Prof. Dr. Joaquín Silvestre-Albero received his Diploma in Chemistry in 1998 and his PhD Degree in Chemistry in 2003, both from the University of Alicante (Spain). He worked as a post-doctoral student at the “Instituto de Tecnología Química” in Valencia (Spain) under the supervision of Prof. Avelino Corma for one year and later at the Fritz-Haber-Institute in Berlin under the supervision of Prof. Hans-Joachim Freund for two additional years. He is actually Full Professor at the Inorganic Chemistry Department since 2018. The research developed during the last 20 years has been mainly devoted to the synthesis and characterization of porous solids, going from microporous to mesoporous materials, to be used either as adsorbents or as catalysts supports. These materials involve activated carbons, carbon molecular sieves, zeolites, mesoporous silicas, MOFs, etc. Among the different applications, he has been highly involved in CO2 capture, natural gas storage, gas hydrate formation, environmental chemistry and heterogeneous catalysis, and more recently in nanomedical applications. He is co-author of 210 papers in internationally recognized journals (h = 60) and several book chapters. Besides teaching and research activities, he is involved in several national and international projects in collaboration with academia and industry. He is actually the coordinator of the Horizon Europe MSCA project CLEANWATER “Multifunctional sustainable adsorbents for water treatment assisted with plasma technology” and participating as a partner in MSCA project WAVEE “Waste as valuable elements for Europe” and RIA project MOST-H2 “Novel metal-organic framework adsorbents for efficient hydrogen storage”.
Prof. Juraj Bujdák
Comenius University Bratislava, Slovakia
Juraj Bujdák is a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Faculty of Natural Sciences, Comenius University in Bratislava, and a senior researcher at the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry of the Slovak Academy of Sciences. His research focused primarily on the chemistry of smectite complexes with organic compounds, including chemical evolution in clay-based systems, organoclays, and polymer composites. He has carried out research stays in Japan, Austria, and the USA. His current research interests encompass the physical chemistry of hybrid systems and materials based on layered silicates and organic dyes, with a particular focus on controlling photophysical and photochemical properties, interactions, and phenomena. These include adsorption-induced emission, molecular aggregation, diffusion processes of luminophores in colloidal systems, energy transfer, photosensitization, and the development of antimicrobial surfaces in composite materials.
