Since its launch at the 2003 International Sol-Gel Conference in Australia, the ISGS has aspired to serve the community of sol-gel practitioners as an inter-disciplinary, non-profit organisation which provides a vibrant plat-form for supporting and advancing sol-gel science and technology. The ISGS is led by a Board with nine elected members, who meet every month via ZOOM to develop initiatives for the society to support our membership. The scope of these initiatives has increased dramatically over the past few years, with the introduction by the current and previous Board of new Scholarships and Fellowships, the eSeminar series and a new format for the Society’s Newsletter.
In the next Newsletter, we will introduce the three new ISGS Board members elected at the 2024 International Sol-Gel Conference in Berlin, and celebrate the work of the three members whose six-year terms will conclude. However, in the current Newsletter, it is a pleasure to announce that we now have a new ISGS President and – for the first time – a Vice President. Professor Beatriz Julián-López was elected by the Board to be our President, while Professor Galo Soler Illia was elected as Vice-President.
Beatriz was elected to the ISGS Board in 2019 and is the first Spanish sol-gel scientist to hold an elected position within the ISGS. She completed her PhD at the University Jaume I (Spain) in 2003, with her thesis focussing on hybrid siloxane materials, followed by a Postdoctoral Fellowship with Professor Clément Sanchez at the University Pierre et Marie Curie – Sorbonne in Paris. Following additional appointments at Ecole National Superior de Chimie de Paris (ENSCP), Centre de Recherche Paul Pascal-CNRS and University of Bordeaux, University of Aveiro and Universidad Complutense of Madrid, she returned to Jaume I University in 2007. In 2012, she became leader of the Multifunctional Materials Group, exploring the develop-ment of novel multifunctional inorganic and hybrid organic–inorganic materials, textured at different scales, for optical, energy, ceramics and biomedical applications. Her recent activities are centred on the design of nanoparticles with optical up-conversion, hybrid perovskites and nanomaterials for photoelectrocatalysis.
Galo was elected to the ISGS Board in 2022. He graduated in Chemistry from the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), where he obtained his doctorate in 1998. He then undertook a Post-Doctoral Fellowship with Professor Clément Sanchez at the University of Paris IV Paris-Sorbonne.
In 2003 he founded the “Chemistry of Nanomaterials” group in Argentina at the National Atomic Energy Com-mission (CNEA). In 2014, he became the Foundation Dean of the Institute of Nanosystems at the National University of San Martín. He is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Inorganic, Analytical and Physical Chemistry of the Faculty of Exact and Natural Sciences of the UBA, a Professor at the Graduate School of the National University of San Martín and was a visiting professor at the universities of Paris VI and Melbourne. His current interest is the development of mesoporous multifunctional materials and programmable nanosystems for applications in the fields of environment, health, energy, and intelligent materials.
Please join us in congratulating them on their appointments, as we begin the next chapter in the 20-year history of the ISGS.
