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.

Littlewood took a BA in 1976 and a PhD in physics at the Cavendish Laboratory, Cambridge in 1980, with a one-year intermediate sojourn at MIT as a Kennedy Scholar. In 1980 he moved to Bell Laboratories in Murray Hill, New Jersey, and remained as a member of technical staff to become head of the Theoretical Physics Research Department in 1992. He returned to Cambridge in 1997 as Professor of Physics, and from 2005 to 2010 he was head of the Cavendish Laboratory. In 2011 he became Associate Laboratory Director at Argonne National Laboratory in the USA, and in 2014 Laboratory Director, retiring in 2017. He is a Professor of Physics at the University of Chicago. He is a fellow of the Royal Society of London, Institute of Physics, American Physical Society, and Trinity College Cambridge. He has extensive collaborations in India, at Bangalore, TIFR, and Kolkata. He has over 200 publications and six patents.

Liu has been a Distinguished Research Fellow at the Research Center for Environmental Changes, Academia Sinica, Taipei, China since 1999. He is the founding Director of the Center. Liu has made fundamental contributions in atmospheric chemistry, air pollution and climate change. He has published more than 160 papers which have received more than 6500 citations. He is one of the first few Chinese geoscientists in the prestigious ISI Highly Cited Researchers list. He was elected as an Academician of Academia Sinica in 2012. He was elected a Fellow of the American Geophysical Union in 1994. He is also a Fellow of the Chinese Meteorological Society. In addition, Liu served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Geophysical Research-Atmospheres (JGR) from 1988 to 1991.

Mahadevan (PhD, 1998, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore) is a condensed matter theorist working as a Professor at the S.N. Bose National Centre for Basic Sciences, Kolkata, in India. She is a Fellow of the Indian Academy of Science, and was a Member of the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics (IUPAP) C20 Commission on Computational Physics from 2015 to 2021. She has been a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the Journal of Magnetism and Magnetic Materials as well as of ACS Energy Letters since 2021. She was a recipient of the NASI (National Academy of Sciences, India)-Scopus Young Scientist Award in 2010 and of the TWOWS Award for Young Women Scientists in physics/mathematics in Asia region in 2010. Her research interests involve using a combination of ab-initio and model Hamiltonian methods in understanding properties of materials - with a focus on electronic structure and magnetism.

Mamun obtained his BSc (Honours) and MSc (Thesis) from Jahangirnagar University, and secured 1st class 1st position in both the examinations. He received his PhD degree from the University of St. Andrews (UK) under the Commonwealth Scholarship. Mamun was awarded the Alexander von Humboldt (AvH) Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship (Germany), the Commonwealth Post-Doctoral Research Fellowship (UK), the Max Planck Research Fellowship (Germany), among others. Mamun received the AvH the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award in 2009. He was awarded the Bangladesh Academy of Sciences Gold Medal in 2004, the TWAS Prizes for Young Scientists in Developing Countries in 2006, among other recognitions. He has published over 400 research articles in peer-reviewed international journals, and has written a textbook published by the Institute of Physics (London).

Mansouri obtained his PhD in physics and astronomy at the University of Vienna in 1972. He is professor of physics at Sharif University of Technology in Tehran. His previous positions include: chairman of the department of physics at Sharif University of Technology from 1983-85 and from 1991-93; and president of the Physics Society of Iran (1984-88, 1992-95 and 1999-2006). He is well known for his test theory of relativity which he developed in the 1970s with Roman Sexl at the University of Vienna. His theory constitutes a theoretical framework for testing the theories claiming to be an alternative to Einstein's theory of relativity. He has been awarded the Abdus Salam Prize for Iranian Scientists in 1989. He is a fellow of the Academy of Science, and associate fellow of the Academy for Irainian Litrature and Farsi Language Iran. He has been founding director of the Iranian National Observatory from 2007-20018. He has also served as deputy for research at the Ministry of Science, Research and Technology of Iran from 2001-2004. His social activities related to sustainable deveplemt in Iran is reflected in his collected works including seven titles published in 2022.

Mariscotti is CEO and founder of Tomografia de Hormigón Armado S.A. After his PhD at the University of Buenos Aires, he spent a few years at Brookhaven National Laboratory. Later, he was visiting professor at the University of Manchester, KFA in Julich, Sao Paulo University, ILL at Grenoble and other institutions abroad. He was professor of nuclear physics at the University of Buenos Aires, member of the board of directors of the Buenos Aires Research Council, director of R and D at the Argentine Atomic Energy Commission and president of the National Agency for the Promotion of Science and Technology. He has been awarded the Konex Award (1983 and 2003), UNIDO (1995), and the Tech Museum Award (2002). He is a former president of the Argentine National Academy of Exact, Physical and Natural Sciences and a member since 1986.

Mathur is J C Bose National Fellow at Manipal Academy of Higher Education. Formerly Distinguished Professor at Tata Institute of Fundamental Research in Mumbai, India and Dean, Natural Sciences Faculty; he was the founding Director of UM-DAE Centre for Excellence in Basic Science, Mumbai University. He obtained his PhD in 1976 at Birkbeck College, University of London. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Science Academy and the Indian Academy of Sciences. He has been an Advisory Editor of the Journal of Physics B and of EPL (Europhysics Letters). Among his prizes are the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize in the Physical Sciences, the J C Bose National Fellowship, the European Union’s Erasmus-Mundus Scholarship in Optical Science and Technology, the Royal Society Guest Research Fellowship at Oxford University, and the Fulton Fellowship of the Association of Commonwealth Universities, London. He has been a visiting professor at Aarhus, Tohoku, Swansea, Oxford and Imperial College London. Currently he is the Scientific Committee Expert for the 2019 edition of the International Junior Science Olympiad being organised in Doha, Qatar.

Menchaca-Rocha is a Mexican nuclear physicist with an Oxford D.Phil. and postdoctoral training at LBNL. His interests include heavy-ion reaction mechanisms and their hydrodynamic simulation; the production of light nuclei and antinuclei, with applications to cosmology. He is member of important international collaborations such as ALICE and AMS2. Locally, he pioneered muon-imaging, carrying highly visible applications to the Teotihuacan Pyramid of the Sun and to the Popocatepetl Volcano. He has published 237 papers, cited over 20,000 times (H=75). Directed (2003-07) the UNAM Physics Institute of Physics; presided over the Mexican Academy of Sciences (2010-12); and is (2016-19) General Coordinator of the Science Advisory Council to the Mexican Presidency. Among other distinctions, in 2004 he received the National Science Prize, the highest academic honor in Mexico. Emeritus, National Researchers System since 2017

Moura is director, Instituto Nacional de Meteorologia and vice-Pres., World Meteorological Organization. He was previously: Dir. Gen., Intl. Res. Inst. for Climate and Society, Columbia U.; snr. researcher and dir. meteorology, INPE, Brazil; and physics prof., U. of Taubate, Brazil. He has advanced research in climate forecasting, El Nino and Atlantic influences on droughts in northeastern Brazil and contributed to application of meteorological satellites and climate modelling in agriculture and water resources. He works on climate forecast system for global food security and relationships between climate and vector-born diseases. Awards include: Rossby Award, MIT; Awards from U. Fed. de Minas Gerais, Brazil; Award for Young Scientists, WMO, Geneva; Santos Dumont Medal, Min. of Aeronautics; Tamandaré Award, Navy, Brazil; elected Hon. Fellow of the Royal Meteorological Society, 2013.

Murenzi (PhD Louvain, Belgium) has been professor at Worcester Polytechnic Institute since 2024. He was Executive Director of TWAS from 2011-2023, 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).

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.

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.