Fedor JELEZKO is currently a director of the Institute of Quantum Optics at Ulm University, director of the Centre for Integrated Quantum Science and Technology and member of Heidelberg Academy of Sciences. He studied in Minsk (Belarus) and received his Ph.D. in 1998. After finishing the habilitation in 2010 at Stuttgart University he was appointed as a professor of experimental physics in Ulm in 2011. His research interests are at the intersection of fundamental quantum science and quantum technologies. His research team is exploring applications of spin qubits in diamond for information processing, communication, sensing, and imaging.

Outside academia, he is involved in the development of quantum technologies based on spin qubits. Fedor Jelezko and his team could show that it is possible to create a hyperpolarization of nuclear spins in diamond or external molecules under ambient conditions. Such diamonds become visible in standard MRI machines and thus offer new perspectives for enhanced medical imaging. Having applied for a patent on this idea, Prof. Jelezko and his colleagues are now pursuing its exploitation by means of their start-up company NVision Imaging Technologies GmbH.

Nigel Marks is Associate Professor at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. He has 30 years experience in the atomistic simulation of carbon, with an emphasis on molecular dynamics. He developed the EDIP interatomic potential which for nearly 20 years was the benchmark for modelling carbon solids. A/Prof Marks’ computational studies span the carbon spectrum: amorphous to crystalline, graphite to diamond, and nanoforms to bulk. His simulations emphasize contact with experimental data, such as thin-film deposition of tetrahedral amorphous carbon, high-pressure transformation in glassy carbon, microstructure in nanoporous carbons, and irradiation cascades in crystalline solids. In recent years he created his own experimental program, employing ultra-high temperature furnaces to understand graphite synthesis. This led to the discovery that screw dislocations are critical in graphitization, and that graphite forms much faster than previously realised.​

M. Fernando R. Pereira is a Full Professor at the Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto (FEUP), Portugal. He obtained his PhD in 1998. Head of the Chemical Engineering Department since 2018, coordinator of the Laboratory of Catalysis and Materials (LCM) – member of the LSRE LCM and ALiCE from 2020, president of the Portuguese Carbon Group since 2021, representative of Portugal in the International Association of the Catalysis Communities (IACS) Council since 2018 and in the European Carbon Association since 2019.
His main research interests are carbon materials, heterogeneous catalysis, environment, energy, biomass conversion, functional materials and smart textiles. In these areas, he has supervised 25 PhD thesis (19 concluded) and over 100 master students; participated in 12 international and 37 national projects; published 390 scientific papers – nº of citations is 24487, and the H-index is 81 (Scopus, 4/2024) – 13 book chapters, and 6 patents pending.

Patrice Simon is Exceptional Class Professor of Material Science at the Université Toulouse III – Paul Sabatier and Fellow of the French Academy of Sciences (2019), French Academy of Technology (2018) and European Academy of Sciences (2018). His research activities focus on the fundamental understanding of electrochemical processes occurring at the material / electrolyte interfaces in electrodes for electrochemical energy storage devices (batteries and electrochemical capacitors).