Keynote Speakers

Prof. Boland received his BSc degree from University College Dublin and PhD from the California Institute of Technology where he was the recipient of the Newby-McKoy for graduate excellence. Prof. Boland was previously a researcher at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Centre where he received an outstanding innovation award, and then went on to become the J.J. Hermans Chair Professor of Chemistry and Applied and Materials Sciences at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is currently Professor in the School of Chemistry at Trinity College Dublin and Director of the Centre for Research on Adaptive Nanostructures and Nanodevices (CRANN). Professor Boland is a Fellow of Trinity College and the AVS.

Prof. Boland leads Irelands’ premiere Nanoscience Institute, CRANN, which is comprised of seventeen Principal Investigators (PIs) working in adjoining areas of Chemistry, Physics, Engineering, Pharmacology and Clinical Medicine, that combine to form a team of 200+ researchers from over thirty different countries. CRANN has 5000 m2 of state-of-the-art facilities, including a cleanroom for device fabrication and characterisation, a level-2 bio-hazard facility; and a metrology and ultramicroscopy facility. At present, CRANN is working closely with leading technology companies such as Intel and Hewlett-Packard. Looking forward, CRANN will grow its engagement in the IT sector and expand into the nanobio and medicine areas to exploit expertise in biosensors and the ability to develop materials platforms for therapeutics and bio-diagnostics applications.

Prof. Boland is an internationally recognized expert in the area of surface chemistry and passivation of semiconductors, particularly the interaction of hydrogen and halogens on Si(100) and the role of stress in surface chemical reactivity. Most recently, he has focused on nanoscale transport, both in terms of contact formation and connectivity in carbon nanotube networks, and the opportunity for new kinds of devices based on nanoscale confinement and transport phenomena.

Brad Nelson is the Professor of Robotics and Intelligent Systems at ETH-Zürich and is the founder of the Institute of Robotics and Intelligent Systems where he leads the Multi-Scale Robotics Lab.

His primary research direction lies in extending robotics research into emerging areas of science and engineering. His current research is in microrobotics, biomicrorobotics, and nanorobotics, including efforts in robotic micromanipulation, microassembly, MEMS (sensors and actuators), mechanical manipulation of biological cells and tissue, nanofabrication and NanoElectroMechanical Systems (NEMS).

Prof. Nelson received a B.S. (Mechanical Engineering) from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1984, an M.S. (Mechanical Engineering) from the University of Minnesota in 1987, and the Ph.D. degree in Robotics (School of Computer Science) from Carnegie Mellon University in 1995. During these years he also worked as an engineer at Honeywell and Motorola, and served as a United States Peace Corps Volunteer in Botswana, Africa. In 1995 he became Assistant Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota in 1998, and Professor at ETH in 2002.

He has been awarded a McKnight Land-Grant Professorship and is a recipient of the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award, the McKnight Presidential Fellows Award, and the Bronze Tablet. He was elected as a Robotics and Automation Society Distinguished Lecturer in 2003 has been a finalist for and/or won best paper awards at major robotics conferences and journals in 2004, 2005, 2006, 2007 and 2008. He was named to the 2005 "Scientific American 50", Scientific American magazine's annual list recognizing fifty outstanding acts of leadership in science and technology from the past year for his efforts in nanotube manufacturing. His lab won the 2007 RoboCup Nanogram Competition, the first year the event was held.

Professor Nelson serves on or has been a member of the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Robotics, the IEEE Transactions on Nanotechnology, the Journal of Micromechatronics, the Journal of Optomechatronics, and the IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine. He has chaired several international workshops and conferences, has served as the head of the Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering from 2005-2007, and is currently the Chairman of the ETH Electron Microscopy Center (EMEZ).