Confirmed Speakers

Jean-Christophe is Full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Liège and Principal Investigator at the WEL Research Institute. Following a PhD at UCLouvain and postdoctoral appointments at Ghent University, the University of Florida, and MIT, he founded the Center for Integrated Technology and Organic Synthesis (CiTOS) in 2013 and the FloW4all Technology Platform in 2023. His research focuses on flow chemistry, process intensification, and computational methodologies for pharmaceutical synthesis and the valorization of bio-based feedstocks. He received Corning’s 2024 International Prize for Outstanding Work in Continuous Flow Reactors & Chemistry and serves as Associate Editor of the Journal of Flow Chemistry.

Norbert Kockmann is full professor at TU Dortmund University. His interests are on modular small-scale devices for continuous flow process intensification. His research includes multiphase flow, experimental and simulation work assisted by machine-learning methods.

Author of more than 150 peer-reviewed journal papers and 7 book chapters; more than 40 invited lectures and keynote lectures

Miquel A. Pericàs was born in Palma de Mallorca (Spain) in 1951. He studied Chemical Engineering (Institut Químic de Sarrià, 1974) and Chemistry (University of Barcelona 1974) and obtained his PhD (University of Barcelona) in 1979. After postdoctoral studies at the Spanish Research Council (1979-1980), he joined the Department of Organic Chemistry of the University of Barcelona in 1980 as an Associate Professor, being promoted to Full Professor in 1991. In 2000 he was appointed as the Founding Director of the Institute of Chemical Research of Catalonia (ICIQ), a position he held until September 2020. He has been a Group Leader at ICIQ till March 2022.

He is now an “ad honorem” professor at Universitat Rovira i Virgili, a permanent academician of the Royal Academy of Sciences and Arts of Barcelona (2022), a member of Academia Europaea (2021), and a founding partner of Alza and Associates Sustainability Consulting.

The major research interests of Miquel A. Pericàs have been focused on enantioselective catalysis in batch and flow with species immobilized onto polymers and magnetic nanoparticles, and on the discovery of new reactions mediated by light.

Christian H. Hornung is a Research Group Leader at the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO) in Melbourne, Australia, which he joined in 2010. He received his PhD in Chemical Engineering from Cambridge University in 2008. Christian has over 25 years of experience working in flow chemistry and microreactor technology on the interface between chemistry & engineering. Christian’s recent research interests include work on process intensification for renewable chemicals & fuels, chemical hydrogen storage & utilisation, 3D metal printing of reactors, machine learning-assisted reactor optimisation & decentralised manufacturing. https://research.csiro.au/floworks/

Mateo Berton is the Process Engineering Manager and Flow Chemistry Subject Matter Expert at Farmhispania Group. He holds a PhD in Organic Chemistry and specialises in the implementation of continuous-flow processes, process intensification and technology transfer for pharmaceutical production. His expertise spans synthetic route development, scale-up from laboratory to industrial manufacturing, process safety and multidisciplinary project leadership across R&D, Production and Engineering teams.

Since 2015, Maurizio Benaglia has been Full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Department of Chemistry of the Università degli Studi di Milano. He is Co-founder and Director of ISPROCHEM – International School of Process Chemistry. In 2000 he received the Giacomo Ciamician Medal, in 2014 the “Innovation in research” award, and in 2019 the Piero Pino Medal by the Italian Chemical Society. He is the author of more than 250 publications. His research activities focus on the development of sustainable synthesis, the application of continuous flow technologies to light-driven and electrochemical stereoselective transformations, synthesis of pharmaceutical products, also in alternative reaction media.

My bachelor and master’s degrees in chemical engineering were completed at Laval University (Quebec City, Canada) in 1996. I then obtained a doctoral degree from the University of Technology Aachen (Germany) in the field of heterogeneous catalysis in 2001. Afterwards, I joined Lonza in March 2001 and was Laboratory Head in charge of reaction engineering (calorimetry) and safety assessment. In February 2003, Lonza started a new project called Microreactor Technology where I became the Project Leader until July 2007. From August 2007 to July 2008, I worked as an Associate Professor at the University of Ottawa (Ottawa, Canada). I re-joined Lonza in September 2008 with the goal to pursue continuous-flow technology. I was responsible of business development of this technology from 2009 to 2012 and, from 2013 to 2024, Director and Head of an R&D group in API chemical Services. Since April 1, I am now leading the Advanced Chemistry Technologies group. I am also Adjunct Professor at the University of Ottawa and still supervising graduate students with their practical part of their thesis performed in Visp, Switzerland.

Prof. Guangsheng Luo is a professor of Tsinghua University. He obtained his Ph.D. and B.Sc. degrees in 1993 and 1988, respectively, both from Tsinghua University. Currently, he is the Director of the State Key Laboratory of Chemical Engineering and Low Carbon Technology. His research interests include micro chemical engineering technology, microscale flow chemistry, and separation science and technology. He has published more than 500 papers in peer-reviewed journals and holds more than 100 Chinese patents. His research achievements have been applied in more than twenty production lines in industry. He has received two national scientific and technological awards. His is also a fellow of the Chemical Industry and Engineering Society of China, a fellow of Chinese Chemical Society, and a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He was elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2025.

Prof. Renzo Luisi is Full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Bari “Aldo Moro” in Italy, where he leads the FLAME-Lab for Flow Chemistry and Microreactor Technology. His research focuses on innovative and sustainable organic synthesis, continuous-flow chemistry, organometallic chemistry and advanced enabling technologies. His group develops safer and more efficient flow processes for highly reactive intermediates, pharmaceutical building blocks and active pharmaceutical ingredients. His work combines synthetic chemistry with flow and microreactor technologies to advance greener and more sustainable pharmaceutical manufacturing.

Dr Adam Clayton received his PhD from the University of Leeds in 2020. He was then awarded a Royal Academy of Engineering Research Fellowship in 2022 based at the University of Leeds, where he has been an Associate Professor of Digital Chemistry since 2024. His research interests are focused on developing efficient and more sustainable multistep processes in continuous flow, principally for small molecule synthesis. To achieve this, he designs and utilises machine learning algorithms to guide experimental campaigns performed on autonomous reactor platforms.

Irini Abdiaj is a pharmaceutical researcher and Senior Scientist in Chemical Technologies at Johnson & Johnson Innovative Medicine in Toledo, Spain. Her expertise spans continuous-flow chemistry, flow photochemistry, organic synthesis and laboratory automation for drug discovery. Her research has explored the translation of photochemical reactions from batch to flow, scalable continuous-flow synthesis, in-line reaction monitoring and automated platforms for the preparation of drug-like molecules. Her work combines flow chemistry and automation to enable more efficient, scalable and innovative approaches to pharmaceutical research.

Michael Crockett is a principal scientist working in process R&D at Cambrex Snapdragon Chemistry. Prior to starting in industry in spring 2023, he did a PhD in organic chemistry with Prof. Jeffery Byers at Boston college working on iron-catalyzed Suzuki-Miyaura coupling reactions. After that Michael completed a post doc. With Prof. Andy Thomas at Texas A&M University exploring alternate site selectivity in lithiation reactions. In his role at Cambrex, Michael has been involved in the process development for several continuous processes, automated optimization campaigns, and kilo scale productions.

Dr. Cloudius Ray Sagandira is a Principal Researcher in advanced pharmaceutical manufacturing at the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), South Africa, and an AfOx Visiting Research Fellow at the University of Oxford. He obtained his Ph.D. from Nelson Mandela University in 2019 and subsequently undertook research appointments at Chimie ParisTech, France, and at Novartis, Switzerland, through the company’s Next Generation Scientist Programme. His research focuses on continuous-flow chemistry for sustainable pharmaceutical and chemical manufacturing. He has developed flow processes for more than 15 active pharmaceutical ingredients, is an inventor on three patents, and has published extensively in the field. His work aims to advance efficient, scalable, and cost-effective pharmaceutical manufacturing and strengthen local medicine production across Africa.

Tom completed his undergraduate degree at the University of Bristol, including a year-long industrial placement at Lubrizol. He then undertook a Pfizer-sponsored PhD at the University of Leeds, focusing on automated steady-state flow chemistry. Tom is now Head of Automation at SOLVE Chemistry, which produces data and insights to enable faster process development through data collection from their automated transient flow lab and mechanistic kinetic insights from their autonomous software. His work centres on creating and growing SOLVE Chemistry’s automation control software.

Ana studied at the University of Seville, and after a short period in industry, she pursued a PhD on enzyme immobilization at CICbiomaGUNE under the supervision Prof. Fernando López-Gallego. She then joined the University of Nottingham (UK) as a Postdoctoral Fellow, and later the University of Bern (Switzerland), with Prof. Francesca Paradisi where she worked on the implementation of enzymatic cascades into continuous flow reactors. In 2023, she initiated her independent career as SNSF Ambizione Group Leader at ETH Zurich, and since 2025 is TT Assistant Professor at TUM (Germany).

Dr. Brenda Pijper is a Senior Scientist at AstraZeneca in Gothenburg as part of the Compound Synthesis and Management team within Discovery Sciences. She focuses on library synthesis, integrating automation, flowchemistry, and photochemistry to expand the chemical space and accelerate drug discovery. She earned her master’s degree at Leiden University, and then obtained an industrial PhD at Johnson & Johnson in 2024. Her work there focussed on accessing novel chemical spaces through automation and flow chemistry, as part of the PhotoReAct Marie Curie ITN. This experience honed her expertise in photochemistry and flowchemistry and established her interest in innovative synthesis techniques.

Daniel studied medicinal chemistry at the University of York before beginning his career as a medicinal chemist at Vernalis in Cambridge, UK. Over 14 years, his role evolved to combine technology and medicinal chemistry, with a particular focus on automated flow chemistry to expand Vernalis’ library synthesis capabilities. In early 2024, Daniel moved to Gothenburg, Sweden, to join AstraZeneca’s iLAB Automation Team. As part of the team, he contributes to the development of a fully automated, end-to-end library synthesis platform, while also serving as system owner for an experimental platform used to explore and develop new automation capabilities.