Scientific Program

Bin Ren is a professor in Chemistry at Xiamen University, dean of College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, director of Center for Instrument and Equipment Development at Tan Kah Kee Innovation laboratory, and vice director of the State Key Laboratory of Physical Chemistry of Solid Surfaces. He received his bachelor’s degree in 1992 and PhD degree in 1998 from Xiamen University and started independent research work in the same university after that. He spent his sabbatical year in Fritz-Haber Institute with Dr. Bruno Pettinger as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow in 2002-2003. He was awarded Distinguished Young Scholars by the National Science Foundation of China and Changjiang Distinguished Professors by the Ministry of Education. He serves as an Associate Editor of Analytical Chemistry (ACS) and the advisory board member of J. Phys. Chem., J. Chem. Phys., and Chemical & Biomedical Imaging. He received National Prizes for Natural Sciences (second prize), Electrochemistry Award of Analytical Chemistry Division of the American Chemistry Society, Young Chemists Award by the Chinese Chemical Society, Young Electrochemists Awards by the Chinese Electrochemical Society and a Fellow of the International Society of Electrochemistry. He is now a vice Chair of Chinese Electrochemical Society, Vice Chair of the Division 7 (Physical Electrochemistry) of International Society of Electrochemistry, a member of Steering Committee of International Conference on Raman spectroscopy, Asian Spectroscopy Conference, International Conference on Tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, and International Conference on Advanced Vibrational Spectroscopy. He is the principal investigator of several key national grants, including The Innovative Research Group Project and National Major Scientific Instruments and Equipment Development Project of NSFC. His research is mainly focused on the development of Raman-based methodology and instrumentation for in situ and operando study of electrochemical systems with high time and spatial resolution, covering topics including tip-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, surface-enhanced Raman spectroscopy, and plasmonics.

Title: The Interplay between Plasmonics and Electrochemistry

Julie Macpherson is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Warwick. She is currently Director of the Warwick Centre for Diamond Science and Technology (DST) and previously served as the co-Director of the UKRI funded Centre for DST, a partnership between 8 Universities and 30 Industrial companies. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, a past University Royal Society Fellow (1999-2008) and Royal Society (RS) Industry Fellow (2014-2018). She obtained her PhD in the area of scanning electrochemical microscopy working with Prof. Patrick Unwin (1993-1996). She has won several awards during her career including the Society of Electroanalytical Chemistry Young Investigators Award (2003), RSC Marlow Medal (2005), RSC and Society of Chemical Industry McBain Medal (2006), RS Innovation Award (2017), RSC Geoffrey Barker Award (2020) and most recently the RSC Tilden Award (2023). Her research laboratory at Warwick has, and continues to focus on, a wide range of activities centred around instrumental methods and applications in electrochemistry. These are predominantly based on the use of carbon materials in electroanalysis and catalysis, sensor development and imaging systems, advanced oxidation and nanostructure fabrication. She has published more than 200 papers, has an H index of 56 and is an author of 7 international patent families and 3 individual patents in the area of boron doped diamond electrodes. Julie is passionate about teaching and education and has won the Chemistry Department Teaching Award five times and the Warwick University Teaching Award. She is currently Editor-in-Chief of the Chemistry Student Guides (RSC), undergraduate chemistry text books which place students at the heart of the book writing process.

Dr. Y. Shirley Meng is a Professor at the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering at the University of Chicago. She serves as the Chief Scientist of the Argonne Collaborative Center for Energy Storage Science (ACCESS) Argonne National Laboratory. Dr. Meng is the principal investigator of the research group - Laboratory for Energy Storage and Conversion (LESC), that was established at University of California San Diego since 2009. She held the Zable Chair Professor in Energy Technologies at University of California San Diego (UCSD) from 2017-2022. Dr. Meng received several prestigious awards, including ECS Battery Division Research Award (2023), the C3E technology and innovation award (2022), the Faraday Medal of Royal Chemistry Society (2020), International Battery Association IBA Research Award (2019), Blavatnik Awards for Young Scientists Finalist (2018), C.W. Tobias Young Investigator Award of the Electrochemical Society (2016) and NSF CAREER Award (2011). Dr. Meng is elected Fellow of Electrochemical Society (FECS), Fellow of Materials Research Society (FMRS) and Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). She is the author and co-author of more than 300 peer-reviewed journal articles, two book chapters and eight issued patents. She is the Editor-in-Chief for Materials Research Society MRS Energy & Sustainability. Dr. Meng received her Ph.D. in Advance Materials for Micro & Nano Systems from the Singapore-MIT Alliance in 2005. She received her bachelor’s degree in Materials Science with first class honor from Nanyang Technological University of Singapore in 2000.