Thomas M. Hermans (TMH) is Senior Research Professor at the IMDEA Nanociencia (Madrid, Spain) since December 2023. He received his PhD in Biomedical Engineering with Prof. E.W. Meijer (TU/e, Netherlands, 2006-2010). After a postdoc with Prof. B. Grzybowski at Northwestern University (USA, 2010-2013), he started his independent group in 2013 at the Institute of Supramolecular Chemistry and Engineering (France, 2013-2023).
Selected honors include: Prix Guy Ourrison (2018), ERC Starting grant (2018), World Economic Forum (elected "among the brightest 21 researchers world wide" 2019), IUPAC Periodic Table of Younger Chemists: elected as element "Francium" (2019), Prix Forscheurs Jean-Marie Lehn (2022), Prix Christiane Dietrich-Buchecker (2022), Institut Universitaire de France – Junior chair (2022), ERC Consolidator grant (2023), The Netherlands Scholar Award for Supramolecular Chemistry (2023), Spanish ATRAE grant (2023).
Dwight Angelo Bruzon obtained his Bachelor and Master’s degrees in chemistry, and PhD in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of the Philippines Diliman. He was part of the Surface Science and Laser Spectroscopy Laboratory under Dr. Imee Su Martinez at the Institute of Chemistry and the Sync.Bio.Optics Laboratory under Dr. Giovanni Tapang at the National Institute of Physics. His research focused on the electrochemical analysis of ionic liquids for carbon capture applications. He designed and fabricated custom electrochemical instrumentation interfaced in high-vacuum systems for in-situ measurements. He also worked on assessing the photo-reactivity of anthracene-functionalized polymers and their application in light-gated organic electronics. He was involved in instrumentation research and engineering at the National Institute of Physics, where he worked on hardware embedded systems such as modular and versatile sensor platforms for metrology, automated microfluidic devices, sensing and control systems for microfluidic diagnostics and autonomous environmental monitoring. He also served as Chief Executive Officer of the start-up company making.technology from 2023 to 2024, bringing applied hardware embedded systems to the market. He is currently a Postdoctoral Researcher at IMDEA Nanociencia in Madrid, Spain, in the Systems Chemistry Laboratory led by Prof. Thomas Hermans. His current research focuses on electrochemically-driven intelligent dynamic systems for computing applications.
Mridula holds a BS–MS dual degree in Chemical Science with a minor in Biological science from the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Thiruvananthapuram, India. Throughout her studies, she carried out research in the laboratory of Professor Kana M. Sureshan, where she worked on the design and synthesis of peptide-based monomers for topochemical polymerization via azide–alkyne cycloaddition (TAAC) reactions. Her research focused on understanding the role of molecular packing and solid-state reactivity in the synthesis of covalent polymers. In parallel, she completed a minor research project in Professor Nisha N. Kannan's laboratory, investigating light entrainment and circadian rhythms in ´Drosophila melanogaster´ populations. Since April 2025, she has been a PhD student in the research group of Professor Thomas Hermans. Her current research focuses on Catalysis, with an emphasis on establishing heterogeneous catalysis reactions in liquid-walled flow reactors.
Danlong Li obtained his B.Sc. in Mineral Processing Engineering in 2019 from China University of Mining and Technology (CUMT). He joined the Minerals Separation and Process Intensification Group led by Prof. Haijun Zhang, where he worked on the multiphase hydrodynamics and flotation intensification of fine particles. From 2019 to 2024, he pursued a Ph.D. in Mineral Processing Engineering at CUMT, focusing on bubble dynamics, thin liquid film drainage, and interfacial transport phenomena in electrolyte solutions. In 2025, he joined the Systems Chemistry Group at IMDEA Nanociencia as a postdoctoral researcher under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Hermans. His current research focuses on the flow phenomena in wall-less microfluidics, with particular emphasis on mixing, transport and flow instabilities.
Miguel Martos Nieto obtained his B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering in 2017 and his M.Sc. in Industrial Engineering in 2018 from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid. He subsequently worked for more than six years in the medical-device industry at Ingeniería y Técnicas Clínicas, where he managed the complete development cycle of new products, from mechanical design, prototyping, and testing to industrialization and regulatory compliance. His experience includes computer-aided design, additive manufacturing, supplier and production management, quality control, and the preparation of technical documentation under the European Medical Device Regulation. In December 2025, he joined the Systems Chemistry Laboratory at IMDEA Nanociencia as a specialized technician. He currently applies his engineering expertise to the design, fabrication, and optimization of experimental equipment and prototypes, with a particular focus on liquid-walled flow systems and magnetostaltic pumping technologies.
Helena Montes earned a B.S. in Chemistry (2013) and an M.S. in Organic Chemistry (2014) from Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She completed her Ph.D. at Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, focusing on the synthesis and characterization of metal–organic frameworks for gas storage under the supervision of Prof. Guillermo Calleja, and was a visiting scholar at Kyoto University's Institute for Integrated Cell-Material Sciences with Prof. Susumu Kitagawa in 2019. She then spent five years in the chemical industry as an R&D project coordinator, managing public–private technology collaboration projects. In 2025, she joined IMDEA Nanociencia as a specialized technician at the Confocal Microscopy Facility under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Hermans.
Dr. Marco Ovalle earned his bachelor's degree in nanotechnology engineering (2018) and master's degree in chemical sciences (2020) at the Technological Institute of Tijuana in the Aguirre-Somanathan research group for natural product synthesis and asymmetric catalysis. He did a predoctoral fellowship in 2020 at Northwestern University under the supervision of Sir Fraser Stoddart, where he focused on molecular machines and the photochemistry of interlocked chromophores. In the same year, he began his doctoral studies at the University of Groningen under the supervision of Ben Feringa. In this period, his research centered on molecular switches, motors, and cages. In 2025, he joined the research group of Thomas Hermans as a postdoctoral researcher at IMDEA Nanociencia. Currently, he is developing photoresponsive mesoscale materials.
Dr. Triza Pal obtained her M.Sc. in Chemistry from Banaras Hindu University, India, in 2017, and completed her Ph.D. in Chemistry at the Indian Institute of Science Education and Research (IISER) Kolkata, India, under the supervision of Dr. Debansu Chaudhuri. Her doctoral research focused on understanding the fundamental mechanisms that govern supramolecular chirality in molecular self-assembly, with a particular emphasis on pathway selection, symmetry breaking, and the design of functional supramolecular materials. In 2024, she joined the Systems Chemistry Laboratory at IMDEA Nanociencia, Spain, as a Postdoctoral Researcher under the supervision of Prof. Thomas Hermans. Her current research explores light-controlled self-assembly, photo-responsive crystal motion, and adaptive supramolecular materials with dynamic functions. In 2026, she was awarded the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA-PF), through which she continues her research at Hermans’ Lab in IMDEA Nanociencia. Dr. Pal's research interests span supramolecular chemistry, dissipative self-assembly, photo-responsive molecular systems, and the design of functional organic materials inspired by Life-like systems.
Dr. Luis Claudio Pantaleone obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Groningen in 2024. His doctoral research focused on artificial polymerization motors and on how molecular and supramolecular anisotropy can be exploited to generate directional motion and mechanical work. His work combined physical organic chemistry, supramolecular self-assembly, photochemistry, and advanced microscopy and force-spectroscopy techniques to investigate dynamic molecular materials. In March 2026, he joined the Systems Chemistry Laboratory at IMDEA Nanociencia as a postdoctoral researcher. His current research explores photoresponsive and out-of-equilibrium molecular systems, with particular emphasis on controlling energy transfer, directional motion, and emergent behaviour in supramolecular materials. IMDEA Nanociencia
Paszkál Papp obtained his Ph.D. at the University of Szeged, where he worked in the Nonlinear Dynamics and Kinetics Group. His research combines nonlinear dynamics, reaction kinetics, computational fluid dynamics, and numerical modelling to understand multiphase chemical processes arising from the coupling of transport phenomena and chemical reactions. He has developed computational tools for large-scale reaction–diffusion simulations and investigated precipitation fronts, buoyancy-driven instabilities, and flow-induced pattern formation in multiphase reactive media. He joined the group of Prof. Thomas Hermans at IMDEA Nanociencia in 2025, where he applies theoretical and computational approaches to study fluid dynamics in liquid tube flow systems and magnetostaltic pumping. In 2026, he was awarded a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship for his project FlowTune, which aims to develop a pioneering reactor based on liquid tube technology that enables precise control of residence time distributions.
Dr. Alex Blokhuis obtained his Ph.D. in Physics from ESPCI Paris in 2019, where his research focused on the physical principles underlying origins-of-life scenarios, including autocatalysis, transient compartmentalization, and the thermodynamics of chemical reaction networks. He subsequently joined the University of Groningen, working at the interface of theoretical chemistry, systems chemistry, and statistical physics. In 2023, he joined the Systems Chemistry Laboratory at IMDEA Nanociencia as a postdoctoral researcher. His current research develops theoretical frameworks for understanding complex chemical reaction networks, with particular emphasis on autocatalysis, oscillations, emergent conservation laws, and the inference of reaction mechanisms from experimental data.
Juntian Wu was born in China in 1994. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in chemistry from Lanzhou University, China, followed by a master's degree in Materials Physics and Chemistry from South China University of Technology, China. In 2019, he joined the group of Prof. Sijbren Otto at the University of Groningen, the Netherlands, to pursue his doctoral degree. His PhD research focused on implementing Darwinian evolution in synthetic self-replicators and advancing the field of systems chemistry. In April 2025, he joined the group of Prof. Thomas M. Hermans at IMDEA Nanociencia, Spain, as a postdoctoral researcher to investigate supramolecular self-assembly under microfluidic conditions. At the same time, he is carrying out a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Postdoctoral Fellowship (MSCA) project on self-healing peptide membranes and their potential application in organic redox flow batteries. His current research interests include: (1) supramolecular self-assembly and its underlying mechanisms; (2) systems chemistry and emergent properties; and (3) dynamic combinatorial chemistry and its potential applications in functional materials.
