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.