Keynote speakers
Dr Roger Benson
Roger Benson is a graduate Chemical Engineer with an MSc and PhD in Process Control. During his long career in the Process Industries he held positions in ICI of Chief Engineer of Engineering Technology, Head of the Manufacturing Technology capability and Head of the Control / Electrical function. He was a member of the team that built and operated the first Hi Gee distillation column. He also worked for ABB as the Technology Manager of ABB Analytics and Advanced Solutions. Since 1994 he has been a judge for the UK Best Factory Awards.
In 1999 he was appointed a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering. In 2008 he was a member of rae2008 Sub Panel 26 (Chemical Engineering). He is a Visiting Professor at two Universities and the Honorary President of CPACT. In 1999 he published the IChemE book on “Benchmarking Process Manufacturing”.
Prof Malcolm Mackley
Malcolm Mackley is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Professor of Process Innovation in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology at Cambridge. He is a scientist, an inventor and an engineer. In the past, Malcolm has developed polymer, chocolate and fluid mixing technologies, some of which have resulted in novel products. He has also invented a number of scientific instruments and is currently working in the fields of microreactors, microporous membranes, carbon nanotubes and ink jet printing.
Prof Dr. Ir Andrzej Stankiewicz
Andrzej Stankiewicz is Professor of Process Intensification and Scientific Director of the Delft Research Center for Sustainable Industrial Processes at Delft University of Technology, The Netherlands. With more than 30 years of industrial and academic research experience, he is author or co-author of ca. 100 publications on chemical reaction engineering, industrial catalysis and process intensification, and holds several patents in the field.
He is co-author and editor of the world’s first book on Process Intensification: “Re-Engineering the Chemical Processing Plant”. Andrzej Stankiewicz is also Editor of Elsevier’s journal “Chemical Engineering and Processing: Process Intensification” and Series Editor of the Green Chemistry Books Series (RCS). He was founder and the first Chairman of the Working Party on Process Intensification at the European Federation of Chemical Engineering. He currently chairs the Board of the European Process Intensification Centre (EUROPIC). Andrzej Stankiewicz received his M.Sc. degree in chemical engineering from Warsaw University of Technology and a Ph.D. degree from the Industrial Chemistry Research Institute in Warsaw.
Professor Stankiewicz has recently been awarded the prestigious Advanced Investigator Grant by the European Research Council, for carrying out research on “perfect chemical reactors”.
Albert Renken
Albert Renken was born in Hannover (Germany) in 1941. He studied chemistry at the University of Hannover, where he earned the Master degree in 1966 and the PhD in 1968. From 1973 to 1977 he was appointed Professor for Chemical Reaction Engineering at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and retired in 2006.
Renken’s scientific interests are: Hetergeneous catalytic engineering, unsteady-state reactor operation and micro structured reators.
Renken is also author/co-author of more than 450 scientific publications, 19 patents and four books in Chemical Reaction Engineering.
Quentin Cooper – After dinner speaker
Described by The Times as both "the world's most enthusiastic man" and "an expert on everything from pop music to astrophysics", by the Daily Mail as someone whose "wit and enthusiasm can enliven the dullest of topics", and by the Daily Telegraph as "dauntless" - well, that's The Telegraph for you - Quentin presents BBC Radio 4's weekly The Material World, the UK's most listened to science programme and "the most accessible, funny and conversational science programme on radio" according to the Radio Times.
He's also written and presented many other TV and radio science series including Connect, Catalyst, Logged On, Strictly Conventional and With Reference To all for Radio 4; New Scientist Reports on the Discovery Channel; the long-running Science Fix for BBC Knowledge; Science in Action and Soundbyte for BBC World Service; and The Formula and Big Byte for 5Live. Also a film critic, author and - briefly - a member of a click-boxing duo with Oscar-winner Ryuichi Sakamoto, he regularly turns up on a range of other TV and radio networks, podcasts and publications including a long-standing slot covering entertainment on Radio 2 on Sunday mornings first with Michael Parkinson and now Michael Ball.
“I'm a passionate believer that science is a perspective rather than a subject and that with the right approach everyone can engage with it at some level.”
Quentin directs annual international science communication workshops for the British Council as part of the Edinburgh and Manchester Science Festivals, is an adviser or trustee for a growing number of science organisations and events including Cheltenham Science Festival, the Wellcome Trust, Newcastle's Life Centre and the Walking With Robots group, and is one of the judges for the first Wellcome Book prize. From 2001-7, he directed and hosted the nightly X-Change events at the BA and the European Science Open Forum. He also continues to run and presents regular science communication and media skills workshops for such organisations as BBC Training, the Institute of Physics, Channel 4, NERC, NESTA, The Guardian and various universities, and is increasingly in demand for such work overseas.
Among many recent events he has hosted are an ecology conference in Brazil, a forum on global diabetes in Chennai, the finals of a Europe-wide search for future science communicators in Barcelona, science communication workshops in countries from Azerbaijan to Yemen (not quite A-Z), an international student summit at the Natural History Museum, a five-hour fiery debate about the image of scientists in Moscow, a global gathering of toy designers at Lego HQ in Denmark, science discussions by video-conference everywhere from the West Bank to Siberia ... and the Royal Festival Hall's Uummannaq Day combining poetry and beat-boxing with climate science.
Quentin spends an increasing amount of time dealing with the issues surrounding climate change and the environment and is particularly entangled with the ongoing science-art Cape Farewell project having been a crew member on their 2004 Svalbard and 2008 Greenland voyages.