SPEAKERS:

Dr. Graciela C. D. de Delgado, University de Los Andes, Venezuela

Dr. Matteo Leoni, University di Trento, Italy

Dr. Jennifer Mass, Winterthur Museum and Country Estate, University of Delaware, U.S.A.

Dr. Vanessa Peterson, Bragg Institute of the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organization (ANSTO), Australia

Professor Graciela Díaz de Delgado obtained her Ph.D. Degree in Chemistry in 1988, from Brandeis University, Waltham, Massachusetts, USA. She joined the Crystallography Laboratory of the Chemistry Department of Universidad de Los Andes in Mérida, Venezuela, where she has been a Professor of Chemistry for the past 21 years.

Her research interests are the study of unsaturated carboxylic acids and their metal derivatives prepared in solution at room temperature, by powder and single crystal X-ray diffraction, by hydrothermal methods, and by mechanochemical routes. Reactions of these compounds in the solid state induced by temperature and/or irradiation (UV-vis, X-rays, γ-rays) are followed by X-ray diffraction and by spectroscopic (FT-IR, NMR) and thermal methods (TGA-DTA, DSC). Additionally, her work includes the structural determination of natural products isolated from medicinal plants of the Venezuelan Andes and the study of polymorphism in active pharmaceutical ingredients.

Professor Díaz de Delgado belongs to the Editorial Board of Journal of Chemical Crystallography and to professional societies such as the American Chemical Society and the American Crystallographic Association. She is a member of the Subcommittee on the Union Calendar of the International Union of Crystallography (IUCr). At ICDD, she is a member of the Ludo Frevel Scholarship Committee and participates in several Technical Subcommittees.

Dr. Matteo Leoni received his degree in Materials Engineering from the University of Trento in 1995, followed by a Ph.D. in Materials Engineering from the University of Rome in 1999. He spent a year as post-doc at the Max Planck Institut für Metallforschung in Stuttgart, and then he returned to Trento where he holds a research position. In 2002, he was rewarded the European Powder Diffraction Conference (EPDIC) award for his contribution to powder diffraction.
His main research interests are in application of diffraction and complementary techniques for the structure and microstructure analysis of nanostructured materials, materials for energy and highly disordered systems. He is the author of the PM2K and DIFFaX+ software packages for microstructure analysis.

Currently he serves as ICDD Regional Co-chair for the European Community.

Dr. Jennifer Mass received her B.A. in Chemistry from Franklin and Marshall College in Lancaster, PA in 1990, and her Ph.D. in Inorganic Chemistry from Cornell University in 1995.  She was then awarded an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Sherman Fairchild Center for Objects Conservation at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Jennifer was an assistant professor in the Art Conservation Department at The State University of New York College at Buffalo from 1998-2001, and in the fall of 2001, she joined Winterthur’s Conservation Department and became a faculty member in the Winterthur/University of Delaware M.S. Program in Art Conservation. While at Winterthur, Jennifer has conducted research on the characterization and degradation mechanisms of artists’ materials, and on the development of a confocal X-ray fluorescence microscope for the study of paintings. 

Jennifer has published numerous articles on her research in the art conservation and materials science literature, and in the popular press including Antiques and Fine Art and The Magazine Antiques.  Jennifer’s work has been highlighted on NPR’s Science Friday and MSNBC, as well as in The Washington Post, the L.A. Times, London’s Daily Telegraph and numerous other national and international media outlets. She received awards for her confocal X-ray fluorescence research in 2005 from the Italian Society for Nondestructive Testing and in 2007 from the Materials Research Society.  Jennifer has acted as Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Institute for Conservation and as Editor of two Materials Issues in Art and Archaeology volumes. 

Dr. Vanessa Peterson obtained her PhD in 2004, from the University of Technology, Sydney, Australia, working on crystallography and quantitative phase analysis of cement components using neutron and synchrotron X-ray powder diffraction. Since then, she relocated to the National Institute of Science and Technology (NIST) center for Neutron Research to explore cement hydration using quasielastic and inelastic neutron scattering, before becoming involved in the storage of hydrogen in porous metal organic frameworks. She continued this research at the University of Sydney, studying the design, synthesis, and characterization of porous framework materials, applying single crystal and powder diffraction.

After relocating to the Bragg Institute in Menai, Australia, she helped commission the two neutron powder diffractometers, for which she is currently Instrument Scientist. Her primary interest remains structure/dynamic-property relationships in condensed matter materials, particularly for sustainable energy materials. She is currently the research leader of the “Neutrons for the Hydrogen Economy” research program at the Bragg Institute. Vanessa is also the current president of the Australian X-ray Analytical Association.