Speakers

Mycobacteriology, molecular biology, tuberculosis drug discovery, M. tuberculosis metabolism
http://www.idm.uct.ac.za/Digby_Warner

Digby Warner is based in the SAMRC/NHLS/UCT Molecular Mycobacteriology Research Unit in the Division of Medical Microbiology, Department of Pathology, at the University of Cape Town (UCT). He is a member of the Institute of Infectious Disease and Molecular Medicine (IDM) and serves as Platform Lead of the Wellcome Centre for Infectious Disease Research in Africa (CIDRI-Africa). His research is aimed at understanding fundamental aspects of mycobacterial physiology and metabolism, with a special focus on the molecular mechanisms that underlie the evolution and propagation of drug resistance in Mycobacterium tuberculosis. To this end, he has focused on DNA repair and replication pathways in M. tuberculosis and their potential involvement in the emergence of drug resistance; the role of vitamin B12 and B12-dependent pathways in mycobacterial pathogenesis; and the impact of drug resistance on mycobacterial physiology and its consequences for pathogenicity. He has also been heavily involved in efforts to establish a pipeline for tuberculosis drug discovery and development in South Africa. In addition, he is a leading partner in a large collaborative project which aims to provide detailed insights into the host, environmental, and mycobacterial factors which enable tuberculosis transmission in our high-burden setting. Digby has co-authored more than 80 publications, including original research articles, reviews, and book chapters. Moreover, he is dedicated to developing young researchers within a southern African context, having supervised more than 20 post-doctoral researchers, PhD and MSc students to completion, as well as teaching and convening a number of courses at postgraduate and undergraduate levels.

Marc de Graef is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include software development for quantitative modelling of TEM and SEM images, application of data sciences for materials development and investigations of magnetic materials.

Yunzhi Wang is Professor of Materials Science Engineering at The Ohio State University. His primary research interests are in the field of theoretical modelling and computer simulation of microstructure evolution during phase transformations and plastic deformation. He is at the forefront in the development and application of mesoscopic modelling approaches (in particular the phase-field method) and their integration with atomistic and continuum approaches for both fundamental and applied research in microstructure science and microstructure engineering.

Wolfgang Jäger is Professor at the Institute for Materials Science at the Christian-Albrechts-Universitaet (CAU) in Kiel. His research interests include microstructure-property relationships of functional materials, quantitative methods of high-resolution and analytical transmission electron microscopy, and nano analytics with electrons in the materials and surface sciences.

Sudarsanam (Suresh) Babu is currently director of the Bredesen Center for Interdisciplinary Research and Graduate Education, as well as UT/ORNL Governor’s Chair of Advanced Manufacturing. In this role, he bridges ORNL expertise to develop a collaborative research ecosystem locally and employ engineering solutions to manufacturing industries. His research interests include advanced manufacturing, additive manufacturing, physical metallurgy, and computational materials modelling.

Stephen Niezgoda is an Associate Professor and the Director of Micro- & Mesoscale Mechanics and Structures Laboratory at The Ohio State University. His research interests include micromechanical modelling and simulation, constitutive model development, crystal plasticity, techniques in model and simulation co-design, computational materials design tools and materials data sciences.

Richard Le Sar is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Iowa State University. His research focuses on using computational methods to study the properties of materials, with a focus on multiscale models of plasticity, simulating the microstructural development in additive manufacturing, and, more generally, developing new strategies for multiscale design. To this end, he served on the US National Academy Committee on Integrated Computational Materials Engineering (ICME).

Raj Banerjee is a Regents Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of North Texas. His research experience includes 3D nano-characterization, atomistic modelling, and the study of structure-to-properties relationships in titanium alloys, nickel-based superalloys, metal matrix composites, and metallic thin films.

Rafal Dunin-Borkowski is the current Director of the Institute for Microstructure Research (PGI-5) and the Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons (ER-C) and is Professor of Experimental Physics at RWTH Aachen University. His research involves the development of quantitative techniques in electron microscopy and has recently focused on the use of off-axis electron holography to study magnetic and electrostatic fields in nanoscale materials, thin films and devices.

Peter Collins is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, and Director of the Centre for Nondestructive Evaluation, at the Iowa State University. His experiences and interests involve the practical and theoretical treatments of microstructure-property relationships. He has extensive experience in participating in large industrial programs, has conducted studies into novel metal matrix composites, and has significant research experience with additive manufacturing techniques, and combinatorial materials science. He is an active member of TMS and past chairman of the ICME committee.

Marc de Graef is Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. His research interests include software development for quantitative modelling of TEM and SEM images, application of data sciences for materials development and investigations of magnetic materials.

Knut Urban is a Senior Distinguished Professor of Physics at Rheinisch-Westfälische Hochschule (RWTH) Aachen (RWTH Aachen University). Prior to his retirement in 2010, he was the Director of the Institute of Microstructure Research at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Professor of Experimental Physics at RWTH Aachen University, and co-director of the Ernst Ruska Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons (ER-C). He is one of the pioneers of aberration-corrected transmission electron microscopy both in the development of the instruments and the control software. His research interests include the examination of structural defects in oxides and the physical properties of complex metallic alloys.

Johan Westraadt is a Senior Research Fellow at the Centre for High-Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy at the Nelson Mandela University. His research interests include quantitative microstructural characterisation and the processing-structure-property relationships of ultra-hard composites, power plant steels and titanium alloys.

Joachim Mayer is co-director of the Institute for Materials Science and Technology (ER-C-2) at the Ernst Ruska-Centre for Microscopy and Spectroscopy with Electrons (ER-C). He is also Professor and Head of the Central Facility for Electron Microscopy at RWTH Aachen University in Jülich, Germany. His research focuses on the application of new methods in electron microscopy in the areas of materials science, nanoelectronics and energy systems.

Jay Tiley is Program Manager and Senior Materials Engineer at the United States Air Force. He has over 30 years’ experience developing and executing research programs involving metallic and hybrid materials. His research focuses on high-temperature titanium alloys and nickel-base superalloys for aerospace propulsion systems.

Jan Neethling is Professor of Physics and Director of the Centre for High-Resolution Transmission Electron Microscopy at the Nelson Mandela University. His main research interest is the study of radiation damage in nuclear reactor and semiconductor materials.

Hamish Fraser is Ohio Regents Eminent Scholar and Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at The Ohio State University. He is the Director of the Center for the Accelerated Maturation of Materials (CAMM) at OSU. He is also a Hon. Professor at Nelson Mandela University. His research areas include advanced materials characterization (involving high resolution and analytical electron microscopy), modelling the microstructure-to-properties relationships in light alloys, and powder metallurgy, including additive manufacturing.

Dipankar Banerjee is Professor of Materials Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and heads the Processing, Structure and Properties of Materials Laboratory (PSPM). His research focuses on processing-structure-property relationships in engineering alloys with emphasis on titanium alloys.

Angus Kirkland is Professor of Materials at the University of Oxford, Science Director at ePSIC, and is the current president of the International Federation of Societies for Microscopy (IFSM). He is also a Hon. Professor at Nelson Mandela University. His current research interests include the development and application of aberration-corrected HRTEM for structural studies of nanomaterials, the design of direct electron detectors and electron optics, and computational image processing.