Plenary Speakers
Alberto Fernández-Nieves
Department of Condensed Matter Physics, University of Barcelona (Spain) & ICREA – Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies (Spain)
Alberto Fernández-Nieves is an ICREA Professor in Condensed Matter Physics at University of Barcelona (UB). He is also an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Physics at University of Texas @Austin. Before joining UB, he was a Professor in Physics at Georgia Tech, and even before a post-doc and an INEST visiting professor at Harvard University. He obtained his BS, MS and PhD in physics from University of Granada. His field of expertise is soft condensed matter. He leads the Soft Condensed Matter Lab at UB. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
Eleonora Secchi
Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, ETH ZürichDr. Eleonora Secchi is Group Leader at ETH Zürich. Trained in soft matter physics and nanofluidics, she established her research group, the bioMatter Microfluidics Group, in 2018 thanks to an SNSF PRIMA Grant. Her work combines microfluidics, soft matter physics, and biophysics to uncover how environmental forces shape the structure and resilience of bacterial biofilms — microbial communities with broad impact in medicine, technology, and the environment. A particular focus of her research is on biofilm rheology and on how the mechanical properties of biofilms control their interactions with surrounding fluids.
Matej Kanduč
Jožef Stefan Institute, Ljubljana, SloveniaMatej Kanduč is a researcher in soft-matter physics at the Jožef Stefan Institute in Ljubljana. After completing his PhD at the University of Ljubljana, he pursued postdoctoral research at the Technical University of Munich, the Free University of Berlin, and Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, before establishing his research group in theoretical soft- and bio-matter. His work combines molecular simulations with statistical physics to uncover the principles governing nanoscale interfacial phenomena, including hydrophobic interactions, hydration forces, cavitation, and the physics of droplets and bubbles, with a recent focus on how surfactants and lipid assemblies regulate wetting and nucleation.
Anna Salvati
Department of Nanomedicine and Drug Targeting, Groningen Research Institute of Pharmacy, University of Groningen (NL)
Anna Salvati is an associate professor in Nanomedicine at the University of Groningen. She is a biologist with a PhD in chemistry from the University of Florence. After working as a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for BioNano Interactions at the University College Dublin, she was awarded a Rosalind Franklin Fellowship to establish her group at the University of Groningen. Her research is focused on understanding at a fundamental level how the physico-chemical properties of nanomaterials affect their interactions with cells in order to improve the design of nanomedicines for drug delivery applications.
