Prof. Dr. Miguel A. Bañares obtained his PhD in Chemistry in 1992 at the University of Salamanca, Spain. He is a postdoctoral fellow at Lehigh University, PA, and at the University of Notre Dame, IN. He is Full Research Professor at the Institute for Catalysis, CSIC, Spain. He is Editor-in-Chief for Catalysis Today (Elsevier) and co-editor of the Handbook for Advanced Catalyst Characterization (Springer). He has been Deputy Vice-President of CSIC, Spanish National Research Council. He is co-founder of Advanced Dispersed Particles in 2011, a CSIC spin-off company. He is Doctor Honoris Causa by the Université de Caen Normandie, France.
He has more than 230 publications (https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3875-4468) in international journals and an “h” factor or 50 with more than 30 plenary/keynote lectures. Bañares research stands on the use of real-time Raman spectroscopy during catalysis combining in situ spectroscopic characterization of catalyst structure with simultaneous activity measurement, so that both, structure and performance are measured simultaneously. He coined the term “operando” to identify this advanced in situ spectroscopy, his new term is widely used in literature now. He has recently implemente a research line on molecular bases of nanoparticle toxicity in the context of reactive aspects in oxidic and polymeric materials.

Prof Casiraghi holds a Chair in Nanoscience at the Department of Chemistry, University of Manchester (UK). She received her B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Nuclear Engineering from Politecnico di Milano (Italy) and her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Cambridge (UK). In 2007, she was awarded with the prestigious Kovalevskaja Award (1.5M Euro). In 2010 she joined the department of chemistry at the University of Manchester. She is recipient of several awards, including the ERC Consolidator (2015), ERC Proof of Concept (2020), ERC Advanced grants (2022), as well as the Leverhulme Award in Engineering (2016, 100K GBP), and the RSC 2020 Gibson-Fawcett Award. Her current research work focuses on the development of biocompatible 2D inks and their use in printed electronics and biomedical applications.

Andrea C. Ferrari earned a PhD in electrical engineering from Cambridge University, after a Laurea in nuclear engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy. He is Professor of Nanotechnology and the Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre and of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Graphene Technology. He is Fellow of Pembroke College, the American Physical Society, the Institute of Physics and the Materials Research Society. His research interests include nanomaterials growth, modelling, characterization, and devices. He was awarded the Royal Society Brian Mercer Award for Innovation, the Marie Curie Excellence Award, the Philip Leverhulme Prize, The EU-40 Materials Prize, The Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. He is also the Chairman of the Executive Board of the EU Graphene Flagship

Juan Carlos González-Rosillo is a physicist from the Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and holds an M.Sc. in Materials Science and Nanotechnology and a Ph.D. in Materials Science from the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. He carried out his doctoral research at the Institute of Materials Science of Barcelona (ICMAB-CSIC) and was a visiting researcher at the University of Geneva and Forschungszentrum Jülich. He subsequently joined the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a postdoctoral researcher, working on lithium-based oxide materials for neuromorphic computing and on thin film solid electrolytes for next-generation all-solid-state batteries and microbatteries. In 2020, he joined IREC with a Tecniospring INDUSTRY fellowship to develop microbattery technologies aimed at powering micro- and nanoscale devices. Juan Carlos is currently a Ramón y Cajal Researcher, and current research interests include solid-state batteries, thin film microbattery architectures, and advanced operando nanoscale characterization, including Tip-Enhanced Raman Spectroscopy (TERS).

Claire Mangeney is professor at LCBPT Laboratory of Université Paris Cité. Her research sits at the interface of surface chemistry, nanotechnology, and biology, where she develops original chemical strategies using aryl diazonium salts to functionalize surfaces, particularly plasmonic nanoparticles. She focuses on applications in SERS sensing, plasmonic nanosensors, SERS tags and contrast agents for bioimaging, aiming to combine chemical precision with advanced optical detection. Her work includes the design of nanoscale tools that serve as ideal interfaces to interrogate biological systems at multiple scales, as well as their integration into “all-optical” sensing devices. She has contributed to over 20 projects (ANR, LabEx, IdEx…) and coordinated 14 of them. She has co-authored more than 100 publications and holds two patents.

Prof. Dr. Jürgen Popp studied chemistry at the Universities of Erlangen and Würzburg and received his PhD in chemistry before conducting postdoctoral research at Yale University. Since 2002, he has held the Chair of Physical Chemistry at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and since 2006 has additionally served as Scientific Director of the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technology. His research focuses on biophotonics, Raman spectroscopy, multimodal optical imaging, and AI-driven biomedical diagnostics with strong emphasis on clinical translation. He is internationally recognized as a leading expert in optical health technologies and translational photonics. Jürgen Popp has authored more than 1,170 peer-reviewed publications (h-index 92) and is inventor of 21 patents. He is Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Biophotonics and the Journal of Raman Spectroscopy and has delivered more than 200 invited lectures worldwide, including over 60 keynote and plenary talks. He won several awards among others the Pittsburgh Spectroscopy Award, the SPIE Biophotonics Innovation Award, and the Ellis R. Lippincott Award

Dr. Sylvie ROUSSEL holds an MS in Agricultural Engineering (94) and a MS in control and robotics (95) and a PhD in Machine Learning (98) from SupAgro Montpellier in France. She has then been a Research Associate at Iowa State University (IA, USA) for Machine Learning applied to NIR spectroscopy.
Since 2003, she is the founder and CEO of Ondalys company, a consulting and training company in chemometrics / Machine Learning for instrumental data (spectroscopy, imagining, chromatography…) for many industrial sectors such as pharma/biotech, chemistry and agrifood. http://ondalys.fr/?lang=en
From 2009 to 2023, Dr. Roussel was also CEO of INDATECH company: in 2009, together with Dr. Chauchard, she founded INDATECH innovative company, an equipment manufacturing company dedicated to spectroscopic sensors for PAT (Process Analytical Technology). In 2017, INDATECH became part of the French industrial group Chauvin-Arnoux. www.indatech.eu
As a scientist, she is currently part of the boards of the NIR French group (HélioSPIR) and the Vibrational Spectroscopy French Group (GFSV), as well as a European Expert for Machine Learning and Optics for EU collaborative projects.

Cyril Ruckebusch is a Professor at LASIRE CNRS, Université de Lille, specializing in chemometrics and data science, with a focus on time-resolved spectroscopy, spectral imaging, and multivariate data analysis for applications in analytical spectroscopy, physical chemistry, and biological optical imaging. He has authored 150+ peer-reviewed publications and serves as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Chemometric