Fernando Zorto is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering and director of the Research Institute of Applied Science and Technology, Faculty of Engineering at the National Autonomous University of Honduras (UNAH). At UNAH, he teaches heat transfer, design projects, and research methods to engineers. He holds a Bachelor of Science in mechanical engineering from UNAH and a Master of Science in project management from the Central American Technological University, also in Honduras. He is a PhD candidate in design, manufacturing, and managing industrial projects with Valencia Polytechnic University, in Spain. His research interests include atmospheric water harvesting, innovative projects, and aerospace systems. Since 2017, he has led the first satellite project in Honduras. He received the Honour of Merit of Engineering of the Pan-American Confederation of Mechanical, Electrical, and Other Fields of Engineering. In 2017, Zorto won the Best Essay about UNAH Scientific Research and Research Management at the XI Conference of Scientific Research UNAH.

Leslie Karina Tejeda Perez earned her PhD in food engineering (2013) from the University of Lund, in Sweden. She also earned a degree in chemistry (2007) from the Universidad Mayor de San Andrés (UMSA), in La Paz, Bolivia. During the doctoral studies, she investigated the chemical composition, the antioxidant activity of Andean grains (quinoa and cañihua) and the polyphenolic content in isolated items and processed food (lunches). She is a member of the spin-off company Swebol Biotech, dedicated to formulating functional foods based on Bolivian crops. At UMSA she coordinates the Innovation Management project, aimed at building up innovative programme management to support science, technology, and innovation based on the quadruple helix model (university, government, industry, and society). The project is receiving five-year support from the Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency. With the Math-AmSud network, she also coordinated a project aimed to establish a collaborative network among Latin-American countries and France. The research topic of the proposal is Chemical Graph Theory, an important and modern area of discrete mathematics and chemical science.

Cristina Romero-Rodríguez is a professor and head of the Department of Chemical Biology, at the National University of Asunción (UNA), in Paraguay, where she is also an assistant professor of biochemistry. She obtained a degree in biochemistry from the Faculty of Chemical Sciences (UNA). Then she earned a Master of Science in cellular, molecular, and genetic biotechnology, and a PhD in biosciences and agrifood sciences both from the University of Cordoba, Spain. Her research interests are in biological science and focus on the study of plant-microorganism interaction that she investigates through biochemical and proteomic approaches. Romero-Rodríguez is an active member of the National Incentive Program for Researchers of the National Council of Science and Technology of Paraguay. In the last five years, she has participated in seven financed projects (three as principal investigator), which allowed the development of a master's thesis, and the building of capabilities to develop doctoral programs in biological sciences in Paraguay. She serves as an associated editor for Physiological and Molecular Plant Pathology and is a member of the editorial board of other national journals.

Roberto Rodriguez-Labrada is the Deputy Director of the Cuban Neurosciences Centre, in Havana, Cuba. He earned a PhD in health sciences (2013) from the University of Medical Sciences of Havana. He was the Deputy Director of research at the Centre for the Research and Rehabilitation of the Hereditary Ataxias, in Holguín, Cuba (2006–2019) where he ran projects on the epidemiological, clinical and neurophysiological characterization of Spinocerebellar ataxia type 2, improving the disease staging, the description of biomarkers, therapeutic targets, and treatment strategies. He won international awards from the International Parkinson and Movement Disorder Society (2017), the International Brain Research Organization (2007, 2011) and the International Federation of Clinical Neurophysiology (2008), as well as prizes from the Cuban Academy of Sciences (2014, 2019) and the Cuban Ministry of Public Health (2014–2019). In 2019, he received the Carlos J. Finlay Order, the highest Cuban recognition awarded to researchers. In 2012, he became a Young Affiliate of the Cuban Academy of Sciences and, in 2019, a member of the Steering Committee of the Pan American Hereditary Ataxia Network.

Elías Peraza has been the Educational Technological Prospective Manager of the Directorate of Educational Technology, Salvadoran Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, since 2022. He conducts studies in science, technology and innovation (STI), prioritizing those of interest to the education system, including emerging technologies. He graduated in business administration from the University of El Salvador in 2010 and earned a master’s degree in business management for innovation and internationalization from the University of Basque Country, Spain, in 2011. In 2019, Peraza received a PhD in economics with cum laude distinction from Universities of Burgos, Valladolid and Salamanca, Spain. He studied both his master’s and doctorate thanks to scholarships from the European Union. Peraza has published academic and diffusion articles about systems of innovation, STI policies, business innovation behaviour, and economic policy. Regarding awards, he got the Ruben Dario Central American Award for Academic Excellence in 2009, and participated in the 22nd TWAS-LACREP Young Scientist Conference at Rio de Janeiro.

Carolina Palma Naveira Cotta has been an Associate Professor of mechanical engineering and head of the Laboratory of Nano and Microfluidics and Microsystems, at Poli & COPPE-Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ), Brazil, since 2011. At UFRJ, she earned a Bachelor of Science (2004), Master of Science (2006) and DSc (2009) in mechanical engineering, and she currently teaches heat transfer, mathematical methods, and transport phenomena at the nano and micro-scales. Her research interests also cover heat transfer enhancement, inverse problems, hybrid methods, water desalination, and sustainable energies. She has experience in research with the industrial sector, including sponsored projects with major companies such as Petrobras, General Electric, INB, and GALP. In 2014, she became an Affiliated Member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, for the term 2015–2019. In 2016, she was elected member of the Scientific Council of the International Centre for Heat and Mass Transfer. She received competitive research productivity grants from the Brazilian National Council for Scientific and Technological Development and the Research Support Foundation of the State of Rio de Janeiro.

Diego Marques is a professor in the Department of Mathematics at the University of Brasilia, Brazil. At the same university, he teaches elementary and advanced courses on number theory for undergraduate and graduate students. He earned a Bachelor in Mathematics and a Master in Mathematics from the Federal University of Ceara, Brazil, and his PhD in mathematics from the University of Brasilia. Then, he worked as a postdoctoral fellow at the University of British Columbia, in Canada. With over a decade of experience, Marques has supervised more than ten doctoral theses, focusing mainly on transcendental number theory and its techniques. His research interests include transcendental number theory, the arithmetic behaviour of transcendental functions, Diophantine approximation, Diophantine equations, recurrence sequences, and elementary number theory. In 2010, for his contributions to research, he was bestowed the Young Researcher Award from the Federal District Research Support Foundation, in the Federal District, Brazil. In the same year, he was elected as the youngest affiliated member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, strengthening his position in the academic community.

Nathalie Casanova-Morales is an assistant professor in the Faculty of Liberal Arts, Adolfo Ibáñez University in Santiago, Chile since 2020. She is specializing in experimental physics with an interdisciplinary approach, playing a pivotal role in establishing the local Interdisciplinary Physics Laboratory, easing and promoting access to physics tools from different areas. She holds a bachelor's degree in applied physics from the University of Santiago, Chile and a degree in engineering physics, both from the same institution. In 2012, she obtained a PhD from the University of Montpellier, France. She has implemented her academic competencies by working in several postdoctoral positions in Chile. Through the application of an interdisciplinary lens to physics, biology, and chemistry, she leverages her experimental expertise to employ physics techniques and innovative processes. This enables her to comprehend crucial parameters in bioprocesses within an interdisciplinary framework. Committed to expanding her expertise, she concentrates on biophysics, microbiology, parasitology, nanotechnology, and biochemistry, all disciplines that are vital for interdisciplinary research.

María Eugenia Cabrera Catalán is a professor with the School of Physical Sciences and Mathematics and a member of the Institute of Physical Sciences and Mathematics, at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala (USAC), in Guatemala City. She earned a bachelor's degree in physics from USAC, and a diploma in High Energy Physics from The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics, in Trieste, Italy. She earned a PhD degree in physics from the Autonomous University of Madrid, Spain. She was a postdoctoral researcher at the Gravitation and Astroparticle Physics Amsterdam, in the Netherlands, and with the Institute of Physics, University of São Paulo, Brazil. Her research interests are in particle physics. She studies theory and phenomenology of physics beyond the Standard Model, collider phenomenology, theory and phenomenology of dark matter searches. In recognition of her contribution to science, Cabrera Catalán was awarded the 2021 OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Awards in Physical Sciences for the Latin American and the Caribbean Region. She is a founding member of the Central American Network of High Energy Physics and Scientific Computing.

Alexander Birbrair received his bachelor’s degree in biomedicine from Santa Cruz State University in Brazil. He completed his PhD in neuroscience at the Wake Forest School of Medicine. Then, he joined as a postdoc in stem cell biology at Albert Einstein School of Medicine in New York. His laboratory is interested in understanding how the cellular components of different tissues function and control disease progression. His group explores the roles of specific cell populations in the tissue microenvironment by using state-of-the-art techniques. In 2018, Alexander was elected affiliate member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, and, in 2019, he was elected member of the Global Young Academy, and in 2021, he was elected affiliate member of TWAS. He is the Founding Editor and Editor-in-Chief of Current Tissue Microenvironment Reports, and Associate Editor of Molecular Biotechnology. Alexander also serves on the editorial boards of several other international journals.

Susana Arrechea works at New Sun Road, a Californian start-up incubated at the University of California at Berkeley (UCB), where she develops solar electrification and connectivity projects for rural Guatemala. She is the Project Director of the Digital Community Centres Stellar Ixq-Saq´e, funded by the US Agency for International Development-Microsoft. She holds a Bachelor of Science in chemical engineering earned at the University of San Carlos of Guatemala (USAC). She received a scholarship from Fundación Carolina, which allowed her to earn a Master of Science and a PhD degree in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology from the Universidad de Castilla-La Mancha, in Spain. She described more than 14 new organic molecules derived from porphyrins with applications in solar devices. In 2015, she was a Visiting Researcher at UCB, under the Fulbright NEXUS Program aimed at generating renewable energy. From 2016–2020, she was a Research Professor at USAC. In 2017, she won the Galardón de Guatemaltecos Ilustres award and received the TWAS Fellowships for Research and Advanced Training. In 2020, she won the OWSD-Elsevier Foundation Awards for Early-Career Women Scientists in the Developing World.