POLYMAT Spotlight 2026

Aurelio Mateo-Alonso obtained his BSc (1999) and MSc (2000) degrees in organic chemistry from Universidad Autónoma de Madrid (Spain). In 2004, he completed his PhD at Queen Mary University of London (UK). Between 2004 and 2009 he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at Università di Trieste (Italy). In 2009 he joined the Freiburg Institute for Advanced Studies (Germany) as a Group Leader. Since 2012 he has been an Ikerbasque Research Professor and Group Leader at POLYMAT and at the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastian (Spain). He has been the recipient of the Young Investigator Prize of Università di Trieste (Italy 2007), the Eugen-Graetz Prize of Universität Freiburg (Germany 2009), the Sigma–Aldrich Young Investigator Prize of the Spanish Royal Chemical Society (Spain 2011), and the Young Investigator Award of the Nanocarbons Division of the Electrochemical Society (USA 2012). In 2016 he received a Consolidator Grant of the European Research Council (ERC).

Jeanne Crassous is a CNRS Research Director at the ‘Institut des Sciences Chimiques de Rennes’ (ISCR, UMR 6226 CNRS - Univ Rennes). She received her PhD in 1996 from the Ecole Normale Supérieure de Lyon (ENS Lyon) on ‘The Absolute Configuration of Bromochlorofluoromethane (CHFClBr)’ under the supervision of Prof. André Collet. After a one-year postdoctoral period studying ‘The Chirality of Fullerenes’ in Prof. François Diederich’s group (ETH Zurich, Switzerland), she received a CNRS researcher position at the ENS Lyon in 1998 and then she joined the ISCR in 2005. She is dealing with many fields of chirality (heteroatomic and organometallic helicenes, chiral π-conjugated systems and assemblies, fundamental aspects of chirality). She is studying chiroptics (electronic and vibrational circular dichroism, circularly polarized luminescence) for potential applications in optoelectronics and spintronics. She received several awards, among which the National Prize of the Organic Chemistry Division of the French Chemical Society (DCO-SCF, 2020), the CNRS Silver Medal (2023), the Victor Grignard - Georg Wittig Lecture prize (GDCh-SCF, 2024), the Clavel-Lespieau prize of the French Academy of Sciences (2025), the Chirality Medal (2026).

Birgit Esser is full professor of Organic Chemistry at Ulm University, Germany. She obtained her Ph.D. in 2008 at the University of Heidelberg. After postdoctoral studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as Leopoldina fellow from 2009–2012, she joined the University of Bonn, Germany, as Liebig and later Emmy-Noether junior group leader. From 2015–2021 she was associate professor of Molecular/Organic Functional Materials at the University of Freiburg, Germany. Her research focusses on organic electrode materials for batteries, including post-lithium batteries, the synthesis of hoop-shaped, conjugated π-systems as well as small molecule semiconductors and photocatalysis.

Kenichiro Itami (b. 1971) studied chemistry at Kyoto University, Japan, and completed his PhD in 1998 with Prof. Yoshihiko Ito. After being Assistant Professor at Kyoto University, he moved to Nagoya University as an Associate Professor in 2005, where he was promoted to Full Professor in 2008. In 2012 he created the Institute of Transformative Bio-Molecules (ITbM) in Nagoya University, serving as the founding director (until March 2022) and the principal investigator (until March 2026). During 2013-2020, he was the Research Director of JST-ERATO Itami Molecular Nanocarbon Project. In 2024, he assumed the position of Chief Scientist at RIKEN, launching the Molecule Creation Laboratory as the director. In 2025, he also became the Team Director of RIKEN Center for Sustainable Resource Science. His research focuses on the development of innovative functional molecules with significant structures and properties, and the development of rapid molecular-assembly methods using unique catalysts. Representative achievements are the creation of a range of structurally uniform nanocarbons of fundamental and practical importance by bottom-up chemical synthesis.

A founding faculty member in the Department of Chemistry at Westlake University, he is also a recipient of China's National Science Fund (Class A) for Distinguished Young Scholars (previously the National Science Fund for Outstanding Young Scientists). He received his PhD in polymer chemistry in 2010 with Professor Tien-Yau Luh from Shanghai Institute of Organic Chemistry, CAS. During the period from 2010 to 2018, he pursued research in the group of Sir Fraser Stoddart at Northwestern University as a Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2018, he joined Westlake University to begin his independent academic career and was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2024. To date, he has published 78 high profile scientific papers and been an inventor of 11 patents. For his research into the isolation of gold, he was the co-recipient of two prestigious Awards―the North America Chemical Engineering Project of the Year Award and the Highly Commended in Sustainable Technology Award for Innovation & Excellence―from the Institution of Chemical Engineers. Dr Liu is also the co-founder of a startup company—named Cycladex—which is focused on gold purification. He serves as Associate Editor of SmartMat, Editorial Board Member of Chin. Chem. Lett., Mem