Invited speakers

Prof. Richard Leach

Prof. Richard Leach is an internationally recognised principal research scientist with nineteen years research and project leadership experience at NPL in various aspects of micro- and nanometrology. His main areas of research have been the measurement of surface texture, 3D metrology of microstructures and low force measurement. Richard gained a BSc in Applied Physics from Kingston University, an MSc in Industrial Measurement Systems from Brunel University and a PhD in Surface Metrology from University of Warwick. He is a member of BSI,
ISO and SEMI committees and is the chair of the UK MNT Measurement Club. He has authored over 80 technical publications in the field of nanometrology including six keynote addresses.

Prof. Karl Böhringer

Karl F. Böhringer received his Dipl.-Inform. degree from the University of Karlsruhe, Germany in 1990 and his M.S. / Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Cornell University, Ithaca, NY in 1993 / 1997. He was a Visiting Scholar at Stanford University in 1994-5 and a Postdoctoral Researcher at the University of California, Berkeley from 1996 to 1998. He joined the Electrical Engineering Department at the University of Washington in Seattle, WA in 1998, where he is professor in microsystems technology. He also held visiting faculty positions at the Universities of Tohoku, Tokyo, Kyoto (Japan), and São Paulo (Brazil). His research interests include microelectromechanical systems (MEMS), manipulation and assembly from macro to nano scales, microfluidic systems for the life sciences, and microrobotics. He has created, among others, multi-batch selfassembling systems, massively parallel microactuator arrays, and a walking microrobot.

Karl F. Böhringer is a member of the IEEE, the Society for Nanoscale Science, Computing and Engineering (ISNSCE), the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), and the German Society for Information Sciences (GI). He was awarded a Long-term Invitational Fellowship for Research in Japan by the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) in 2004, an IEEE Robotics & Automation Society Academic Early Career Award in 2004, an NSF CAREER Award in 1999, and an NSF Postdoctoral Associateship in 1997. His work was listed among the “Top 100 Science Stories of 2002” in Discover magazine. He is an editor of the ASME/IEEE Journal of Microelectromechanical Systems and IEEE and he has served, among others, on the technical program committees for the IEEE MEMS and Transducers conferences.

Dr. Peter T. Tang

Peter T. Tang holds an M.Sc. in chemical engineering and a Ph.D. in electrochemical engineering and microtechnology. He has worked for more than 15 years with electroplating and electrochemistry. Currently employed by IPU as senior consultant, he is project leader of several national research projects as well as contract research projects for Danish and international companies.Peter T. Tang has worked with pulse plating of nickel, copper, silver, zinc and various alloys - both for purely scientific studies but also for specific application, lately mainly within the field of micro-technology. He is the author of more than 65 scientific journal and international conference papers and holds seven patents in the field of electrochemistry, electroforming, pulse plating and selective metallisation.

Dr Bill O'Neill

Current situation
Bill is a lecturer in production processes within the Cambridge University Engineering Department. He has written over 70 scientific papers on the subject of laser-matter interactions, optical engineering and manufacturing process technologies, he is a member of a number of government and industrial advisory boards, a member of EPSRC peer review college, and is a non-executive director of Advanced Laser Solutions Ltd.

Background
Bill obtained a B.Sc in Applied Physics from the University of Essex in 1985 and an M.Sc in Laser Physics in 1986. On moving to the John Percy Group, Royal School of Mines, Imperial College, he studied the interaction phenomena of dual-wavelength laser materials processing and obtained a PhD in 1990. He then moved to the University of Liverpool where he continued his research and supported Prof W M Steen in establishing one of the world's largest university based laser research groups.

He was appointed Royal Society Research Fellow, 1990-4, in order to study the gas dynamics of laser cutting and examined rate-limiting affects on the iron-oxygen combustion reactions. This resulted in a number of international patents for new methods of cutting thick section steels with low power lasers, laser machining techniques and optical system design.

In 1995 Bill was appointed Lecturer in the Department of Industrial Studies, University of Liverpool where he continued his research and the development of teaching materials on advanced manufacturing systems and technology, in addition to establishing a research base in laser based rapid production technologies.

In 1998 Bill was appointed to a 5 year EPSRC Advanced Research Fellow with a view to carrying out research and development in the field of laser based micro engineering. Having completed his advanced fellowship in September 2003 and established a £5M EPSRC Innovative Manufacturing Research Centre in 2002, Bill was appointed to a lectureship in production processes within the Cambridge University Engineering Department in 2003.

Prof. Thomas Wirth

Diplom University of Bonn (1989). PhD Technical University of Berlin (1992, S. Blechert); JSPS Fellow, Kyoto University (1993, K. Fuji). Habilitation, University of Basel (1999, B. Giese). Visiting Scientist, University of Toronto (1999). Visiting Scientist, Chuo University, Tokyo (2000). Visiting Scientist, Osaka University (2004); Werner Prize, New Swiss Chemical Society (2000). Appointed as Professor of Organic Chemistry, Cardiff, in 2000.

Research Interests
Design and Synthesis of New Chiral Selenium Electrophiles: high stereoselectivities are obtained with very simple and easily accessible reagents. Efficient polymer-bound selenium electrophiles with all the advantages in handling and work-up have been synthesized and used in various applications towards natural product synthesis.

Development of New Hypervalent Iodine Reagents: hypervalent iodine compounds are versatile alternative reagents in reactions traditionally employing heavy metal complexes. The development of chiral reagents led to various new stereoselective reactions. Due to their high reactivity, even the functionalization of alkanes can be achieved under mild reaction conditions.

Coordination of Chiral Ligands towards Electrophiles: we have developed a reagent-controlled stereoselective iodolactonization reaction applying a new method using a combination of ICl and a primary amine.
Electrochemical Methods: The selective functionalization of alkenes by combining electrochemical methods with electrophilic reagents leads to promising catalytic reactions. The direct electron transfer at electrode surfaces is frequently referred to as one of the prototypical green technologies of the future.

Microreactor Technology: The translation of both traditional flask-based chemistry and entirely new procedures on to chipbased platforms becomes more challenging as complexity of operation increases. We are developing new microreactors for reactions under segmented-flow conditions.

Computational Chemistry: The evaluation of reaction pathways, transition states, intermediates and mechanisms by close interaction of theory and experiment on various levels is supporting many of the research areas mentioned above.

In many areas of Synthetic Organic Chemistry reactions are needed, which produce in good yields stereochemically uniform compounds. In this respect many remarkable efforts have been undertaken and a variety of efficient as well as elegant stereochemical transformations using prochiral substrates are known. However, there are certain classes of compounds which cannot be efficiently used in these reactions. Only a few useful methods are known for the stereoselective functionalization of not or only weakly activated C-H bonds or C=C bonds. In our research projects we are investigating and developing stoichiometric and catalytic reactions leading to products with new stereogenic centers.

Prof. Michael Vellekoop

Michael J. Vellekoop was born in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. He received the B.Sc. degree in Physics in 1982 and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering in 1994. In 1988 he co-founded Xensor Integration B.V. where he was managing director until 1996. In that year he initiated a new research group on the topic of physical chemosensors at the DIMES Electronic Instrumentation Laboratory of the Delft University of Technology, where in 1997 he became an associated professor. Since 2001 he is a full professor of Industrial Sensor Systems at the Institute of Sensor and Actuator Systems of the Vienna University of Technology, Austria. In 2002 he became head of this institute. In 2005 he received the Eurosensors Fellow Award and he was elected as a corresponding and full member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2005 and 2007, respectively. He authored or co-authored 160 publications in peer reviewed Journals and International Conferences. Keywords of research are physical chemosensors, biochips, sensor systems, micro & nanofluidics, and technology.