Prof. Philip Grandinetti, Ohio State University (2024))
“Real-Time Monitoring of Battery Chemistry with Nuclear Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy”

 Prof. Claudio Pettinari, Rector of University of Camerino (2023)
"Materials of future for energy and the environment"

Prof. Gaetano T. Montelione, Center for Advanced Biotechnology and Medicine Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (2019)
"Proteins Flex to Function: Conformational Plasticity in Molecular Recognition"

Prof. Wolfgang Lubitz, Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion, Mülheim a. d. Ruhr, Germany (2018)
"The Water Oxidation Cycle in Photosynthesis Probed by Magnetic Resonance Techniques"

Prof. Vincent L. Pecoraro, Department of Chemistry - University of Michigan (2015/16)
"The Art of de Novo Protein Design: From Heavy Metal Sequestration to Novel Metalloenzymes"

Prof. Luisa De Cola, Institut de Science et d'Ingénierie Supramoléculaires (I.S.I.S.), Université de Strasbourg (2014)
"Self-assembly as a tool for new materials"

Prof. Kazuyuki Tatsumi, Department of Chemistry, Nagoya University, President of IUPAC (2013)
"Chemistry of Cluster Active Sites of Oxidoreductases: Drawing a Lesson from the Brilliant Functions of the Enzymes for our Future Sustainable Society"

Prof. Giovanni Natile, Dipartimento Farmaco-Chimico, Università di Bari, Italy(2012)
"Insights into the cellular uptake and processing of cisplatin and related Drugs"

Prof. Nigel Robinson, Department of Chemistry, Durham University, UK (2011)
"How cells help proteins to acquire the correct metals"

Prof. Kurt Wuethrich, The Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla California, USA and ETH Zurich, Switzerland (2010)
"The Protein Universe - from Structural Biology to Structural Genomics"

Prof. Harry B. Gray, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA (2008)
"Bioinorganic Solar Photochemistry: Fuel from Sunlight and Water"

Prof. Chikashi Toyoshima, University of Tokyo, Japan (2007)
"How does Ca2+ ATP-ase pump ions across the membranes?"

Prof. Joan S. Valentine, University of California, Los Angeles, USA (2006)
"Misfolded Cu Zn SOD and ALS"

Prof. Daniel G. Nocera, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA (2005)
"Powering the Planet. The Challenge for Chemistry in the Twenty-First Century"

Prof. Ernesto Carafoli, University of Padova, Italy (2004)
"Calcium Signalling: a Meeting Point for Structural and Cellular Biology"

Prof. Edward I. Stiefel, Princeton University, USA (2003)
"Elements and Cycles of Life: Metals, Microbes, Myths, and Mysteries"

Prof. Giulio Alberti, University of Perugia, Italy (2002)
"A Marriage between Building Block Chemistry and Nano-Chemistry for Decreasing Town Pollution:
General Expectations and Recent Applications to Fuel Cells for Electric Cars"

Prof. Daniel Mansuy, University of Paris V, France (2001)
"Bioinorganic Chemistry of Nitric Oxide: Implications in Medicinal Chemistry"

Prof. Daryle H. Busch, University of Kansas, USA (2000)
"Special Ligands for Special Purposes - Some Goals for the Complete Coordination Chemistry"

Prof. Vincenzo Balzani, University of Bologna, Italy (1999)
"Molecular-Level Devices and Machines"

Prof. Kenneth N. Raymond, University of California at Berkeley, USA (1998)
"Supramolecular Clusters based on Metal Coordination Chemistry"

Prof. Luigi Maria Venanzi, ETH, Z?rich, Switzerland (1997)
"Transition Metal Trihydrides as Ligands"

Prof. Fred Basolo, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA (1997)
"Ring Slippage Mechanism and Kinetics of Ligand Substitution of Organometallic Compounds"

Prof. Harry B. Gray, Caltech, Pasadena, CA, USA (1996)

 

Philip J. Grandinetti was born and grew up in Clarksburg, WV. He received his B.S in chemistry in 1982 and M.S. in physical chemistry in 1984 at West Virginia University. At WVU, he worked on electron paramagnetic resonance studies of phase transitions in ferro- and anti-ferroelectric materials under Professor Nar S. Dalal. He moved to the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, for a Ph.D. in physical chemistry under Professor Jiri Jonas.
He developed and applied in-situ high-pressure nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) methodologies to study the dynamics of elastohydrodynamic lubricants and pressure-induced phase transitions in lipids. After finishing his Ph.D., he took a post-doctoral position at the University of California, Berkeley, in the lab of Professor Alex Pines from 1989 to 1993. During this period, he made contributions to a new class of solid-state NMR methods for obtaining high-resolution spectra of half-integer quadrupolar nuclei. He began his career at Ohio State University as an Assistant Professor in 1993, was promoted to Associate Professor in 1999, and full Professor in 2005. His research interests currently focus on magnetic resonance to probe dynamics and structure in disordered and heterogeneous materials.
He received the NSF CAREER award in 1995 and an NSF Creativity Award in 2004. In 2022, he received the Eastern Analytical Symposium Award for Outstanding Achievements in Magnetic Resonance. He was a visiting Professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Lyon in 1999, a visiting Professor and Le Studium Researcher at the CNRS, Orléans, France in 2005-06, and the Allan Cox Visiting Professor in the School of Earth Sciences, Stanford University in 2009, and a visiting Professor at the École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne, Switzerland. He served on the Editorial Board of the journal Solid-State Nuclear Magnetic Resonance and was a council member of the International Society of Magnetic Resonance.

 

Claudio Pettinari insegna attualmente Chimica Generale ed Inorganica per il Corso di Laurea in Farmacia e per il corso di laurea in Scienze Gastronomiche. È co-autore di libri di testo per studenti di scuole superiori e testi universitari nell’area della Chimica Generale, è autore del libro Scorpionates-II Chelating Borate Ligands edito dall’Imperial College Press, promotore di numerosi convegni ed eventi di divulgazione culturale e scientifica delle discipline chimiche.
Si occupa di chimica organometallica e chimica dei composti di coordinazione con applicazioni nel settore dei materiali innovativi, nella sintesi di composti ad attività biologica e nella produzione di nuovi catalizzatori per reazioni di polimerizzazione e ossidazione, utilizzando eterocicli N-, O e S-donatori (pirazolilborati, pirazolilalcani, pirazoloni, scorpionati), e leganti ancillari come fosfine e difosfine con metalli dei gruppi principali (Sn, Ge,Pb), di transizione (Rh, Ir, Pd, Pt, Os, Cu, Ag, Au, Zn, Cd, Hg) e terre rare (La, Eu, Gd).
Nell’ultimo periodo ha rivolto attenzione alla preparazione di nuovi materiali polifunzionali e MOFs utilizzando unità di costruzione secondarie derivate da specie molecolari quali sintoni rame e argento-triazolato e rame o argento-pirazolato sviluppati precedentemente o leganti ditopici e multitopici derivati da pirazoli e imidazoli.
Inorganica Chimica Acta ha dedicato nel 2022 un volume speciale: Claudio Pettinari, a protagonist in Inorganic Chemistry.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/inorganica-chimica-acta/special-issue/10H1QW4FC9F

 

Wolfgang Lubitz studied Chemistry at the Freie Universität (FU) Berlin (1969 – 1974), where he also received his doctoral degree (1977), and his habilitation (1982). He worked as a research scientist at UC San Diego, USA (1983/84) and as Assistant and Associate Professor at the FU Berlin (1979 -1989). In 1989 he became Professor in the Physics Department of the Universität Stuttgart, before he took over a Chair of Physical Chemistry at the Technische Universität (TU) Berlin in 1991. In 2000 he became a Scientific Member of the Max Planck Society and Director at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion (formerly Max Planck Institute for Bioinorganic Chemistry) in Mülheim/Ruhr, Germany, where he established the Department for Biophysical Chemistry. Professor Lubitz is an Honorary Professor at the Universität Düsseldorf. His scientific work is focused on energy conversion processes in natural and artificial photosynthesis, the investigation of metalloproteins (e. g. hydrogenases, water oxidase) and the development and application of molecular spectroscopy, especially magnetic resonance methods. His work has been published in more than 450 scientific publications and decorated with a number of awards. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), the International Society of Magnetic Resonance, and the International EPR Society and has received honorary doctorates (Dr. h.c.) of the University of Uppsala, Sweden (2008) and the Université d'Aix-Marseille, France (2014). He has been President of the International EPR Society (2005 – 2008) and is currently Vice President of the Council for the Annual Nobel Laureate Meetings in Lindau.

Prof. Vincent L. Pecoraro was born on August 31, 1956 in New York. He received a BS in biochemistry from UCLA in 1977, a PhD in Chemistry in 1981 (research advisor Ken Raymond) from the University of California, Berkeley and completed postdoctoral studies at the University of Wisconsin, Madison with W.W. Cleland. He began his independent scientific career in the chemistry department at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1984 and has risen through the ranks to his present position as the John T. Groves Collegiate Professor of Chemistry. His main research interests focus on bioinorganic and supramolecular chemistries. He has made major contributions to the understanding of the structure and reactivity of manganese enzymes such as the Oxygen Evolving Complex of Photosystem II and to defining the mechanism of the broad class of vanadium haloperoxidases. In recent years, his research team has developed helical scaffolds using a de Novo design approach to clarify heavy metal binding to proteins and prepared novel redox and hydrolytic enzymes. He also discovered the class of molecules known as metallacrowns, which initiated the field of metallamacrocycles. He has contributed to the inorganic community in many capacities including serving on the ACS/PRF and ACS Books Advisory Boards and as an Associate Editor for Inorganic Chemistry for over 20 years. He has received numerous awards and honors including the Searle Biomedical Research Scholar, a Sloan Foundation Fellowship, the Alexander von Humboldt Stiftung for Senior Scientists, the Blaise Pascal Chair for International Research, the Vanadis Award and is the 2016 recipient of the ACS Award for Distinguished Service in the Advancement of Inorganic Chemistry. He is a Fellow of the AAAS and the ACS.

Prof. Luisa De Cola is since September 2013 Professor Exceptionnelle at the University of Strasbourg (ISIS) as chair of Supramolecular and Bio-Material Chemistry, and part time scientist at the INT-KIT, Karlsruhe, Germany. Since 2016 she is also Professor of the Institut Universitaire de France (IUF), and since 2019 Honorary Professor at Tianjin University, China. She was born in Messina, Italy, where she studied chemistry. After a post-doc in USA she was appointed Assistant Professor at the University of Bologna (1990). In 1998 she was appointed Full Professor at the University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. In 2004 she moved to the University of Muenster, Germany. She is recipients of several awards, the most recent being the ERC advanced grant 2010, IUPAC award as one of the Distinguished Women in Chemistry and Chemical Engineering (2011). She was elected as member of the Academia Europeae in 2012 and in 2014 member of the German National Academy of Sciences Leopoldina. In 2014 she has been Nominated “Chevalier de la Légion d' Honneur” by the President of the French Republic, François Hollande.

Prof. Kazuyuki Tatsumi, was born on January 26, 1949 (in Nara, Japan) and started his carrier as a theoretical chemist, then his research subjects have shifted into synthetic inorganic chemistry, extending over coordination chemistry, organometallic chemistry, and bioinorganic chemistry. His recent research interests include synthesis of coordinateively unsaturated organometallics, transition metal chalcogenides, and transition metal sulfide/thiolate clusters modeling the active sites of reductases such as nitrogenase, hydrogenase, and acetyl-CoA synthase.
Prof. Tatsumi received his B.S. (Hons.) in 1971, and obtained a Ph.D. in theoretical inorganic chemistry in 1976 at Osaka University. He held postdoctoral fellowships, first at Texas A&M University (1977-1979), where he studied lanthanide and actinide chemistry with the late Prof. Minoru Tsutsui, and then in the theoretical group of Prof. Roald Hoffmann at Cornell University (1979-1982), where he learned beauty of chemistry. In 1982 he joined the Prof. Akira Nakamura group at Osaka University (Faculty of Science) as Assistant Professor, and started chalcogenide chemistry of early transition metals while he continued the study on theoretical inorganic chemistry. He was awarded Visiting Professorships at University of Helsinki in 1985, and at EPFL (Switzerland) in 1987. He was promoted to Associate Professor at Osaka University (Faculty of Engineering Science) in 1991, and to Professor of Chemistry at Nagoya University in 1994. In 2003 was nominated Director at the Research Center for Materials Science of Nagoya University.
IUPAC Involvement: From 2012 Tatsumi is the President of IUPAC, which he has been a member since 2002.
Related Professional Activities: Since 2005 Tatsumi has been on the Council for Science and Technology Committee (Subdivision on Science Committee) of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, Japan, and he became a member of Science Council of Japan in 2008. He led the Grant-in-Aid on Priority Area Project, "Reaction Control of Dynamic Complexes" from 2002 to 2006, and has been a head investigator of Grant-in-Aid on Creative Scientific Research on the chemistry of reductases since 2006. He has been a member of the International Organizing Committee of Pacifichem since 1996, where he is currently the vice-chair for Pacifichem 2010. He was on Editorial Advisory Board of New Journal of Chemistry (1995-1997), on International Advisory Editorial Board of JCS Dalton (1998-2002), and he is on Editorial Board of Chemistry: An Asian Journal. He has also been the Regional Editor of J. Organomet. Chem. since 2002.
Awards: Tatsumi received the Inoue Prize for Science in 1998, the Humboldt Research Award in 2004, and The Chemical Society of Japan Award in 2006. He was awarded Lectureships of Chinese Academy of Science in 2000, KAIST (Korea) in 1999 and 2001, and National Science Council (Taiwan) in 2003, and was appointed Honorary Professor of Nanjing University of Science of Technology (2004) and Lanzhou University (2004), Visiting Professor of University of Helsinki (1985), EPFL (Switzerland, 1987), Suzhou University (2001), and University of Heidelberg (2005). He was appointed Honorary Doctorate of University of Münster, Germany (2011).

Prof. Giovanni Natile was born in Putignano (Bari, ITALY) on 18 November 1944. Since 1981 he is Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry in the Faculty of Pharmaceutical Sciences of the Università degli Studi di Bari, Italy. Professor Giovanni Natile, Past President of the Italian Chemical Society/Società Chimica Italiana (SCI), became President of the European Association for Chemical and Molecular Sciences (EuCheMS) in October 2005 until 2008. As President of the SCI, Giovanni Natile has taken vigorous steps to strengthen the editorial policy of the Società Chimica Italiana and to promote collaboration with other European chemical societies in order to improve their partnership. He has also initiated action to promote the spread of chemical knowledge in society, in accordance with the belief that a better understanding of chemistry means a better future for chemistry. The EuCheMS General Assembly 2010 in Slovenia acknowledged the contribution of Giovanni Natile, President Elect 2004/2005, President 2005 to 2008 and Immediate Past President until 2010. Giovanni Natile steered EuCheMS through the challenge of becoming a legal entity registered in Belgium and funded by its member societies. His Presidency marked a period during which EuCheMS gained recognition as a voice for chemical and molecular sciences. Natile chaired the EuCheMS launch event at the European Parliament in 2006 bringing together representatives of the Parliament and the Commission with guests from the key European organisations involved in chemical sciences. With his support EuCheMS, having signed a declaration on sustainable development, played a prominent role in developing policy, holding meetings in Brussels to publicise reports on energy and sustainable water. Natile presided over the first two EuCheMS Congresses, building on the strengths of EuCheMS scientific Divisions. With his encouragement the Divisions broadened their scope to embrace organic and inorganic chemistry, sustainable chemistry and chemistry and energy. He supported the creation of the Eu ropean Young Chemists Network and the launch of the European Young Chemist Award. He led EuCheMS in strengthening links with sister organisations, including CEFIC and the European Physical Society. As Immediate Past President, he chaired the task group on governance which led to a more effective EuCheMS governance structure. Giovanni Natile is active in the field of organometallic chemistry and bioinorganic chemistry and is author of ca. 200 papers, several book chapters and some patents. Actually he is: - coordinator of the PhD in "Synthesis and enzymat ic Applied Chemistry" at University of Bari; - member of the Management Commettee of the COST-D 20 "Metal Compounds for the treatment of cancer and viral diseases"; - member of the editorial board of "Metal-based drugs", "European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry" and "Inorganic Chemistry Communications"; - director of CIRCMSB: the "Chemistry of Metals in Biological Systems" which puts together 20 research teams from different Italian universities.

 

Prof. Nigel Robinson, University of Liverpool, specialising in Botany, graduating with a first in 1981 and completing a doctorate in 1984 with David Thurman on the mechanism of copper tolerance in Mimulus guttatus. Supported by Fellowships from the Natural Environment Research Council, and Directors-office of Los Alamos National Laboratory, he worked with Paul Jackson at LANL (1984-1987) then held a Royal Society University Research Fellowship at Durham University, UK (1987-1994) to gather genetic resources for metal-homeostasis. He was awarded the Presidents medal of the Society for Experimental Biology in 1993 in recognition of distinguished work on metalloproteins and metal interactions with plant and microbial cells. In 1994 he was appointed to the chair of Genetics in the Medical School at Newcastle University. He has trained two-dozen postgraduates, written circa one hundred papers, served as editorial advisor to Molecular Microbiology and the Biochemical Journal, organised a dozen metals-related conferences, delivered more than a hundred invited lectures and co-instigated (with Dr Dennis Winge of the University of Utah) the Gordon Research Conference series on the Cell Biology of Metals. With nearly a half of enzymes estimated to need metals he has contributed to understanding how cells assist proteins to acquire the correct metals.

Prof. Kurt Wuethrich is currently a Cecil H. and Ida M. Green Professor of Structural Biology at the Scripps Research Institute, La Jolla, CA, USA and Professor of Biophysics at the ETH Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland. His research interests are in molecular structural biology, and in structural genomics. His specialty is nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy with biological macromolecules, where he contributed the NMR method of three-dimensional structure determination of proteins and nucleic acids in solution. The Wuethrich groups have solved more than 100 NMR structures of proteins and nucleic acids, including the immunosuppression system cyclophilin A−cyclosporin A, the homeodomain−operator DNA transcriptional regulatory system, and prion proteins from a variety of species.

Harry B. Gray (Northwestern University PhD, 1960; Copenhagen University postdoc,1960-61; Columbia University professor,1961-66) is the Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry and the Founding Director of the Beckman Institute at the California Institute of Technology. His main research interests center on inorganic photochemistry and biological inorganic chemistry, with emphasis on understanding electron transfer in proteins.His contributions to chemistry include over 750 papers and 18 books. He has received the National Medal of Science from President Ronald Reagan (1986); the Linderstrøm-Lang Prize (Denmark,1991); the Laurea Honoris Causa from the University of Florence (1993) among 16 other honorary degrees; the Gibbs Medal (1994); the Harvey Prize (Israel, 2000); the National Academy of Sciences Award in Chemical Sciences (2003); the Benjamin Franklin Medal in Chemistry (2004); the Wolf Prize in Chemistry (2004); and six national awards from the American Chemical Society, including the Priestley Medal (1991). He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences; the American Academy of Arts and Sciences; the American Philosophical Society; a foreign member
of the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters; the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences; the Royal Society of Great Britain. He was California Scientist of the Year in 1988. He has served as a Member of the Board of Directors of the Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation since 1994. Harry Gray is an honorary member of the Italian Chemical Society and received the City of Florence Prize in Molecular Sciences in 2006.
He is in Italy to be appointed as a foreign member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei. On this occasion he will give the Luigi Sacconi Memorial Lecture, a series of lectures which he inaugurated in 1996.

 

Chikashi Toyoshima, Professor of Supramolecular Structure at the Institute of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, The University of Tokyo, is a structural biologist working on ion transporting ATPases. He graduated from the Department of Physics, The University of Tokyo, and started his career as an electron microscopist.
Dr Toyoshima's outstanding accomplishment is the resolution of the atomic structures of the muscle sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPase in 7 different states that approximately cover the entire reaction cycle. He also contributed to our understanding of structure and function relationship through advanced theoretical studies, such as molecular dynamics simulations and electrostatic calculations within his laboratory.
As a result, we now have a fairly detailed scenario of ion pumping and can answer fundamental questions, e.g., what are the roles of ATP and why H+ countertransport is necessary despite that the membrane of the sarcoplasmic reticulum is leaky to H+.
His work has been published in higly prestigious journals, including an extraordinary string of full articles in Nature.
Dr Toyoshima is currently a foreign associate of the National Academy of Sciences, USA. He also delivered the National Lecture for the Biophysical Society 2007 meeting, USA.

Joan Selverstone Valentine,  Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry at UCLA, is a leading figure working at the interface of inorganic chemistry and biology. She has published over 200 research papers and several books, and her work is widely cited. She pioneered the chemistry of the superoxide anion, and her discoveries have been fundamental to our understanding of the biological reactions of dioxygen and its interactions with metalloenzymes. Particularly notable in recent years are her demonstrations of the remarkable nucleophilic properties of iron porphyrin peroxo complexes, development of novel sol-gel techniques to entrap biological macromolecules in an optically transparent rigid matrix, and her ongoing detailed biophysical characterization of mutant copper-zinc superoxide dismutase enzymes that cause Lou Gehrig's disease. She is a recipient of several awards, including the John C. Bailar, Jr. Medal, has held numerous distinguished lectureships in the United States and abroad, and was recently elected to membership in the National Academy of Science. She is Editor-in-Chief of Accounts of Chemical Research, an American Chemical Society journal.

Daniel G. Nocera is the W. M. Keck Professor of Energy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and he is widely recognized in the world as a leading researcher in energy at the molecular level. Nocera studies the basic mechanism of energy conversion in biology and chemistry with primary focus in recent years in the photogeneration of hydrogen and oxygen. Nocera has pioneered each of these areas of science. He created the field of proton-coupled electron transfer (PCET) at a mechanistic level with the publication of the first ultrafast laser study of an electron transfer through a hydrogen bonded interface. With the frameworks of multielectron chemistry and PCET in place, Nocera and his graduate student Alan Heyduk described the first molecule to produce hydrogen photocatalytically from homogeneous solutions of hydrohalic acid. In 2005, he was awarded the Italgas Prize for his fundamental contributions to the development of renewable energy at the molecular level.
Complementing his interest in light-to-chemical energy conversion, Nocera has made pioneering contributions in other areas of sciences including mixed valence compounds, ferromagnetic and antiferromagnetic materials and optical chemosensors. He has given over 300 invited talks and plenary lectures.
Nocera (born 3 July 1957) received his early education at Rutgers University, obtaining a B. S. degree in 1979. He moved to Pasadena, California where he began the research on the electron transfer reactions of biological and inorganic systems with Professor Harry Gray at the California Institute of Technology. After earning his Ph.D. degree in 1984, he went to East Lansing, Michigan to take up a faculty appointment at Michigan State University. He joined the faculty of the Massachusetts Institute of technology as a Professor of Chemistry in 1997.

Ernesto Carafoli was born, 1932, in Italy. M.D. 1957, University of Modena, Italy. "Habilitation" (Libera Docenza) in General Pathology (1965) and in Biochemistry (1968). Fogarty International Post-doctoral Fellow in the Dept. of Physiological Chemistry of the Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, USA (1963-1965), Visiting Lecturer in the same department 1968-1969. Assistant Professor of General Pathology in the University of Modena School of Medicine (1959-1965), Associate Professor of General Pathology at the same school (1965-1972),Professor of General Pathology, University of Padova School of Medicine (Italy) (1973), Professor of Biochemistry, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) (Zurich, Switzerland), (1973 to 1998), Chairman of the Dept. of Biochemistry of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) in 1978 and 1987-1991, Professor of Biochemistry, University of Padua, School of Medicine (since 1990). From 1971-1991 Visiting Professor for various periods in several Italian Universities, at the University of Nairobi (Kenya) at the Universidad Nacional Autonoma of Mexico, Mexico City (Mexico) at the Universidad Central de Venezuela, Caracas (Venezuela), and at Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland (OH, USA). Scientific Director of the Venetian Institute of Molecular Medicine (Padua), (since 2000). He has received many awards and honours, among them the Laureae Honoris Causa in Natural and Mathematical Sciences from the University of Åbo, Finland (1993), in Medicine from the Carol Davila University of Bucharest, Rumania (1995) and in Medicine and Pharmacy from the University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania (1998). Since 1996 he is corresponding member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Rome, Italy). Ernesto Carafoli has lectured in many Universities worldwide and has been Plenary and Keynote lecturer in several important International Conferences He is Member of a dozen professional Societies, including the Swiss Biochemical Society, the Biochemical Society, the American Society for Cell Biology, the American Society of Biological Chemistry and Molecular Biology (Honorary Member), the Society of General Physiology, the Biophysical Society, the Italian Society of Biochemistry. Since 1969 Ernesto Carafoli is member of the Editorial or Advisory Board of several journals in the area of biochemistry (among them European Journal of Biochemistry, Archives of Biochemistry and Biophysics, Biochemistry, EMBO Journal, Biochimica et Biophysica Acta, Biochemical and Biophysical Research Communications, Current Topics in Membranes and Transport, Advances in Second Messengers and Protein Phosphorylation, Cell Calcium, CMLS). He has been Editor or Co-editor of some 20 books in the area of membrane biochemistry, calcium biochemistry and physiology, bioenergetics. Carafoli is Associate Editor of the Encyclopedia of Biological Chemistry, Elsevier-Academic Press, 2004. He is member of the Scientific Committees of several European Agencies, member of Scientific Committees of Institutions in France (CNRS) and in Germany (Max-Planck Society), member of the evaluation committees of Academical Institutions in several European countries. He has been Vice-President of ICRO (International Cell Research Organisation) (1988 - 1994) and then President 1995-1995. He has been member of the International Scientific Advisory Board of UNESCO (ISAB) (1996-1999). Carafoli has been Co-organizer of about 30 International Congresses and Symposia, and of about 20 Advanced Courses held in 6 countries. Finally he is author of about 450 articles in refereed journals on topics of muscle biochemistry, membrane biochemistry, mitochondrial bioenergetics, membrane transport of ions (calcium specially by pumps) regulation of calcium metabolism of about 100 book chapters and 70 invited review articles on the same topics.

Edward I. Stiefel was born in Brooklyn, NY and received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from Columbia University with Prof. Harry B. Gray. Stiefel joined the Faculty at Princeton in 2001, as Ralph W. Dornte Lecture with the Rank of Professor in the Department of Chemistry. Previously, Stiefel was a Senior Scientific Advisor at ExxonMobil Corporate Strategic Research, and before that a Senior Investigator at the Kettering Research Laboratory. He has at taught at SUNY Stony Brook, and, as a visiting Professor, at Princeton and Columbia Universities. Stiefel is on the steering committee of the Princeton-based Center for Environmental Bioinorganic Chemistry (CEBIC). He is the founding Co-Chair of the Gordon Research Conferences on 'Molybdenum and Tungsten Enzymes' and 'Environmental Bioinorganic Chemistry (EBIC)'. Stiefel is on the Advisory Boards of Progress in Inorganic Chemistry and Inorganic Chemistry and is on the Board of Reviewing Editors of Science Magazine. Stiefel's research interests include: the bioinorganic chemistry of molybdenum enzymes and models; bacterioferritins and iron metabolism; the role of metalloenzymes in biogeochemical cycles; the mechanisms of enzyme action; the origins of life; and synthetic inorganic chemistry of transition metal sulfur systems. Stiefel was elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1994, won the Exxon Golden Tiger Award for Technical Innovation in 1996, and the American Chemical Society Award in Inorganic Chemistry for the year 2000.</p>

Giulio Alberti, following his degree in Chemistry (1954) had his scientific formation at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of Rome University directed by Prof. V. Caglioti. In 1970 he became Full Professor of General and Inorganic Chemistry and he moved to the Chemical Department of Perugia University, where presently he teaches Inorganic Chemistry and Solid State Chemistry. His current research interest is in the field of solid state chemistry and ranges from solid state electrochemistry to octahedra-tetrahedra building block chemistry for creating “tailor-made” inorgano-organic molecular buildings and functionalised lamellar nano-particles as well as to their applications. Recently, his interest has been more focused into taking advantage of his previous research to solve some important problems of an industrialized society, especially those related to the atmosphere pollution in large towns. He is author of about 200 papers, 2 international books, 10 chapters in books and 20 patents. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the journals: European Journal of Inorganic Chemistry, Solid State Science, Reactive Polymers and Water Treatment. In 1991 he received the Languedoc Medal from Montpellier University for his pioneer researches on inorganic membranes while, for his researches on the chemistry of bidimensional solids, the Italian Chemical Society awarded him the Paternò 1998 Gold Medal.

Daniel Mansuy has been Director of Research in CNRS since 1983; he is presently Director of a Department of chemistry and biochemistry associated to CNRS at the Université René Descartes (Paris V) (since 1984), and is Responsible for the National CNRS Programme "Physics and Chemistry for Life Sciences".
He has been a Member of the French Academy of Sciences since 1998 and member of the Editorial Boards of New Journal of Chemistry, Journal of Molecular Catalysis, Bioorganic Medicinal Chemistry Letters, Bioorganic & Medicinal Chemistry, and Biochemical Pharmacology.
His main fields of research are: Oxidation catalysts and coordination chemistry of metalloporphyrins; Metalloenzymes: mechanism and biological implications (cytochromes P-450, cyclooxygenase, nitrile hydratases, NO synthases); Drug metabolism and molecular toxicology: Research for new drugs.
He has published 330 original papers and 27 review articles. He has given 135 invited lectures at international meetings and 165 invited lectures in France and abroad.

Daryle H. Busch is the Roy A. Roberts Distinguished Professor of Chemistry at the University of Kansas, since August 1988. Previously he was a faculty member at The Ohio State University where he rose through the ranks from Assistant Professor (1954) to Presidential Professor (1987). His research in basic transition metal coordination chemistry fathered modern macrocyclic ligand chemistry and created the molecular template effect. He was among the founders of the subject of ligand reactions and an early researcher and proponent of bioinorganic chemistry. He first described the phenomenon called preorganization in 1970. His research is presently focused on homogeneous catalysis, bioinorganic chemistry, and orderly molecular entanglements, a part of supramolecular chemistry. Throughout his research career Busch has worked closely with industry and holds patents with five major industrial companies. He received a B.A. from Southern Illinois University in 1951 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Illinois in 1952 and 1954. The ACS Award for Distinguished Service in Inorganic Chemistry (1976), the ACS Award for Research in Inorganic Chemistry (1963), the John C. Bailar Medal of his alma mater, the University of Illinois (1978), the Dwyer Medal of the Royal Society of N.S. Wales, Australia (1978), and the Izatt-Christenson International Award for Macrocyclic Chemistry (1994) are among the recognitions of his research. He is President of the American Chemical Society for the year 2000.

 

Vincenzo Balzani received his "laurea" in Chemistry at the University of Bologna in 1960. Since 1972 he has been Professor of Chemistry at the same University.
He was Chairman of the European Photochemistry Association (1988-1992), and Director of the Photochemistry and Radiation Chemistry Institute (FRAE) of the Italian National Research Council, Bologna (1977-1988).
He has organized and directed the NATO ARW on "Photoinduced Charge Separation and Energy Migration in Supramolecular Systems" (1987), the XII IUPAC Symposium on Photochemistry (1988), and the II NATO Science Forum "Supramolecular Chemistry" (1991).
He spent periods as visiting professor at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada (1972), Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel (1979), University of Strasbourg, France (1990), University of Leuven, Belgium (1991), University of Bordeaux, France (1994).
He has obtained several awards, including the Canizzarro Gold Medal of the Italia n Chemical Society (1988), the Doctorate Honoris Causa from the University of Fribourg, CH (1989), the Ziegler-Natta Lectureship of the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (1994), the Italgas European Prize for Research and Innovation (1994), the Centenary Lecture of the Royal Society of Chemistry (1995), the Lee Lecture, University of Chicago (1996), and the Blacet Lecture, University of California at Los Angeles (1998).
He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Association for the Advancement of Science (USA), the Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL, the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (corresponding member) and the Academia Europaea.
He has served or is now serving as a member of the Editorial Boards of Inorganic Chemistry, Chemistry European Journal, Chemical Society Review, New Journal of Chemistry, and Supramolecular Chemistry.
His research interests include supramolecular chemistry, photochemistry, photophysics, electron- an energy-transfer processes, photochemical molecular devices.
He is the author of more than 350 scientific papers, two edited books, and two monographs: Photochemistry of Coordination Compounds (with V. Carassiti), Academic Press, London, 1970, and Supramolecular Photochemistry (with F. Scandola), Horwood, Chichester, 1991.
He has presented lectures at more than 100 International Conferences and at many Universities and Research Centers all over the world.

 

Kenneth N. Raymond was born on January 7, 1942 in Astoria, Oregon. He attended Reed College where he received a B.A. in 1964 and Northwestern University, where he received a Ph.D in 1968. He began his faculty appointment at the University of California at Berkeley on July 1, 1967, becoming Associate Professor in 1974 and Professor in 1978. He has served as Vice Chair of the Berkeley Chemistry Department (1982-1984) and Chair (1993-1996). He has been an Alfred P. Sloan research fellow (1971-1973), a Miller Research Professor at the University of California (1977-1978, 1996) and a Guggenheim Fellow (1980-1981). He received the Ernest O. Lawrence Award of the Department of Energy in 1984 and was awarded a Humbolt Senior Scientist Award for Senior U.S. Scientists in 1991, and the American Chemical Society Alfred Bader Award in Bioinorganic or Bioorganic Chemistry in 1994. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1997 and was selected Basolo Medalist at Northwestern University also in 1997. Professor Raymond is a member of the editorial boards of many journals in the fields of inorganic and bioinorganic chemistry. In addition to his academic appointment on the University of California campus, he is a Faculty Senior Scientist of the Chemical Sciences Division, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is the author of nine patents and over 280 research publications, in subjects related to bioinorganic chemistry and metal-ion-specific sequestering agents. Early in his career at Berkeley, he determined the structure of uranocene and of a large number of other organo-actinide and organo-lanthanide compounds. He is a founder of the field of bioinorganic chemistry with his research in biological iron transport, particularly siderophore mediated iron transport in microorganisms. He and his research group were the first to use kinetically inert metal-substituted complexes of siderophores to elucidate the cellular transport mechanisms of iron in microorganisms. One focus of Raymond's current research is what he has called stereognostic coordination chemistry -- that is, the three-dimensional recognition and binding of anisotropic ions such as UO22+He is also using coordination chemistry as the driving force in the rational design and preparation of symmetry-driven supramolecular assemblies.

 

Luigi M. Venanzi  was born in Rome, Italy, in 1927 and received his "Dipl. Chem." at the University of Kiel, Germany, in 1952. He then joined the Butterwick Research Laboratoires of I.C.I. Ltd., Welwyn Garden City, England, working in the group of J. Chatt. In 1956 he was appointed I.C.I. Research Fellow at the University of Oxford, England, where he obtained the degree of D. Phil. in 1958. He then became a Lecturer at the Inorganic Chemistry Laboratory of that University and a Fellow of Magdalen College, Oxford, positions he held until 1968 when he joined the State University of New York at Albany, NY, as Professor of Chemistry. In 1971 he became E.I. du Pont Professor and Chairman of the Chemistry Department at the University of Delaware. Professor Venanzi was Professor of Inorganic Chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich from 1973 to 1994. He is now "Professor Emeritus" there.
His Research interests range from homogeneous catalysis to cluster chemistry, with a strong bias for the coordination chemistry of the platinum-group metals, hydrides and polydentate phosphines. He is the author of ca. 250 original publications in these areas.

 

Fred Basolo was born in Coello, Illinois in 1920. He went to SINU where he received a B.Ed. degree in 1940 and then to the University of Illinois where he received a Ph.D. with John C. Balair, Jr. in 1943. After working at Rohm & Haas, he joined the faculty at Northwestern in 1946. In 1980, the University honored him with the Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professorship of Chemistry.
Basolo is internationally recognized for his original contributions to the syntheses and reaction mechanisms of transition-metal Werner complexes, and he has done some of the seminal work in the developing fields of organometallic and bioinorganic chemistry. He is also a truly gifted teacher. Many of his former students occupy prominent academic and industrial positions. He has over 400 scientific publications and has coauthored two books. Basolo has influenced students worldwide to study inorganic chemistry, and received the 1992 ACS Pimentel Award in Chemical Education.
Equally outstanding are Basolo's contributions to the profession of Chemistry. He served as President of the American Chemical Society in 1983 and as Chairman of the Chemistry Section of AAAS in 1979. He was a member of the Board of Trustees of the Gordon Research Conferences and its chairman in 1976. Some of the many honors received by Basolo include membership in the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, foreign membership in the Italian Academy of Sciences Lincei, as well as the ACS Awards for Research and for Service in Inorganic Chemistry. He recently received the first Joseph Chatt Medal and the 1996 Willard Gibbs Medal.

 

Harry Gray is Arnold O. Beckman Professor of Chemistry and Director of the Beckman Institute at the California Institute of Technology.
Gray began his work in inorganic chemistry with Fred Basolo and Ralph Pearson at Northwestern University, where he earned his Ph.D. in 1960. After a postdoctoral year with Carl Ballhausen at the University of Copenhagen, he joined the chemistry faculty at Columbia University, and in 1966 he moved to Caltech. He was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1971.
Gray has investigated the syntheses, structures, and reactions of inorganic complexes, and for over twenty years he has worked on the electronic structures and electron-transfer reactions of metalloproteins. For his contributions to bioinorganic chemistry and inorganic photochemistry, he received the National Medal of Science from President Reagan in 1986. In addition to twelve honorary degrees, including Laurea Honoris Causa from the University of Florence, his recent awards include the American Institute of Chemists Gold Medal, the Pauling Medal, the Gibbs Medal , the Waterford Prize, the Bader Award, the Priestley Medal, and the Linderstrom-Lang Prize.