Speakers - PhotoIUPAC 2026

Plenary speakers

Ryu Abe

University of Kyoto
Ryu Abe received his PhD (2001) degrees from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan. He then worked as a postdoctoral fellow (2001-2002) and as a researcher (2002-2005) at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST), Japan. In 2005, his academic career as an Associate Professor began at the Catalysis Research Center, Hokkaido University, Japan. ...

Gonzalo Cosa

Department of Chemistry, McGill University
Gonzalo Cosa is a Professor in the Chemistry Department at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. His research centers on designing, synthesizing, and using fluorescent molecular probes, and on developing fluorescence microscopy methods, that when combined provide unprecedented detail of chemical and biologically-relevant processes with unsurpassed spatial-temporal resolution ...

Leticia González

University of Vienna, Faculty of Chemistry, Institute of Theoretical Chemistry
Leticia González earned her degree in Chemistry from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and completed her PhD with honors in 1998. In 1999, she joined the Free University of Berlin, where she obtained her Habilitation in 2004. She was appointed Professor of Theoretical Chemistry at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena in 2007 and became Full Professor at the University of Vienna in 2011. ...

Anna Gudmundsdottir

University of Cincinnati
Dr. Anna Gudmundsdottir is a Professor of Chemistry at the University of Cincinnati. She earned her B.S. in Chemistry from the University of Iceland and completed her Ph.D. at the University of British Columbia under the mentorship of Professor John Scheffer. Following her doctoral studies, she held postdoctoral fellowships with Professors Peter Wagner at Michigan State University and Matt Platz ...

David MacMillan

Princeton University
Dave MacMillan was born in Bellshill, Scotland and received his undergraduate degree in chemistry from the University of Glasgow, where he worked with Dr. Ernie Colvin. In 1990, he began his doctoral studies with Professor Larry Overman at the University of California, Irvine, before undertaking a postdoctoral position with Professor Dave Evans at Harvard University in 1996. He began his independent career ...

María Luisa Marín García

Universitat Politècnica de València
Maria Luisa Marin was born in Valencia, Spain. She did her PhD at the University of Valencia (UV), where she worked on the synthesis of natural products. In 1996, she moved to Imperial College (London, UK), where she spent two years as a postdoctoral Pierre and Marie Curie fellow. When she came back to Spain, she moved to the Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV) to work in the fields ...

Sherri A. McFarland

University of Texas, Arlington
Sherri is a professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Texas at Arlington. She enjoys working in the general areas of synthetic and natural products chemistry, inorganic photophysics, photobiology, and photomedicine. ...

Hans Jacob Wörner

Department of Chemistry and Applied Biosciences, Laboratory of Physical Chemistry, ETH Zürich
Prof. Hans Jakob Wörner is a Full Professor of Physical Chemistry at ETH Zurich, where he leads the research group for Ultrafast Spectroscopy and Attosecond Science. His research explores the fundamental processes of electron and nuclear motion in molecules on attosecond to femtosecond timescales by developing advanced spectroscopic techniques. He is internationally recognized ...

Award winner

Invited speakers

Tobias Brixner

Universität Würzburg
Tobias Brixner is a W3 Professor (Chair) of Physical Chemistry and Physics at the University of Würzburg, Germany. He develops and applies ultrafast spectroscopy methods including coherent multidimensional as well as microscopy techniques. He was the spokesperson of the DFG Research Unit “Light-Induced Dynamics in Molecular Aggregates” (from 2012 to 2019) and the General Chair of ...

Benedetta Carlotti

University of Perugia
Benedetta Carlotti received her laurea (M.Sc.) and Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of Perugia in Italy. During her graduate studies, she spent a 15 month-research period as a visiting scholar in the USA at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Thereafter, she worked as a Research Associate in the group of Prof. Theodore Goodson at the University of Michigan. After obtaining the National Habilitation, ...

Maria Laura Dantola

Universidad Nacional de La Plata
María Laura Dántola was born in Berisso, Argentina, in 1979. She obtained her degree in Biochemistry at the Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP), Argentina, in 2005. She was awarded a PhD in Science at UNLP in 2008. In 2010, she started as an Assistant Researcher in Grupo de Fotosensibilización y Fotobiología Molecular at Instituto de Investigaciones Fisicoquímicas Teóricas y Aplicadas ...

Jillian Dempsey

University of North Carolina
Jillian L. Dempsey is a professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and currently holds the Bowman and Gordon Gray Distinguished Term Professorship. She is the Deputy Director of the Center for Hybrid Approaches in Solar Energy to Liquid Fuels (CHASE). Her research group explores charge transfer processes associated with solar fuel production, including ...

Matthew J. Fuchter

University of Oxford
Prof. Fuchter is Professor of Chemistry at the University of Oxford and the Sydney Bailey Fellow in Chemistry at St Peter’s College Oxford. He runs a multidisciplinary research group with a broad array of interests in functional molecules, materials and medicines. In fundamental research, his work has significantly contributed to the development of chiral materials ...

Grace Han

Brandeis University
Grace earned her PhD at MIT with Prof. Timothy Swager, focusing on organic chromophores for photovoltaics. She then completed postdoctoral research in MIT’s Department of Materials Science and Engineering with Prof. Jeffrey Grossman. In 2018, she joined the Department of Chemistry at Brandeis University and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2024. ...

Frances Houle

Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory
Dr. Houle is a Senior Scientist in the Chemical Sciences and Molecular Biophysics and Integrated Bioimaging Divisions at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Her scientific interests are in the areas of coupled reaction-transport processes in solar energy conversion systems and their components, and chemical modification of polymer, nanoparticle, semiconductor, and metal interfaces, surfaces and films ...

Stefania Impellizzeri

Toronto Metropolitan University
Dr. Stefania Impellizzeri is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemistry and Biology, the Jet Ice Research Chair in Sustainable Materials Chemistry and the Dimensions Faculty Chair for Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Research (Faculty of Science) at Toronto Metropolitan University. Her expertise ranges from organic synthesis to photo– and physical chemistry, materials chemistry and (photo)catalysis. ...

Eléna Ishow

Nantes Université
Eléna Ishow is Full Professor in Nantes University. After being admitted at the Ecole Normale Supérieure of Paris Saclay in 1990, she obtained in 1997 her Ph.D. in the group of Nanosciences at CEMES in Toulouse, under the supervision of A. Gourdon onto the elaboration of molecular wires. She then worked for one year as a postdoctoral fellow in the group of Prof. V. Balzani in Bologna (Italy) on photoinduced molecular machines. ...

Sivaguru Jayaraman

Bowling Green State Univrsity
Prof. Dr. Jayaraman Sivaguru (Siva) is the Distinguished University Professor and the Antonia and Marshall Wilson Professor at the Department of Chemistry, Bowling Green State University (BGSU), Bowling Green, Ohio. Prof. Sivaguru completed his bachelor’s (1996) and master’s (1998) degrees from St. Joseph’s College, Trichy, Tamil Nadu, India, and Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, Tamil Nadu, India, ...

Jiani Ma

Shaanxi Normal University, Xi’an
Jiani Ma is a professor at the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at Shaanxi Normal University. She earned her PhD in Philosophy from The University of Hong Kong in 2013 under the supervision of Prof. David Lee Phillips. Her research focuses on studying photochemical reaction mechanisms on organic molecules using time-resolved spectroscopies (like ultrafast transient absorption spectroscopy, ...

Henrik Ottosson

Uppsala Universitet
Henrik Ottosson has an MSc in chemical engineering from Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, followed by a PhD in theoretical chemistry with Prof. Dieter Cremer (PhD 1996) and a three-year postdoctoral stint with Prof. Josef Michl at University of Colorado at Boulder, USA. In 2000, he started his independent research at Uppsala University, and today, it is broadly directed to ...

Tomislav Rovis

Columbia University
Tomislav Rovis was born in Zagreb, Croatia, but was largely raised in Southern Ontario, Canada. Following his undergraduate studies at the University of Toronto, he earned his Ph.D. degree at the same institution in 1998 under the direction of Professor Mark Lautens. From 1998-2000, he was an NSERC postdoctoral fellow at Harvard University with Professor David A. Evans. In 2000, he began his ...

Toshinori Suzuki

Kyoto University
Toshinori Suzuki was born in Yamagata, Japan, in 1961. He received his Ph.D. in chemistry in 1988 under the guidance of Professor Mitsuo Ito. He worked as a research associate in the high-resolution spectroscopy laboratory of Professor Eizi Hirota at the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS). He then conducted postdoctoral research at Cornell University with Professor Paul Houston and at the ...

Tahei Tahara

Riken Center for Advanced Photonics
Tahei Tahara obtained his Ph.D. degree from the University of Tokyo in 1989. He became a research associate of the University of Tokyo in 1989 and then moved to the newly founded Kanagawa Academy of Science and Technology (KAST) as a research associate in 1990. In 1995, he joined the Institute for Molecular Science (IMS) as an associate professor and started his own research group. ...

Zhiwei Zuo

Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry
Zhiwei Zuo received his B.S. in Chemistry from Nanjing University and his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry (SIOC), under the supervision of Prof. Dawei Ma. After postdoctoral studies with Prof. David MacMillan at Princeton University, he began his independent career at ShanghaiTech University in 2015. He returned to SIOC in 2020, where he was promoted to Professor. ...