Robert W. Boyd

Robert W. Boyd received the B.S. degree in physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Ph.D. degree in physics in 1977 from the University of California at Berkeley. His Ph.D. thesis was supervised by Charles Townes and involved the use of nonlinear optical techniques in infrared detection for astronomy. Professor Boyd joined the faculty of the Institute of Optics of the University of Rochester in 1977 and in July 2001 he became the M. Parker Givens Professor of Optics. In 2010, he became Professor of Physics and Canada Excellence Research Chair in Quantum Nonlinear Optics at the University of Ottawa. His research interests include studies of nonlinear optical interactions, studies of the nonlinear optical properties of materials, the development of photonic devices including photonic biosensors, and studies of the quantum statistical properties of nonlinear optical interactions. Professor Boyd has written two books, co-edited two anthologies, published over 200 research papers, and has been awarded five patents. He is a fellow of the Optical Society of America and of the American Physical Society and is the past chair of the Division of Laser Science of the American Physical Society.

Nader Engheta

Nader Engheta is the H. Nedwill Ramsey Professor at the University of Pennsylvaniain Philadelphia with affiliations in the Departments of Electrical and Systems Engineering, Physics and Astronomy, Bioengineering, and Materials Science and Engineering. He received his BS degree from the University of Tehran, and his MS and Ph.D. degrees from Caltech. His current research activities span a broad range of areas including optics, metamaterials, electrodynamics, microwaves, photonics, nano-optics, graphene photonics, imaging and sensing inspired by eyes of animal species, microwave and optical antennas, and physics and engineering of fields and waves. He has received several awards for his research including the 2023 Benjamin Franklin Medal in Electrical Engineering, Election to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2023), Caltech Distinguished Alumni Award (2023), the 2020 Isaac Newton Medal and Prize from the Institute of Physics (UK), the 2020 Max Born Award from the OPTICA (formerly Optical Society), the 2019 Ellis Island Medal of Honor, the 2018 IEEE Pioneer Award in Nanotechnology, the 2022 Hermann Anton Haus Lecture at MIT, the 2015 SPIE Gold Medal, the 2014 Balthasar van der Pol Gold Medal from the International Union of Radio Science (URSI), the 2017 William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, the Canadian Academy of Engineeringas an International Fellow the Fellow of US National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the IEEE Electromagnetics Award, the Vannevar Bush Faculty Fellowship Awardfrom DoD, the Wheatstone Lecture in King’s College London, 2006 Scientific American Magazine 50 Leaders in Science and Technology, and the Guggenheim Fellowship. He is a Fellow of nine international scientificand technical organizations, i.e., IEEE, OPTICA, APS, MRS, SPIE, URSI, AAAS, IOP and NAI. He has received the honorary doctoral degrees from the Aalto University in Finland in 2016, the University of Stuttgart, Germany in 2016, and Ukraine’s National Technical University Kharkov Polytechnic Institute in 2017.

Ortwin Hess

Ortwin Hess currently holds the Chair Professorship of Quantum Nanophotonics and an SFI Research Professorship in the School of Physics and the CRANN Institute of Trinity College Dublin, The University of Dublin, Ireland. He is Editor-in-Chief of the gold open-access journal APL Quantum. Ortwin is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (FInstP), a Fellow of Optica (formerly OSA) and a Professorial Fellow of Trinity College Dublin. Previously, Ortwin held the Leverhulme Chair in Metamaterials in the Blackett Laboratory at Imperial College London, UK. From 2003 to 2010 he was a full professor at the University of Surrey (Guildford, UK) and visiting professor at Stanford University, USA, and at the Ludwig-Maximilians University of Munich, Germany. Ortwin obtained the Dr.-rer-nat. (PhD) degree from the Technical University of Berlin, Germany in 1993 and the Habilitation (Dr.-habil.) at the University of Stuttgart, Germany in 1997. Ortwin’s research interests bridge quantum nanophotonics with semiconductor and metamaterials physics, laser science and bio-medical photonics. He discovered the ‘trapped-rainbow’ principle, had the idea of stopped-light lasing and made defining contributions to the fields of spatio-temporal dynamics of semiconductor lasers, ultraslow light in metamaterials, complex quantum dot photonics and photonic crystals and strong coupling in nanoplasmonics. Ortwin pioneered active nanoplasmonics and optical metamaterials with quantum gain for which he has been awarded the Royal Society Rumford Medal.

Stefanie Kroker

Stefanie Kroker studied Physics at Friedrich Schiller University in Jena/Germany and Universidad de Granada/Spain. She did her PhD with the Institute of applied Physics at Friedrich Schiller University in 2014 and became assistant professor at TU Braunschweig and the German national metrology institute, PTB in 2016. In 2020 Stefanie Kroker received the Science Award Lower Saxony and in 2021 she was appointed to a full professorship at TU Braunschweig. She is a member of the German clusters of excellence QuantumFrontiers and PhoenixD. Since 2023 she is associate editor of the journal APL Quantum. Stefanie’s research covers nanophotonic and integrated optical systems for applications in sensing, high-precision metrology and quantum technologies. In 2024 she received a Consolidator Grant from the European Research Council.

Gloria Platero Coello

Gloria Platero Coello Gloria Platero is Research Professor at the Materials Science Institute of Madrid, at the CSIC (Spanish Research Council), which is located at the excellence Campus CSIC-UAM (Autonomous University of Madrid). She leads the group at ICMM: “New Platforms and Nanodevices for Quantum Simulation and Quantum Computation” https://wp.icmm.csic.es/npqsic/ and belongs to the University Institute Gregorio Millán on Nanoscience and Industrial Mathematics (Carlos III University of Madrid). She has given over hundred invited, keynote or plenary talks in international conferences and she has been invited to give seminars and to make stays in many research centers all over the world. She has been Mercator Fellow at the University of Regensburg. Supervisor of many PhD students, most of them are working successfully in Academia. She is Fellow or the APS (Quantum Information), and Secretary of the C8 IUPAP Commission on Semiconductor Physics. She will be Chair on January 2025. Her research belongs to the field of Quantum Nanotechnologies. She investigates the theory of spin qubits in quantum dot arrays, their manipulation and the transfer of quantum information in these systems, for quantum computation purposes. She also investigates hybrid systems: superconducting cavities coupled to qubits, where photons are the flying qubits. Time periodic driven systems is one of her main topics of research. She investigates as well, in different platforms as photonic crystals, the role of topological edge states for the transfer of quantum information.

Eli Yablonovitch

UC Berkeley, USA

Eli Yablonovitch is a Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences at UC Berkeley, where he holds the James & Katherine Lau Chair in Engineering. He is the Director of the NSF Center for Energy Efficient Electronics Science (E3S), a multi-University Center headquartered at Berkeley.

Prof. Yablonovitch introduced the idea that strained semiconductor lasers could have superior performance due to reduced valence band (hole) effective mass. With almost every human interaction with the internet, optical telecommunication occurs by strained semiconductor lasers. He is regarded as a Father of the Photonic BandGap concept, and he coined the term "Photonic Crystal". The geometrical structure of the first experimentally realized Photonic bandgap, is sometimes called “Yablonovite”. In his photovoltaic research, Yablonovitch introduced the 4(n squared) (“Yablonovitch Limit”) light-trapping factor that is in worldwide use, for almost all commercial solar panels. His mantra that "a great solar cell also needs to be a great LED”, is the basis of the world record solar cells: single-junction 29.1% efficiency; dual-junction 31.5%; quadruple-junction 38.8% efficiency; all at 1 sun. His startup company Ethertronics Inc., has shipped over 2 billion cellphone antennas.

Prof. Yablonovitch is elected as a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, the National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and is a Foreign Member of the Royal Society of London. He has been awarded the Buckley Prize of the American Physical Society, the Isaac Newton Medal of the UK Institute of Physics, the Rank Prize (UK), the Harvey Prize (Israel), the IEEE Photonics Award, the IET Mountbatten Medal (UK), the Julius Springer Prize (Germany), the R.W. Wood Prize, the W. Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, and the Adolf Lomb Medal. He also has an honorary Ph.D. from the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, & the Hong Kong Univ. of Science & Technology, and is honorary Professor at Nanjing University.

Andrea Alù

City University of New York, USA

Andrea Alù is a Distinguished Professor at the City University of New York (CUNY), the Founding Director of the Photonics Initiative at the CUNY Advanced Science Research Center, and the Einstein Professor of Physics at the CUNY Graduate Center. He received his Laurea (2001) and PhD (2007) from the University of Roma Tre, Italy, and, after a postdoc at the University of Pennsylvania, he joined the faculty of the University of Texas at Austin in 2009, where he was the Temple Foundation Endowed Professor until Jan. 2018. Dr. Alù is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE), the Materials Research Society (MRS), Optica, the International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE) and the American Physical Society (APS). He is the President of Metamorphose, a Highly Cited Researcher since 2017, a Simons Investigator in Physics, the director of the Simons Collaboration on Extreme Wave Phenomena Based on Symmetries, and the Editor in Chief of Optical Materials Express. He has received several scientific awards, including the NSF Alan T. Waterman award, the Blavatnik National Award for Physical Sciences and Engineering, the IEEE Kiyo Tomiyasu Award, the ICO Prize in Optics, the OSA Adolph Lomb Medal, and the URSI Issac Koga Gold Medal.

Harry Atwater

Harry Atwater is the Otis Booth Leadership Chair of the Division of Engineering and Applied Science, and the Howard Hughes Professor of Applied Physics and Materials Science at the California Institute of Technology. Atwater’s scientific effort focuses on nanophotonic light-matter interactions. His work spans fundamental nanophotonic phenomena and applications, including active wavefront shaping of light using metasurfaces, optical propulsion of lightsails, quantum and 2D nanophotonics as well as solar energy conversion, on earth and in space.

Atwater was an early pioneer in nanophotonics and plasmonics and gave a name to the field of plasmonics in 2001. He is Chair of the LightSail Committee for the Breakthrough Starshot program. Currently Atwater is also the Director for the Liquid Sunlight Alliance (LiSA), a Department of Energy Hub program for solar fuels, and was also the founding Editor in Chief of the journal ACS Photonics. Atwater is a Member of the US National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of APS, MRS, SPIE and Optica, a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher from 2014-2023, and is recipient of numerous awards, including the 2021 von Hippel Award of the Materials Research Society.

Renaud Bachelot

Université de Technologie of Troyes (UTT), France &
Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore

Renaud Bachelot is a full professor of physics at the University of Technology of Troyes (UTT) that he joined in 1996 after graduate studies and PhD at the University of Paris-Cité and ESPCI graduate school (Paris, University PSL). His area of expertise includes nano-optics, nanophotonics, near-field optics, local light/polymer interaction, scanning probe microscopy, nano-optoelectronics and hybrid nanoplasmonics. He recently joined the CINTRA Lab (CNRS/NTU/CINTRA) as an Adjunct Senior Research Scientist. At UTT, R. Bachelot is the director of the Graduate School “Nanooptics & Nanophotonics” (nano-phot.utt.fr) including both master and PhD programs. From 2011 to 2019, RB has been the director of the Light, nanomaterials nanotechnologies CNRS Laboratory involving more than 100 people (l2n.utt.fr). His national and international influence includes current and past activities and positions such as (e.g.) adjunct professor at the LuMin Laboratory (University of Paris-Saclay), Board Member of the Faculty of Physics of Sorbonne University, elected board member of the French Society of Physics, condensed matter section division, adjunct-professor of the Shanghai University (since 2019, “1000-talents” award since 2020), invited scholar in Argonne National Laboratory, USA, and chair of the NFO-15 international conference that took place in August 2018 in Troyes, France. RB has (co)supervised 24 PhD students and is the co-author of more than 130 peer-reviewed articles (H=46, cf. google scholar), 10 book chapters and 5 patents.

Guillaume Baffou

Institut Fresnel - CNRS, France

Guillaume Baffou is a CNRS researcher at the Institut Fresnel in Marseille, France. He graduated from the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan (now ENS Paris-Saclay) and earned his Ph.D. in Nanoscience from Paris XI University in 2007. Following his doctorate, he undertook a postdoctoral fellowship at ICFO, Barcelona, where he worked on plasmonics and related photothermal effects under the supervision of Prof. Romain Quidant. In 2010, he joined the CNRS and the Institut Fresnel. His contributions to research at the intersection of optics, thermodynamics, and small-scale biology have earned him several honors, including the CNRS Bronze Medal in 2015. In 2018, he was awarded an ERC Consolidator Grant. Most recently, during the 2023–2024 academic year, he spent a year at Columbia University in New York on a Fulbright grant, collaborating with Prof. Rafael Yuste's team.

Konstantin Bliokh

Konstantin Bliokh received the MSc and PhD degrees in physics from the Kharkov National University (Ukraine) in 1998 and 2001, respectively. After that, he worked as a research scientist at the Institute of Radio Astronomy (Ukraine, 2001–2009). He was a post-doctoral fellow at Bar-Ilan University (Israel, 2003–2005), a visiting research scientist at Technion–Israel Institute of Technology (Israel, 2007), a Linkage International research fellow at the Australian National University (Australia, 2008–2009), a Marie Curie research fellow at the National University of Ireland (Ireland, 2009–2011), an associate professor at the Australian National University (Australia, 2015–2019), and a senior research scientist at RIKEN (Japan, 2011–2024). Starting from 2024, he is an Ikerbasque Professor at the Donostia International Physics Center (Spain). His ongoing research areas include: complex wave systems, geometric phases, spin-orbit interactions, wave momentum and angular momentum, wave vortices, wave-matter interactions, etc. He has co-authored more than 130 scientific papers, reviews, and book chapters.

Alexandra Boltasseva

Purdue University, USA

Alexandra Boltasseva is a Ron and Dotty Garvin Tonjes Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with courtesy appointment in Materials Engineering at Purdue University. She received her PhD in electrical engineering at Technical University of Denmark, DTU in 2004. Boltasseva specializes in nanophotonics, quantum photonics, and optical materials. She is the 2023 recipient of the R.W. Wood Prize (Optica, formerly Optical Society of America), 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, 2018 Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists Finalist and received the 2013 Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Photonics Society Young Investigator Award, 2013 Materials Research Society (MRS) Outstanding Young Investigator Award, the 2011 MIT Technology Review Top Young Innovator (TR35), the 2009 Young Researcher Award in Advanced Optical Technologies from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and the Young Elite-Researcher Award from the Danish Council for Independent Research (2008). She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), MRS, IEEE, Optica, and SPIE. She served on MRS Board of Directors and is former Editor-in-Chief for Optical Materials Express journal.

Karin Everschor-Sitte

University of Duisburg-Essen, Germany

Karin Everschor-Sitte is a professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Duisburg-Essen in Germany. Her main scientific research fields are the complex fundamental physics of topological magnetic textures and spintronics-based unconventional computing. After completing her PhD at the University of Cologne in 2012, Karin Everschor-Sitte worked as a postdoc at the Technical University Munich and then received a DAAD postdoctoral fellowship to conduct research at the University of Texas at Austin. Followed by a period as a postdoc, she led an Emmy Noether group at the Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz, from 2016 to 2021. In 2018, she received the Hertha-Sponer-Prize, and in 2024, she was honored as the Wohlfarth Lecturer.

Vivian Ferry

University of Minnesota, USA

Vivian Ferry is an Associate Professor in the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science at the University of Minnesota. Prior to joining Minnesota, she was a Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory working with Prof. A. Paul Alivisatos , and she received her PhD in Chemistry from the California Institute of Technology working with Prof. Harry A. Atwater. Her work in nano-optics and optical materials has resulted in more than 50 journal publications. Her research includes fundamentals of optical materials and applications, including chiral materials, phase-change materials, luminescent materials and composites, large-area fabrication of nanostructures, and applications to energy, sensing, and optoelectronic devices. She is the recipient of an NSF CAREER award, an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, the Marion Milligan Mason Award for Women in the Chemical Sciences, the SPIE Early Career Achievement Award, and was named as one of Technology Review’s 35 Innovators under 35.

Andrea Fratalocchi

Andrea Fratalocchi is a Full Professor in the Computer, Electrical, and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering Division at KAUST University. He joined KAUST in January 2011 as Assistant Professor and was promoted to Associate Professor in July 2016. Before joining KAUST, Andrea Fratalocchi was a Research Fellow at the Sapienza University of Rome under a KAUST Fellowship Award. From 2007 to 2009, Andrea Fratalocchi worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Sapienza University under a "New Talent" Award from the research center "Enrico Fermi." In 2012 he was appointed as Editor of Nature Scientific Report. In 2017, he won the Middle East GCC Enterprise Award as the best electrical engineer of the year. In 2019, he became a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IOP), a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA): "For pioneering innovations in the use of complex optical systems and the development of creative technologies in clean energy harvesting, bio-imaging, and advanced optical materials". According to the standardized citations index collected by Plos (https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.3000918).

Prof. Fratalocchi is in the top 2% of Optics worldwide. Andrea Fratalocchi authored more than 200 publications, including three books and six patents. Andrea Fratalocchi is the co-founder of Pixeltra (www.pixeltra.com), a startup company implementing a revolutionary artificial intelligent hardware and software hyperspectral technology for security, food safety, and biomedical applications.

Mark C. Hersam

Northwestern University, USA

Mark C. Hersam is the Walter P. Murphy Professor of Materials Science and Engineering, Director of the Materials Research Center, and Chair of the Materials Science and Engineering Department at Northwestern University. He also holds faculty appointments in the Departments of Chemistry, Applied Physics, Medicine, and Electrical Engineering. He earned a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) in 1996, M.Phil. in Physics from the University of Cambridge (UK) in 1997, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from UIUC in 2000. His research interests include nanoelectronic materials, additive manufacturing, scanning probe microscopy, renewable energy, sensors, neuromorphic computing, and quantum information science. Dr. Hersam has received several honors including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, TMS Robert Lansing Hardy Award, MRS Mid-Career Researcher Award, AVS Medard Welch Award, U.S. Science Envoy, MacArthur Fellowship, and eight Teacher of the Year Awards. Dr. Hersam has been repeatedly named a Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher with over 700 peer-reviewed publications that have been cited more than 78,000 times. An elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, and National Academy of Inventors with over 170 issued and pending patents, Dr. Hersam has founded two companies, NanoIntegris and Volexion, which are suppliers of nanoelectronic and battery materials, respectively. Dr. Hersam is a Fellow of MRS, ACS, ECS, AVS, APS, AAAS, SPIE, and IEEE, and also serves as an Executive Editor of ACS Nano.

Atac Imamoglu

Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich (ETHZ), Switzerland

Atac Imamoglu is a graduate of Middle East Technical University, Turkey, in electrical engineering. He got his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford. He did post-doctoral work on atomic and molecular physics at Harvard. In 1993, he joined the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of University of California, Santa Barbara. In 1999, he became a professor of electrical engineering and physics. In 2001 he moved to the University of Stuttgart in Germany. Since 2002, he has been working at ETHZ (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Switzerland, where he is heading the research group on Quantum Photonics. His group at ETHZ investigates quantum optics of solid-state zero-dimensional emitters, such as quantum dots or defects, embedded in photonic nano-structures. He received the Charles Townes Award of the Optical Society of America in 2010, Quantum Electronics Award of IEEE in 2009, the Muhammed Dahleh Award of UCSB in 2006, the Wolfgang Paul Award of the Humboldt Foundation in 2002, the TÜBİTAK prize for physics in 2001, David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in 1996, and NSF Career Award in 1995. He is a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee at the IMDEA Nanoscience Institute. He is a fellow of the American Physical Society, of the Optical Society of America and the Turkish National Academy of Sciences.

Maria Kafesaki

University of Crete & FORTH, Greece

Maria Kafesaki is Professor in the Dept. of Materials Science and Engineering of the University of Crete and Adjunct Researcher at the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) of Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH). She obtained her Ph.D. from the Physics Department of the University of Crete, Greece. She has worked as post-doctoral researcher in CSIC in Madrid, Spain, and in IESL of FORTH. Her current research is on the area of electromagnetic wave propagation in periodic and random media, with emphasis on metamaterials, where she has large theoretical and computational experience. She has more than 140 publications in refereed journals and more than 80 invited talks at international conferences/schools and Institutions. She has participated in many European projects as well as in the organization of many international conferences and schools. She is Fellow of Optica.

Alexader V. Kildishev

Purdue University, USA

Alexander V. Kildishev works on theory and numerical modeling for nanophotonics. He has had several breakthrough results on negative refractive index metamaterials, optical artificial magnetic structures, loss compensation in metamaterials, plasmonic nanolasers, optical metasurfaces, optical cloaks, and hyperlenses. His current interests also cover the AI-driven inverse design of metadevices in optics and acoustics. He has been included on the Highly Cited Researchers List for the years of 2018, 2022, and 2023 in Web of Science (WOS), which recognizes world-class researchers selected for their exceptional research performance with multiple highly cited papers that rank in the top 1% by citations in the cross-field category. Prof. Kildishev is a Fellow of Optica (OSA).

Philippe Lalanne

Institut d'Optique - CNRS, France

Philippe Lalanne currently works as a CNRS Research Scientist in Bordeaux. He is an expert in nanoscale electrodynamics. Over the course of his career, he has introduced novel modal theories, established general principles for designing high-Q microcavities, clarified the role of plasmons in the extraordinary optical transmissions, and demonstrated the first high-NA optical metalenses using high-index nanostructures during the late 1990s. Presently, his research interest focuses on the non-Hermitian interaction of light with nanoresonators and disordered optical metasurfaces. From 2018 to 2022, he held the role of Director for the GDR Ondes that gathers the French community working on electromagnetic waves. He received several distinctions, including the prestigious 2023 ERC Advanced grant. He is a fellow of IOP, SPIE and OPTICA.

Howard Lee

UC Irvine, USA

Howard Lee is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at UC Irvine. Before joining UCI in 2020, he was an Associated Professor in the Department of Physics at Baylor University and IQSE Fellow and visiting professor in the Institute for Quantum Science and Engineering (IQSE) at TexasA&M. He was a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Caltech, working with Prof. Harry Atwater in active plasmonics/metasurfaces. He received his PhD in Physics from the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Light in Germany in 2012 under the supervision of Prof. Philip Russell. His work on nano-optics, plasmonics/metasurfaces, and fiber optics has led to 50 journal publications in various journals, such as Science, Nano Letters, Advanced Materials, as well as 100 invited talks and 180 conference papers. Dr. Lee is a recipient of a 2025 IEEE Photonics Society Distinguished Lecturer, a 2024 SPIE Fellow, a 2023 Finalist of Moore Inventor Fellow, a 2023 UCI Beall Innovation Award in Physical Sciences, a 2022 Finalist of Moore Inventor Fellow, a 2021 iCANX Young Scientist Awarcd, a 2021 Finalist of Rising Stars of Light, 2020 SPIE Rising Researcher, a 2019 DARPA Director’s Fellowship, a 2019 IEEE OGC Young Scientist Award, a 2018 NSF CAREER Award, a 2017 DARPA Young Faculty Award, a 2018 OSA Ambassador, and a 2017 APS Robert S. Hyer Award. He has strong passion in promoting optical sciences and physics to students and the general public, and in serving for the professional communities. He organized more than 25 technical sessions in nanophotonics/metasurfaces in international conferences (Optica, META, PQE, MRS, IEEE) and serves as Lead Symposium Organizer for plasmonic/metasurface symposiums at 2019-2025 MRS Fall Meeting and 2020-2025 MRS Spring Meeting (organized > 2000 presentations).

Konstantinos Makris

Konstantinos Makris is Associate Professor in the Department of Physics, of the University of Crete and Affiliated Researcher at the Institute of Electronic Structure and Laser (IESL) of Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas (FORTH). He obtained his PhD in Theoretical Photonics from the School of Optics and Photonics (CREOL-FCPE) at the University of Central Florida, Orlando (USA) in 2008. From 2008 until 2010 he was a postdoctoral researcher at Ecole Polytechnique Federale de Lausanne (EPFL), Switzerland. During 2011 he was Lecturer at Institute for Theoretical Physics of Vienna University of Technology (TU-Wien), Austria. From 2012 until 2015 he was a Marie Curie fellow between Princeton University, USA and TU-Wien, Austria. His current research interests lie on non-Hermitian physics, nonlinear optics, photonics lattices and wave propagation in complex media. He has more than 100 publications in refereed journals and more than 60 invited talks-colloquia at international conferences/schools and Institutions. In 2022 he was awarded an ERC consolidator grant related to open disorder systems. He was also elected as a 2023 Fellow of OPTICA (former OSA).

Marco Miniaci

IEMN-CNRS, France

Marco Miniaci is a permanent researcher at the French National Scientific Research Centre (CNRS) appointed at the Institute of Electronics, Microelectronics and Nanotechnology (IEMN) of Villeneuve D’Ascq, in France. His research interests cover theoretical, numerical, and experimental aspects of wave propagation and structural mechanics of phononic crystals and elastic metamaterials. Marco Miniaci currently is the principal investigator of the ERC StG « POSEIDON » (dealing with bioinspired metamaterials, topological protection and underwater acoustics), coordinator of the MAGNIFIC HORIZON-CL4-2022-RESILIENCE-01-10 (dealing with materials for a next generation of (nano-)opto-eòectro-mechanical systems), and participate into the MetAcMed HORIZON-MSCA-2022-DN-01 (dealing with acoustic and mechanical metamaterials for biomedical and energy harvesting applications).

Willie Padilla

Duke University, USA

Willie Padilla is the Dr. Paul Wang Distinguished Professor of Electrical & Computer Engineering and the Director of the Metamaterials Center with a master's degree and doctorate in physics. He received a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers. Padilla is a fellow of the IEEE, American Physical Society, Optical Society of America and Kavli Frontiers of Science. He is also a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher in physics for 2018 and 2019. He heads a group working in the area of metamaterials with a focus on machine learning, computational imaging, spectroscopy and energy, and has published more than 250 peer-reviewed journal articles.

Sir John Pendry

Imperial College London, UK

John Pendry has worked at the Blackett Laboratory, Imperial College London, since 1981. His research at Imperial College reflects his broad interests in physics but has recently concentrated on optics and electromagnetism in general. In collaboration with scientists at The Marconi Company he designed a series of ‘metamaterials’ whose properties owed more to their micro-structure than to the constituent materials. The metamaterial concept caught on and now is a major topic not only of research activity, but also of application to 5G and 6G network technology, MRI, satellite communications and much else, though popular interest has concentrated on his design for a cloak of invisibility.

Vladimir M. Shalaev

Purdue University, USA

Vladimir M. Shalaev, Scientific Director for Nanophotonics at Birck Nanotechnology Center and Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Purdue University, specializes in nanophotonics, plasmonics, optical metamaterials and quantum photonics. Prof. Shalaev has received several awards for his research, including the APS Frank Isakson Prize for Optical Effects in Solids, the Optica (formerly, Optical Society of America) Max Born Award for his pioneering contributions to the field of optical metamaterials, the Willis E. Lamb Award for Laser Science and Quantum Optics, IEEE Photonics Society William Streifer Scientific Achievement Award, Rolf Landauer medal of the ETOPIM (Electrical, Transport and Optical Properties of Inhomogeneous Media) International Association, the UNESCO Medal for the development of nanosciences and nanotechnologies, and the OSA and SPIE Goodman Book Writing Award. Prof. Shalaev is recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher in physics by the Web of Science Group for 7 consecutive years, in 2017-2023. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, APS, SPIE, MRS and Optica.

Marin Soljačić

MIT, USA

Marin Soljačić is a Professor of Physics at MIT. He is a founder of a few companies, including WiTricity Corporation (2007) and Lightelligence (2017). His main research interests are in artificial intelligence as well as electromagnetic phenomena, focusing on nanophotonics, non-linear optics, and wireless power transfer. He is a co-author of more than 300 scientific articles, more than 100 issued US patents, and he has been invited to give more than 100 invited talks at conferences and universities around the world. He is a recipient of the Adolph Lomb medal from the Optical Society of America (2005), and the TR35 award of the Technology Review magazine (2006). In 2008, he was awarded a MacArthur fellowship “genius” grant. He is an international member of the Croatian Academy of Engineering since 2009. In 2011 he became a Young Global Leader (YGL) of the World Economic Forum. In 2014, he was awarded Blavatnik National Award, as well as Invented Here! (Boston Patent Law Association). In 2017, he was awarded "The Order of the Croatian Daystar, with the image of Ruđer Bošković", the Croatian President’s top medal for Science. In 2017, the Croatian President also awarded him with "The Order of the Croatian Interlace" medal. He was a Highly Cited Researcher according to WoS for 2019, 2020, 2021, 2022 & 2023. In 2023, he was awarded Max Born award of Optica.

Clivia M. Sotomayor Torres

Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL), Portugal

Clivia M. Sotomayor Torres obtained her PhD in Physics in 1984 from the University of Manchester, UK. She held tenured academic appointments at Saint Andrews and Glasgow universities in the UK, at Wuppertal University in Germany and was a research professor at the National university of Ireland University College Cork (Tyndall National Institute). From 2007 to 2023 she was an ICREA research professor and group leader of the Phononic and Photonic Nanostructures group at the ICN2 in Spain. Clivia received awards from the Royal Society of Edinburgh, the Nuffield Foundation and an Amelia Earhart Fellowship from ZONTA International (USA). She carries out research in the science and engineering of phononic nanostructures, nanophotonics and thermal transport. In 2020 she was elected to the Academia Europaea. She is holder of an European Research Council advanced grant investigating phonon transport in topological waveguides. Since September 2023 she is the Director General of the International Iberian Nanotechnology Laboratory (INL) in Braga, Portugal, where she has set up a new research group.

Vincent Tournat

Laboratory of Acoustics - CNRS, Le Mans University, France

Vincent Tournat currently holds a Research Professor position at CNRS and conducts research in the field of nonlinear waves and acoustics at the Laboratory of Acoustics at Le Mans University in France. VT graduated with a major in solid state physics, acoustics & wave physics and defended his PhD thesis on nonlinear acoustics in granular materials in 2003. He then spent the year 2004 as a postdoc at Hokkaido University, Japan, working on laser picosecond ultrasonics, prior to starting at CNRS. During his first years at CNRS, he established two research groups on acoustics of granular media and laser ultrasonics, then participated in developing two other areas of research in his department, ultrasonic non-destructive testing, and acoustic metamaterials. For the last decade, his research focuses on nonlinear waves in flexible mechanical metamaterials. From 2007 to 2022, VT led the "Acoustics and Mechanics of Materials" research team of more than 50 people. His research achievements have been awarded prizes on several occasions, including the CNRS Bronze Medal in 2010 and the Silver Whistle early career award by the International Commission on Ultrasonics (ICU) in 2013. Until 2024, he has been the director of the Institut d’Acoustique - Graduate School (http://iags.univ-lemans.fr) created in 2017 and awarded the national label “Graduate School” (a selection of few Institutes comprising high impact research laboratories, departments, as well as recognized master, engineering and doctoral curriculae). VT has been regularly invited for research visits in Japan, Chile, Spain, USA and he is a visiting research Professor at Harvard University since September 2022. https://perso.univ-lemans.fr/~vtournat/

Seokho Yun

Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), Korea

Seokho Yun is the Vice President of Technology at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT), where he leads the Photonics Research Team, advancing research and development in meta-photonics and silicon photonics. His expertise lies in meta-photonics and silicon photonics, with a strong focus on enhancing device performance, enabling miniaturization, and pioneering innovative functionalities. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University and conducted postdoctoral research at the Materials Research Science & Engineering Center, specializing in metamaterials and plasmonics applications.

Since joining Samsung Electronics in 2012, he has played a key role in leading meta-photonics sensor projects. Under his leadership, in February 2025, his team successfully commercialized the world’s first image sensor integrating meta-photonic color-routing nanostructures. As the demand for high-speed data processing continues to accelerate in the AI era, he is spearheading the development of next-generation ultra-high-speed optical interconnect technologies based on silicon photonics. Additionally, he is driving research on the convergence of silicon photonics and meta-photonics, shaping the future of photonics innovation.

Nikolay Zheludev

University of Southampton, UK

Nikolay Zheludev 's research interest are in nanophotonics and metamaterials. He is the Deputy Director of the Optoelectronics Research Centre in Southampton University, UK. Prof. Zheludev is elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society (UK) and Member of the USA National Academy of Engineering. He is a Fellow of the European Physical Society (EPS), the Optical Society (OSA) and the Institute of Physics (London). He has been awarded the Michael Faraday Gold Medal, Thomas Young Medal and President of Singapore Science and Technology Award.