Luisa Torsi is internationally renowned as a pioneer in bio-organic electronic sensors and elected member of the Accademia dei Lincei. She earned a degree in Physics and a PhD in Chemistry from the Uni-versity of Bari, where she has served as Full Professor of Analytical Chemistry since the age of 40. Following a postdoctoral fellowship at Bell Labs in the U.S., she developed an interdisciplinary research approach that integrates electronic devices, analytical chemistry, and organic semiconductors. She also held a position as adjunct professor at Åbo Akademi University in Finland and currently occupies leadership roles, including Vice President of the Scientific Council of the National Research Council (CNR) and President of ARTI Puglia, the regional agency for innovation and technology transfer.
Torsi has received numerous international accolades: she was the first woman to receive the Heinrich Emanuel Merck Award for Analytical Sciences and she was also awarded the Exner Medal. She was awarded the prestigious President of the Republic Prize by the Accademia dei Lincei in 2023. In 2025, she has also been awarded an honorary doctorate from Åbo Akademi University. She is also a Fellow of both the Materials Research Society and the Royal Society of Chemistry and was also the first woman elected President of the European Materials Rese-arch Society.
With over 280 scientific publications, approximately 19,000 citations, and 14 patents (10 granted), Torsi ranks among the top 0.58% most-cited chemists in the world, according to ScholarGPS®. She has given more than 200 invited talks, including over 60 plenary lectures.
She has led numerous national and EU-funded research projects, including SiMoT, a platform for ultra-sensitive biomarker detection applied to early cancer diagnosis and viral screening such as COVID-19. She currently coordinates a project focused on detecting Xylella in olive trees in Apulia. Her dedication also extends to science communication and the promotion of women in STEM—through TEDx talks, the 100Esperte initiative, and even a feature in the Italian Topolino magazine, where she appeared as “Louise Torduck,” a successful scientist from Calisota Valle;
Website: https://www.uniba.it/docenti/torsi-luisa
ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-0798-0780
Researcher ID & Scopus ID: G-9065-2011; 7005294241
Prof. Paolo Lugli is a renowned expert in nanoelectronics, printed electronics, and molecular electronics, with over 800 scientific publications to his name. After completing his studies in physics at the University of Modena, he earned his M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Colorado State University, USA. His academic career includes research and teaching roles at the Universities of Colorado, Modena, and Rome “Tor Vergata.” In 2002, he was appointed Chair of Nanoelectronics at the Technical University of Munich (TUM), where he taught for twelve years and served as Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, overseeing more than 3,500 students and 700 doctoral candidates. In 2017, he joined the Free University of Bozen-Bolzano as Professor and later served as Rector, bringing with him extensive leadership experience and a strong commitment to advancing key fields such as bioengineering and nanotechnology. Prof. Lugli is an IEEE Fellow and a member of the German Academy of Science and Engineering (acatech), actively contributing to the scientific and academic communities through international collaborations, conference leadership, and cross-disciplinary innovation.
Professor Riccarda Antiochia received an MSc degree in Chemistry with honors in 1992 and an MSc degree in Pharmacy with honors in 2009, both at the Sapienza University of Rome. In 1994 she received a Diploma of Imperial College from Imperial College, London, and in 1996 received a PhD in Chemical Sciences from the Sapienza University of Rome. In 2018 she was awarded the national scientific qualification as Full Professor for the scientific sector CHIM/01, Analytical Chemistry. She is a Member of the Steering Committee of CNIS, Research Center for Biotechnology, applied to Engineering of the Sapienza University of Rome from 2011, and a Member of the PNIEC-PNRR Technical Committee of the Ministry of Environment and Energetic Security (MASE) for the environmental impact assessment of projects from Integrates National Energy and Climate Plan (PNIEC) and National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) since April 2022. She is author of more than110 papers in international peer-reviewed scientific journals, 3 book chapters and 1 mono- graph.
Her scientific activity is focused on the fields of biotechnology, nanotechnology and analytical chemistry. Her main area of research is the design and development of electrochemical (bio) sensors for clinical applications. More recently, she has been involved in the characterization of new nanostructured materials for electrode modification in second- and third-generation electro- chemical biosensors, biofuel cells and microneedle-based bio- sensor development.
Olivier Soppera is CNRS Research Director at the Institut de Science de Matériaux de Mulhouse, a joint research unit of the CNRS and the Université de Haute-Alsace, located in Mulhouse, north-east France.
Olivier Soppera’s research focuses on the use of photochemical pathways to prepare structured functional materials on a variety of scales, from nanotechnology to the macroscopic. The spatial control of light enables these materials to be structured in the form of thin films, 2D or 3D structures, for applications in a wide range of fields including optics, photonics, electronics and sensors.
Responding to the challenges of the energy transition by proposing materials and processes that are more respectful of the environment, and to the challenges of health with sensors for biomedical applications and biocompatible materials are central to his research work.
Christophe Caucheteur is head of the Advanced Photonic Sensors ERC Unit at the University of Mons in Belgium. He holds a master degree in electrical engineering (2003) and PhD degree in applied sciences (2007) from the Faculté Polytechnique de Mons. He was recipient of an ERC Starting grant from 2011 to 2016. His research activities focus on the study and development of fiber Bragg grating sensors, especially plasmonic biosensors based on gold-coated tilted fiber Bragg gratings. He is regularly involved in the organization of international events, including the co-chairing of EWOFS (European Workshop on Optical fibre Sensors) in 2023 and the technical program co-chairing of BGPP (Bragg Gratings, Photosensitivity and Poling in optical materials and waveguides) in 2024. He is the co-founder of the spin-off company B-SENS (www.b-sens.be).
Andrea Cusano received his Laurea degree cum Laude in Electronic Engineering on November 27, 1998 from University of Naples “Federico II”, Italy. In 2003 he defended his PhD thesis carried out at the Department of Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering of University of Naples with tutor Prof. Antonello Cutolo. His Ph.D. thesis was focused on “Optoelectronic Sensors for Smart Materials and Structures”. On February 2002, during his Ph.D. student course, he was engaged as Research Fellow at the Department of Engineering at University of Sannio to support Prof. Antonello Cutolo to build up the Optoelectronic Division. Since September 2002 and up to now, he has been also in charge as Professor for several courses of Electronics at the Engineering Department of University of Sannio. On December 30, 2002, he started his service as permanent researcher at the University of Sannio. On December 15, 2005 he won a national competition as Associate Professor (scientific area ING-INF/01) at the University of Sannio. His research interests are focused on the suitable merging of optical fibers and nanotechnologies and was the pioneer of the “Lab on Fiber Technology” concept, nowadays recognized as a hot topic in nanophotonics. In 2019, he won a competition as full Professor at the University of Sannio where now he leads the Optoelectronic and Photonic Group.
He was also cofounder of several spin-off companies focused on the development of fiber optic sensing systems for industrial and life science applications: “OptoSmart S.r.l.” in 2005, “MDTech” in 2007, “OptoAdvance” in 2011, Mantid S.r.l. in 2017, Often Medical in 2019.
He published over 400 papers on prestigious international journals and communications in well-known international conferences worldwide; he has close to 20 national and international patents currently in charge of prestigious industrial companies (Ansaldo STS, Alenia WASS, Optosmart, MdTEch, Often Medical). Since 2011 he is Editor in Chief of Journal of Optics and Laser Technology (Elsevier).
He is member of the technical and steering program committees of several international and well recognized conferences (IEEE Sensors, International conference on Sensing Technologies, European Workshop for SHM, European Workshop on Optical Fiber Sensors, Asian-Pacific Optical Sensors, International Conference on Applications of Optics and Photonics, Bragg Gratings, Photosensitivity, and Poling (BGPP), International conference on Optical Fiber Sensors).
He is co-author of more than 70 invited chapters published in international books, invited papers, keynote and plenary lectures in prestigious scientific international journals as well as international conferences.
He has been Guest editor of many Special Issues related to optical fiber sensor technology and was the Co-Editor of 4 international and well recognized books for relevant scientific publishers. He is consultant for important companies of the Finmeccanica group (today Leonardo Group) such as Ansaldo STS and Alenia WASS. He is also consultant for CERN in Geneva where he is working on the development of innovative optical sensors for high energy physics applications. He received many international recognitions and awards for his efforts in the development of new concepts based on the suitable integration of Optical fibers and Nanotechnologies. He was also Principal Investigators of many national and international projects and was able to be funded for over that 25MEuros in the last 6 years.
Recently, he was appointed as Technical Director of two important National Initiatives:
Finally, he works in collaboration with the REA agency of the European Commission in the frame of the FET-Open initiatives.
Dr. Xing Wang is a Bioengineering professor, affiliated with the Chemistry Department, Carl R. Woese Institute for Genomic Biology (IGB), Holonyak Micro and Nanotechnology Laboratory (HMNTL), and Cancer Center at Illinois (CCIL) at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). He received a Ph.D. from New York University, working with Dr. Ned Seeman to build biofunctional DNA motifs. He did his postdoc training at Princeton University with a focus on nucleic acid engineering and RNA biology. At UIUC, Dr. Wang directs the Nucleic Acids Programming Lab (NAPL), and his research group utilizes nucleic acid and protein engineering to evolve new molecular ligands for targeted drug delivery and create designer DNA nanostructure-based “plug-and-play” platforms for the applications in disease diagnosis and treatment. Dr. Wang is a recipient of Mikashi Award in 2021. He was selected as a Fellow of Y Combinator Founder Cohort in 2021. He received a Spoke Award in 2024. Dr. Wang’s research group is mainly supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and National Science Foundation (NSF).
Dr. Carlo Massaroni received his BSc (2010) and MSc (2012) in Biomedical Engineering and Ph.D. in Bioengineering (2017) from Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma (UCBM). Currently, he is Assistant Professor at UCBM. His research interests are focused on the design, development, and tests of sensors, measuring systems and devices for mechanical and thermal measurements, with particular emphasis on the design of wearable and unobtrusive systems for the measurement of vital parameters and joint motion. Among others, he is principal investigator in ongoing national projects on the development of wearable technologies for non-invasive measurement in the medical, occupational and sports fields and on design of unobtrusive or minimally-invasive measuring systems based on fiber optics for medical and industrial applications . He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society, IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology. He is currently the Chair of the “Wearable Sensors” TC of the IEEE Sensors Italy Chapter and Associate Member of the "Wearable Biomedical Sensors & Systems" TC of the IEEE EMB.