A prominent physical chemist and nanomaterial expert, Dr. HOU has made significant contributions in synthesis and characterization of nanomaterial and nanostructures, physical and chemical properties of single molecules and their assemblies, and scanning tunnel microscopy. He studied physics at the University of Science and Technology of China (USTC) from 1978, completing his Bachelor degree in 1983 and then received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in 1986 and 1989, respectively. From 2008 to 2015, Dr. HOU held the position as President of USTC until he became Vice Minister of the Ministry of Science and Technology of China (MOST). Afterwards, he worked successively in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region and General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine from 2016 to 2017. In 2018 He was appointed as Vice President (full ministerial level) of CAS. He was elected CAS Member in 2003 and Fellow of the World Academy of Sciences for the advancement of science in developing countries (TWAS) in 2004. He is also Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry of UK.

Mahouton Norbert Hounkonnou is a full Professor of Mathematics and Physics at the University of Abomey-Calavi, Benin. His works deal with noncommutative and nonlinear mathematics, and complexity. He authors books. He serves as a member or associate editor of editorial boards for renowned book series and journals in mathematics and mathematical physics. He supervised 37 PhD and 40 M. Sc. students from various continents. He was awarded a series of recognitions for the excellency of his works such as the Prize of The World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) in 1996, the Tokyo University of Science President Award in 2015, and the 2016 World Academy of Sciences C. N. R. Rao Prize for Scientific Research "for his incisive work on noncommutative and nonlinear mathematics and his contributions to world-class mathematics education ";. He is the President of the Network of African Science Academies, former President of the Benin National Academy of Sciences, Arts and Letters. His membership extends to African Academy of Sciences, Academy of Science of South Africa, Académie Hassan II des Sciences et Techniques du Maroc, InterAcademy Partnership Advisory Committee, etc.

Hussain is professor in the electrical engineering department at Kuwait University in Safat, Kuwait. He has done significant work in advancing the emerging technology, utrawide band impulse radar and radio communications, through basic design principles, and array beam forming and self-steering array antenna systems. In addition, he has also provided solutions to modified Maxwell equations for signals. He is a senior member of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and recipient of the Teaching Excellence Award and the Kuwait Prize for the Advancement of Science.

Nancy Ip is currently the President of The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), and is also The Morningside Professor of Life Science and the Director of the State Key Laboratory of Molecular Neuroscience at HKUST. She received her PhD degree in Pharmacology from Harvard University, after which she held the position of Senior Staff Scientist at Regeneron Pharmaceuticals Inc. in New York. Since joining HKUST in 1993, she has served as the Vice-President for Research and Development, Dean of Science, Director of the Biotechnology Research Institute, and Head of the Department of Biochemistry. Ip is world-renowned for her significant contributions to the field of neuroscience. Her outstanding research has resulted in 328 scientific papers and 70 patents. She has been elected to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, the US National Academy of Sciences, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences, and received numerous awards and honors including the National Natural Science Awards, the L’OREAL-UNESCO for Women in Science Award and the 10 Science Stars of China by Nature.

Jemmis is professor of chemistry at IISc, Bangalore. He studies the structure and reactivity problems of real life molecules, clusters and solids using theoretical techniques. He has successfully linked different areas of chemistry through his computational chemical approach. His major contributions include theoretical study of transition metal complexes of fullerenes and their ring-opened alternatives; a unifying electron-counting rule for polyhedral boranes, metallaboranes, and metallocenes; electronic structural requirements for macro-polyhedral boranes and elemental boron; establishment of novel analogies between carbon and boron, and on the structures and reactions of transition metal organometallics. Recently he has formulated electron counting rules for borophenes and borophites. The interplay between hexagonal hole density and interlayer bond density provides infinite options multilayer borophenes. He is a fellow of all science academies of India, winner of the INSA Young Scientist Prize, SS Bhatnagar Prize, Millennium Medal of Indian CSIR and other national science honours. Govt of India honored him with the civilian award, Padma Shri.

Klein is Carnell Professor of Science and director of the Institute for Computational Molecular Science, at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA. He was Hepburn professor of physical science and director, Lab. for Research on the Structure of Matter, Univ. of Pennsylvania (UPenn), Philadelphia. After his PhD (Univ. of Bristol) and postdoctoral work in Italy, England, and USA, he joined the National Research Council of Canada. In 1987, he joined UPenn where he established the Center for Molecular Modeling. He is member of the National Academy of Sciences of the USA, a fellow of: Royal Society of London; Royal Society of Canada; and American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Awards include: American Physical Society Aneesur Rahman Prize for Computational Physics; American Chemical Society Debye Award in Physical Chemistry; and Bernie J. Alder CECAM Prize, European Physical Society.

Malekzadeh is Distinguished Professor in Internal Medicine and Director, Digestive Disease Research Institute in Tehran University of Medical Sciences. He obtained his MD, specialty board of medicine and subspecialty board of gastroenterology from Shiraz University of Medical Sciences, Iran. He has worked in various capacities in Iranian medical education and research system. He was chancellor of Shiraz University; Minister of Health and Medical Education (MOHME); secretary of Iranian Academy of Medical Sciences and Vice Chancellor of MOHME. He has received 14 national awards including Razi, Avicenna, Yalda, Hadavi, Tabatabaei and Iranian Science awards. He has obtained International Agency for Research on cancer (IARC/WHO) Medal of Honor for outstanding contribution in research on cancer (2018). He is a member of 18 national and international academies and scientific societies. He has published 660+ papers in scientific international journals with 65,800+ citations and is among the top 1% world highly cited scientists in clinical Medicine based on Essential Science Indicators. His h-index is 90 in Scopus. He has established the Golestan Cohort and Persian cohort study in Iran.

Murthy is INSA senior professor in the Molecular Biophysics Unit, Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore. He obtained his bachelor's from Bangalore University (1970), master's from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (1972) and PhD from the IISc, Bangalore (1977). His research interests are X-ray crystallography, protein and virus structure. He has been awarded the Shantiswaroop Bhatnagar Prize, Rustum Choksi award, GN Ramachandran commemoration award, Hari Om Ashram Trust Award, Jagdish Chandra Bose Award for Life Sciences and G.N. Ramachandram gold medal for excellence in biological sciences. He has been elected to the Indian Academy of Sciences, Indian National Science Academy, and the National Academy of Sciences, India.

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.

Shakoori is professor emeritus, dist. natl. prof. and director, School of Biological Sciences, U. of the Punjab, Lahore and prof. of cell biology at the U. of Massachusetts Medical Centre, Worcester. He obtained his Dr.rer.nat. from the U. of Hohenheim, Stuttgart, 1972. He has been co-dir., Centre of Advanced Mol. Biology, and chair. of the dpts. of zoology and microbiology and molecular genetics at the U. of the Punjab. He was awarded Pakistan's Highest Academic Award, Aizaz-i-Kamal; Dist. Scientist of the Year Award 2011 in Zoology, Pakistan Acad. of Sciences; the Civil Award Tamgha-i-Imtiaz and Scientist of the Year Award by the Min. of Ed., Pakistan. He has been a senior Fulbright fellow, senior DAAD fellow and obtained a fellowship from the Royal Soc. (1999). He is fellow of the Pakistan Academy of Sciences and life fellow and pres. of the Zoological Society of Pakistan (2002-2006).He received Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) Excellence Award in Science & Technology in 2012

Singhvi (PhD Physics, IIT, Kanpur). He served as vice-president, International. Quaternary Union (INQUA) and as Vice President, Indian National Science Academy. He holds DST-SERB- Year of Science Chair Professorship at Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) in Ahmedabad, India. He was Av. Humboldt Fellow at the MPI für Kernphysik and Heidelberg U., Germany; Leverhulme Prof., Sheffield U., UK; DAAD Prof., Freiberg, Germany; and Ford Foundation Fellow, Oxford, UK and St. Louis, USA. His honours include: Krishnan and Decennial Medals, Ind. Geophys. Union; Natl. Mineral Award, India; Farouk El-Baz Award for Desert Sci. (2004), Geol. Soc. of America; and K. Naha Medal, Ind. Nat. Sci. Acad; Goyal Prize, Kurukshetra U. and B. Sahni Centenary Medal, Indian Science Congress. A fellow of all Indian science academies and Hon. Lifetime Fellow of the Geol. Society London, he served on Sci. Prog. Comm. of UN's IYPE programme. He served as on the editorial boards of several international journals.

Suresh is President, Nanyang Technological U., Singapore. Previously, he served as Pres., Carnegie Mellon U. (2013-17), Dir., Natl. Science Foundation of the United States (2010-13), and as dean of engineering (2007-2010) and Vannevar Bush prof. of engineering, Massachusetts Inst. of Technology (MIT). He received his bachelor of technology (1977) from Indian Inst. of Technology, Madras; MS (1979) from Iowa State U.; and ScD (1981) from MIT. He is world renowned for his pioneering work on the mechanical properties of engineered and biological materials and for establishing connections between cell mechanics and human diseases. He has authored over 240 research articles, 20 patents and 3 books. A recipient of 11 hon. doctorates, he has been elected to 15 engineering/science academies incl. the US Natl. Acad. of Engineering, Natl. Acad. of Sciences, National Academy of Medicine, National Academy of Inventors, and the American Acad. of Arts and Sciences, as well as the French, Chinese and German science academies.

Terrones (Phd Birkbeck College, U. of London) is Rayleigh Endowed Chair Prof. in Physics at Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst. in USA. After holding a postdoc position in the dept. of chem., U. of Cambridge (UK), he returned to Mexico to the Inst. of Physics, UNAM, where he spent 8 years as a researcher. He moved to San Luis Potosi, Mexico, to start a new institute with the main idea of working in multidisciplinary research and to decentralize science outside of Mexico City. Main awards include: Mexican Acad. of Sciences Prize in Exact Sciences (2000), UNAM Prize for Young Scientists in Exact Sciences (2000), El Potosi Prize from IPICyT (2004). He is a member of the Mexican Acad. of Sciences. He has been invited prof. in UCL (Belgium), UFC (Brazil), Penn State (USA), Shinshu (Japan) and ORNL (USA). He has contributed to the theory and experiment of 2-D materials, such as graphene and TMDs.

Titanji is an emeritus Professor of Biochemistry and Biotechnology and an Honorary Dean at the Faculty of Science University of Buea. He is also the Vice-Chair AU-ASRIC . He served as Vice-chancellor, Cameroon Christian U. (2015-2019), vice-chancellor of the University of Buea (2002-2012) and pioneer coordinator, Biotechnology center, University of Yaounde1(1986-1997),Coordinator of Biotechnology Unit U. of Buea (1996-2012), Cameroon. He focuses on infectious diseases (malaria, river blindness, tuberculosis ,COVID-19) and protein phosphorylation as a regulatory mechanism in Onchocerca volvulus, the parasite causing River Blindness in humans. He discovered, cloned and characterized new antigens, employed for diagnosis and potential vaccines, in Onchocerca volvulus. He also works on immune responses to malaria and has discovered new vaccine candidates (UB05-09) and drug leads from med. plants for malaria intervention strategies. He is past pres. and member, Council of Fed. of Afr. Socs. of Biochem. and Mol. Biol., and received the IFS/DANIDA Prize and Cameroon Knight Order of Valour. He is fellow of the Cameroon Acad. of Sciences, Afr. Acad. of Sciences, and Inst. o

Wong obtained his BSc (1973) from the Chinese U. of Hong Kong and PhD (1976) from U. College London. After 2 years as a postdoc at Harvard, he returned to U. College London. From 1980 to 1982, he did research at the Shanghai Inst. of Organic Chemistry (SIOC), The Chinese Acad. of Sciences (CAS). In 1983, he joined the Chinese U. of Hong Kong and is now Emeritus Prof. of Chemistry and Research Professor. He also chairs the Management Committee, Shanghai-Hong Kong Joint Laboratory in Chemical Synthesis, SIOC, CAS. His research interests are concerned with syntheses and studies of natural and non-natural molecules, as well as synthetic methodologies. He has published more than 275 research papers, invited reviews and book chapters. He is member of CAS and the Hong Kong Academy of Sciences, and the winner of Humboldt, Croucher and Ramsay fellowships and the National Natural Sciences Prize of China.

Xu is professor at the Shanghai Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (SIOM), Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). He served as director of SIOM from 1992 to 2001, and is currently chairman of the academic council of SIOM. He has made outstanding contributions to laser physics, optical science and plasma physics, particularly to laser fusion, high power lasers, laser-plasma interactions, X-ray lasers, high field physics and ultrafast optics. He is a member of CAS, a fellow of the Optical Society of America and has served as vice president of the Chinese Optical Society from 1993 to 2012. He is also founding editor and editor-in-chief of Chinese Optical Letters. As the first winner, his major awards include Natl. Sci. and Tech. Progress Award, 1st class, 2004; two Natl. Natural Science Awards, 2nd class, 1995 and 2001; Natl. Innovation Award, 2nd class, 1999; HLHL Prize, 1998.

Alper is Chair, Canvassing Cmte. for Global Res. Excellence, Governor General of Canada. He served as Chair, Govt. of Canada's Sci., Techn., and Innovation Council, from 2007-2015. He was previously Vice Pres. of Res. at the U. of Ottawa for 9 years. He was Co-Chair of IAP: The Global Network of Sci. Acad., during 2007-2013. He was past president and foreign secretary of the Royal Soc. of Canada. His research has been concerned with metal catalyzed organic reactions of value to different industrial sectors. His awards include: the Gerhard Herzberg Canada Gold Medal for Sci. and Eng., Canada's highest research honour. He is an Officer of the Order of Canada(1999) and Officer, Natl. Order of Merit, Republic of France(2002), as well as Commander, Order of Merit, Republic of Italy (2014). He was the first Canadian ever honoured by the Chem. Soc. of Japan as an Hon. Foreign Member in 2013.

Ayupov was educated at Tashkent State University. He is the director of V.I Romanovskiy Institute of Mathematics, Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences(former Institute of Mathematics, National University of Uzbekistan); professor, National University of Uzbekistan; and chairman, Algebra and Functional Analysis Department. He was previously: Dep. Minister of Higher and Secondary Specialized Education of Uzbekistan; Chairman, Supreme Attestation Commission under the Cabinet of Ministers of the Republic of Uzbekistan. His awards include: Uzbekistan Academy Prize for Young Scientists; Uzbekistan Youth Union Prize for Young Scientists; All Soviet Union Youth Prize in Sciences and The First Degree State Prize of Uzbekistan in Science and Technology. He is a member of the Uzbekistan Academy of Sciences (elected in 1995) and American Mathematical Society. He was a senior associate, ICTP, Trieste, Italy, 2008-13. Member the Senate of the Republic of Uzbekistan since 2021, Hero of Uzbekistan (2021).

Akissa Bahri is currently Professor at the National Agricultural Institute of Tunisia. She was the Coordinator of the African Water Facility ‘2010-2015), the Director for Africa at the International Water Management Institute, based in Accra, Ghana (2005-2010), and prior to that, Director of Research at the National Research Institute for Agricultural Engineering, Water and Forestry in Tunisia. She has academic and professional experience in water resources management and the agricultural use of marginal waters, biosolids and their environmental impacts. She has received international honors from the Guinness Foundation (1984), the International Foundation for Science (1993), the Kuwait Foundation for the Advancement of Sciences (1996), the 2009 "Prof. C.N.R. Rao Prize for Scientific Research", and the 2018 IWA Women in Water Award. She was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of California at Davis in 2005. She holds an Agricultural Engineer degree from the Ecole Nationale Supérieure d'Agronomie de Toulouse, France, a Doctor-Engineer degree from the Institut National Polytechnique de Toulouse, France, and a Ph.D. in Water Resources Engineering from Lund University.

Balakrishnan (PhD 1979, Indian Inst. of Science, Bangalore, India) is an Hon. Professor, at the Supercomputer Education and Res. Centre, Indian Institute of Science (IISc). He was Associate Director IISc (2005-2014). He has made important contributions to Aerospace Electronics, Computational Electromagnetics, Language Technologies, Information Security, and Information and Communication Technologies. His awards include: Padmashree, Pres. of India; Prof SN Mitra Memorial Award, IETE Diamond Jubilee Medal; Jawaharlal Nehru Lectureship of INSA; JC Bose National Fellowship; Hari Om Prerit Dr. Vikram Sarabhai Res. Award; and JC Bose Medals of Inst. of Electronics and Telecommunication Eng. for best papers. He is a Fellow of: TWAS, Indian Natl. Acad. of Eng.; Indian Acad. of Sciences; Indian Natl. Science Acad.; National Acad. of Sciences; Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Eng..

Campos de Carvalho was Director of the Department of Science and Technology at the Ministry of Health in Brazil. He was scientific director of the National Cardiology Institute and is Professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He graduated in medicine and obtained his PhD at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He did postdoctoral work at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine where he now holds a visiting position as Professor. He received 3 national prizes from the Brazilian Federation of Experimental Biology Societies and the Heart Institute (Incor) Prize for his work on cell therapies in cardiac diseases. He was a Fogarty Fellow and is a fellow of the American Heart Association. He was in the Council of the International Union of Physiological Sciences (2009-2013) and is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences. He has published more than 200 papers in indexed journals, edited 3 books and 25 book chapters. He tutored 81 master, PhD and post-doctoral students