Guanrong Chen is the Shun Hing Education and Charity Fund Chair Professor in Engineering and the Founding Director of the Centre for Complexity and Complex Networks at the City University of Hong Kong. He was elected IEEE Fellow in 1997, received the State Natural Science Awards of China in 2008, 2012 and 2016 respectively, awarded the 2011 Euler Gold Medal from Russia, and conferred Honorary Doctor Degrees by the Saint Petersburg State University, Russia in 2011 and by the University of Normandy, France in 2014. He is a Highly Cited Researcher in Engineering in the past decade. In 2014, he was elected a Member of the Academia Europaea. In 2025, he was elected a Fellow of the Network Science Society.

Chen (PhD 1992, Joh.-Gutenberg-U., Mainz, Germany) is currently Chair Professor at University of Gothenburg, Sweden. He is an internationally renowned climate researcher with important contributions to the understanding of regional climate changes and their impacts in Sweden and China. His research includes Earth System Science, global environmental change, climate dynamics and modeling, and atmospheric circulation. He works on recent and future regional climate changes and their impacts on water, ecosystem, environment, and agriculture. He currently focuses on climate and environmental changes over the Third Pole (Tibetan Plateau) region. He has served as Executive Director of the International Council for Science (ICSU), Director of the Gothenburg Atmospheric Science Centre, and Science Director of the Beijing Climate Center. He is an elected member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society of Arts and Sciences in Gothenburg, as well as TWAS Fellow. He has served on numerous international and national committees and boards, advising various governmental, intergovernmental and international non-governmental organizations as well as research funding agencies.

Prof. Jian Ding is a renowned Chinese cancer pharmacologist and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and he’s made extraordinary contributions to research and development of new drugs. He is currently a researcher at the Shanghai Institute of Materia Medica, and was Director of SIMM(2004-2013). Prof. Ding serves as the editor-in-chief of Acta Pharmacologica Sinica and editorial board member of several international academic journals such as Eur J Pharmacol and Mol Pharmacol. Focusing on biomarkers and drug resistance mechanisms of anti-tumor drugs, Prof. Ding is the co-inventor of more than ten innovative drug candidates, and all of which are currently at clinical trials with one of them has been conditionally approved in China and Japan and 4 of them running additional clinical tests in U.S, Japan & Australia. More than 340 papers have been published in journals including Cell、Cancer Cell etc. Over 150 patents have been authorized. Multiple awards have been bestowed to Prof. Ding to acknowledge his tremendous contribution to the area of cancer treatment, including but not limited to, 2 Second degree of National Natural Science Award.

Gingrich is full professor at the Department for Social and Cultural Anthropology at the University of Vienna. Real member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW) and Director of the Institute for Social Anthropology of the ÖAW. Foreign Member of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Member of the Publishing House Committee of the ÖAW. He obtained his PhD in 1979 at the University of Vienna. He has served as a Delegate in the Assembly of the Austrian Science Fund. He was a founding member of the European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA) and he was a Panel Chair for the European Research Council, Advanced Grant SH2. His awards include the Wittgenstein Prize, City of Vienna Award in the Humanities, Social Sciences, Cultural and Legal Studies.

Gopakumar is Senior Prof. and Director of the Int. Centre for Theoretical Sciences (ICTS-TIFR) in Bengaluru, India. He was previously Prof. at the Harish-Chandra Research Institute (HRI), Allahabad, India. He did his undergraduate studies at IIT-Kanpur and obtained his Phd in 1997 under the supervision of David Gross at Princeton U., USA. After a research associateship at Harvard U. he returned to India to work at HRI. His work has aimed to understand the origin of gauge-string dualities. He is known for the Gopakumar-Vafa duality as well as the Gopakumar-Vafa invariants. His work with Gaberdiel on the duals to minimal model CFTs has also been very influential. He is the recipient of the ICTP Prize, S. S. Bhatnagar award, G. D. Birla Award, TWAS Prize in Physical Sciences, J. C. Bose Fellowship among other awards. He is a member of all three Indian science academies as well as a founding member-alumnus of the Global Young Academy.

Hasan is Senior Professor at the National Centre for Biological Sciences, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Bangalore, India. She obtained her Ph.D at the University of Cambridge, UK, in 1983. Research from her group has contributed to an understanding of signaling mechanisms underlying maturation of neural circuits and their dysregulation in disease. Her memberships include the Indian National Science Academy and the Indian Academy of Sciences.

Lépine is professor at the Instituto de Astronomia, Geofísica e Ciências Atmosféricas, University of São Paulo. He obtained his PhD in 1977 at Université de Paris VII, and became full professor at the University of São Paulo in 1999. He made important contributions to Astronomy, like the discovery of the first water vapor extragalactic megamaser, and the study of a Cassini-like ring in the Galactic disk with a minimum of stellar density and also of gas density, at the corotation radius. Lepine was the Director of his Institute from 2001 to 2005, and President of the Brazilian Astronomical Society for 2 years in the past. He is now the coordinator on Brazilian side of the joint Brazilian-Argentinean LLAMA project, which is installing a 12 m radiotelescope for sub-mm waves in the Andes, at 4800 m altitude.

Narayan is the Thomas Dudley Cabot Professor of the Natural Sciences at Harvard Univ., U.S.A. He obtained his PhD in 1979 at Bangalore Univ., India. He has made numerous contributions in many areas of astrophysics, notably in the field of black holes. His work spans theory, observations, and numerical simulations. His membership includes: Royal Society (London); National Academy of Sciences (USA); American Association for the Advancement of Science; and Honorary Fellowship of the Indian Academy of Sciences.

Poor (PhD, 1977, Princeton) is the Michael Henry Strater University Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University, where he served as Dean of the School of Engineering and Applied Science from 2006 to 2016. His research contributions are in the areas of communications and signal processing, particularly in wireless networking, smart grid, and related fields. His awards include: the IEEE Education Medal, the IET Fleming Medal, the URSI Booker Gold Medal, the IEEE Eric Sumner Award, the EURASIP Athanasios Papoulis Award, the AAES John Fritz Medal, the IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, and honorary doctorates from five universities. His memberships include: U.S. National Academy of Engineering, U.S. National Academy of Sciences, U.S. National Academy of Inventors, Royal Society, U.K. Royal Academy of Engineering, Academia Europaea, Royal Society of Edinburgh, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Sanyal is a Professor and former Director at the Saha Institute of Nuclear Physics (SINP). He obtained his PhD from University of Bombay in 1987 working at Bhabha Atomic Research Centre. He worked in Brookhaven National Laboratory as Research Associate. He has served in various capacities at National and International bodies, like Co-Chairperson of the India-Japan Science Council (2014-Present), Member, Scientific Advisory Committee to the Cabinet, Government of India 2010-Present, President, Indian Physics Associations and Indian Physical Society (2011-2014). Sanyal is Fellow of all the three Indian science academies. Sanyal has made significant contributions in understanding of structure-property relationship of the nanomaterials that produce novel properties due to confinement-induced ordering. Particularly, he has done pioneering work in synchrotron x-ray scattering techniques.

Xiang is a professor at Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He has made seminal contributions to the development and application of density matrix and tensor renormalization group methods, and to the understanding of microscopic mechanism of interlayer dynamics of high temperature superconductors, magnetic interactions of ferropnictides, and topological phase transition of strongly correlated quantum systems. Member of Chinese Academy of Sciences and Fellow of American Physical Society, he has received the Chi-Sun Yeh Physics Prize and the Distinguished Youth Title of CAS.

Xie (PhD, 1996, University of Science and Technology of China) is now a Principal Investigator of Hefei National Laboratory for Physical Sciences at the Microscale and a full professor of the Department of Chemistry, University of Science and Technology of China. She was appointed as the Cheung Kong Scholar Professor of inorganic chemistry in 2000 and elected as a member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2013. She is also a recipient of many awards, including the National Prize for Natural Sciences of China (2001 and 2012), China Young Scientist Award (2002), China Young Female Scientist Award (2006) and IUPAC Distinguished Women in Chemistry/Chemical Engineering Award (2013), TWAS Prize in Chemistry (2014) and L’Oréal-UNESCO For Women in Science (2015).

Zhang is professor at Tsinghua University. He received his B. S. (1978) from Peking University. He studied Solid State Chemistry and Materials Science in University of Bordeaux I (France) and received a PhD in 1993 in France. He makes great contributions to the fundamental research and application of rare-earth functional materials. His awards include: The 2nd Class of National Natural Science Award, China; Outstanding Youth Scholar Award by Hong Kong Qiushi Scientific and Technological Foundation, Hong Kong; and Gold Kangaroo World Innovation Award, Australia. His membership includes: Chinese Academy of Sciences; Chinese Chemical Society; American Chemical Society; Royal Society of Chemistry, UK; and Chinese Society of Rare Earths.

Al-Nimr is Distinguished Professor at Jordan University of Science and Technology, Jordan. He obtained his Ph.D. (1991) in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan/Ann Arbor - USA. He has published about 277 articles in different fields of energy and heat transfer. He was awarded the World Academy of Sciences Award (TWAS) in Engineering Sciences (2013), the Khalifa Award for Education (2012), the Khwarizmi International Award (2012), King Abdullah II Award for Innovation (2010), Scopus Award (2009), the Abed-Alhameed Shoman Award for Arab Scientists (1994) and many others. He is acting as an Editor-in-Chief of Energy Conversion and Management Journal – Elsevier since 2013. He is acting now as an Associate Editor for 12 other journals.

Bouskela is Full Professor and Director of the Clinical Research Unit at the State University of Rio de Janeiro; Director of Technology and Innovation at the Rio de Janeiro State Foundation for Research Support; Member of the Managing Committee for Health at the Ministry of Science, Technology, Innovation and Communication; Full Member of the National Academy of Medicine; Full Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences; Full Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts; Associate Member of the Académie Nationale de Médicine of France and recipient of the Tiradentes Medal given by the Government of Rio de Janeiro state. She obtained her PhD in 1978 at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro after spending 3 years at the Mayo Clinic (Rochester, MN) and at University of Washington (Seattle, WA) and her Docent degree in 1992 at the University of Lund, Sweden.

Chen is member of CAS, professor and director of Institute of Tibetan Plateau Research, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He is the president and fellow of China Geography Society. He obtained his PhD in 1990 at Lanzhou University. He is vice-presidents of IGU Environment Evolution Commission, China Society on Tibetan Plateau, Chinese Quaternary Science Associate. His prizes include China National Excellent Scientist in 2005; National Science Foundation for Distinguished Young Scholars in 2003; China Youth Science and Technology Award in 1996; Second award of National Natural Science in 2007 and 2018; five awards of Natural Science by Ministry of Education of China. He has published more than 690 papers in peer-reviewed journals of both English and Chinese with more than 420 papers published in SCI journals such as Nature, Science, NCC, NC, PNAS, QSR, which are cited more than 19900 times by papers of SCI journals with H index of 69.

De los Reyes is Founding Director of MODEMAT - Research Center in Mathematical Modeling and Optimization and Full Professor of Mathematics at Escuela Politécnica Nacional de Ecuador. He obtained his PhD in 2003 at the University of Graz, Austria, and worked as postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Berlin (2005-2006). In 2009 he was awarded an Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship for Experienced Researchers to carry out research in Germany, and in 2010 he was awarded a J.T. Oden Faculty Fellowship at The University of Texas at Austin. He has held Visiting Professor positions at the Humboldt University of Berlin (2010), the University of Hamburg (2013) and the Weierstrass Institute of Berlin (2021). He is former Director of Research of Escuela Politécnica Nacional de Ecuador (2019-2021), former President of the Ecuadorian Mathematical Society (2012-2014), Fellow of the Ecuadorian Academy of Sciences (since 2015), and Fellow of TWAS (since 2016). Dr. De los Reyes has served as member of organizing committees of various academic events worldwide, and has promoted the creation and strengthening of scientific networks in Latin-America.