El-Khozondar (PhD 1999, New Mexico State U., Postdoc 1999, Max Planck Institute, Germany) is professor, electrical engineering dpt., Islamic U. of Gaza. She got her B.Sc. in Physics and joined the Physics faculty at BirZeit U., Palestinian Territory in 1987. She is recognized for her research on the behaviour of optical fibre grating sensors under different stress effects, magneto-optical isolators, metamaterial devices, electro-optical waveguides, and the microstructural evolution of polycrystalline materials, with relevance to integrated optical devices and the performance of metals and ceramics. Her honours include Fulbright Scholarship, DAAD award; Alexander von Humboldt Scholarship; Erasmus Mundus; senior member at ICTP; Islamic U. Deanery Prize for applied sciences and the Arab U. Union Award, TWAS medal lecture 2015 and ISESCO Prize in Science and Technology 2014.

Brito Cruz is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Campinas (Unicamp), Brazil and the Senior Vice-President Research Networks at Elsevier, UK. He graduated in Electronics Engineering and has a doctorate in Physics. He was a visiting researcher at the Quantum Optics Laboratory at the Universitá di Roma, at the Femtosecond Research Lab. at the Universitè Pierre et Marie Curie, and a resident researcher at the AT&T's Bell Laboratories, in Holmdel, New Jersey. He was the Director of Unicamp's Physics Institute, Pro-rector for Research, and Rector of the university. He was the President of the São Paulo Research Foundation (FAPESP) and its Science Director from 2005-2020. He is a member of the Queen Elizabeth Engineering Prize Judging Panel and of the UN's 10-Member Committee for Technology for Technology Facilitation for the SDGs. Brito Cruz is a member of the Brazilian Academy of Sciences, received the Ordre des Palmes Academiques de France, the Order of the Scientific Merit from the Federative Republic of Brazil, and the Order of the British Empire, Honorary (OBE).

Prance is a Trustee of the Eden Project in Cornwall, and vis. professor at Reading U. He obtained his BA in botany (Oxford, 1960) and DPhil (1963). He began his career with The New York Botanical Garden as a research assistant, becoming senior vice president for science in 1981. He also set up the Garden's Inst. of Economic Botany of which he was the first director from 1981-1988. From 1988 to 1999, he was director of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. He was knighted in 1995, holds hon. doctorates from 15 universities and is a member of several science academies. Honours include: Ordem Nacional do Mérito Cientifico, Grã-Cruz, Brazil, 1995; Internatl. Cosmos Prize, 1995, Order of the Southern Cross, Brazil, 2000; Lifetime Discovery Award, Royal Geographical Society and the Discovery Channel, 1999; Fairchild Medal for Plant Exploration, 2000; Order of the Rising Sun, Japan, 2012.

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.

Professor Grebogi got his PhD in Physics from the University of Maryland in 1978, Postdoc in Physics and Applied Mathematics at UC Berkeley in 1978-1981. He is the Sixth Century Chair, and the Founding Director of the Institute for Complex Systems and Mathematical Biology, King’s College, University of Aberdeen, UK. He is also an External Scientific Member (Mitglied) of the Max-Planck-Society. He was previously with the University of Sao Paulo as Full Professor of Physics, and, before that, with the University of Maryland as Full Professor of Mathematics. He has made a major impact for his work in the field of chaotic and complex dynamics. He was awarded the Senior Humboldt Prize and the Thomson-Reuters Citation Laureate. The seminal work on chaos control (OGY) was selected by the American Physical Society as a milestone in the last 50 years. He received multiple Doctor Honoris Causa degrees, Humboldt Senior Prize, Fulbright Fellowship, Toshiba Chair, and various Honorary Professorship awards. He is Fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, The World Academy of Sciences, Academia Europaea, Brazilian Academy of Sciences, American Physical Society, and the UK Institute of Physics

Hasnain obtained his PhD (1977) at the Univ. of Manchester. In 2008, he became the first occupant of the Max Perutz Chair of Molecular Biophysics at the University of Liverpool. Since 2011, he has been appointed as the Intl. Lead for the Fac. of Health and Life Sciences. Prior to this, he was head, Molecular Biophysics Group, Daresbury Synchrotron Lab., UK, for 20 years. He was found. ed. of the Jnl. of Synchrotron Radiation. Prev. pos. incl.: Lecturer in applied physics, Univ. of Karachi; rsrch. fell., Physics Dept., Univ. of Manchester; DESY rsrch. fell., HasyLab; rsrch. fell., chemistry and medical biophysics dept., Manchester Univ. He is a fell. of the UK's Inst. of Physics and Royal Society of Chemistry. He has been the Editor-in-Chief of the International Union of Crystallography and is the founding editor-in-chief of IUCrJ launched in 2014.