Alexander Vaskevich is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. He received his Ph.D. and D.Sc. degrees in Extractive Metallurgy from the Moscow Steel and Alloys Institute, where he was employed as a Senior Staff Scientist. Thereafter he worked as a Researcher at the School of Chemistry, Tel-Aviv University, Israel. In 1998 he joined the Department of Materials and Interfaces, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot, Israel. He published more than 120 peer reviewed papers and book chapters and holds more than 20 patents and author certificates. His current research interests includes development of nanostructured materials using self-assembly schemes, nanostructured metal and metal oxide films, localized plasmon transducers for sensing applications and chemically and electrochemically active plasmonic systems. The objective is to develop new approaches to the construction of nanomaterials, as well as applications of the newly developed nanostructures.

Christiane Becker heads the Young investigator Group Nano-SIPPE’(the name derives from the research topic Nanostructured SIlicon for Photonic and Photovoltaic ImplEmentations (Sippe: engl. Clique)). The main goal of the ‘Nano-SIPPE’ is the development of large-area silicon nano- and microstructures for photovoltaic and photonic applications. Aiming at basic research gearing towards future industrial applications the group is focused on cost-effective and up-scalable fabrication methods such as nanoimprint-lithography and high-rate silicon evaporation. The group is supported by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (BMBF) in the program NanoMatFutur (no. 03X5520).

Main research interests of Gerhard Meyer are in the area of scanning probe microscopy and epitaxial growth, in particular low-temperature scanning tunneling microscopy and atomic force microscopy, atomic/molecular manipulation and studies on the growth of/on ultrathin insulating films.
   He received his PhD from the University of Hannover, Germany, in 1987. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at the IBM Research Laboratory in Yorktown Heights, he joined the group of Prof. K. H. Rieder at the Free University Berlin, starting a project on low-temperature scanning probe microscopy. In 2000, he became staff member of the Paul Drude Institut fuer Festkoerperelektronik, Berlin, until 2002, when he moved to IBM Research - Zurich Laboratory. For his work in scanning probe microscopy Gerhard Meyer has received several IBM awards, including an IBM Corporate Award, the German Nano-Science Prize in 2002 and the Robert Wichard Pohl Prize of the German Physical Society in 2011. Since 2009 he has been a Fellow of the American Physical Society.
   He has published more than 120 papers and presented more than 100 invited talks in the area of Surface Science and Nanoscience. His research projects have been supported by several national and EU projects fostering international collaboration.
In 2011, he was awarded a European Research Council (ERC) advanced grant.

Research interest of Prof. Gregory Weiss is to apply new tools from chemistry to dissect biology at the level of atoms and bonds.  His laboratory applies viral evolution and the phage display of large libraries of proteins to uncover mechanisms of enzymes, protein folding, and molecular recognition by both soluble and membrane-associated proteins. Selectants from such libraries and other protein engineering experiments are then wired into circuits developed collaboratively with his lab. At the single molecule level, he collaborates with Prof. Phil Collins (UC Irvine, Dept. of Physics) to interrogate individual enzymes during their catalytic cycles. For the development of disease diagnostics, he collaborates with Prof. Reg Penner (UC Irvine, Dept. of Chemistry) to invent sensors capable of recognizing disease-associated biomarkers from complex fluids.

Isodiana CRUPI received the M.Sc. degree in Electronic Engineering from the University of Messina in 1999 and the Ph.D. degree in Materials Science from the University of Catania in 2003. In 2004 she held a post-doctoral research position at the National Research Council (CNR-IMM) in Catania. Since 1998, she has been a frequent scientific visitor at IMEC, collaborating with the CMOS Reliability, FLASH Memory and Solar Cell groups. Since November 2004 she is a Research Scientist at the CNR-IMM in Catania. Her main research activities are directed towards the electrical and structural characterization of dielectric and semiconductor materials, the electrical characterization of advanced semiconductor devices for micro- and opto-electronics and the development of silicon nanocrystals devices for memory applications. More recently her interest has shifted to photovoltaics research with a focus on electrical and optical properties of innovative materials for solar cell applications. She is author of about 70 publications in international scientific journals and in international conference proceedings. She is co-inventor on an U.S. Patent. She serves as referee for outstanding international scientific journals and was listed in "The Golden List", IEEE Electron Device Letters, 2005. In 2003 she received the Young Scientist Award at the European Materials Research Society.

Jakub Dostalek is a project leader at the AIT - Austrian Institute of Technology GmbH in Vienna. He runs a group active in the field of nanophotonics and materials research for biosensor and photovoltaic applications. In particular, Jakub Dostalek’s research interests include plasmonics, guided wave optics, nanomaterials, hydrogels, fluorescence spectroscopy, optical biosensors for medical diagnostics and food safety. Jakub Dostalek completed his PhD in 2006 at Charles University in Prague. He continued his postdoctoral studies at Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz until 2007. From 2007 to 2008, he served as a project leader Polymer Research in Mainz and since 2009 he is with Austrian Institute of Technology in Vienna. Jakub Dostalek authored more than 40 papers and 7 book chapters.

Jirí Orava is a Research Associate in the Department of Materials Science & Metallurgy at the University of Cambridge, UK, since 2009 and the Advanced Institute for Materials Research, Tohoku University, Japan, since 2012. His research interests include the synthesis and physical-chemical properties of chalcogenide glasses, photonic structures, dynamics in glass-forming liquids and the optical and electrical data recording in amorphous semiconducting chalcogenides. He obtained his PhD in 2009 from the University of Pardubice in the Czech Republic.

Klaus Ensslin has been Professor of Solid-State Physics at ETH Zurich since October 1995. He studied physics at the University of Munich and at ETH Zurich. After completing his doctoral dissertation at the Max Planck Institute in Stuttgart, he was a postdoc at the University of California in Santa Barbara, USA. From April 1991 until September 1995 he worked at the University of Munich. His habilitation thesis was awarded a prize from the University of Munich. In 1994 he received the Gerhard Hess prize of the German Science Foundation promoting outstanding young researchers. Since 2011 he directs National Center for Competence in Research on “Quantum Science and Technology”.
   The primary research interest of Klaus Ensslin lies in the physics of mesoscopic systems. The electronic properties of novel semiconductor nanostructures are investigated using material control down to the atomic scale. One important goal is the ever increasing control and improved understanding of the quantum properties of electrons in nanostructures.

Synthesis and characterization of graphene nanostructures:

• Atomically precise bottom-up fabrication of graphene nanoribbons
• Mapping the electronic surface potential of nanostructured surfaces
• Porous graphenes: two-dimensional polymer synthesis with atomic precision