Pieter Kok received an MSc in Physics from the University of Utrecht in 1997, and completed his PhD in Optical Quantum Technology at the University of Bangor in 2001. He worked as postdoctoral researcher at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Hewlett Packard in Bristol, and at the University of Oxford. He is currently Professor of Theoretical Physics at the University of Sheffield and Chief Quantum Scientist at Aegiq Ltd. His expertise is in linear optical quantum computing, quantum metrology, imaging and sensing, and the foundations of quantum mechanics

Weidong Zhu is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the founder and director of its Dynamic Systems and Vibrations Laboratory and Laser Vibrometry and Optical Measurement Laboratory. He received his double major BS degree in Mechanical Engineering and Computational Science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1986, and his MS and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Arizona State University and the University of California at Berkeley in 1988 and 1994, respectively. He is a recipient of the 2004 National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He has been an ASME Fellow since 2010, and has served as an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Vibration and Acoustics and the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control, and as a Subject Editor of the Journal of Sound and Vibration and Nonlinear Dynamics. His research spans the fields of dynamics, vibration, control, structural health monitoring, renewable energy, and metamaterials, and involves analytical development, numerical simulation, experimental validation, and industrial application. He has published 418 journal papers in these areas and has 13 issued U.S. patents. He received 17 best paper awards from the ASME and Society for Experimental Mechanics. He is a recipient of a 2020 University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Research, the 2024 ASME Rayleigh Lecture Award, and the 2026-2029 UMBC Presidential Research Professorship Award.

Full Professor of Applied Physics at Universidad de La Laguna (Tenerife, Canary Islands, Spain). Researcher in luminescent materials with “rare-earths” elements with applications to nanotechnology and photonics to the areas of renewable energies (solar energy, “green hydrogen”, “artificial photosynthesis”) and anti-counterfeiting. He is Editor of “Optical Materials” journal at Elsevier. Principal Investigator of the “MAGEC-REEsearch” Project (“Materials for Advanced Energy Generation in the Canary Islands and exploration of rare- earth resources”) of the “TENET” Project (“MaTErials with photoNic applications in Energy and anti-counterfeiting security”) financed by the Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness of Spain and by the Research Agency of the of Canary Islands Government, focused on the development of frontier-of-research photonic applications from the improvement of photocatalysis and green hydrogen generation to the development of luminescent tags and security inks. He has 108 scientific publications in prestigious international journals (h-index 34), four six-year periods of research, as well as four industrial patents on luminescent nanomaterials with technological applications. Since 2017 he serves as President of the International Organizing Committee of the SHIFT series of international conferences on light applications in renewable energy and biomedicine. He is also a quite active scientific disseminator (Broadcast on the air in prime time in the morning within the program “Hoy por Hoy” Tenerife - Cadena SER Radio Club Tenerife since July 2021 and continues today) and organizer of scientific outreach events, among others, around the figure of Blas Cabrera Felipe, physicist considered “father of Spanish physics”. Lately, he is involved in the foundation and promotion of a spin-off company at Universidad de La Laguna, acting as CEO in TENET-Lightkey.