Pena is professor of biochemistry at the Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais (UFMG) in Brazil, where he graduated in medicine in 1970. He became a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians of Canada in pediatrics in 1975 and obtained his PhD in human genetics at the University of Manitoba in 1977. He is member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences and received the Great-Cross of the National Order of Scientific Merit of Brazil in 2006. is currently a member of the National Council of Science and Technnology of Brazil. Among other honours, he was awarded the 2007 TWAS Prize in Medical Sciences. He was president of the Brazilian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and member of the Council of the Human Genome Organization (HUGO). He created and directs the Danilo Pena Foundation, which grants scholarships to poor students with high intellectual potential.

Peña Diaz obtained his MD and PhD in biochemistry from the University of Mexico. He pursued postdoctoral research at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine in 1964. He has been professor at the Medical School, Biology Institute and Investigator and director of the Instituto de Fisiología Celular and the Marine Sciences Institute at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. He was honoured by UNESCO with the Carlos Finlay Prize for Microbiology in 2003. He was president of the Mexican Academy of Sciences, the Mexican Biochemical Society and the Panamerican Association for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology. His work is focused on the transport and effects of ions, mainly on different species of yeasts. His work has produced 100 publications in specialized journals, and has received more than 2000 citations.

Paz got his PhD from the University of Buenos Aires (UBA), Argentina, and held a postdoctoral position both at the Universtity of Maryland and at the Los Alamos National Lab (LANL), United States, where he was also a staff member. He is a leader in quantum information. He made major contribution to the theory of quantum open systems and to the study of the process of decoherence. He contributed to the theory of quantum error correction and to design new quantum algorithms for physics simulations. He played a key role to establish a strong experimental basis for quantum technologies in Argentina. As a director of the Physics Department of UBA he played a key role to position it as a leading institution in the region. He is plenary full professor at UBA, superior investigator at CONICET and since December 2019 has been the vice-minister of Science in Argentina. Paz received the 2015 Argentinian Presidential Prize in Science, the TWAS Prize in Physics, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the W. Bessel Prize; and the Bunge and Born, and Konex prizes in Argentina.

Paulraj is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Electrical Engineering, Stanford University, USA. He obtained his PhD in 1973 at IIT (Delhi). He served in the Indian Navy from 1965 to 1991 where he led the development of military sonar systems. He also founded three national level research labs in India. He joined Stanford in 1992 where he pioneered MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) wireless technology that has revolutionized wireless performance and is incorporated into all Wi-Fi and mobile 4G./ 5G systems His recognition includes the 2024 RAE Prince Phillip Medal, the 2023 IET Faraday Medal, the 2011 IEEE Alexander Graham Bell Medal, the 2014 Marconi Prize, the 2010 Padma Bhushan (Indian national award), the 2017 induction into the US Patent Office National Inventors Hall of Fame and the 2018 China Friendship Award. He is a member of nine academies, including the US National Academy of Engineering, American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Royal Swedish Academy of Engineering Sciences, Chinese Academy of Engineering and several Indian S&T Academies . He is a fellow of IEEE and AAAS.

Patnaik is INSA Senior Scientist and Adjunct Professor at the National Institute of Advanced Studies,and was Vice Chancellor, Defence Inst. of Advanced Technology (DIAT), Deemed Univ., Pune, India. He was previously Honorary Professor, Dept of Electronic Systems Engg, Prof., Dept. of Computer Science and Automation, and Convener, Computational Neurobiology Group, IISc. He obtained his PhD (1978) and DSc (1989) in computer science and engineering from IISc. He has been honoured with over 20 awards for contributions to electronics, communications, and information technology including the Technical Achievement Award (1999), Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), USA, Computer Society; Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru Natl. Award for Engineering and Technology, 1999; and Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry (FICCI) Award for Innovation in Applied Research, 2002. He is a Fellow of IEEE and all 4 leading science and engineering academies in India.www.lmpatnaik.in.

Patel (PhD, Electr. Engg., Stanford, 1961) is Em. prof. of physics and astronomy, electrical engineering and chemistry, UC Los Angeles. University Distinguished Professor, University of Central Florida, Orlando, FL; He is also President and CEO of the Board, Pranalytica, Inc. In 1961, he joined Bell Laboratories where he managed all research in physics and materials science and engineering. In 1993 he joined UC Los Angeles as vice chancellor for research and assumed his present positions in 2000. He has received many scientific society prizes including the highest prizes of the IEEE (Medal of Honor) and the Optical Society of America (Ives Medal) and the Natl. Medal of Science awarded by the US President (1996). He was elected to the Natl. Acad. of Sciences, the American Acad. of Arts and Sciences and the Natl. Acad. of Engineering. In 2013, he was inducted into the Natl. Inventors Hall of Fame. He was pres., American Physical Society (1995) and Sigma Xi (1993-95).

Parodi is Superior Investigator of the National Research Council (Argentina) and was president of the Fundacion Instituto Leloir (2005-2012). After his PhD work at the University of Buenos Aires and postdoctoral training at the Institut Pasteur in Paris and Duke University he returned to Argentina. Since then, he has been professor of Biochemistry at the University of Buenos Aires and Career Investigator of the National Research Council. He was a Howard Hughes International Research Scholar (1997-2011) and is a Foreign Associate of the National Academy of Sciences (USA). His membership includes: American Academy of Microbiology; Brazilian Academy of Sciences; Latin American Academy of Sciences; National Academy of Sciences (Argentina); and the National Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences (Argentina).

Parkin (PhD, 1981, Cambridge, UK) is Director, Max Planck Institute for Microstructure Physics and an Alexander von Humboldt Professor, Martin Luther University, Halle, Germany. He is elected Fellow, Royal Soc.; Roy. Soc. Eng.; Am. Phys. Soc.; Materials Res. Soc. (MRS); Inst. of Physics (London); Inst. of Electrical and Electronics Engineers; Am. Assoc. for the Adv. of Science; Am. Acad. of Arts and Sciences; Gutenberg Res. College; Leopoldina. He is elected Member, Natl. Acad. of Scs. (NAS), and Natl. Acad. Eng. (NAE) USA; Hon. Fellow Indian Acad. Sciences. His honours include: Gutenberg Res. Awd.; Humboldt Res. Awd.; Am. Inst. of Physics Prize for Industrial Applications of Physics; European Physical Soc.’s Europhysics Prize; Am. Physical Soc.’s Intl. New Materials Prize; MRS Outst. Young Invest. Awd.; MRS von Hippel Award; Charles Vernon Boys Prize and Swan Medal, Inst. of Phys. London; Millenium Technology Prize (2014). He has authored >600 papers and has more than 120 issued patents.

Iqbal Parker is founding director of the ICGEB Cape Town Component (2007 - 2016); General Secretary of the International Union of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (2021 - present); founder sec. gen. of the Federation of African Societies for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (1996 - 2012); vice President of Acad. Science of SA (2010 - 2016); Vice President of the African Academy of Sciences (2020 - present). He obtained his PhD from UCT in 1979. He and his team have identified a novel transcription factor responsible for transcriptional modulation of collagen gene expression and identified several genetic polymorphisms that are important in gene-environment interaction in the aetiology of oesophageal cancer. His awards include: DST/NRF research chair in cancer biology, an MRC funded Oesophageal Cancer Research Group; Outstanding Scientist Award by the Natl. Science and Technology Forum; Gold Medal from the South African Soc. for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology and Oettle Memorial Medal from the Cancer Association of SA. He is founding member of ASSAf and member of Islamic World Academy of Sciences.

Parisi is a theoretical physicist born in 1948, and a former student of the Italian physicist Nicola Cabibbo. From 2018–2021 he was president of the Accademia dei Lincei, and now is a member of various academies including the American Philosophical Society. In 2021 he received the Nobel Prize in Physics "for the discovery of the interplay of disorder and fluctuations in physical systems from atomic to planetary scales." He carried out his research activities at the Frascati National Laboratories, first as a fellow of the CNR (1971–1973) and later as an INFN researcher (1973–1981). During this time he spent long periods abroad at Columbia University, IHES, ENS. In February 1981, he was appointed full professor of theoretical physics at the University of Rome Tor Vergata, a position that he held until 1992. Since 1992, he has been an emeritus professor at the University of Rome La Sapienza. His contributions cover many areas of theoretical physics, including particle physics, statistical mechanics, fluid dynamics, condensed matter physics, and scientific computer constructions. He has also published some papers on neural networks, the immune system, and starling flight.

Panza former Professor of seismology (University of Trieste) and the Head of Structure and Non-Linear Dynamics of the Earth (SAND) group (International Centre for Theoretical Physics, Trieste, Italy. His scientific activity deals with integrated analysis of the structure and dynamics of the lithosphere-asthenosphere system; the integrated approach to modelling of seismic waves; and the earthquake-prone lineaments and premonitory seismicity patterns. He received Gutenberg Medal in 2000, doctorate h.c. in physics from University of Bucharest, Romania, in 2002; medal of honour by the Earth Sciences Committee of the Central European Initiative, in 2004; commemorative medal from the Vietnam Academy of Science and Technology in 2009; honour of the Order of Merit of the Italian Republic in 2015, International AGU award 2018 among others. Panza is an honorary professor at the Institute of Geology and Geophysics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and at the Institute of Geophysics of the China Earthquake Administration; and elected member of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei and of the Accademia Nazionale delle Scienze detta dei XL, both in Italy, and of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

Pant earned his PhD from Jeonbuk National University, South Korea, in 2011. He is a pioneering chemist of Nepal and made a significant contribution towards fabricating advanced polymer and ceramic nanomaterials that have potential applications in the biomedical field and environmental remediation. His research on nanotechnology for the fabrication of hierarchical nanomembrane and nanoparticles using top-down and bottom-up approaches has greatly enhanced global knowledge in the field of advanced nanomaterials. He has been teaching and doing research for three decades, becoming a leader in the materials science and engineering discipline. Pant has published 88 SCI/SCIE-ranked journal articles and has 5,400 citations with h-index=43. He has more than 100 conference proceedings and non-ranked journal publications and is the author of 14 books and book chapters in chemistry and materials science. He is the editor of four SCI/SCIE journals and the reviewer of about 60 ranked journals. Currently, Pant is working as vice-chancellor of Far Western University, Nepal.

Pant obtained her MSc in botany from Tribhuvan University, and a PhD in biotechnology from Hiroshima University, Japan. Her major fields of research are application of plant tissue culture in threatened, endangered and economically important plant species in Nepal. She is currently a professor in Central Department of Botany, Tribhuvan University, and also leads Annapurna Research Centre, a non-governmental, and non-profit organization, as a research director. Since over two decades, her active leadership has contributed significantly in developing and promoting tissue culture technology for economic benefit for the people of Nepal through her groundbreaking research. Pant is one of the very few Nepali scientists who have passionately and consistently worked in this important field of research. She has made significant contributions to academics as well as in human resource development in her country by supervising PhD and master’s students. She has contributed to the establishment and development of biotechnology education and research in Nepal by her involvement in various activities.

Panda (PhD, 1994, Bose Institute, Kolkata, India) is Director, National Institute of Pharmaceutical Education and Research, Mohali Punjab, India; and Professor, Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Mumbai. He was a Chair Professor of Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay and also served as Head of Department of Biosciences and Bioengineering, IIT Bombay. He is a Fellow of National Academy of Sciences, India; Indian Academy of Sciences; and Indian National Science Academy. He received several awards and honours including G.N. Ramachandran Gold Medal, J.C. Bose National Fellowship; Tata Innovation Fellowship; Swarnajayanti Fellowship; Outstanding Research Investigator award by Department of Atomic Energy-Science Research Council; National Biosciences Award; Sun Pharma Research Award; Central Drug Research Institute Award for Excellence in Drug Research; S.C. Bhattacharya Award for Excellence in Pure Science of IIT Bombay; P. S. Sharma Memorial Award of the Society of Biological Chemists; and Fogarty International Research Award of the National Institute of Health, USA. He is an Associate Editor of BMC Molecular and Cell Biology.

Pal is a distinguished scientist and former Director of Indian Statistical Institute. He founded its Machine Intelligence Unit & the Natl. Center for Soft Computing in Calcutta. Currently, he is an ANRF Prime Minister Professor; ISI-President and Emeritus Professor; & AICTE-Distinguished Chair Professor. Obtained PhD (Sc) from Calcutta U. and PhD (Engg) & DIC from Imperial College, London. Worked at UC Berkeley; UMD, College Park; NASA JSC, Houston; and US Naval Research Lab, Washington, DC. His awards include: SS Bhatnagar; Padma Shri; GD Birla; OP Bhasin; J Nehru Fellowship; FICCI; Vikram Sarabhai; IETE-Wadhwa Gold Medal; INSA-Zaheer Medal; ISC-PC Mahalanobis Gold Medal; INAE Chair Prof.; INSA Distinguished Prof.; National Science Chair; INAE-SN Mitra; INSA-JNBC Lecture; JC Bose Natl. Fellow; DAE Raja Ramanna Fellow; Al-Khwarizmi Intl. 1st Prize; NASA Space Act Tech Brief; NASA Patent Appl.; IEEE Distinguished Speaker; IEEE NN Soc. Outstanding Paper; US NAS-NRC Senior Associate; and IEEE Editor. He is Fellow of all 4 Indian sci. and engg. academies, IEEE, IAPR, IFSA, IRSS & AAIA; and Member of European Acad of Sci & Arts. He has visited 45 countries as keynote/invited speaker.

Padrón work started at Cambridge´s MRC Laboratory of Molecular Biology. Padrón founded I.V.I.C.´s Center of Structural Biology, where he was an International Research Scholar of Howard Hughes Medical Institute. His group found by cryo-electron microscopy that in thick filaments of tarantula muscle the two heads form the myosin interacting-heads motif (IHM), where both ATPases were inhibited explaining relaxation (Nature 436: 1195, 2005). Their showing that IHM is conserved since before the origin of animals revealed IHM importance as a relaxation ATPase inhibition and ATP energy-saving mechanism. They proposed a cooperative phosphorylation activation mechanism that explains potentiation and post-tetanic potentiation on tarantula contracting muscles. They found that hypertrophic cardiomyopathy mutations cluster on IHM intramolecular interactions accounting for hypercontractility, reduced relaxation, and increased energy consumption of this pathogenesis. Honors: 1991 Polar Prize, 2008 Science and Technology National Prize of Venezuela. Elected Member of the Latin-American Academy of Sciences in 2002 and International Member of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S.A. in 2018.

Padmanabhan, Distinguished Professor at IUCAA, Pune, has authored about 270 research papers and eleven books including eight graduate-level textbooks published by Cambridge University Press. His research, providing an alternative perspective of gravity, in which gravity arises as an emergent phenomenon has far reaching implications for quantum gravity and has won prizes six times from the Gravity Research Foundation, USA including the First Award in 2008. He is an elected Fellow of all the three Academies of Science in India. He was the President of the Cosmology Commission of the International Astronomical Union (2009-2012), Chairman of the Astrophysics Commission of International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (2011-2014) and a Sackler Distinguished Astronomer of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge. The national and international awards received by him include, the Presidential medal of honor, Padma Shri (2007), Inaugural Infosys Prize in Physical Sciences (2009), TWAS Prize in Physics (2011), Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Award (1996), INSA Vainu-Bappu Medal (2007), Millennium Medal (2000), J.C.Bose Fellowship (2008-), Miegunah Award of Melbourne University (2004).

Prof. Mehmet Öztürk completed his undergraduate studies at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Gazi University (Turkey) and his PhD at the Faculty of Pharmacy, Paris XI University (France). He become Assistant Professor at Harvard Medical School (USA), Research Director at INSERM (France) and Professor at Bilkent University (Turkey). His seminal research work is on genetic causes of human cancer, including inherited and carcinogen-induced genetic mutations causing childhood cancers and liver cancer, respectively. His high impact research, including over 100 articles, referenced more than 9100 times (H-factor: 44), and nearly 10 patents, have made him a world known scientist. Prof. Öztürk was presented with the ‘Cecile Cerveux Cancer Award’ in France. He also received ‘Golden Mortar Award’ and ‘TÜBİTAK-TWAS Science Award’ in Turkey. The Department of Molecular Biology and Genetics that he created at Bilkent University received ‘Vehbi Koç Award’. Prof. Öztürk is an elected member to several science academies including EMBO, TWAS and Turkish Academy of Sciences.

Owolabi is the director of the Center for Genomic and Precision Medicine at the University of Ibadan, Nigeria, and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, the American Neurological Association, the American Heart Association, the American Academy of Neurology, the Nigerian Academy of Science, the African Academy of Sciences and the Academy of Medical Sciences. He is a global leader in brain and global health, with over 460 scientific publications, more than 204,000 citations, and a Google Scholar h-index of 109. Widely recognized for his contributions to neuroscience and clinical research, he introduced the conceptual innovations of “stroke quadrangle” and “brain quadrangle”, which have helped shape novel approaches for stroke care and brain health. Ranked among the top 2% of scientists globally (2024), he was the recipient of the 2021 World Stroke Organization Global Award for Outstanding Contributions to Clinical Stroke Research. He is a leading voice in the promotion of brain health. He chairs the Lancet Commission on neurorehabilitation, developing pragmatic solutions to improve the quality of life of over 3.4 billion people with neurological conditions globally.

Ovbiagele, MD, MSc, MAS, MBA, MLS, is professor of neurology and associate dean at the University of California, San Francisco. His primary research involves translation of evidence-based interventions into clinical practice and community settings, to improve stroke outcomes for underserved and vulnerable populations around the world. He currently leads several studies of stroke in the US and sub-Saharan Africa. Ovbiagele has published over 600 peer-reviewed articles (h-index 89) in the areas of stroke prevention, risk factors and outcomes. His work has been recognized with the Pessin and Wartenberg Awards of the American Academy of Neurology; Penn Award of the American Neurological Association; Mridha Humanitarian Award of the American Brain Foundation; Feinberg and Stroke Council Awards of the American Stroke Association; Haddock International and Distinguished Scientist Awards of the American Heart Association, and Meritorious Achievement Award of the National Medical Association. He chaired the International Stroke Conference (2016-2018) and is current editor-in-chief of the Journal of the American Heart Association. He serves on the board of the World Stroke Organization.

Ouknine is a full professor of mathematics at Cadi Ayyad University, Marrakesh, Morocco. His work focuses on probability theory and stochastic calculus. He has published more than 167 scientific articles in reputed international peer-reviewed journals such as Annals of Probability, Annals of Applied Probability, Stochastic Processes and their Applications, Electronic Journal of Probability, Electronic Communications in Probability, and Journal of Theoretical Probability. He has been a referee and co-editor of several scientific journals ranking high at the international level. He is also one of the initiators of international meetings in stochastic analysis and probability theory as well as several training schools in stochastic process theory in Morocco. He has been a resident member of the Hassan II Academy of Science and Technology, in Morocco, since 2006.

Ouhabaz studied at the University of Marrakesh in Morocco and got his PhD in France in 1992. Early in his career, he was Researcher at the Technische Universität Berlin, and a member of the Max-Planck group at the University of Potsdam, Germany. Back to France, he was Associate Professor at the University of Marne-la-Vallée, next to Paris. He is currently Professor at the Institut de mathématiques de Bordeaux, University of Bordeaux. He is a member of the Scientific Council of the Institut national des sciences mathématiques et de leurs interactions (INSMI), Centre national de la recherche scientifique (CNRS). He was a scientific delegate at the Haut Conseil de l'Evaluation de la Recherche et de l'Enseignement Supérieur (HCERES) and corresponding member of the Hassan II Academy of Science and Technology, Morocco. He was the Head of the CNRS research group Functional Analysis, Harmonic Analysis and Applications, and Deputy Director of the Institut de Mathématiques de Bordeaux. He is the author of a book published by Princeton University Press and has written more than 68 research articles.

Ou-Yang has worked at the Institute of Theoretical Physics (ITP), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in Beijing since 1989 and has served as director from 1998-2007. He is also adjunct professor at the Center for Advanced Study at Tsinghua University, Beijing. He made distinguished contributions to soft matter physics and biophysics., e.g. the Ouyang-Helfrich shape equation for vesicles of spontaneous curvature, the theory of vesicle-to-tube shape transition of bipeptide aggregates, and the new theory of icosahedron shape of virus capsid and nano-aggregates, the elastic model of double-strand DNA which has been acknowledged as one of the most important early theoretical works on DNA. His honours include: Asia Achievement Prize(1993), Overseas Chinese Physical Society; First Award in Natural Science(1995), CAS, Beijing; Second Award, Chinese National Prize for Natural Sciences(1999); Ho Leung Ho Lee Foundation (HLHL) Prize for Progress in Science and Technology (2004); The National Outstanding Scientific and Technological Workers, by China Association for Science and Technology (2010). He has became an academician of CAS since1997.

Prof. Osumi graduated Tokyo Medical and Dental University, was given PhD thesis from the same university, and now is a professor of Tohoku University School of Medicine since 1998. She was one of the 25 Distinguished Professors in Tohoku University from 2008 to 2011, and has become Vice President of Tohoku University as well as Director of Tohoku University Libraries from 2018. Her research background is developmental biology, and she has interest in brain development, evolution, and disease. More recently, she has much interest in gendered research focusing on sex differences in the brain. She was a representative of CREST project (2005-2010) supported by JST, and Global COE project (2007-2012) as well as Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research on Innovative Areas (16H06524) “Integrative Research toward Elucidation of Generation of Brain Systems for Individuality”. Currently, As the Director of Gender Equality Center at Tohoku University, Dr. Osumi is promoting the policy of diversity in academia, providing various information through the website and social media, and organizing various events networking female researchers.

Osier's expertise is in malaria, where she believes we can "Make Malaria History" through vaccination. She previously led two core teams of over 25 scientists in Kenya and Germany, that focused on creating highly effective malaria vaccines through vaccine candidate discovery, identifying immune correlates of protection and unravelling important mechanisms underlying antibody-dependent protection. They designed an innovative protein microarray KILchip©, a first of its kind in Africa. Through the SMART partnership, they assembled 10,000 samples from across Africa to probe their chip, the largest study of this nature. They created a paradigm shift in the understanding of the mechanisms that underpin protective immunity to malaria. Osier is past president of the International Union of Immunological Societies (> 60,000 members globally)—the first African and only second woman in this role. She has won prestigious prizes including: Royal Society Pfizer; Sofja Kovalevskaja; and UK Medical Research Council - UK Department for International Development African Research Leader. She was honored with the prestigious British Society of Immunology Honorary Lifetime Membership Award (2022).