Dr. Tulay Aygan Atesin received her Ph.D. in 2007 from the University of Rochester under the supervision of Professor William D. Jones working on the mechanisms of strong bond activation reactions. She was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Wisconsin-Madison from 2007 to 2009 and at Northwestern University from 2009 to 2011. After being a lecturer at the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, she moved to The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley (formally The University of Texas-Pan American) in 2013. She completed the UTPA ADVANCE Leadership Institute in Spring 2014 and UTPA ADVANCE Administrative Fellow in the Office of Undergraduate Research and Service Learning in 2014-2015. She was a DOE Visiting Faculty at the Iowa State University and the Ames Laboratories in Summer 2016. She completed the ACS Leadership Institute in 2017 and chaired the ACS South Texas Local section in 2018. She is a recipient of a 2008 Young Investigator Award from the ACS Division of Inorganic Chemistry.
Prof. Sajid Bashir received his Ph.D. in Analytical Chemistry from the University of Warwick, England, 2001. He was a postgraduate research associate at Cornell University to conduct research in the field of plant genetics. Currently, he is a Full Professor at Texas A&M University-Kingsville (TAMUK) and a Faculty Fellow at the US Air Force. He has directed and participated in more than 20 projects supported by the Welch Foundation, TAMUK, Texas Workforce Commission, and US National Institute of Health. He has co-authored > 80 book chapters and peer-reviewed journal articles. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and Chartered Chemist & Chartered Scientists of Science Council. More recently, he has collaborated with local law enforcement as a consultant.
Jingbo (Louise) Liu received her Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from the University of Science and Technology Beijing in 2001. She is a full Professor at Texas A&M University-Kingsville (TAMUK) and focused on materials preparation, characterization, and
applications. She is the Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry and DEBI faculty fellow at the US Air Force Research Laboratory. She has authored and co-authored, books, book chapters, and peer-reviewed journal articles (>100). During her 12.5-year services in TAMUK, she taught > 8,700 students and trained about 150 students and scholars to conduct leading-edge research. She directed and/or participated in the projects (>40) supported by the NSF (US and China), NSERC (CANADA), ACS Petroleum Research Funds, and Department of Education as PI, Co-PI and senior personnel. She was recently elected as the Division Chair-Elect of Energy and Fuels, American Chemical Society.