Sara Bals was born in Antwerp (Belgium) in 1977 and studied Physics at the University of Antwerp from 1995-1999. She obtained her PhD in 2003 with greatest distinction and special honours by the jury. From 2003-2004, she did postdoctoral work at the National Center of Electron Microscopy in Berkeley, USA. The focus of her work was the development of electron tomography for materials science. After returning to UAntwerp, she became an Assistant Professor in the Physics Department. In 2018 she was promoted to Full Professor. She is currently the spokesperson of EMAT, consisting of 7 principal investigators, about 25 postdoctoral researchers and more than 30 PhD students. Moreover, she is the coordinator of the “Nanolab” Centre of Excellence at the host institution, composed of 6 research groups. Sara Bals is an expert in the application and development of electron tomography for functional nanomaterials. By combining state-of-the-art electron microscopy with advanced 3D reconstruction algorithms, the positions and chemical nature of individual atoms in a nanomaterial are measured. These measurements are now also performed under realistic conditions (heating, liquid or gas flow experiments). She was awarded an ERC Starting grant in 2012, an ERC Consolidator grant in 2018 and an ERC Proof of Concept grant in 2023. She received the award “Laureate of the Academy for Natural Sciences” by the Royal Flemish Academy in 2016, became Francqui research professor in 2017 and was elected as member of the Royal Flemish Academy of Belgium for Science and the Arts in 2020. She received the European Microscopy Award in 2020 and the ACS Nano Lectureship award in 2021. She is an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and the Academia Europaea. Since 2023 she is Associate Editor with ACS Nano.

Prof. Marc-André Fortin is the head of the Biomaterials for Imaging laboratory at the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire de Québec (CR-CHU de Québec – Université Laval in Quebec City). He is a full professor at the department of Mining, Metallurgy and Materials Engineering at U. Laval. He is and expert in the field of nanomaterials for diagnosis and imaging of cancer, including for radiosensization therapies. He is also the founder and the manager of CR-CHUN de Qc’s small-animal imaging platform (magnetic resonance imaging, positron emission tomography, and X-ray computed tomography), mainly dedicated to the study of nano(bio)materials pharmacokinetic processes in vivo for acquiring evidence toward regulatory approvals in the biomedical device and pharmaceuticals industries. Dr Fortin graduated with a Ph.D. from Institut National de la Recherche Scientifique – Énergie et Matériaux (INRS-ÉMT – Montréal, Canada), followed by a Postdoc in biomedical imaging at Uppsala and Linköping Universities (Sweden; in biomedical imaging). Dr Fortin received twice a Career Award from the Fonds de la Recherche en Santé du Québec (FRQS Junior 1 and 2; 2008 – 2016). His main research interests include the development of nano(bio)materials for imaging applications, new strategies to image the biodistribution of nanomaterials in vivo, additive manufacturing of biomedical polymers for enhanced visibility in biomedical imaging, as well as novel routes for radioactive nanoparticles synthesis. Dr. Fortin has published more than 75 scientific papers (ACS Nano, Nanoscale, Advanced Materials, Chemistry of Materials, Journal of Controlled Release…), 3 book chapters and 3 reviews in the field of nanomaterials for imaging. He holds several patents on novel nanoparticle synthesis routes by plasma technologies, including effective technology transfers in the precious metals extractive industry. Currently, he holds funding from NSERC, CIHR, CFI, FRQNT, and NRCan. He is a member of the College of Reviewers of the Canadian Institutes of Health (CIHR; Pharmaceutical Sciences panel). At U.Laval since 2007, he lectures on materials analysis, biomedical imaging, and nanotechnology for biomedical applications. He chaired the International Gold Conference 2022 (www.gold2022.org), a scientific platform uniting research in gold-based nanomaterials for high-technology applications.

Vivian W.-W. Yam obtained both her BSc (Hons) and PhD from The University of Hong Kong, and is currently the Philip Wong Wilson Wong Professor in Chemistry and Energy and Chair Professor of Chemistry at The University of Hong Kong. She was elected to Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences, International Member (Foreign Associate) of US National Academy of Sciences, Foreign Member of Academia Europaea, Fellow of TWAS and Founding Member of Hong Kong Academy of Sciences. She was Laureate of the 2011 L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science Award. She has received a number of awards, including the Josef Michl ACS Award in Photochemistry, RSC Centenary Medal, RSC Ludwig Mond Award, Porter Medal, Bailar Medal, I-APS Presidential Award, FACS Foundation Lectureship Award, APA Masuhara Lectureship Award, JPA Honda-Fujishima Lectureship Award, JPA Eikohsha Award, JSCC International Award, State Natural Science Award, CCS-China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec) Chemistry Contribution Prize, CCS Huang Yao- Zeng Organometallic Chemistry Award, etc. Her research interests include inorganic/organometallic chemistry, supramolecular chemistry and controlled assembly of nanostructures, photophysics and photochemistry, and metal-based molecular and nano- assembled functional materials for sensing, organic optoelectronics and energy research.

Also see: https://chemistry.hku.hk/wwyam/

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 Emiliano is Professor in Experimental Physics and Energy Conversion at the Faculty of Physics, University of Munich (LMU), Germany and he is the academic lead of the Nanomaterials for Energy group. He is also a visiting researcher at the Materials Departments of both Tianjin University, China and Imperial College London, UK. His research interests lie at the interface between chemistry and physics, and focus on the development of novel nanomaterials and techniques, specifically for applications in energy conversion. He had published over 120 scientific articles, 4 patents and co-edited the first book in Plasmonic Catalysis (Wiley, June 2021). He has been awarded by the European Commission several times, initially as Marie-Skłodowska-Curie research fellow at Imperial College London and later at LMU with ERC Grants for his projects CATALIGHT and SURFLIGHT. In 2021, the Royal Society of Chemistry in UK awarded him as Emerging Investigator in Materials Science. He is currently a PI of the German excellence research cluster e-conversion and coordinator of its graduate program, scientific board member in the Center for NanoScience (CeNS) in Munich, member of the Bavarian program Solar Technologies go Hybrid (SolTech), and fellow of the Young Academy of Europe (YAE). Since 2024, Emiliano has been elected as external Associate Researcher at the TUM Catalysis Research Center (CRC) in Munich.

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Professor Ki Tae Nam received his B.S. and M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering from Seoul National University, and his Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He got the “outstanding PhD thesis award” from MIT. His PhD thesis was about the “virus-based battery” (Science 2007) that has been highlighted as the first demonstration of virus based electrochemical devices. During his postdoc (2007-2010) at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, he studied peptide mimetic polymers to assemble two dimensional structures (Nature Materials 2010). Since 2010, His group at SNU continue to pioneer the research area of bioinspired material science to make new functional materials for energy and optical applications. Recently, his group is pioneering a new synthesis to make uniform chiral nanoparticles using peptides and amino acids (Nature 2017 and Nature 2022). In 2022, He received the POSCO Chung-Am Award, which is one of the most prestigious awards in Korea. 

Liane M. Rossi holds a BS degree in Chemical Engineering (UFRGS, Brazil, 1994) and a PhD degree in Chemistry (UFSC, Brazil, 2001). After postdoctoral research experience in Brazil and the USA, in 2004, she joined the Institute of Chemistry at the University of São Paulo (USP) and became a Full Professor in 2016. She currently serves as Coordinator of the CCU Program at the Research Centre for Greenhouse Gas Innovation (RCGI), sponsored by FAPESP/SHELL/USP (São Paulo, Brazil). Prof. Rossi is a permanent member of the Brazilian Academy of Science, effective since January 2021. She is an Editorial Advisory Board Member at ACS Catalysis (American Chemical Society) and Chemistry Select (ChemPubSoc and Wiley), and an International Advisory Board at Angewandte Chemie. She is a member of the Brazilian Chemical Society (SBQ), Brazilian Catalysis Society (SBCAT), and American Chemical Society (ACS). She is the author or co-author of about 150 papers published in indexed peer-reviewed scientific journals which received 7200 citations and an H=47. Prof. Rossi has been awarded the King Carl XVI Gustafs professorship in environmental science (Konung Carl XVI Gustafs professur i miljövetenskap) for 2023/24. Her research interests in the field of chemistry and catalysis include metal nanoparticle catalyst design, preparation and characterization. In the field of gold catalysis, she has studied the reactivity patterns at gold-ligands interfaces, bimetallic and hybrid catalysts for selective transformations. The main catalytic processes currently under study are selective hydrogenations and oxidations, biomass conversion into chemicals, and CO₂ capture and conversion.

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George C. Schatz is Charles E. and Emma H. Morrison Professor of Chemistry at Northwestern University.  He received his undergraduate degree in chemistry at Clarkson University and a Ph. D at Caltech.  He was a postdoc at MIT, and has been at Northwestern since 1976.   Schatz is a theoretician who studies the optical, structural and thermal properties of nanomaterials, including plasmonic nanoparticles, plasmonic metamaterials, DNA and peptide nanostructures, and transition metal dichalcogenides. He has contributed to theories of dynamical processes, including gas phase and gas/surface reactions, energy transfer processes, quantum science, transport phenomena and photochemistry. Schatz has published four books and over 1700 papers. Schatz is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.   He has received numerous awards, including the Debye,  Langmuir and Marsha Lester Awards of the ACS, and the Bourke and Boys-Rahman Award of the Royal Society of Chemistry, and the Materials Theory Award of the MRS.  He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Chemical Society and of the AAAS.

Jianfang Wang obtained his BS degree in inorganic chemistry and software design in 1993 from University of Science and Technology of China, his MS degree in inorganic chemistry in 1996 from Peking University, and his PhD degree in physical chemistry in 2002 from Harvard University. He did postdoctoral study in University of California Santa Barbara from 2002 to 2005. In 2005, he joined Department of Physics at The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) as an assistant professor. He became an associate professor in 2011 and a full professor in 2015. He was the Assistant Dean of the Faculty of Science of CUHK from August 2015 to July 2021 and has been the Chairperson of the Department of Physics of CUHK since August 2021. His current research interests are nanoplasmonics, nanophotonics, and photocatalysis.