96th ACS Colloid and Surface Science Symposium

Colorado School of Mines

Golden, Colorado

July 10-13, 2022

Conference Information

Join us for the 96th Annual Colloid and Surface Science Symposium

Golden, Colorado, located at the foot of the Rocky Mountains, is the home of the Colorado School of Mines, the National Renewable Engineering Laboratory, and the Coors Brewery, one of the largest brewing facilities in the world. It has plenty of good restaurants, multiple microbreweries within walking distance, and is a 20-minute drive from downtown Denver. A short 15-minute drive from the famed Red Rocks Park & Amphitheatre, Golden is the closest point in the Denver/Boulder metro area to mountain destinations with miles of hiking trails for all levels. It is serviced by Denver International airport, the 20th-busiest airport in the world and the 5th-busiest in the United States.

Schedule

While organizing a number of technical sessions that are of typical interest in this symposium, this conference will feature three particular areas that tie strongly with Colorado: “Surface Science in Catalysis and Energy Research”, “Colloids in Environmental Science”, and “Biomedical Applications of Colloids”. CSM’s partnership with the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), the University of Colorado Denver and Anschutz Medical Campus, and various industrial consortia will foster networking of researchers from academia, national laboratories, and industry.

 

Sunday (7/10)Monday (7/11)Tuesday (7/12)Wednesday (7/13)
8:00 - 9:00amKeynote 1Keynote 2LaMer Award Lecture
9:30 - 11:30amSession 1Session 4Session 7
1:00 - 2:40pmSession 2Session 5Session 8
3:10 - 4:30pmSession 3Session 6
Social (5:30 - 7:30pm)Poster Session (4:45 - 6:45pm)Unilever Award Lecture (4:45 - 5:45pm)
Symposium Banquet (5:45 - 9:00pm)

Organizers

Plenary Speakers

Naomi J. Halas

Director, Smalley-Curl Institute and Director, Laboratory for Nanophotonics
Rice University

Bradley Nelson

Director, Multi-Scale Robotics Lab
ETH Zürich

Award Winners

Unilever Award

Assistant Professor Amir Sheikhi
The Pennsylvania State University

Bio - Amir Sheikhi

From hairy nanocelluloses to granular hydrogels: Colloidizing bio-based materials for environmental and healthcare applications

Dr. Amir Sheikhi is an Assistant Professor of Chemical Engineering and Biomedical Engineering (by courtesy) at Penn State. In August 2019, he founded the Bio-Soft Materials Laboratory (B-SMaL) to tackle some of the quintessential challenges of the 21st century in biomedicine and the environment by designing novel bio-based colloidal systems via micro- and nanoengineering techniques. Amir earned his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering at McGill University and continued to complete two years of post-doctoral research on colloids and macromolecules at McGill Chemistry under Theo van de Ven and Ashok Kakkar. Before joining Penn State, Amir was a post-doctoral fellow in Bioengineering at Harvard Medical School and UCLA, working with Ali Khademhosseini.

Victor K. LaMer Award

Rebecca Pinals
Schmidt Science Postdoctoral Fellow
Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Bio - Rebecca Pinals

Rebecca Pinals is currently a Schmidt Science Postdoctoral Fellow at the MIT Picower Institute, working with Professor Li-Huei Tsai. She received her BS in Chemical Engineering with Honors from Brown University in 2016. She then obtained her PhD in Chemical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley in 2021 as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, under the guidance of Professor Markita Landry. Rebecca’s graduate research focused on engineering nanomaterials to probe biological systems. Her work has elucidated fundamental mechanisms and effects of biomolecule adsorption on nanomaterial surfaces. She then applied this knowledge to develop more robust nano-bio constructs for optical-based sensing applications, such as to detect the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. For her research accomplishments, Rebecca has received awards including the CAS Future Leader Award and the ACS Women Chemists Committee/Merck Research Award and has been named an MIT Rising Star in Chemical Engineering and a UW Distinguished Young Scholar Speaker. In her current work, Rebecca is developing nanoparticle-based tools and a human brain model platform to investigate the molecular mechanisms driving Alzheimer’s Disease.

Beyond research, Rebecca is passionate about teaching and mentoring students in research. For her teaching, Rebecca has received the Excellence in Teaching Award and the Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award. During her PhD, she was also involved in leading local science outreach programs that encourage participation in STEM, including Expanding Your Horizons and Bay Area Scientists in Schools.