Thomas Heinze is Professor of Organic Chemistry at the Institute of Organic and Macromolecular Chemistry, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena. In 2010, he was awarded as Finland Distinguished Professor at Abo Academi University, Finland. He has made outstanding contributions to the research of polysaccharides including new concepts for polysaccharide chemistry, efficient solvents for cellulose shaping and homogeneous phase reactions, structure-property relationships of polysaccharide derivatives, and structure characterization of biopolymers by advanced analytical tools. For his achievements, he got various awards including the Anselme Payen Award of the American Chemical Society (2011), Dr. Edmund Thiele Denkmünze of the Zellcheming Association, Germany (2012), and the Thuringian Research Award 2014 for “Ultrasensitive immuno-assays for emergency medicine based on nanostructured polymer membranes”. In 2019 he was nominated as Corresponding member of the Slovenian Academy of Engineering, SI-1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia. Up to now, he published 530+ papers and 33 patents in the field of polysaccharide and was leading author of the books “Cellulose derivatives: Synthesis, Structure, and Properties” Springer, 2018, ISBN 978-3-319-73167-4 and “Esterification of Polysaccharides”, Springer 2006, ISBN 3-540-32103-9. At the 7th International Polysaccharide Conference in Nantes, France, Prof. Heinze was awarded with the EPNOE Science Award 2021 that recognizes outstanding life achievements in Polysaccharide Research.
Peter Miethe holds an PhD in physical Chemistry. He was visiting scientist at Forschungszentrum Jülich and Lomonosov University Moscow. Since 1992 he has been working in the in vitro diagnostic industry. His R&D focus is the development rapid test systems and immunoassay applications. Dr. P. Miethe has published more than 50 scientific publications and holds 35 patens in the EU and the US. He is co-founder of 2 diagnostic companies and is currently the CEO of Research Centre for medical technology and biotechnology (FZMB GmbH). His research and development focus are antibody based technologies. This comprises the development, the characterization, conjugation and immobilization of antibodies. He was involved in several platform developments for rapid immunoassays (magnetic read out, ABICAP micro microcolumn technology, lab ion chip) and has a comprehensive project and research grant experience.