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Dr Jose Yacaman got his PhD from the national University of Mexico (UNAM) and has held positions at UNAM, University of Texas and currently at Northern Arizona University.  He is the Regent’s professor and chair of the Applied Physics and Materials science department. His work has been centered on structure and shape of clusters and nanoparticles where he has made important contributions particularly on Electron Microscopy and Electron diffraction. He is a fellow of the APS, MRS, AVS AAAS and MSA.

Christine M. Aikens earned her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry under the direction of Mark S. Gordon at Iowa State University in 2005 and performed postdoctoral research with George C. Schatz at Northwestern University. Prof. Aikens is currently a University Distinguished Professor at Kansas State University. She and her research group have published over 110 articles on understanding the physical and chemical properties of metal and metal oxide nanoparticles and other systems. Prof. Aikens received a NSF CAREER grant in 2010 and was awarded an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship and a Camille Dreyfus Teacher-Scholar Award in 2011.  She received the Journal of Physical Chemistry A Lectureship in 2015 and was chosen as a American Chemical Society Women Chemist’s Committee Rising Star in 2020.

Vincenzo Amendola is Professor of Physical Chemistry at Padova University, where he established and directs the Laser Assisted Synthesis and Plasmonics lab, focusing its research activity on the mechanisms behind laser processing of colloids and its application to the synthesis of unconventional and non-equilibrium nanomaterials, that are exploited for experimental and theoretical investigations in the fields of plasmonics, sensing, nanomedicine and heterogeneous catalysis. He obtained the PhD in Materials Science and Engineering in 2008 and the Italian qualification as Full Professor in 2017, after research experience at Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Cambridge University. He is part of the Program Committee of the ANGEL conference series and he is a current member of the ChemPhysChem and Nanomaterials Editorial Advisory Boards. He was honoured with the Levi prize, the Semerano prize, the Young Innovators Award, the Alceste Mion Award and the Belloni prize. His research activity has been recently acknowledged with the inclusion in the top 100k scientists of the “science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators”.

Graham Hutchings is Regius Professor of Chemistry at Cardiff University. He studied chemistry at University College London. His early career was with ICI and AECI Ltd where he became interested in gold catalysis. In 1984 he moved to academia and has held chairs at the Universities of Witwatersrand, Liverpool and Cardiff. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 2009, a Member of Academia Europaea in 2010. He was awarded the Davy Medal of the Royal Society in 2013, the ENI Award for Advanced Environmental Solutions in 2017, the RSC Faraday Lectureship and Prize in 2018 a CBE in 2018, and the Michel Boudart Award in 2021.

Prof. Mariscal has been employed at Universidad Nacional de Cordoba (Argentina) since Spring 2004 and from Nov.2008 as a Professor at the Department of Theoretical & Computational Chemistry of the School of Chemical Sciences. Previously he made his PhD at the University of Ulm, Germany. In 2009-2010 he was Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio (US). His area of research is broadly described as computer simulations of nanostructured materials, including metal clusters and nanoalloys, 2D materials and theoretical models on the basis of statistic thermodynamics. He has published more than 70 papers in high-impact journals as well as two books and two book chapters on Computer Simulations of Nanomaterials. He organized several conferences in the last years on the nanoscience field. He is the Director of the Serafin project (the largest Argentina Supercomputer). He was the Director of the Department of Mathematics and Physics, Secretary of Science & Technology, Vice-Dean and now he is the Dean of the School of Chemical Science, Universidad Nacional de Cordoba Argentina.

Rolf Schäfer is a Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Technical University of Darmstadt. His major interest is in small clusters, isolated in the gas phase but also supported on surfaces. He is focussed on the development of molecular beam and surface science techniques to study the dielectric, magnetic, optical, catalytic and structural properties of clusters in dependence of their size and chemical composition.