Plenary Speakers
Confirmed Plenary Speakers
Nancy A. Burnham
Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, MA, USA
“New looks at old (nano)materials with modern scanning probe techniques”
Nancy Burnham graduated from the University of Colorado at Boulder in 1987 with a PhD in Physics. Her dissertation concerned the surface analysis of photovoltaic materials. As a National Research Council Postdoctoral Fellow at the Naval Research Laboratory, she became interested in scanning probe microscopy, in particular its application to detecting material properties at the nanoscale. She spent nine years abroad pursuing the mechanical properties of nanostructures and instrumentation for nanomechanics. She became an Associate Professor of Physics at WPI in January of 2000 where she teaches several undergraduate and graduate courses. Her research interests lie in the direction of nanoscience and engineering. She offers an undergraduate and graduate course in Atomic Force Microscopy, an important technique in this burgeoning interdisciplinary field, for which she is writing a book. Additionally, she organized the Minor in Nanoscience program at WPI. Nancy Burnham has been an invited, tutorial, or plenary speaker at over 50 conferences, author or co-author of over 80 publications with over 8400 citations (h-index 34); she is as well active in professional societies as, e.g., serving on the Nanometer Structures Committee of the IUVSTA and Treasurer of the Nanoscience and Technology Division of the AVS. She was the recipient of the 2001 Nanotechnology Recognition Award from the latter organization, was a 2002 Institute of Physics of Ireland Lecturer, and became a Fellow of the AVS in 2010. Two of her articles were featured among the 25 highlighted publications for the 25th anniversary of the journal Nanotechnology in 2014, out of nearly 12,000.
Jan Linnros
KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden
“Silicon at the nanoscale using lithography control : Nanowires, nanopores and 
quantum dots”.
Prof Jan Linnros received his Ph.D. in Physics (ion beam processing of materials) from Chalmers University of Technology (Göteborg, Sweden) in 1986. After a post-doc at Bell Labs, Murray Hill, he joined the Swedish Institute of Microelectronics in Stockholm to work on semiconductor material and device characterization. In 1993 he accepted a research position at Royal Institute of Technology and was appointed full professor in 2001. He is an active teacher and initiated/headed a master program in Nanoelectronics/Nanotechnology. He has published more than 200 scientific papers in international journals. He is also a cofounder of a company ‘Scint-X’ developing an imaging X-ray detector and of the company ‘Spin-Y’ developing an electron-spin filter. Current research interests include: Silicon nanostructures such as nanocrystals, nanowires, nanopores and associated nanofabrication methods including electrochemical etching and nanolithography, as well as X-ray imaging techniques. Recent projects include the use of silicon nanostructures in bio-molecule sensing (nanowires), DNA translocation through nanopores and silicon quantum dots for light emission. A main scientific break-through has been PL spectroscopy of individual silicon quantum dots.
Tony McNally
University of Warwick, UK
“Challenges in the Preparation of Composites of Polymers and Nanoparticles: From Molecule to Manufacture” 
Prof. Tony McNally is currently Chair Professor in Nanocomposites at the University of Warwick, UK. In 2013 he co-founded, with Professor Lord Bhattacharyya FREng FRS, the International Institute for Nanocomposites Manufacturing (IINM) and in 2015 the UK National Polymer Processing Centre (NPPC) and is serving as the first Director of both. He is leading a team of up to 50 academics and researchers (chemists, physicists, engineers and modellers) who are adopting a holistic approach to the study and manufacture of composites of polymers and 0D, 1D and 2D nanomaterials. Prior to this he was a Director of the Polymer Processing Research Centre (PPRC), Director of the Medical Polymers Research Institute (MPRI) and Director of Research for the Advanced Materials & Processing Research Cluster at Queen’s University Belfast, UK. He also worked in R&D in the medical device and transport industries for 6 years, latterly at board level, leading projects with a range of multinational companies. He has published widely and has held/holds a number of visiting academic positions in Australia, Europe and the USA. He is an advisor/assessor to several national and international funding agencies and research institutes, and sits on the editorial board of 6 journals. His current research interests are focused on; melt processing of polymer nanocomposites; functionalization of nanoparticles, including the use of ionic liquids to modify layered silicates and covalent/non-covalent functionalization of carbon nanotubes and graphene(s); polymer nanocomposite drug delivery; composites of polymers/metals with 0D, 1D and 2D nanomaterials; the use of magnetic/electric fields, solid-state and melt processing techniques to orientate nanoparticles in polymers; spinning using ionic liquids and mechanochemistry.