Nano World Magazine

Dr Nasar Ali is the founder of NANOSMAT and serves as the President of The NANOSMAT Society. He has held the post of a chief scientific officer at CNC Coatings Company based in Rochdale, UK. Prior to this, Dr Ali was a faculty member at the University of Aveiro in Portugal, where he founded and led the Surface Engineering and Nanotechnology Group. Dr Ali has extensive experience in hard carbon-coating materials, including nano-sized diamond coatings and carbon nanotubes deposited using CVD technologies. He has over 120 international peer reviewed research publications, including a number of book chapters. He was a fellow of the Institute of Nanotechnology (UK). Dr Ali has authored and edited many books/handbooks on surface coatings, thin films and nanotechnology for leading publishers, including the 6 volume handbook on GRAPHENE SCIENCE HANDBOOK (CRC Press). He was also the founder of the Journal of Nano Research (Trans Tech Publishers), Functional Nanostructures journal (One Central Press) and Nano Energy Systems journal (OCP). Dr Ali was the recipient of the prestigious Bunshah Prize at ICMCTF-2002 conference in San Diego, USA for his work on developing time modulated CVD of carbon based materials.

Dr Matt Cole is a Research Fellow investigating the heterogeneous integration of chemical vapour deposited aligned nanomaterials in nanoscale vacuum electronics devices. He is based in the Electrical Engineering Division in the Department of Engineering. He is a member of the Centre for Advanced Photonics and Electronics, the Cambridge Graphene Centre, and the Electronic Devices & Materials group.

He is a Director of Cambridge Xray Systems, a spin out company developing nanoengineered field emission Xray source. Dr Cole is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (FIMMM), a Chartered Engineer (CEng), a Chartered Scientist (CSci), and a Chartered Physicist (CPhys). He is a Eur Ing, a STEM advocate and registered STEM Ambassador. He is a member of the Founders of the Future Forum and a named Forbes 30 under 30 (2016). His awards include the Sir MacFarlane Medal from the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Sir Kroto Medal from The NANOSMAT Society, the Silver Medal from the Institute of Materials, Minerals, & Mining, and the Sir Royce Medal from the Institute of Engineering & Technology. Dr Cole has spent time as a visiting scholar at Harvard University, and as a research associate at Sharp Laboratories of Europe. He has held the Isaac Newton Trust Fellowship (2012), a Winston Churchill Trust Fellowship (2012-2013), an International Young Scientist Research Fellowship (2013-2014), the CAS President’s International Fellowship (2015-2017), and Cambridge University’s Oppenheimer Research Fellowship (2014-2017).

Dr Giuseppe Fierro was born in 1961 in Ariano Irpino (AV), Italy. In 1985 he received with Summa cum Laude the Italian Doctor Degree in Chemistry from the Faculty of Science of ‘SAPIENZA’ University in Rome.  During 1985 he joined as adjunct-scientist the ENEA (Italian National Agency for new Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development), working in the Research Area ‘Casaccia’ in Rome on one of the first Italian biotechnology projects (“Biochemical leaching of Sulcis (Sardinia) bituminous coal at high sulphur content”). From the end of 1985 through to 1989, he held the position of Research Scientist at the Research Centre for the Development of Materials (CSM -Centro Sviluppo Materiali) in Rome, a research centre of ILVA, the former Italian National Steel Company. His research activity at CSM concerned the study of metallic and ceramic materials and was specifically aimed to the investigation of steels surface properties and of the enamel-steel and ceramic-metallic substrate interfaces, many of these studies being supported by funding from CECA and BRITE European Projects. Since 1989 he is a Research Scientist of the National Research Council of Italy (CNR). He presently holds this position in the Institute for the Study of Nanostructured Materials (ISMN) working in the ISMN Research Unit located inside the Department of Chemistry of ‘SAPIENZA’ University of Rome. His research activity is devoted to some fundamental topics of the heterogeneous catalysis, in particular in the field of environmental catalysis, and is currently focused on the study of catalysts active in NO and N₂O abatement reactions. Dr. Giuseppe Fierro has spent more than one year (1993-1994) at the Department of Chemistry of the University of Pittsburgh, USA, working with Prof. W. Keith Hall. In 2006 he has been at the Chemistry Department of the Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan, being invited by Prof. Koichi Segawa as Visiting Scientist in his Catalysis Laboratory. Dr. Fierro has delivered several Invited Lectures in different universities as well as at national and international conferences, in particular at the Gordon Research Conference on Catalysis, the 216^th American Chemical Society National Meeting and NANOSMAT Conferences. Since 2005 he is a Member of the International Advisory Board and of the Steering Committee of the NANOSMAT Conferences, organizing and chairing ‘Nano-Catalysis’ devoted special sessions. As Guest Editor he served, and is still serving, ISI journals, i.e. Catalysis Today, Journal of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Vacuum, Surface & Coatings Technology, Applied Surface Science. Since 1989 he has a strict scientific collaboration, including also educational activities, with the Department of Chemistry as well as the Department of Chemical Engineering, Materials and Environment of ‘SAPIENZA’ University of Rome.

Dr Mahmood Aliofkhazraei earned his B.Sc. in extractive metallurgical engineering from Amirkabir University of Technology and M.Sc. and Ph.D. in materials science (corrosion, coatings and surface engineering) from Tarbiat Modares University. In 2012, he joined the materials engineering department at Tarbiat Modares University as assistant professor. Dr. Aliofkhazraei’s research interests include nanotechnology and its use in surface and corrosion science. One of his main interests is plasma electrolysis and he published more than 40 papers and a book in this area. In total he has published more than 12 books and 90 journal papers. He has given some invited talks including several keynotes in several countries. Aliofkhazraei has received several awards including the Khwarizmi award, IMES medal, INIC award, best thesis award (multiple times), best book award (multiple times) and the best young nanotechnologist award of Iran (2 times). He is on the advisory editorial board of several materials science and nanotechnology journals. He is a member of the national association of surface sciences, Iranian corrosion association, and national elite foundation of Iran.

Dr. Mircea Chipara graduated from the University of Bucharest, Romania (Physics) and obtained his PhD in Condensed Matter from the Institute for Atomic Physics (Bucharest, Romania) with a thesis on Hyperfine Interactions in Polymers. He was postdoc at the University of Nebraska Lincoln, doing research in the field of magnetic nanomaterials under the supervision of Professor David Sellmyer and later Associate Researcher at Indiana University (Bloomington). In 2006, Dr. Mircea Chipara joined the University of Texas Pan American which now became University of Texas Rio Grande Valley. Dr. Mircea Chipara is now Associate Professor within the Physics Department. The research of Dr. Mircea Chipara focuses on polymer-based nanocomposites and includes a wide variety of experimental techniques and methods to obtain, modify, and characterize the effect of nanoparticles on polymeric matrices. With over 200 articles, the research activity of Dr. Mircea Chipara includes over 1500 citations, and h index of 19 (according to Google Scholar). Dr. Mircea Chipara is editor in chief to the journal Surfaces and Interfaces (Elsevier) and participated to the organization of Nanosmat-USA conferences.