Laura Fabris
Biography:
Dr. Fabris earned both her B.S./M.S. and Doctorate Degrees in Chemistry from the University of Padova, Italy. Between 2006 and 2009 she was a postdoc in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of California Santa Barbara, after which she joined Rutgers University as an Assistant Professor of Materials Science and Engineering. Currently, Dr. Fabris is a Professor in the Department of Applied Science and Technology at Politecnico di Torino (Italy) and an Associate Professor in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Rutgers University (USA). Her research aims at rationally designing plasmonic nanomaterials, employing both experimental and computational approaches, to address biologically- and medically-relevant questions and, most recently, to design efficient nanostructured photocatalysts.
Keynote presentation:
Advancing Colloidal Synthesis to Address Global Challenges
Our planet is populated by over 7 billion, highly interacting individuals, who are, at least in first world countries, enjoying longer, hyperconnected, and comfortable lives. These facts bring substantial strain to the healthcare systems, as people are more exposed to both communicable and non-communicable diseases. In stark contrast, communities in developing and low-income countries have limited access to healthcare. Similarly, while people in high income countries are putting substantial strain on energy resources, villages in low-income countries are completely off the grid. Therefore, there is the need to address healthcare and energy issues for both the rich and the developing countries, taking into account how approaches that could be effective for the rich world have to be made substantially cheaper, rugged, and portable to address the needs of low-income countries. In my talk, I will discuss how my group has been addressing these needs by developing new and advancing existing methods for the synthesis of gold nanomaterials, and by integrating them with novel approaches to diagnostics and catalysis.