Plenary speakers

To highlight this day,  four invited speakers will join us to present their latest advances around four major themes at the heart of research in the North-West European area: organic chemistry, analytical chemistry, polymer and materials chemistry, as well as solid-state chemistry.

 Prof. Rebecca MELEN (Univ Cardiff, UK): Organic chemistry – Catalysis

 Rebecca Melen studied for her undergraduate and PhD degrees at the University of Cambridge, completing her PhD in 2012 with Prof. Wright. Following postdoctoral studies with Prof. Stephan in Toronto and with Prof. Gade in Heidelberg, she took up a position at Cardiff University in 2014, where she is now a professor in inorganic chemistry. In 2018, she was awarded an EPSRC Early-Career Fellowship, and in 2025, she received an ERC Consolidator Grant. She is the recipient of the 2019 RSC Harrison Meldola Memorial Prize, a 2022 Philip Leverhulme Prize in Chemistry, and the 2025 RSC Sir Geoffrey Wilkinson Prize. Her research interests lie in main group chemistry and the applications of main group Lewis acids in synthesis and catalysis. 

Dr David BALTES (conférencier industriel - Oril industrie) : Crystallography

 David Baltes has been the manager of the crystallisation laboratory since 2024 at Oril Industrie (Bolbec 76210, France), a branch of the Servier pharmaceutical group. In 2007, he obtained a PhD in Process Engineering at the LAGEPP laboratory (Villeurbanne 69100, France), where he worked on the screening of polymorphs in supercritical fluids and the crystallisation of lazy molecules using an experimental prototype specifically designed for these purposes.
For nearly 20 years, he worked for Sanofi, where he was responsible for several teams dedicated to developing processes for the crystallisation, filtration, drying, and grinding of pharmaceutical active ingredient powders at the laboratory scale. He worked closely with pharmacokinetic teams and pharmacists to develop materials with physicochemical attributes tailored for use in drug formulations.

Throughout his career, he has been responsible for transferring processes to production plants to support clinical phases or for industrial validation in preparation for regulatory approvals of new drugs. To achieve this, he guided technological choices and worked on scale-up conditions to ensure that the physicochemical properties of the powders produced in the plant were equivalent to those developed at the laboratory scale.

Dr Olivier COLOMBANI (Le Mans): Polymer chemistry

 Olivier Colombani is an Associate Professor in polymer chemistry and polymer physical chemistry at Le Mans Université (France) since 2006 and holds the Habilitation to Supervise Research (HDR) since 2013. His research focuses on the control of polymer self-assembly in solution through the combined design of polymer chemical structure and solution processing conditions. He employs controlled radical polymerisation and post-polymerisation chemical modification to direct the formation of polymer nanoparticles with tunable structure, morphology, and reorganisation dynamics. These systems are characterized using complementary techniques, including scattering methods, rheology, electron microscopy, and potentiometric titration, to establish structure–supramolecular organization–properties relationships across multiple length scales. His current research aims to exploit these approaches to address societal challenges, particularly in the areas of health, catalysis, and information storage. He has co-authored approximately 60 peer-reviewed publications and has coordinated several research projects funded by the French National Research Agency (ANR) and regional authorities.

Dr Romain LUCAS-ROPER (Limoges): Solid state chemistry

 Romain Lucas-Roper obtained his PhD in Organic Chemistry from the University of Limoges in 2009. He subsequently spent a year as a research and teaching assistant at the Institute of Research for Ceramics and at the IUT of Limoges, before being appointed as a lecturer in 2010, then as a professor in 2024. His current research interests focus on: the syntheses and rheology of original preceramic polymers, including a core-shell approach; the role of the interfaces between ceramic and organic materials, and the sintering abilities of these hybrid materials; and the functionalisation of lignocellulosic fibres towards catalysts and ceramic matrix composites. He was also in charge of the international affairs at the Institute, and he is now responsible for the axis 4 of the laboratory named “Ceramics under Environmental Stresses”. He is the author and co-author of 63 publications, 80 oral presentations, and 23 invited talks.