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Andrew is presently a Distinguished Professor within the School of Physics at the U. Witwatersrand (South Africa) where in 2015 he established a new laboratory for Structured Light. He is a Fellow of SPIE, Optica, the South African Institute of Physics (SAIP), an elected member of the Academy of Science of South Africa and editor-in-chief of the IoP’s Journal of Optics. Andrew has won several awards for his research, including the NSTF national award for his contributions to photonics in South Africa (2015), the Georg Forster prize from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation for outstanding contributions to photonics (2020), the SAIP Gold Medal (2020), the highest award for physics in South Africa, making him the youngest winner to date, the Sang Soo Lee award from Optica and the Korean Optical Society (2022) and the TWAS prize for Physics (2024). He is Director of South Africa’s Quantum Technology Initiative.

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Professor of physics, Peking University. Dr. Ma received his PhD degree in Physics from Peking University in 2009. He was a postdoc researcher at UC Berkeley during 2009 to 2014 before joining Peking University as a faculty. His research interests include laser physics, nanophotonics, light-matter interaction, non-Hermitian and topological photonics. He published over 80 peer reviewed papers, including 5 in Nature/Science, 11 in Nature/Science sister journals, 2 in PRL. His works has been selected as China’s Top 10 Optical Breakthroughs of 2018 and 2020, APS Physics Top 10 "Highlights of the Year" of 2018, China’s Top 10 Semiconductor Research Breakthroughs of 2020, and Top 100 high impact research articles of China 2020.

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Qammer H. Abbasi (SMIEEE, FRET, FRSA, FEAI, FIET), Professor of Applied Electromagnetics & Sensing with the James Watt School (JWS) of Engineering, Theme lead for Connecting People priority at JWS, Director for Communication Sensing and Imaging (CSI) Hub and UK Government's Policy Advisor in Department for Science Innovation & Technology. He has grant portfolio of £13M+ and contributed to more than 500+ leading international technical journal (including nature portfolio) and peer reviewed conference papers, 11 books and received several recognitions for his research including UK exceptional talent endorsement by Royal Academy of Engineering, Sensor 2021 Young Scientist Award, University level Teaching excellence award in addition to coverage by various media houses globally, BBC news, Scotland TV, Fiercewireless, theEngineers and many other media houses. Prof. Abbasi is an IEEE senior member and is chair of IEEE APS/MTT UK, Ireland and Scotland joint chapter. He is an Associate editor for IEEE Sensors, IEEE open journal of Antenna and Propagation, IEEE JBHI and scientific reports. He is IEEE APS distinguished lecturer (2024-26), Vice-Chair of IEEE APS Young professional committee, Sub-committee chair for IEEE YP Ambassador program, committee member for IEEE 1906.1.1 standard on nano communication, IEEE APS/SC WG P145, IET Antenna & Propagation and healthcare network. He is/was Fellow of Royal Society of Arts, industrial Fellow of Royal Academy of Engineering (2022-23), Fellow of Institution of Engineering & Technology and Fellow of European Alliance of innovation.

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Guglielmo Lanzani is a physicist. Full professor at Politecnico di Milano, he has served from 2010 to 2023 as Director of the Center for Nano Science and Technology at Italian Institute of Technology, where he is senior researcher. He studies photoresponsive materials able to induce light sensitivity and signaling in biological systems. The ultimate goal is to realize photo-driven human-machine interfaces for application in regenerative medicine, prosthet-ics and hybrid robotics. He has recently developed, in collaboration with neuroscientist and medical doctors, a new retina prosthesis that exploit semiconducting polymer nanoparticles for rescuing vision in photodetector-degraded retinas. He is a founding partner in two start-ups (NOVAVIDO, and SAMS Technology).

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Mona Jarrahi is a Professor and Northrop Grumman Endowed Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCLA and the Director of the Terahertz Electronics Laboratory. Prof. Jarrahi has made significant contributions to the development of ultrafast electronic and optoelectronic devices and integrated systems for terahertz, infrared, and millimeter-wave sensing, imaging, computing, and communication. 

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Sergei A. Tretyakov received the Dipl. Engineer-Physicist, the Candidate of Sciences (PhD), and the Doctor of Sciences degrees (all in radiophysics) from the St. Petersburg State Technical University (Russia), in 1980, 1987, and 1995, respectively. From 1980 to 2000 he was with the Radiophysics Department of the St. Petersburg State Technical University. Presently, he is emeritus professor at the Department of Electronics and Nanoengineering, Aalto University, Finland. His main scientific interests are electromagnetic field theory, complex media electromagnetics, metamaterials, and microwave engineering. He has authored or co-authored six research monographs and more than 370 journal papers.

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Hongsheng Chen (Fellow, IEEE) received the BSc and PhD degree from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, in 2000 and 2005, respectively. In 2005, he joined the College of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University, and was promoted to Full Professor in 2011. He was a visiting scientist (from 2006 to 2008) and a visiting professor (from 2013 to 2014) with the Research Laboratory of Electronics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. In 2014, he was honored with the distinguished Cheung-Kong Scholar award. Currently, he serves as the Dean of College of Information Science and Electronic Engineering, Zhejiang University. He received the National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars of China in 2016, and the Natural Science Award (first class) from the Ministry of Education, China, in 2020. His current research interests are in the areas of metamaterials, invisibility cloaking, transformation optics, and topological electromagnetics. He is the coauthor of more than 300 international refereed journal papers. His works have been highlighted by many scientific magazines and public media, including Nature, Scientific American, MIT Technology Review, The Guardian, and so on. He serves as topical editor at the Journal of Optics, deputy editor-in-chief at PIER, and editorial board member for Nature’s Scientific Reports, Nanomaterials, and Electromagnetic Science. He served as the general co-chair of the Photonics & Electromagnetics Research Symposium in 2022, and the general co-chair of the International Applied Computational Electromagnetics Symposium in 2023.

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Prof. Gang Li is Chair Professor of Energy Conversion Technology, Sir Sze-Yuen Chung Endowed Professor in Renewable Energy in the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE), the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He serves as Director (HK) of Guangdong-Hong Kong-Macao Joint Laboratory for Photonic-Thermal-Electrical Energy Materials and Devices, and Associate Director of HK PolyU's Research Institute for Smart Energy (RISE). His research interests are organic semiconductors, organo-metal halide hybrid perovskite semiconductors and thin-film optoelectronic devices based on then --- solar cells, photodetectors and LEDs. He has published ~300 papers in peer review journals including Nature Materials, Nature Photonics, Nature Energy, Science, Nature Review Materials. His research works have been cited over 85,000 times (Google Scholar), in which 21 papers have over 1000 citations each. He has been recognized as a Highly Cited Researcher from 2014 to 2024 (Materials Science 2014-2019; Physics 2017-2018, Chemistry 2018, Cross-field 2020-2024) by Thomson Reuter/Clarivate Analytic, with a H-Index of 99. He is Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry (UK), Optica (OSA) Fellow, Fellow of The International Society for Optics and Photonics (SPIE), and Hong Kong RGC Senior Research Fellow.