-cantilever bio-sensors, size effects and scaling transitions in systems and structures.
Support for Prof Korsunsky’s research has come from EPSRC and STFC, two major Research Councils in the UK, as well as also from the Royal Society, Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng), NRF (South Africa), DFG (Germany), CNRS (France) and other international and national research foundations. Prof Korsunsky is a member of the editorial board of Journal of Strain Analysis published by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, UK (IMechE).
Prof Korsunsky is consultant to Rolls-Royce plc, the global aeroengine manufacturer, whom he advises on company design procedures for reliability and consistency. He spent a period of industrial secondment at their headquarters in Derby, UK (supported by RAEng), and made recommendations on R&D in structural integrity.
Prof Korsunsky plays a leading role in the development of large scale research facilities in the UK and Europe. He is Chair of the Science Advisory Committee at Diamond Light Source (DLS) near Oxford, UK, and Chair of the User Working Group for JEEP (Joint Engineering, Environmental and Processing) beamline at DLS. These activities expand the range of applications of large scale science to problems in real engineering practice.
Prof Korsunsky’s research team at Oxford has involved members from almost every part of the globe (UK, FR, DE, IT, China, India, Korea, Malaysia, South Africa).
Prof.
Carsten Gachot
Vienna University of Technology, Austria
Carsten Gachot
received his PhD from the Saarland
University in Germany in 2012 where
he studied the effects of laser
interference patterning on the
microstructure and topography of
metallic surfaces with a focus on
tribological applications under
Prof. Dr. Frank Mücklich and Prof.
Dr. Martin H. Müser. For this work,
Dr. Gachot was awarded by the
European Honda initiation grant in
2011. Prof. Gachot was academic
visitor at the tribology Group at
the Imperial College London and is
currently the head of the tribology
research Group at the Vienna
University of Technology.
Additionally, Prof. Gachot is a
visiting Professor at the Pontifical
Catholic University in Santiago de
Chile and chief editor of the peer
reviewed journal "Industrial
Lubrication and Tribology of the
Emerald Publishing Group Leeds UK.
Invited Speakers

Institute Polytechnic of Leiria,
Portugal
Geoffrey Mitchell
is Professor and Vice-Director of
the Centre for Rapid and Sustainable
Product Development at the
Polytechnic Institute Leiria in
Portugal. Geoffrey Mitchell carried
out his doctoral work at the
University of Cambridge in the UK
and subsequently held a
post-doctoral fellowship at
Cambridge and a JSPS Fellowship at
Hokkaido University in Japan. Prior
to his current position he was
Professor of Polymer Physics at the
University of Reading, UK and from
2005 he was the founding Director of
the Centre for Advanced Microscopy
at Reading. His research work
bridges physics, biology, chemistry
and technology and he is a Fellow of
both the Institute of Physics and
the Royal Society of Chemistry as
well as the Royal Society for the
Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures
and Commerce.
Geoffrey Mitchell is passionate
about direct digital manufacturing
(DDM) which enables products to be
manufactured directly from a digital
design without the need for
specialist tooling or moulds and the
development of novel materials to
support the emerging technologies.
He is fascinated by the
opportunities that arise from
merging electrospinning in to the
family of DDM technologies. He
brings a wealth of experience
working with polymer based materials
both natural and synthetic. He is
particularly interested in the
scales of structure present in all
materials and especially
biopolymers. He has developed and
made extensive use of x-ray and
neutron scattering methods coupled
to computational molecular modelling
and electron microscopy techniques.
He is a Visiting Member of the
Medical Physics and Clinical
Engineering Department of the Oxford
Universities NHS Foundation Trust.
He is the editor of a book
“Controlling the Morphology of
Polymers Multiple Scales ” published
by Springer in 2016.
Prof. Ramirez-Castellanos Julio
Universidad Complutense, Spain
Julio Ramírez-Castellanos graduated
with a BAS (Bachelor of Science
degree) in Solid State Chemistry at
Complutense University of Madrid.
His PhD degree was on the synthesis
and structural characterization of
high Tc superconducting materials.
This PhD served as an introduction
to many chemical methods needed for
the preparation of new materials,
and the application of electron
microscopy techniques used to
characterize and understand the
relationships between structure and
properties. Dr. Ramirez-Castellanos
also visited/worked at/studied at
several European research centers,
including the Laboratoire de
Cristallograhie (CNRS) in Grenoble
(FR). He was an active participant
in Prof. Maximo Marezio´s working
group, under the supervision of Dr.
J. J. Capponi. Ramirez-Castellanos
also joined at Prof. S. Palmer's
group, at Physics Department in
Warwick University, Coventry (UK).
Furthermore, Dr. Ramirez-Castellanos
studied the determination of crystal
structures, and the processing of
electronic images obtained through
electron microscopy with Prof. Sven
Hovmoller, in Arrhenius Laboratory
at Structural Chemistry Department,
Stockholm University (SE).
For several years after that, he
completed research with a
postdoctoral fellowship in order to
study with Dr. Yoshio Matsui at the
National Institute for Materials
Science (N.I.M.S) in Tsukuba (JP).
Dr. Ramírez-Castellanos completed
his research and studies on new
functional materials, using a
Hitachi H-1500 ultra-high-resolution
and ultra-high voltage transmission
electron microscope (U-HRTEM),
operated at 1300 kV. At the same
time, he also collaborated with
Prof. Ryozo Yoshizaki at the Applied
Physics Institute and Cryogenic
Center in the Faculty of Engineering
at Tsukuba University (JP).
Dr. Ramírez-Castellanos returned to Madrid, and joined the Inorganic Functional Materials Group, at Inorganic Chemistry Department in Universidad de Complutense de Madrid (UCM). His research mainly based on the synthesis, optical properties and structural/microstructural characterizations of nanomaterials.