Raffaele Mezzenga is a soft condensed matter scientist, currently heading the Laboratory of Food and Soft Materials at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. [1] He is among the 0.1% most cited scientists according to the Clarivate 2023 Highly Cited Researchers list in the cross-field discipline.
Prof. Mezzenga received his M.S. in Materials Science (1997) from Perugia University in Italy, while actively working for the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer experiment at the European Center for Nuclear Research (CERN) [2] and NASA (NASA Space Shuttle Discovery mission STS91), followed by a PhD in the field of Polymer Physics at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland (2001).
Mezzenga did postdoctoral research on semiconductive polymer colloids [3] at the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB) and then moved to the Nestlé Research Center in Lausanne as research scientist, working on the self-assembly of surfactants, natural amphiphiles and lyotropic liquid crystals. [4] [5] In 2005 he was hired as Associate Professor in the Physics Department of the University of Fribourg, and he then joined ETH Zurich [6] on 2009 as Full Professor.
His research mainly focuses on the fundamental understanding of self-assembly processes in polymers, lyotropic liquid crystals, biological and food colloidal systems. His work has led to over 400 scientific publications and about 20 patents. He has made seminal contributions to several fields of soft condensed matter such as in protein aggregation, biopolymers and surfactants self-organisation. [7] He has pioneered the use of protein-based materials in the establishment of new technologies for environmental remediation, health and advanced materials design. [8] [9] [10] [11] [12] [13] [14] [15]
Prof. Mezzenga was the recipient of the 2011 John H. Dillon Medal [16] by the American Physical Society. He was elected Fellow of the American Physical Society in 2017. [17] Other awards include the 2011 Young Scientist Research Award of the American Oil Chemist Society, the 2013 Biomacromolecules/Macromolecules Young Investigator Award [18] [19] of the American Chemical Society and the 2019 Spark Award [20] for the most promising ETH Zurich invention in 2019.
Mezzenga served as an Executive, Associate and Guest Editor for various journals including Food Biophysics, Food Hydrocolloids, Polymer International, Trends in Food Science, and has been a board member of Swiss Chemical Society [21] for over 15 years.
Richard Robert Ernst was a Swiss physical chemist and Nobel laureate.
Soft matter or soft condensed matter is a subfield of condensed matter comprising a variety of physical systems that are deformed or structurally altered by thermal or mechanical stress of the magnitude of thermal fluctuations. These materials share an important common feature in that predominant physical behaviors occur at an energy scale comparable with room temperature thermal energy, and that entropy is considered the dominant factor. At these temperatures, quantum aspects are generally unimportant. Soft materials include liquids, colloids, polymers, foams, gels, granular materials, liquid crystals, flesh, and a number of biomaterials. When soft materials interact favorably with surfaces, they become squashed without an external compressive force. Pierre-Gilles de Gennes, who has been called the "founding father of soft matter," received the Nobel Prize in Physics in 1991 for discovering that methods developed for studying order phenomena in simple systems can be generalized to the more complex cases found in soft matter, in particular, to the behaviors of liquid crystals and polymers.
Liquid crystal polymers (LCPs) are polymers with the property of liquid crystal, usually containing aromatic rings as mesogens. Despite uncrosslinked LCPs, polymeric materials like liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) and liquid crystal networks (LCNs) can exhibit liquid crystallinity as well. They are both crosslinked LCPs but have different cross link density. They are widely used in the digital display market. In addition, LCPs have unique properties like thermal actuation, anisotropic swelling, and soft elasticity. Therefore, they can be good actuators and sensors. One of the most famous and classical applications for LCPs is Kevlar, a strong but light fiber with wide applications, notably bulletproof vests.
Lyotropic liquid crystals result when fat-loving and water-loving chemical compounds known as amphiphiles dissolve into a solution that behaves both like a liquid and a solid crystal. This liquid crystalline mesophase includes everyday mixtures like soap and water.
Theo Wallimann is a Swiss biologist who was research group leader and Adjunct-Professor at the Institute of Cell Biology ETH Zurich and later at the Institute of Molecular Health Science https://mhs.biol.ethz.ch/about-us/emeriti-formermembers/wallimann.html at the ETH Zurich at the Biology Department https://biol.ethz.ch/en/, of the ETH Zurich, Switzerland.
Dame Athene Margaret Donald is a British physicist. She is Professor Emerita of Experimental Physics at the University of Cambridge, and Master of Churchill College, Cambridge.
Nenad Ban is a biochemist born in Zagreb, Croatia who currently works at the ETH Zurich, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, as a professor of Structural Molecular Biology. He is a pioneer in studying gene expression mechanisms and the participating protein synthesis machinery.
Thomas Maurice Rice, known professionally as Maurice Rice, is an Irish theoretical physicist specializing in condensed matter physics.
Natalie Stingelin, Fellow of the Materials Research Society and Royal Society of Chemistry, is a materials scientist and current chair of the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, the University of Bordeaux and Imperial College. She led the European Commission Marie Curie INFORM network and is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Materials Chemistry C and Materials Advances.
Dr. Jean-Christophe Leroux is a French-Canadian full professor of Drug Formulation and Delivery at the Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology ETH Zürich. His research is mainly focused on broadening the field of drug delivery, and the development of biodetoxification systems for the treatment of metabolite disorders. Additionally, he has made important contributions to the field of biomaterials for use in drug delivery.
Aline Fiona Miller is a Professor of Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Manchester. She specialises in the characterisation of polymer, biopolymer and peptides, using neutron and x-ray scattering, as well as the development of functionalised nanostructures for regenerative medicine and toxicology testing.
Lia Addadi is a professor of structural biology at the Weizmann Institute of Science. She works on crystallisation in biology, including biomineralization, interactions with cells and crystallisation in cell membranes. She was elected a member of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) in 2017 for “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research”, and the American Philosophical Society (2020).
Maksym V. Kovalenko is a full professor of inorganic chemistry and the head of the Functional Inorganic Materials group at ETH Zurich. A part of the research activities of the group are conducted at Empa (Dübendorf). He is working in the fields of solid-state chemistry, quantum dots and other nanomaterials, surface chemistry, self-assembly, optical spectroscopy, optoelectronics and energy storage.
Ulrike Lohmann is a climate researcher and professor for atmospheric physics at the ETH Zurich. She is known for her research on aerosol particles in clouds.
Collin Yvès Ewald is a Swiss scientist investigating the molecular mechanisms of healthy aging. He is a molecular biologist and a professor at ETH Zurich, where he leads the Laboratory of Extracellular Matrix Regeneration. His research focuses on the remodeling of the extracellular matrix during aging and upon longevity interventions.
Hans-Beat Bürgi is a Swiss chemist and crystallographer. He was a professor for crystallography at the University of Bern from 1979 to 2007.
Christoph Weder is the former director of the Adolphe Merkle Institute (AMI) at the University of Fribourg, Switzerland, and a professor of polymer chemistry and materials. He is best known for his work on stimuli-responsive polymers, polymeric materials that change one or more of their properties when exposed to external cues. His research is focused on the development, investigation, and application of functional materials, in particular stimuli-responsive and bio-inspired polymers.
Vanessa Claire Wood is an American engineer who is a professor at the ETH Zurich. She holds a chair in Materials and Device Engineering and serves as Vice President of Knowledge Transfer and Corporate Relations.
Paola Picotti is an Italian biologist who is Professor for Molecular Systems Biology at ETH Zürich. She is Deputy Head of the Institute for Molecular Systems Biology. Her research investigates how the conformational changes of proteins impact cellular networks. She was awarded the 2020 ETH Zürich Rössler Prize and the 2019 EMBO Gold Medal.
Athina Anastasaki is a Greek chemist who is a professor at ETH Zurich. Her research considers chemical synthesis and radical polymerisation. She was awarded the 2022 Ruzicka Prize in recognition of her research in chemistry.
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