Prof. Dr. Raymond Ooi has been an elected Fellow of the Academy of Sciences Malaysia since 2015. He won the Malaysian Toray Science Foundation (MTSF) Science & Technology Award in 2013. He obtained his PhD (dr.rer.nat) from Universitaet Konstanz, Germany in quantum optics and laser cooling of molecules. He then worked as a post-doctoral Research Associate for three years with Marlan O. Scully (a distinguish physicist in quantum coherence). During this time, he was also a Visiting Scientist at Princeton University and Max-Planck Institut fuer Quantenoptik. Then, he joined KAIST as a Research Professor, Korea University as an Assistant Professor, and Monash University (Sunway) as a Senior Lecturer, before joining Universiti Malaya in 2010. His research has produced a total of more than 160 publications (mainly WoS journal & including conference papers) covering quantum optics, nonlinear molecular spectroscopy and quantum microscopy, statistical physics of Bose-Einstein condensates, interactions, generation and propagation of ultrashort and intense laser pulses. In 2011 he initiated the "Quantum and Laser Science" research center and single-handedly developed the Ultrafast High Intensity Femtosecond Laser and Optics facility in High Impact Research (HIR) building through the MoHE grant. In 2018, he initiated and chaired the first international conference on Quantum and Nonlinear Optics(QNO2018). Recently he has been leading a quantum communications research program for the country.

Dr. Chao Zuo is a professor in optical engineering, at Nanjing University of Science and Technology (NJUST), 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 such as Digital Holographic Microscopy (DHM), Noninterferometic Quantitative Phase Imaging (QPI), Fringe Projection Profilometry (FPP), and Structured Illumination Microscopy (SIM). He has authored >200 peer-reviewed journal publications with over 12,000 citations. These researches have been featured on journal cover over 20 times and highlighted by Nature, Light. Sci. Appl., SPIE Newsroom, CLP Newsroom, and Optica Image of the Week. He is a Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher and a Fellow of SPIE and Optica. He also serves as an Associate Editor of PhotoniX, Optics and Lasers in Engineering, Microwave and Optical Technology Letters, and Frontiers in Photonics. He served as an organizing committee member of more than 60 international conferences and congresses and delivered >100 plenary/keynote/invited talks. He also served as the Optica/SPIE Student Chapter Advisor of NJUST.

Dr. Huabei Jiang started his career as an Assistant Professor at Clemson University in 1997 and became a full Professor there in 2003. He then joined University of Florida (UF) in 2005 as a founding senior faculty of then newly established biomedical engineering department and became the J. Crayton Pruitt Family endowed professor in 2008 at UF. Dr. Jiang joined University of South Florida (USF) in 2017 as the founding faculty of medical engineering department and the founding Director of USF Center for Advanced Biomedical Imaging. In his career, Dr. Jiang has used optics in highly innovative ways to make pioneering and seminal contributions to several fields including diffuse optical tomography (DOT), photoacoustic tomography (PAT), fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT), and bioluminescence tomography (BLT). He has published nearly 500 peer-reviewed articles, and is the author of four noteworthy books, all of which were the first books in their respective fields: Diffuse Optical Tomography: Principles and Applications (CRC Press, 2010), Photoacoustic Tomography (CRC Press, 2014), Thermoacoustic Tomography (IOP Publishing, 2020) and Fluorescence Molecular Tomography (Springer, 2022). Dr. Jiang was elected as Fellow of American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) in 2008, Fellow of International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE) in 2007, and Fellow of Optical Society of America (OSA/OPTICA) in 2006.

Dr. John M. Hanchar has been named University Research Professor in acknowledgment of his internationally recognized contributions as an earth scientist, for cultivating an innovative and cutting-edge research program, and for the incredible reach and impact of his scholarship. Dr. Hanchar, professor and head, of the Department of Earth Sciences, Faculty of Science, and director of the Centre for Earth Resources Research, is a leader in his field whose research activities combine fieldwork, experiments, and high-precision analytical methods. He has made fundamental contributions in geochemistry, economic geology, condensed matter physics and materials science. In the last 15 years, his research has been directed towards providing a better understanding of the genesis of igneous rocks and economic mineral deposits. This work has also provided critical information on the timing and compositional evolution of the Earth’s continental crust and mantle through geological time. “Importantly, his work is not solely of academic interest, but he has been engaged in research that has a strong economic relevance to the minerals and exploration industries,” noted Dr. Simon A. Wilde, professor of Precambrian geology and the John Curtin Distinguished Professor, Department of Applied Geology, Curtin University in Australia. He has published more than 80 papers in globally circulated peer-reviewed journals, which have been cited more than 8,500 times. He has trained and mentored graduate and undergraduate students at Memorial and research institutions internationally. In addition, Dr. Hanchar has been invited to 126 seminars throughout the world; is a fellow of the Mineralogical Society of America, the Society of Economic Geologists and the Geological Society of America; and in 2014 was awarded the Dean of Science Distinguished Scholar Medal by Memorial University. Dr. Hanchar holds a B.Sc. from the University of Memphis, an M.Sc. from Vanderbilt University, and a PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Baojun Li a distinguished Professor, Dean of the Institute of Nanophotonics at Jinan University, and Director for Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Nanophotonic Manipulation, China. He received his Ph.D. from Xi’an Jiaotong University in China in 1998. After that, he worked at Fudan University, China, as a Postdoctoral Fellow till 2000. From 2000 to 2002, he worked in the Singapore-MIT Alliance, first as a Postdoctoral Fellow, and then as a Research Fellow. From April to October 2002, he worked in the Institute of Materials Research and Engineering in Singapore as a Research Fellow. In October 2002, he joined Sun Yat-Sen University in China as a full Professor and served as Director for the Research Laboratory for Optoelectronic Integration. From May to November 2009, he worked at the University of Oxford as a senior visiting scholar. Then, he came back to Sun Yat-Sen University as a Cheung Kong Scholar Distinguished Professor and served as Dean of the School of Physics and Engineering. In November 2016, he moved to Jinan University in Guangzhou, China, where he founded the Institute of Nanophotonics and Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Nanophotonic Manipulation.

Roger Falcone is a professor of physics at the University of California, Berkeley, and an affiliated faculty member of Berkeley's Energy and Resources Group and Applied Science and Technology Program. He chaired the Physics Department from 1995-2000. As of January 2018 he is a Professor of the Graduate School at Berkeley. He received his A.B. in Physics (1974) from Princeton, and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering (1979) from Stanford, and was the Marvin Chodorow Fellow in Applied Physics (1980-83) at Stanford. He was the Director of the Advanced Light Source x-ray synchrotron facility at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab (2006-2017) and was President of the American Physical Society (2018).

Dr. Hamidreza Siampour is a Lecturer at Queen's University Belfast, where his research primarily revolves around investigating the interplay between nanophotonics and quantum optics. Before his current role, he held the position of Research Associate at the University of Cambridge, working on the implementation of a quantum simulation platform using interacting spins in diamond. Prior to that, he was a Postdoc at the University of Sheffield, working on the development of a semiconductor nanophotonic platform for directional spin-photon coupling. He obtained his PhD degree in Nano-optics from the University of Southern Denmark, with his thesis titled "A Nanophotonic Platform for Quantum Optical Integrated Circuits".

Kyunghwan Oh is a professor in the Department of Physics at Yonsei University, Seoul, Korea. He is also the director of the Yonsei Physics Education and Research Institute (YPERI). Prof. Oh earned his B.S. and M.S. in Physics from Seoul National University in 1986 and 1988, respectively. He then moved to Brown University, Providence, RI, USA, and received an M.S. in Engineering in 1991 and a Ph.D. in Optics in 1994. Prof. Oh’s research focuses on fiber optics, optical materials, and lasers. He has been affiliated with world-leading photonics research institutes such as Bell Laboratories, Murray Hill (USA), Optoelectronics Research Centre in the University of Southampton (U.K.), Leibniz Institute for Photonic Technology, Jena (Germany), EPFL (Switzerland), The University of Tokyo (Japan), to name a few. He has authored and co-authored more than 300 SCI journal papers, 7 U.S. patents, a technical monograph, “Silica Optical Fiber Technology,” published by Wiley and Sons, and four book chapters. He is a Fellow of Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America). He is a recipient of Alexander Von Humboldt Research Fellow (Germany), Chevening Scholar (UK), JSPS Invitation Fellow (Japan), Erasmus Mundus Visiting Scholar (EU), Tan Chin Tuan Exchange Fellow (Singapore), a High-End Foreign Expert (China). He is keenly interested in interdisciplinary research activities that can eventually lead to practical applications. His recent discoveries include nonlinear optic applications of DNA, RNA, and nucleobase solid thin films for generating ultrashort pulse lasers, which could open a new avenue in the biophotonic platform. He also invented a new form of syringe operated by a laser that can deliver zeptoliter droplets, which can explore a unique opportunity to handle fluid with unprecedented precision. He is also involved in several industrial projects to apply optical technologies in semiconductor process metrologies.

Dr. Yijie Shen is currently a Senior Research Fellow of the Nanophotonics & Metamaterials Group (Nikolay I. Zheludev group) at Optoelectronics Research Centre (ORC), University of Southampton, Southampton, UK, also working as a Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow funded by Marie S.-Curie MULTIPLY Fellowship. He received a Ph.D. degree in optical engineering at the Department of Precision Instruments, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. He received a B.S. degree in mechanical engineering and automation from the South China University of Technology, Guangzhou, China. From Mar. 2019 to Jun. 2019, he was invited as a visiting researcher to the School of Physics: Structured Light Laboratory (Andrew Forbes group), University of the Witwatersrand (Wits University), Johannesburg, South Africa, and also invited as a visiting researcher in National Laser Centre, Council for Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR), Pretoria, South Africa. He is a member of the Chinese Optical Society (COS) and Chinese Society of Theoretical and Applied Mechanics, and an invited member of the Optical Society of America (OSA), especially a fellow member of the Systems and Instrumentation Group in which. He won the Wang Da-Heng Optics Award (COS, China) in 2019. He is a national first-grade computer-aided designer and cartographer in China. He is a senior reviewer of journals Opt. Lett., Opt. Express, IEEE Photon. J., J. Opt., etc., who especially won the IOP and OSA Outstanding Reviewer Awards in 2020. He is also a member of the Journal of Optics Advisory Panel. He has published more than 40 papers in high-impact journals including Light: Sci. & Appl., Optica, Phys. Rev. Appl., Phys. Rev. A, Opt. Lett., Opt. Express, with hundreds of citations.

Evgeny V. Sergeev (H index: 3; Scopus) graduated in the field of electronics and microelectronics from the National Research University "Moscow Power Engineering Institute" (M.S., 2011, MPEI). He completed an internship at the Department of Physics of the Brno University of Technology (Czech Republic) in the field of “Fabrication of the ultra-sharp tungsten field emission cathodes” (2012-2013). He has gone his path from an engineer to a lead engineer in MIREA — Russian Technological University (2013-2018). Since 2019, he is serving as a researcher at the R&E Center Functional Micro/Nanosystems, Bauman Moscow State Technical University.

Evgeniy S. Lotkov (H index: 5; Scopus) received his master’s degree in electronical engineering from Bauman Moscow State Technical University in 2020. He is currently with the Research and Educational Center Functional Micro/Nanosystems at BMSTU. His research interests include nanofabrication technology of the electro-optical modulators and optical sensors, thin films deposition for integrated photonics devices.

Amjad Ali Amjad received his B.S. degree (Hons.) in Computer Systems Engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology (UET), Peshawar, Pakistan, in 2014, his M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Lahore, Islamabad, Pakistan, in 2017, and his Ph.D. from Zhejiang University in 2021. He was a Post-Doctoral Research Associate with the School of Electronic and Computer Engineering at Peking University from 20121 to 2013. He is currently engaged in his second postdoctoral research at the Donghai Laboratory in collaboration with Zhejiang University. He has participated in several projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. He has also served as a TPC member for several conferences and as a reviewer for many IEEE and Optica journals and conferences. His research interests include wireless optical communications, underwater wireless optical communication, solid-state lighting, and visible light communication. He has co-authored one book chapter and several papers on these subjects, published in refereed journals and conference proceedings.

Prof. Dr.Sci. Elvira M. Ibragimova’s (H index: 8; Google Scholar) degrees are in physics (optics and spectroscopy) from the University of Samarkand (M.S., 1968; USSR), in solid state physics (response of laser crystals of Y2O3-Al2O3 and Re2O3-Al2O3 systems to nuclear particles and gamma-ray irradiations, experimental) from Institute of Nuclear Physics Uzbekistan Academy of sciences (Ph.D., 1974; USSR) and physics of condensed state (structure modification of high temperature superconductors under electron, proton and gamma beam exposure, experimental) from the same Institute of Nuclear Physics Uzbekistan Academy of sciences (Dr.Sci., 2000; Uzbekistan), and also professor diploma (2019) for preparation of PhD researchers. All the experimental researches have been done on effects of various kinds of nuclear radiation on structure and working characteristics of dielectrics, semiconductors and superconductors. She has been serving for this Institute as a scientific researcher (growing from junior to senior and now as a principal status at the same institute); simultaneously she has been appointed as a member (2001-2011) and the Chair (since 2015 to now) of the expert council in physics at Supreme Attestation Commission of Uzbekistan, which controls issue of Diploma of PhD, Doctor of science, senior researcher, docent, professor. Dr.Sci. prof. Ibragimova E.M. was awarded with Medal from Ministry of Education of Malaysia for directing International Summer Air-Space School for teenagers (including some from Malaysia) teaching them how to develop team research projects in aviation and space missions. She was also awarded “Do’stlik” Medal by the President of Uzbekistan in 2023 for great contribution in preparation of science researchers.

Ilya Stepanov’s (H index: 1; Google Scholar) degree is in nanoelectronics from the Bauman Moscow State Technical University (M.S., 2023; Russia). He works as an engineer in the Functional Micro/Nanosystems R&E Center (FMN Laboratory) from 2020 to present, where he is the team leader for the development of single-photon detectors for on-chip photonic quantum computing. Work on the development of the device began from scratch and today a reproducible SNSPD fabrication technology and a cryogenic measurement technique has been developed. He also proposed a new nanowire geometry to improve SNSPD performance, which was successfully implemented in the devices of the FMN Laboratory and showed its effectiveness compared to the traditional design.

Sergey Avdeev (H index: 4; Google Scholar) degrees are in Electronics and nanoelectronics - Electronic engineering from Bauman Moscow State Technical University (B.S., 2019; Russia) and in Electronics and nanoelectronics - Equipment and technologies of electronics and nanoelectronics from Bauman Moscow State Technical University (MSc., 2021; Russia). From 2019 to the present, he has held the position of engineer. Engaged in the development of fabrication technologies for the edge coupling, electro-optical assembly and die level tests for Si3N4 photonic integrated circuits.