SIRBESCU INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM

Dr. Florian Kongoli holds 3 degrees: a Bachelor of Science, a Master of Science/University of Montreal, Canada and a Doctor of Science Degree/Tohoku University, Japan. Since 1996 he is CEO of FLOGEN Technologies Inc.,(www.flogen.com) a Sustainable High Tech applied research institute
incorporated in Canada and USA that today have offices and representations in more than 15 Countries around the the world while carrying out high tech projects in more than 40 countries.

Since 2007 he is Chairman of FLOGEN STAR OUTREACH (www.flogen.org), a not-for-profit organization dedicated to (1) achieving sustainability through science and technology, (2) raising the profile of science and engineering in the society and (3) properly honoring scientists and engineers.

Since 2003 Dr Kongoli has been President of the Organizing Committee of the Sustainable Industrial Processing Summits (SIPS) held every year in several countries around the world with an average participation of 500 authors from academia, industry, government and the entrepreneurship world representing an average of 80 countries.

Dr Kongoli has about 25 years of rich scientific and applied technology experience through direct involvement in numerous invited engagements in all continents. He has managed, involved, or actively participated in about 200 projects, 40 types of reactors, 10 industries, in 45 countries and in 6 continents. Dr. Kongoli has published 113 books and more than 200 scientific articles. He has delivered in numerous countries around the world about 220 plenary, keynote and invited presentations as well as articles, technical reports and research presentations. He has served in many leadership positions in national and international organizations and in many Professional Award Councils such as the Industrial Achievement Award Committee of International Federation of Automatic Control. He is Editorial Board member of several International Journals.

He is an elected Honorary Member of the Lorraine Academy of Sciences and Elected Member of Euro Mediterranean Academy of Arts and Sciences. He was awarded in 2017 the title "The Environmental Tech CEO of the year 2017" by CEO-Monthly UK magazine. He was awarded Certificate of Appreciation in recognition of his contribution toward sustainable development through FLOGEN Sustainability Framework by Tomas Bata University in Zlin (Czech Republic)/Faculty of Applied Informatics. He is honorary Citizen of Rio de Janeiro and Laureate of Gold Medal of the City of Nancy, France. In 2022 he was honored by the Congressman elect of Rio de Janeiro State, Alan Lopes, who will propose to the State Congress to adopt FLOGEN Sustainability Framework developed by Dr. Florian Kongoli in the state law for evaluating any proposed public or private project in the state. Also, in 2022 he was invited to give the Opening Sustainability Plenary Lecture at the United Nation Headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland, on 11 February 2022 about FLOGEN Sustainability Framework at the International Year of Glass 2022.

He has participated in business and government delegations in numerous countries accompanying Prime Ministers, Ministers and other government officials.
A more detailed biography can be found at: http://www.flogen.com/elt/pdf/Kongoli_Short-CV.pdf

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Gilberto Artioli is a professor of mineralogy, crystallography and materials science at the University of Padova. He received a Laurea Degree from the University of Modena and a PhD from the University of Chicago. His interests focus on mineralogy, crystallography and materials science. His scientific expertise encompasses the use of combined techniques, including those based at large scale facilities, for the investigation of complex materials, including natural and industrial materials. His recent interests concern the application of advanced characterization techniques to cultural heritage materials and processes.

He started and directed the CIRCe Centre @UNIPD for the investigation of cements and chaired the IUCr Commission on Crystallography in Art and Cultural Heritage. Honors include: Mineralogical Society of America fellow (1998), Conservation Guest Scholar at The Getty Conservation Institute (2006), the Luigi Tartufari International Prize, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (2014), the Mario Giacomo Levi of the Società Chimica Italiana (2018), the Waltrude and Friedrich Liebau Prize for the Promotion of Interdisciplinarity in Crystallography, German Society for Crystallography (2021). He is member of Academia Europaea, Accademia nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL, Accademia Galileiana di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti in Padova.

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Barbara L Dutrow, 68, is currently the Gerald Cire & Lena Grand Williams Alumni Professor in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, U.S.A. Professor Dutrow received her B.S. from Chadron State College in Nebraska, and her M.S. and Ph. D from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. During this time, she was one of the first scientists to employ the ion microprobe to quantitatively determine light element compositions of rock-forming minerals and use this data to understand their impact on thermodynamic properties. She was awarded the prestigious Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship to conduct research at Ruhr University in Bochum, (then West) Germany. There she conducted high-pressure, high-temperature experiments determining stability relationships and crystal chemical constraints of several important rock-forming minerals. After her post-doctoral work, she returned to the U.S. and held a research position at the University of Arizona, analyzing heat and mass transport in fluid-rock systems, and a visiting faculty position in mineralogy at the University of Iowa, where she oversaw the X-ray diffraction laboratory, before moving to LSU in 1992. During her tenure at LSU, she was an affiliate scientist at Los Alamos National Laboratory, in New Mexico, and a visiting scientist at the University of Lausanne (UNIL), Switzerland and Goethe-Universität in Frankfurt am Main, Germany.

For her mineralogical and educational endeavors Dutrow holds several honors, including having a new mineral of the tourmaline group named for her in 2019: dutrowite. An isostructural magnesium-rich species of dutrowite was later discovered and is named magnesio-dutrowite. She received the 2021 Carnegie Mineralogical Award for her contributions to mineralogical research, teaching and service and the Association of Women Geoscientists – Outstanding Educator Award in 2016. She has given numerous invited presentations on her research around the world.

Her involvement and leadership in the mineralogical and geological community is broad. Currently, she is on the Board of Governors of the Gemological Institute of America (GIA), in the last year of a 9-year term, and has chaired both the Governance and Education committees and serves on the Lab and Research committee. She is a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America (MSA, 1995), elected as MSA Vice-President (2006-2007), and served as MSA President (2007-2008). She is a Fellow of the Geological Society of America (2007) and was elected to President of the Geological Society of America (a world-wide society of ~20,000) in 2021-2022, having served as Presidentelect (2020-2021), and Past President (2022-2023). She serves on committees for the Geochemical Society, and as a member of the Executive Committee for the journal Elements. Previously, she served on the U.S. National Academy of Sciences Board on Earth Sciences and Resources, as a panel member on NAS study for the development of geologic repositories for high-level radioactive waste (2002-2003) and as a panel member for several U.S. Department of Energy programs including those of the Office of Geothermal Energy. She has been a distinguished lecturer for the MSA, Sigma Xi, and the Association for Women Geoscientists. She is co-author of the Manual of Mineral Science (after James Dwight Dana), which is the premier introductory mineralogy at universities around the world, now in its 23rd edition. A 24th edition is nearing completion.

Her research spans from continental scale tectonometamorphism to micrometer scale crystallochemical interactions in minerals. It encompasses incorporation of time-transient 3-D computational modeling of heat and mass transport, to field, and analytical approaches to investigate thermal-chemical-mechanical feedback in fluid-rock systems ranging from geothermal systems to high-temperature metamorphic and metasomatic systems. Dutrow is known for her influential research in the crystal chemistry and stability of geologically important rock-forming minerals and their use to decipher past and present geological conditions. She is widely known for her innovations in teaching, developing multidisciplinary courses focusing on earth materials and sustainability for the energy transition, research in visual communication, and mentoring for workplace development.

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Professor Shmuel (Shmulik) Hayun has been an Associate Professor at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel. His current research focuses on two main areas – the development of advanced ceramics for structural, functional, and energy-related applications and the thermochemistry and thermophysical properties of multi-component alloys. Professor Hayun received Ph. D. degree in 2009 from Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, Israel. From 2009 to 2011, he was with Peter A. Rock Thermochemistry Laboratory, University of California, Davis, USA, as a Postdoc. In 2011, he returned to Israel and became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Materials Engineering at the Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva. In 2016, he became an Associate Professor. In 2017 He spent one year as a visiting professor in Peter A. Rock Thermochemistry Laboratory, University of California, Davis, USA. During this visit, he developed together with Prof. Navrotsky a new methodology for measuring the enthalpy of formation from elements of multi-principal element alloys (MPEA) based on high-temperature oxidative calorimetry. He has published more than 100 journal and conference papers as the first or corresponding author. He is a member of the editorial board of Materials in the section board of advanced composites. He also serves as a guest editor and Dr. Sergey Ushakov from ASU for a special issue, "Thermal Analysis of Materials," through MDPI. His work on reaction-bonded boron carbide for lightweight armor: The interrelationship between processing, microstructure, and mechanical properties was published as a cover story In the American Ceramic Society Bulletin in 2017.

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Darrell Henry is the Campanile Charities Professor of Geology in the Department of Geology and Geophysics at Louisiana State University (LSU) in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA. His wide-ranging research generally relates to the utilization of minerals to decipher development of the continental crust through time. Specifically, his focus is: the crystal chemistry and petrologic applications of minerals (particularly tourmaline and biotite) in metamorphic and sedimentary environments; the tectonometamorphism of Paleozoic to Archean metamorphic terranes; the novel applications of cathodoluminescence to metamorphic and igneous rocks; and geoscience education. He has been honored by having a tourmaline species, darrellhenryite, named after him for his many contributions to the study of the tourmaline supergroup minerals. He is a Fellow of MSA and of the Geological Society of America, and the recipient of the Outstanding Service Award from the MSA (2000). After receiving degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he was a postdoctoral fellow at Arizona State University and NASA - Johnson Space Center and a consultant to ARCO Oil and Gas Co. before moving to LSU. He has served the Mineralogical Society of America at varying capacities: Treasurer (2008-2012), co-editor of the Tourmaline issue of Elements (2011), Associate Editor of the American Mineralogist (2006-2010) and sole editor of The Lattice, MSA's newsletter prior to Elements (1995-2000). In addition, he was a co-editor of the special tourmaline volume of the Canadian Mineralogist (2011), published by the Mineralogical Association of Canada. He was chair of the Subcommission on Tourmaline Nomenclature for the International Mineralogical Association 2017-present. At LSU he has risen through the professorial ranks and attained Full Professor status in 1996. He was Director of the LSU SACSCOC Reaffirmation of Accreditation in 2011-2014. He became Interim Chair of Geology and Geophysics in 2022 and Chair of Geology and Geophysics in 2023.

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Jiankang Li is a professor at the Institute of Mineral Resources (IMR), Chinese Academy of Geological Sciences, Beijing, China. He previously studied high pressure–temperature experimental technology under I-Ming Chou at the USGS and under W. A. Bassett at Cornell University. Currently, he serves as the Director of the High Pressure–Temperature Experimental Simulation Laboratory at IMR and is the Chief Expert of the State Key Laboratory of Deep Earth and Mineral Exploration in China. His research focuses on pegmatites, particularly employing melt and fluid inclusions and P–T petrology and metallogeny experiments. He invented the Bassett-type HDVC-V hydrothermal diamond-anvil cell, which is widely used in many laboratories worldwide. To date, he has published over 120 papers.

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Alexandra Navrotsky, 80, was educated at the Bronx High School of Science and the University of Chicago (B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in chemistry). After postdoctoral work in Germany and at Penn State University, she joined the faculty in Chemistry at Arizona State University, where she worked with a leading-edge team in materials science and geochemistry until her move to the Department of Geological and Geophysical Sciences at Princeton University in 1985. She chaired that department from 1988 to 1991 and was active in the Princeton Materials Institute. In 1997, she became an Interdisciplinary Professor of Ceramic, Earth, and Environmental Materials Chemistry at the University of California Davis and was appointed Edward Roessler Chair in Mathematical and Physical Sciences in 2001. She directed the organized research unit on Nanomaterials in the Environment, Agriculture and Technology (NEAT) from 1999 to 2019.Professor Navrotsky rejoined the ASU faculty in 2019 as Professor in the School of Molecular Sciences and the School of Engineering, Matter, Transport and Energy. She is director of the Center for Materials of the Universe at ASU, a cross-disciplinary center which brings together planetary science and materials science.

Her research interests have centered about relating microscopic features of structure and bonding to macroscopic thermodynamic behavior in minerals, ceramics, and other complex materials. She has made contributions to mineral thermodynamics; mantle mineralogy and high pressure phase transitions; silicate melt and glass thermodynamics; order-disorder in spinels; framework silicates; and other oxides; ceramic processing; oxide superconductors; nanophase oxides, zeolites, nitrides, perovskites; and the general problem of structure-energy-property systematics. The main technical area of her laboratory is high temperature reaction calorimetry. She has published over 900 scientific papers.

Honors include an Alfred P. Sloan Fellowship (1973); Mineralogical Society of America Award (1981); American Geophysical Union Fellow (1988); Vice-President, Mineralogical Society of America (1991-1992), President (1992-1993); Geochemical Society Fellow (1997). She was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 1993. In 1995 she received the Ross Coffin Purdy Award from the American Ceramic Society and was awarded the degree of Doctor Honoris Causa from Uppsala University, Sweden. In 2004, she was elected a Fellow of The Mineralogical Society (Great Britain) and awarded the Urey Medal (the highest career honor of the European Association of Geochemistry). In October 2009, she received the Roebling Medal, the highest honor of the Mineralogical Society of America. In 2011, she became a member of the American Philosophical Society. In 2017 she received the Goldschmidt Medal of the Geochemical Society and the Kingery Award of the American Ceramic Society, both top lifetime achievement awards. In 2018 she was elected to the World Academy of Ceramics. In 2020 she received the Czochralski Award of the European Ceramic Society and was elected a Distinguished Life Member of the American Ceramic Society.

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Professor Ralf Riedel has been a Full Professor at the Institute of Materials Science at the Technical University of Darmstadt from 1993. His current research focuses on two main areas – the molecular synthesis of advanced ceramics for structural, functional and energy-related applications and the ultrahigh pressure synthesis of novel inorganic nitride based materials.
Prof. Riedel got a PhD. degree in Inorganic Chemistry in 1986 at the University of Stuttgart. After postdoctoral research at the Max-Planck-Institute for Metals Research and the Institute of Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Stuttgart he completed his habilitation in 1992.
Professor Riedel is an elected member of the World Academy of Ceramics, a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, the European Ceramic Society and the School of Engineering at The University of Tokyo in Japan. To state some of his accomplishments, he was awarded with the Gold Medal for Merits in Natural Sciences, a honorary doctorate of the Slovak Academy of Science, as well as with the Gustav Tammann Prize of the German Society of Materials Science (DGM) and an honorary professorship at the Tianjin University in China.
Recently, Prof. Riedel has also received the Innovation Talents Award of Shaanxi Province, China at the Northwestern Polytechnical University in Xi´an. He is a Guest Professor at the University of Tokyo and was awarded with the International Ceramics Prize 2020 for Basic Science by the World Academy of Ceramics. Furthermore, he is Editor in Chief of the Journal of The American Ceramic Society and of Ceramics International.

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Nancy Ross, 66, is currently a Professor in the Department of Geosciences and Materials Science and Engineering Department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (“Virginia Tech”) in Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A. Professor Ross received her B.S. from Virginia Tech, her M.S. from the University of British Columbia and her Ph.D. from Arizona State University. After postdoctoral work at Stony Brook University and the Carnegie Institution of Washington, she joined the faculty at University College London, England. In 2000, she came full circle, returning to the Department of Geosciences at Virginia Tech as a full professor. She served as the first Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Studies in the newly-formed College of Science at Virginia Tech from 2003 to 2012. She chaired the Department of Geosciences from 2012 to 2017.

Ross is a Fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America (MSA). She was selected as a Distinguished Lecturer of MSA (2011-2012). She was elected as Vice-President of MSA (2008-2009) and as President of MSA (2090-2010). She is currently a candidate for the position of First Vice President of the International Mineralogical Association (IMA). She was awarded Honorary Fellowship of the Societá di Mineralogia e Petrologia, Italy (2014) and Fellowship of Geological Society of America, U.S.A. (2016). In September 2024 she will receive the Roebling Medal, the highest honor of the Mineralogical Society of America.

Ross is known for her influential role in applying lattice dynamics and principles of atomic bonding and structure to derive governing principles of the stability and sustainability of materials, and for leadership in expanding the scope of the fields of geochemistry and mineralogy with neutron sources.

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Adam Simon is the Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Earth & Environmental Sciences at the University of Michigan and CEO of VectOres Science, Inc., a company specialized in using metal isotope geochemistry for mineral exploration, processing and environmental monitoring. Adam earned BSc., MSc. and PhD degrees in geology and geochemistry from Stony Brook University and the University of Maryland and was a postdoctoral fellow at The Johns Hopkins University. Adam is recognized as an expert on all aspects of mineral resources including mineral economics and the relationship between resources availability and economic growth. He is a Fellow of the Society of Economic Geology and the Mineralogical Society of American. He has led research programs on all seven continents. Adam co-authored the books Mineral Resources, Economics and the Environment, and Earth Materials: Components of a Diverse Planet, has published 120 scientific articles, and supervised or co-supervised 48 MSc. and PhD students. He regularly gives invited lectures around the world including a TEDX talk and was awarded the University of Michigan Teaching Innovation Prize for his transdisciplinary pedagogy.

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Professor Basilios Tsikouras was educated at the University of Patras, Greece (BSc and PhD in Geology). After working as a Geologist in construction and teaching at high schools, he was appointed to the Department of Geology at the University of Patras, Greece, where he worked until 2017, eventually as an Associate Professor. Since 2013, he has been working at Universiti Brunei Darussalam (UBD), where he is currently a Professor of Mineralogy and Petrology in the Geosciences Programme and the Director of Research in the Office of Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research, Innovation and Sustainability. He previously served as Head of the Physical & Geological Sciences Department in UBD, as well as the Faculty of Science, UBD, as the Deputy Dean of Academic Affairs and of Graduate Studies and Research.

His research interests include Soil and Environmental Mineralogy and Geochemistry, Petrogenesis of Ophiolites, formation of Chromitites and Platinum-Group-Minerals, and quality assessment of Industrial Minerals. He has been the principal investigator of 20 research grants funded by national and international funds and has authored over 150 scientific papers and 3 books. Professor Tsikouras was also a Research Fellow of Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Canada, and is currently a Research Fellow of INTI International University, Malaysia. He is the founder and Chair of the International Congress on Earth Sciences in SE Asia and a member of several technical and scientific committees. In 2019, a new mineral, tsikourasite, was named in his honour by the International Mineralogical Association for his contributions to ore mineralogy and mineral deposits of ophiolite complexes.

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