Latin America Road Show- Colombia

Michael Tam obtained his B.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in Chemical Engineering from Monash University, Australia in 1982 and 1991, respectively. He spent 18 months on a postdoctoral fellowship at the Department of Chemical Engineering, McMaster University Canada, and subsequently taught at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore for 15 years. In June 2007, he joined the Department of Chemical Engineering, University of Waterloo as a tenured full professor, and holds the position of University Research Chair in the field of functional colloids and sustainable nanomaterials. He is an active member of the Waterloo Institute for Nanotechnology, Waterloo Institute, and the Institute for Polymer Research. Tam served as an Associate Editor of ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering from 2015-2023. He is on the Editorial Advisory Board of Chemical Society Reviews and a panel member of The Research Foundation – Flanders (FWO – a Belgian public research council, based in Brussels) since 2022. He has authored or co-authored over 400 peer-reviewed articles on fundamental and applied research in chemical engineering and nanotechnology, and his works have been cited over 25,000 times. He is also a co-inventor of 10 patents or disclosures.

Dr. Osorio is Chemist of Universidad Nacional de Colombia (1993), and obtained her M. Sc and Dr. Sc. in Chemistry at the same University in 1995 and 2001, respectively. She was research fellow in natural product chemistry at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan (1998) and visiting scientist in biochemistry lab at Universidad de La República, Montevideo, Uruguay (2000), during her doctorate. After her doctorate, she did a stay at Technical University of Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany (2002), and has been visiting researcher at Department of Food Science & Technology, Oregon State University, Corvallis, Oregon, USA (2005) and Technical University of Munich, Munich, Germany (2018). Dr. Osorio started her academic career at Department of Chemistry of Universidad Nacional de Colombia, Bogotá, Colombia as Associated Instructor (1997); continued as Assistant Professor (1998), Associated Professor (2006), and currently serves as Professor since 2014. She is Deputy Editor of ACS Food Science & Technology, and has been a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry since 2016.

Christina I. McCoy is the Portfolio Manager for Global Engagement at ACS. She oversees the global professional and student chapter program and works to internationalize our programs, products and services. She comes to ACS with more than a decade in international education and global relations. She holds a Ph.D. from the University of Texas at Austin.

Becky Monfort is the Program Manager for ACS on Campus, the American Chemical Society’s flagship outreach program. She oversees events and programs at institutions around the world, bringing leaders in chemistry, publishing, research, science communication, and career development to thousands of students and early career researchers. Prior to joining the ACS on Campus team, Becky managed the ACS international student chapter program, coordinated ACS outreach efforts to international students and faculty in the chemical sciences, and facilitated student programming at ACS and other scientific meetings. Becky joined ACS in July 2017 from Organic Letters, an ACS Publication, at the University of Pennsylvania, and she has worked in global program strategy and development. Becky holds a BA in French and Comparative Literature from Bryn Mawr College.

Dr. Carlos Toro earned his Bachelor’s degree in Chemistry from La Universidad del Zulia, Maracaibo, Venezuela, where he started his professional career as a computational chemist. In 2010, Carlos obtained his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Central Florida, where he used multi-photon absorption spectroscopy to study the nonlinear optical properties of chiral molecules. Afterwards, he held a position as the Ellen D. Williams Distinguished Postdoctoral Fellow in the Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the University of Maryland, where his research focused on the study of high resolution transient infrared absorption spectroscopy of molecular super rotors. In Spring 2014, Carlos joined the ACS Publications Division and is now Associate Editor, overseeing nine journal titles with responsibility over their strategic development and management.