Lucia Gemma Delogu is head of the Immune-Nano Lab at the University of Padua, Italy, and an Associate Professor at Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, UAE. She acquired her experience in Material Science, Immunology, and Nanobiotechnology at the University of Southern California (Los Angeles, USA) and the Sanford-Burnham Institute (San Diego, USA) as a postdoctoral fellow. She served the University of Sassari, Italy, as an Assistant Professor and was recruited in 2019 and promoted to Associate Professor at the University of Padua, Italy. Moreover, she has been a visiting Professor at Technische Universität Dresden (TUD; Dresden, Germany) and New York University Abu Dhabi (UAE). Prof. Delogu has been the Scientific Coordinator of several interdisciplinary European projects funded by the European Commission involving over 20 partners in Europe, the USA, and the Middle East in Academia and Industry. Prof. Delogu obtained over 6M euros in sponsored research activities; she has received several awards, including the “Marie S. Curie Individual Fellow,” the “200 Young Best Talents of Italy 2011” from the Italian Ministry of Youth, and the “Bedside to Bench & Back Award” from the National Institutes of Health, USA. She introduced the “NanoImmunity-by-design” concept and pioneered the use of high-dimensional single-cell approaches, including the use of single-cell mass cytometry in the context of 2D materials and air pollutants. Her works appeared in major journals, including Nature Nanotechnology, Advanced Materials, Nature Communications, Nano Today, and ACS Nano. Cumulatively, her studies contribute to immunology, biomedicine, and material science

Sir Andre Geim is Regius Professor at the University of Manchester. He was awarded the 2010 Nobel Prize for his groundbreaking work on graphene. He has also received numerous international awards and distinctions, including medals from the Royal Society and the US National Academy of Sciences, and holds honorary doctorates and professorships from many countries and universities. Thomson-Reuters repeatedly named him among the world’s most active scientists and attributed to him three new research fronts – diamagnetic levitation, gecko tape and graphene. More than thirty of his papers have been cited >1,000 times with six of them >10,000 times. He was awarded the 2000 Ig Nobel prize for his work on levitation, becoming the first and only recipient of both Nobel and Ig Nobel Prizes.

Ian holds the Royal Academy of Engineering/Morgan Advanced Materials Chair in Carbon Materials at the University of Manchester. His group sits across the Department of Materials, National Graphene Institute and Henry Royce Institute. His research covers the production, processing and use of nanomaterials with a focus on the energy transition (power materials and energy storage) and composite applications. He has previously held R.A.Eng/EPSRC Research and EPSRC Challenging Engineering Fellowships

Prof. Kin Liao was trained in engineering science and mechanics and earned his Ph.D. degree from Virginia Tech (USA). He had spent two years at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and Northwestern University as a visiting scientist before joining Nanyang Technological University (NTU) in Singapore and served there for 13 years. He was one of the founding faculty of NTU’s Bioengineering Division and had served as Director for NTU’s BioInformatics Research Center from 2004-2006. Since 2011, he joined Khalifa University’s Department of Aerospace Engineering/Mechanical engineering. During his tenure at KU, he had served as Interim Chair for both the Mechanical Engineering Department and the Aerospace Engineering Department. Prof. Liao’s research include advanced materials for aerospace, senor, and energy applications; nano-materials and nano-mechanics; cell mechanics, as well as durability of composite materials. Prof. Liao's current research interests are in 2D heterogeneous materials and novel multi-phased composites for aerospace applications. Prof. Liao has authored and coauthored more than 170 technical papers in leading international journals

Arben Merkoçi is currently ICREA Professor and director of the Nanobioelectronics & Biosensors Group at Institut Català de Nanociencia i Nanotecnologia (ICN2), a BIST centre situated at Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB) campus (Bellaterra, Barcelona). After his PhD (1991) at Tirana University, in the topic of Ion-Selective-Electrodes (ISEs) designs and applications in clinical and environmental analysis, Dr. Merkoçi worked as postdoc at other European research centres and USA in the field of nanobiosensors and lab-on-a-chip technologies. His postdoc periods were followed by leading positions in several laboratories: (1997-2006) at Autonomous University of Barcelona and since 2006 in ICN2.

Rahul R. Nair is a Carlsberg/Royal Academy of Engineering Research Chair and Professor of Materials Physics at the National Graphene Institute (NGI), and the Department of Chemical Engineering at the University of Manchester. His current research focuses on molecular transport through sub-nanometer two-dimensional (2D) capillaries and developing 2D materials-based membranes for sustainable separation technologies. He has published over 60 highly cited peer-reviewed research articles, including several in Science, Nature, and more than a dozen in the Nature series publications during the last twelve years. He has also received several prestigious awards, such as the Moseley Medal and Prize, ERC grant, the Philip Leverhulme Prize, Prince Sultan Bin Abdulaziz International Prize for Water, etc., for his innovative and groundbreaking research. He also has research partnerships with leading industries such as Carlsberg, the US Army, AstraZeneca, ICON Life Saver, etc.

Prasad Potluri is a Professor of Robotics and Textile Composites, Director of Northwest Composites Centre, and Academic Theme Lead for the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre at the University of Manchester. He has been a High Value Manufacturing CATAPULT Fellow at the National Composites Centre (Bristol) and AMRC (Sheffield). Following a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering, he worked as a Design Engineer at Suzuki Motor (1984-90). He then pursued a PhD in Applied Robotics at UMIST. Professor Potluri has extensive industrial collaborations and has received funding of over £18 million and part of consortium grants worth £50million. He has been Manchester PI for the EPSRC Future Composites Manufacturing HUB and the EPSRC Textiles Circularity Centre. In addition, he was Manchester PI for a number of Innovate UK ATI, InnovateUK KTP and EPSRC IAA grants. His research focus has been 3D fibre architectures for advanced composites, Graphene enhanced composites, sustainable fibrous materials. He is a Senior Life-time member of AIAA and its Materials Technical Committee.

Prof. Stephan Roche is a theoretician with more than 25 years’ experience in the study of transport theory in low-dimensional systems, including graphene, carbon nanotubes, semiconducting nanowires, organic materials and topological insulators. He has published more than 250 papers in journals such as Nature, Review of Modern Physics, Nature Physics, Nano Letters and Physical Review Letters and he is the co-author of the book titled “Introduction to Graphene-Based Nanomaterials: From Electronic Structure to Quantum Transport” (Cambridge University Press, 2020-second edition). He received the qualification to supervise PhD students from the Université Joseph Fourier (Grenoble, France) in 2004, and since then he has supervised more than ten PhD students and about 25 postdoctoral researchers in France, Germany and Spain. In 2009 Prof. Roche was awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award by the Alexander Von-Humboldt Foundation (Germany) and, since 2011, he has been actively involved in the European Graphene Flagship project as deputy leader of the Spintronics Work Package (WP). He is serving as leader of this WP since April 2020 and will continue until March 2023. He is also Division Leader of the Graphene Flagship.

Associate Professor Dr. Burcu Saner Okan earned her Bachelor of Science degree in Chemistry from Middle East Technical University, Turkey, in 2005. She then went on to complete her Master's degree in 2007 and her Ph.D. in 2011 in the Materials Science and Engineering program at Sabancı University. Since March 2022, Dr. Saner Okan has held the position of academic director at the Sabancı University Composite Research Center. She is also a research faculty member in the Departments of Materials Science and Nanoengineering, as well as Manufacturing Technologies, at Sabancı University. In addition, Dr. Saner Okan is co-founder of NANOGRAFEN Nano Technological Products Company and she is among the first entrepreneurs to successfully complete the TUBITAK 1512 program. Dr. Saner Okan develops cost-effective and lightweight automotive composites parts reinforced by waste tire-derived Graphene NanoPlatelet with part producers and leading OEM partners. Additionally, she is involved in sustainable advanced materials research, creating compound solutions using recycled and natural sources for thermoplastic processing. As a co-founder of Euronova Next-Generation Sustainable Plastic Materials Company, she contributes to producing sustainable compounds with recycled additives for various plastic applications. Throughout her career, Dr. Saner Okan has secured funding totaling $5.0 million for national and international projects at Sabancı University. Her areas of expertise include graphene, polymer nanocomposites, compounding, surface chemistry, electrospinning, recycling, upcycling, and circular economy practices. She has more than 50 articles published in international journals, 8 book chapters, 2 patents and presented over 50 conference papers in these fields.

Prof. Rehan Umer is a full professor in the Aerospace Engineering Department at Khalifa University of Science and Technology (KUST), Abu Dhabi, UAE. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Center for Advanced Composite Materials (CACM), The University of Auckland, New Zealand in 2008. He then worked as Research Engineer at the newly established Airbus helicopter site in Brisbane, Australia. He then moved to the USA and worked as a Post Doc. Research Fellow at the Composite Vehicle Research Center (CVRC), Michigan State University, USA on polymer composites processing for vehicle applications. In 2012, he started his academic career as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Aerospace Engineering, KUST, Abu Dhabi, UAE. He is the co-founder of the Aerospace Engineering department and the Advanced Research and Innovation Center (ARIC) at KUST. Prof. Umer has also been the acting chair of the department in 2021. Prof. Umer’s research has been focused on advanced composites manufacturing covering both experimental and modelling studies. Dr. Umer has worked very closely with several academic institutes, research centers and industries around the globe. Prof. Umer has four US patents, authored and co-authored books, book chapters, research papers in refereed journals, and presented at a number of international conferences. Prof. Umer’s research interest is in composites manufacturing including, thermoset and thermoplastic composites, smart manufacturing, graphene and 2D materials, liquid composites molding, automated fiber placement, pultrusion, process modelling and simulations, multifunctional nano-composites, 3D printing and additive manufacturing, lightweight lattice and sandwich structures.

Dr. Lourdes F. Vega is a Full Professor in Chemical Engineering, Director and Founder of the Research and Innovation Center on CO2 and Hydrogen (RICH Center) and Theme Lead on Energy and Hydrogen at the Research and Innovation Center for Graphene and 2D materials (RIC2D) at Khalifa University in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates. She has developed her career between academia and industry, with positions in the USA, Spain, and the UAE. An expert on computational modeling and energy, she is internationally recognized for moving fundamental science to the applied world in the areas of clean energy and sustainable products, focused on Hydrogen and its derivatives, CO2 capture and utilization, sustainable fuels, and sustainable cooling systems. The impact of her work has been recognized through several prestigious awards, including, among others, the V60 recognition as one of the 60 impactful Women in the Middle East driving sustainability, and one of the TOP100 Women Leaders in Spain (TOP 10 exterior), both in 2024, the 2020 Mohammed Bin Rashid Medal of Scientific Distinguishment for her contributions in clean energy and sustainable products, and the 2013 Award in Physics, Innovation and Technology by the BBVA Foundation and Spanish Royal Society of Physics. She is a Fellow of the American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE), an Academician of the Royal Academy of Science of Spain, the Mohammed Bin Rashid Academy of Scientists in the UAE, and the Academy of Sciences of Granada. Prof. Vega is a member of the Emirates Scientist Council, the Mission Innovation on Clean Hydrogen (representing the UAE), she also serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of several other international institutions and the Board of Directors (non-executive Director) of two companies.