Professor Georgina Such
University of Melbourne 

Professor Craig Hawker
Director, California NanoSystems Institute

Craig Hawker is the Director of the California NanoSystems Institute and Director of the Dow Materials Institute at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He is a Distinguished Professor, holds the Alan and Ruth Heeger Chair in Interdisciplinary Science and is the Clarke Professor within the California Nanosystems Institute.

Craig is also an award-winning polymer scientist with 75 US patents and co-authored over 600 papers in nanotechnology, materials science, and chemistry. He holds a BSc from the University of Queensland and a PhD from the University of Cambridge.

Professor Christine Luscombe
Okinawa Institute of Technology

Christine Luscombe is currently a Professor and Chair of the Faculty at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Okinawa, Japan. After receiving her Bachelor’s degree in Natural Sciences from the University of Cambridge in 2000, she worked with Profs. Andrew Holmes and Wilhelm Huck in the Melville Laboratory of Polymer Synthesis at the University of Cambridge where her research focused on surface modifications using supercritical carbon dioxide for her PhD.

 She received the Syngenta Award for best organic chemistry project for her PhD. In January 2004, she joined the group of Prof. Jean Fréchet at UC Berkeley for her post-doctoral studies where she began her research on semiconducting polymers for organic photovoltaics. She was the recipient of the Lindemann Fellowship and the Trinity College Junior Research Fellowship (University of Cambridge) for her post-doctoral studies. 

Professor Brent Sumerlin
University of Florida

Brent S. Sumerlin is a prominent polymer chemist and the George B. Butler Professor at the University of Florida. His research focuses on creating well-defined polymers with specific functionalities and molecular architectures. Sumerlin's group develops new synthetic routes for creating functional macromolecules, often using "click chemistry" to efficiently modify polymers. He investigates water-soluble polymers that can self-assemble or dissociate in response to environmental changes, which have potential applications in drug delivery, tissue engineering, and surface modification. 

Additionally, his team constructs materials with reversible covalent bonds, allowing them to adapt their structure and reactivity based on their environment, including smart nanoparticles and self-healing coatings. Sumerlin's research also involves modifying biological molecules with polymers to control their solubility and activity.