I was born in Minsk (Belarus). I had received MS in physics from the Belorussian State University (Minsk) in 1977, PhD in theoretical physics from the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology in 1981, and the Doctor of Sciences degree (habilitation) in theoretical physics from the N. N. Bogoliubov Institute for Theoretical Physics, Ukrainian Academy of Sciences (Kiev) in 1989. Till 1991, I was a senior researcher at the Institute for Oceanology of the USSR Academy of Sciences (Moscow). Since 1991, I was an Associate Professor, and since 1998 a Full Professor at the Tel Aviv University. Since 2015, I am a holder of a personal research chair "Optical solitons" funded by the Tel Aviv University. I have published 1,200+ papers and four books. The total number of citations to my publications exceeds 59,000. My h-index is 92 (Web of Science) / 96 (Scopus)/ 108 (Google Scholar). I am an editor of four major international journals: Physics Letters A, Chaos, Solitons & Fractals, Scientific Reports, and PLOS ONE, and an Editorial Board member of Journal of Optics, Symmetry, Photonics, Optics Communications, and Chaos. I have been an advisor to 31 MS students, 14 PhD students, and 11 postdocs. I am a Senior Member of the Optical Society of America (recently renamed to Optica), and a Foreign Member of the Serbian Academy of Nonlinear Sciences. In 2025, I have received the NSC (Nonlinear Science & Complexity) Lagrange award for lifetime achievement in Nonlinear Physical Science.

Thomas J. Webster’s (H index: 129) degrees are in chemical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh (B.S., 1995; USA) and in biomedical engineering from RPI (Ph.D., 2000; USA). He has formed over a dozen companies who have numerous FDA approved medical products currently improving human health in over 30,000 patients. His technology is also being used in commercial products to improve sustainability and renewable energy. He is currently helping those companies and serves as a professor at Brown University, Saveetha University, Hebei University of Technology, UFPI, and others. Dr. Webster has numerous awards including: 2020, World Top 2% Scientist by Citations (PLOS); 2020, SCOPUS Highly Cited Research (Top 1% Materials Science and Mixed Fields); 2021, Clarivate Top 0.1% Most Influential Researchers (Pharmacology and Toxicology); 2022, Best Materials Science Scientist by Citations (Research.com); and is a fellow of over 8 societies. Prof. Webster is a former President of the U.S. Society for Biomaterials and has over 1,350 publications to his credit with over 66,000 citations. He was recently nominated for the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. Prof. Webster also recently formed a fund to support Nigerian student research opportunities in the U.S.

Karsten Koenig is C4 Full Professor and Head of the Department of Biophotonics and Laser Technologies at the Saarland University, Germany. He is also founder and president of the company JenLab GmbH with facilities in Jena and Saarbruecken. He gained the PhD degree in physics as well as the habilitation degree in cell biology from the University Jena. Prof. König published about 500 scientific papers (2x Nature) in the field of biophotonics and laser material processing, filed 25 patents, and pioneered fluorescence lifetime imaging, femtosecond laser nanoprocessing, femtosecond laser transfection, and clinical multiphoton tomography. His work was awarded with the SPIE Prism Award, the Leibinger Innovation Award, the Pascal Rol Award, the Award of the International Society of Skin Pharmacology and Physiology, the Technology for the Human Being Award of the Fraunhofer Society, the Kortum Motivation Prize, the Feulgen Prize, The New Economy Award, and the IAIR Award as European Man of the Year 2014. Karsten König focuses on biomedical and technical applications of femtosecond laser technology. His current projects include Sub-100nm-Nanomachining with 10 Femtosecond Laser Pulses, Optical Reprogramming by laser transfection, Testing the biosafety of nanoparticles in cosmetic products, and Multiphoton Tomography of astronauts to understand skin ageing effects in space.

Dr. Chao Zuo is a Zijin Chair Professor at Nanjing University of Science and Technology (NJUST), Distinguished Professor of "Changjiang Scholars Program", Ministry of Education of China. He leads the Smart Computational Imaging Laboratory (SCILab: www.scilaboratory.com) at the School of Electronic and Optical Engineering, NJUST, and is also the founder and director of the Smart Computational Imaging Research Institute of NJUST. He has long been engaged in the development of novel Computational Optical Imaging and Measurement technologies, with a focus on Phase Measuring Imaging Metrology. He has published > 300 peer-reviewed articles with over 20,000 citations. He currently serves as an Associate / Topical Editor of eLight, PhotoniX, Optics Letters, Optics and Lasers in Engineering, IEEE Transaction on Computational Imaging, Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, and Advanced Devices & Instrumentation. He is a Fellow of SPIE | Optica | IOP, and listed as a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher.

Dr. Guanying Chen is a Professor and Ph.D. supervisor at the School of Chemical Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, and serves as the Head of the Department of New Energy Materials and Devices. He has been recognized as both a National Distinguished Talent and a National Young Talent by the Ministry of Education. His Research Interests are Rare-earth luminescent materials, Biophotonics, and solar cells.

Pavone is the author of over 280 international papers and the editor of several international books. He has given more than 150 invited talks and is the editor of several international journals. He’s the coordinator of International, European, and national projects. He has obtained an Advanced Grant from the European Research Council, an associated ERC Proof-of-Concept, and NIH grants within the framework of the Brain Initiative. He is the Italian node leader of the infrastructure EBRAIN and the Italian delegate on the Board of Directors of the infrastructure EurobioImaging. He has organized several international congresses. He served in the evaluation panel of the European Research Council and the DFG. He is actually a fellow of SPIE, AIMBE, and OSA. He has been awarded the Fermi Prize in 2024. He has an h-index equal to 66 (Google Scholar). Pavone is also the founder of companies Light4tech (2005) and Emoled (2016), as well as Nsight Dynamics (2025), and holds several patents. Currently, he is working in the field of biophotonics, specifically in microscopy, biomedical imaging, image analysis, data management, and machine learning.

Thomas Justel is a German chemist and professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering, Münster University of Applied Sciences. Dr. Thomas Jüstel was born in Witten, Germany in 1968. He studied chemistry and biology at the Ruhr-University of Bochum from 1987 to 1992. He received his Ph.D. in coordination chemistry in spring 1995 in the group of Prof. Dr. Karl Wieghardt. Afterwards, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Radiation Chemistry, Mülheim (since 2012 – Max Planck Institute for Chemical Energy Conversion). He was hired by the Philips Research Laboratories Aachen in summer 1995 as a Research Scientist, where he started to work on luminescent materials. Some years later he became a Senior Scientist and then he was promoted to a Principal Scientist in 2003. In spring 2004 he became a professor for Inorganic Chemistry and Material Sciences at the Muenster University of Applied Sciences. His research group deals with photochemistry, nanoscale and m-scale luminescent materials for LEDs, UV radiation sources and x-ray detectors. He also consults several chemical and lighting companies. Thomas Jüstel is the dean of the department Chemical Engineering at the Münster University of Applied Sciences, Münster, Germany. His research interests focus on various aspects of optical materials and spectroscopy. He holds almost 100 US patents, (co-)authored about 180 original research publications, and edited several book chapters. He also consults companies active in the field of functional materials and light sources. Professor Thomas Jüstel Foreign Member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences since 2014 He is Vice President at the German Academy of Photobiology and Phototechnology (DAfP) for the Department of Photochemistry and Phototechnology. He also holds regular seminars on the subject of inorganic phosphors for the Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker (GDCh).

Lai Tao, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor at the College of Intelligent Science, National University of Defense Technology. His primary research focuses on the development of high-precision measurement systems and machine tools, nanoscale coordinate metrology, the design and fabrication of core components and key elements, and the manufacturing of metal optical systems. He has authored over 40 papers indexed by SCI/EI, including more than 20 SCI papers as the first or corresponding author. He has pioneered novel methodologies such as standard-independent separation of perpendicularity errors and the development of long-range, high-precision optical material guides. His work has been published in several leading international and domestic journals, including the Journal of Manufacturing Processes, Journal of Mechanical Engineering, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Measurement, and Precision Engineering, with 7 papers appearing in these top publications. Additionally, he serves as a reviewer for prestigious journals like ISA Transactions.

Weidong Zhu is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the founder and director of its Dynamic Systems and Vibrations Laboratory and Laser Vibrometry and Optical Measurement Laboratory. He received his double major BS degree in Mechanical Engineering and Computational Science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1986, and his MS and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Arizona State University and the University of California at Berkeley in 1988 and 1994, respectively. He is a recipient of the 2004 National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He has been an ASME Fellow since 2010, and has served as an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Vibration and Acoustics and the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control, as a Subject Editor of the Journal of Sound and Vibration, and as a Topical Associate Editor of Nonlinear Dynamics. His research spans the fields of dynamics, vibration, control, structural health monitoring, metamaterials, and renewable energy, and involves analytical development, numerical simulation, experimental validation, and industrial application. He has published 396 archival journal papers in these areas and has 12 issued U.S. patents. He is a recipient of the 2020 University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Research and the 2024 ASME Rayleigh Lecture Award.