Ibrahim Abdulhalim has been a Professor of Electrooptics and Photonics Engineering at Ben-Gurion University since 2005, where he also served as the Head of the Department from 2007 to 2015. He has held positions at several academic institutions and companies, including the OCSC at UC Boulder, the ORC at Southampton University, the Thin Films Center at the University of Western Scotland, KLA-Tencor, Nova, and GWS Photonics. His current research focuses on liquid crystal devices for bioimaging and photonic applications, tunable nanophotonic metamaterials for biosensing and energy conservation, and optical imaging. He has published over 300 articles, authored two books, contributed 12 book chapters, and holds 25 granted patents. Abdulhalim is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics (IoP) and SPIE, a Senior Member of OPTICA, and a member of the International Liquid Crystal Society (ILCS). He has served on the editorial boards of several journals and is currently an Associate Editor for the Journal of Sensors and Biosensors and a Topical Editor for Applied Optics. Abdulhalim has supervised over 50 graduate students throughout his career, including M.Sc., Ph.D., and postdoctoral researchers. He is also the founder of two companies: Photonicsys, specializing in miniature plasmonic sensors, and Photoliqsys, which develops advanced liquid crystal devices.

Maria Helena Godinho holds a D.Sc., a Ph.D. in materials science, and a chemical engineering degree. During her Ph.D., she was a NATO/Invotan fellow in France. She is a member of the Norwegian Academy of Science and Letters and serves as the President of the International Liquid Crystal Society. From 2016 to 2020, she was Vice President of the International Liquid Crystal Society. She was honored with the 2023 Lars Onsager Professorship and Medal, awarded by the Norwegian University of Science and Technology, and in 2019, she received the Freéderiksz Medal from the Russian Liquid Crystal Society. She is a full professor of materials science at NOVA University Lisbon and one of the principal investigators for the recently awarded ERC Synergy Grant 2024 (ALCEMIST). Her research mainly focuses on functional liquid crystalline materials inspired by nature, particularly liquid crystalline polysaccharides.

Iam-Choon Khoo is currently William E. Leonhard Professor of Electrical Engineering at The Pennsylvania State University. A Fellow of four technical societies: IEEE, OPTICA (formerly OSA), UK Inst. of Phys, Electromagnetic Academy, he authored/co-authored 8 books, including two widely cited books on optics, nonlinear optics and photonics of liquid crystals, 3 patents, 14 book chapters, and 294 publications and has given over 430 presentations (including 234 Invited and 36 Keynote/Plenary) at international conferences sponsored by IEEE, OSA, SPIE, The Electromagnetic Academy, and several European and Asian-Pacific organizations. His research programs/interests are on nonlinear optics/photonics and optical physics of liquid crystalline materials, nonlinear fiber arrays for eye/sensor protection and tunable plasmonic and meta-nanostructure. He is the adviser/mentor of 33 Ph.D. graduates and has served as an external Ph.D. examiner for several oversea universities, including Trinity College in Ireland (2001), Chalmers University in Sweden (2002), Cambridge University in UK (2005), The University of Wollongong in Australia (2013) Tampere University of Technology in Finland (2018). He is the recipient of the 2024 SPIE Maria Goeppert Mayer Award in Photonics.

Quan Li is Distinguished Chair Professor and Director of Institute of Advanced Materials at Southeast University, China. He is the Honorary Editor-in-Chief of Chinese Journal of Liquid Crystals and Displays, the founding Editor-in-Chief of the journal Responsive Materials published by Wiley, an editor of Springer Nature’s Light: Science & Applications, etc. Li held appointments in USA, Germany, and France. He received his Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Shanghai, where he was promoted to the youngest Full Professor in February 1998. Li was Alexander von Humboldt Fellow in Germany. He has won Kent State University Outstanding Research and Scholarship award. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC). He has been elected as a member of European Academy of Sciences and a member of European Academy of Sciences and Arts. He has also been honored as Professor and Chair Professor at ten universities. In the past decade, he has edited eight books (2 Wiley-VCH, 2 Wiley, and 4 Springer books), and has co-authored 40 chapters including the invited author of the entry entitled “Liquid Crystals” in the prestigious Kirk-Othmer Encyclopedia of Chemical Technology. Li’s current research interest spans from stimuli-responsive smart soft matter, advanced photonics, and optoelectronic materials for energy harvesting and energy saving to functional biomedical materials and nanoparticles to nanoengineering and device fabrication (http://www.quanlilab.com).