Murenzi (PhD Louvain, Belgium) is Executive Director of TWAS from 2011, with a year interruption across 2016-2017 when he served as Director of the Division of Science Policy and Capacity Building in UNESCO's Natural Sciences Sector (July 2016). He previously was Minister of Science, Technology and Scientific Research in Rwanda and Director of the Center for Science, Technology and Sustainability at the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Washington, DC; he was also visiting Professor at the University of Maryland. He was Chair and Professor in the Department of Physics at Clark Atlanta University, USA. He was also designer of the two-dimensional continuous wavelet transform. In 2012 he was elected as a Fellow of the African Academy of Sciences (AAS). He chairs the UN Secretary General's High-level Panel of Technology Bank and Science, Technology and Innovation Supporting Mechanism dedicated to the Least Developed Countries; he is a Member of the ITU/UNESCO Broadband Commission for Digital Development and of the Carnegie Mellon University President’s Global Advisory Council.

Nahar (MSc, Dhaka University; MA, PhD, Wayne State University) is an atomic astrophysicist at Ohio State University; adjunct professor, Cairo University and Aligarh Muslim University (AMU); Iron Lady of international Opacity Project and Iron Project; known for her seminal contributions in radiative atomic processes of photoionization and theoretical spectroscopy. She introduced a unified method for electron-ion recombination and x-ray spectroscopy for cancer treatment. Delivering research and lecture courses with computational workshops globally since 2013, she trained over 700 researchers. She is co-author of textbook Atomic Astrophysics and Spectroscopy (Cambridge), founder of NORAD-Atomic-Data database, co-founder, Indo-US STEM Education and Research Centre, AMU; founder, STEM research and education programme in developing countries; founder, International Society of Muslim Women in Science; director, Women in STEM Roadshow. Fellow of American Physical Society (APS), Bangladesh Physical Society, Bangladesh Academy of Sciences. Recipient of President's Golden Dome Award, Cairo University; Gold Medal, Topical Society of Laser Sciences; Medal, NRIAG; John Wheatly Award of APS.

Naqib is currently serving as a Professor at the Department of Physics, University of Rajshahi, where he is leading the theoretical condensed matter research group. In terms of scientific productivity, this group ranks among the top in Bangladesh, and has been consistently producing high-quality publications in the fields of computational condensed matter physics, and superconductivity in hole doped cuprates. Naqib obtained his PhD from Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK, in 2003. He had postdoctoral experience both at the Quantum Matter Group, Cavendish Laboratory, University of Cambridge, UK, and at the MacDiarmid Institute for Advanced Materials and Nanotechnology, New Zealand. His research interests include superconductivity in high-Tc cuprates, magnetic and transport properties of strongly correlated electronic systems, DFT calculations on MAX phase nanolaminates, superhard materials, novel low-Tc superconducting systems and topological insulators, semimetals and superconductors. Naqib has published 130 papers in Scopus indexed journals of international repute so far. His papers have been cited over 2200 times.

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.

Narlikar received his BSc (Banaras Hindu Univ., 1957) and PhD (1963) and ScD (1976) at Cambridge. In 1988 he became the foun. dir. of the Inter-Univ. Centre for Astronomy and Astrophysics in Pune, where he was dir. until his retirement in 2003 and where he is now emeritus prof. He is SS Bhatnagar laureate (1978) in physics and has several other national awards including Padmavibhushan (2004). In 1996 he received the UNESCO Kalinga Award for science popularization. In 2004, he received the Janssen Medal of the Societe Astronomique de France. He is a fellow of the 3 natl. academies of science in India and assoc. of the Royal Astronomical Society, London. In 2012 he received TWAS Institution building award. He has received hon. doctorates from several Indian universities and also one from the Univ. of Natal, Durban, South Africa. In 2011 he received the State Award Maharashtra Bhushan.

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.

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).

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.

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).

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.

Pérez Rojas is senior researcher at the Institute of Cybernetics, Mathematics and Physics, Ministry of Science and Technology, Cuba; emeritus member of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba; and member of the Latin American Academy of Sciences. His national awards include the Rafael Maria Mendive and Carlos J. Finlay Medals. He was awarded in 2011 the National Prize in Physics from the Cuban Physical Society. His interests include quantum field theory and its applications to finite temperature problems in high energy physics and condensed matter. Among these, he has devoted special attention to quantum electrodynamics in matter and in vacuum in the presence of external fields, phase transitions in electroweak theory, relativistic quantum Hall effect, Bose-Einstein condensation in magnetic fields, and applications of physics to social sciences.

Ramaswamy is Visiting Professor in the Department of Chemistry at IIT Delhi. He obtained his PhD in 1978 at Princeton University and worked at the Jawaharlal Nehru University between 1986 and 2018. He has made fundamental contributions in the study of nonlinear dynamical systems, particularly on the control and synchronization of chaotic and stochastic systems. His interests also extend to genomics and biological physics, in particular to nonequilibrium processes at the cellular and subcellular level. His membership includes the Indian Academy of Sciences, Bangalore, the Indian National Science Academy, New Delhi, and he has served as Vice Chancellor of the University of Hyderabad between 2011 and 2015. He was President of the Indian Academy of Sciences in the period 2016-2018.

Roederer (DSc, 1952, U. of Buenos Aires) is prof. emeritus of physics, Geophysical Inst., Univ. of Alaska-Fairbanks, and affiliate prof. University of Colorado. He was prof. of physics at the univ. of Buenos Aires, Denver and Alaska (1959-1993), and distinguished visiting prof., Rhodes University, South Africa (1997). He was dir., Argentine Natl. Ctr. of Cosmic Radiation, and Geophysical Inst. of the U. of Alaska; chrmn., US Arctic Rsrch. Commiss.; and sr. advisor, ICTP, Trieste. He has held chairmanships of ICSU associations and commissions and was former Intl. Sec. of the American Geophysical Union. Awards include: Soviet Acad. Medal, 100 Years of Geophysics; 4 NASA awards for contributions to the Galileo Mission to Jupiter; AGU Flinn Award for unstinting service to the scientific community. He is corr. member, Academies of Sciences of Argentina and Austria, and fell. of IUGG, AAAS, the AGU, the Argentine Physical Assoc. and Argentine Geodesic and Geophysical Association. Roederer is also organist.

Ruffolo is a professor at Mahidol U. He obtained his PhD in 1991 at U Chicago. He developed a classic transport equation for solar energetic particles and precision modeling of their observed distribution in space. He created new theories of turbulent transport of cosmic rays, including an explanation of solar particle dropouts in terms of solar wind turbulence and topological trapping. He led the establishment of a neutron monitor in Thailand, which detects galactic cosmic rays at the world's highest geomagnetic cutoff energy. He has twice served as a rapporteur of the International Cosmic Ray Conference. He was awarded the Golden Eagle Award from the American Academy of Achievement and the 2017 Outstanding Scientist Award of Thailand. His memberships include the Thailand Academy of Science and Technology and the American Geophysical Union.