Paul Mayrhofer is University Professor of Materials Science at the Institute of Materials Science and Technology, and chairs the Materials Science Division at the University TU Wien, Vienna, since 2012. He received a Dr. in 2001 and Habilitation in 2005 in Materials Science at the University of Leoben. Paul spent his post-doc and Erwin-Schrödinger-Fellowship at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, RTWH Aachen, and Linkoping University. Paul is currently Dean of Academic Affairs for Materials Science, and Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at TU Wien. Editor for Short Communications of Vacuum, and in the Editorial Board of Surface and Coatings Technology and Ceramics in Modern Technologies.
Paul has pioneered age hardening within hard ceramic thin films based on ternary nitrides and borides and is fascinated by phase transitions in general. His research activities focus on the development and characterization of vapor phase deposited nanostructured materials by a combination of computational and experimental material science. He won the prestigious START price of the Austrian Science Fund and served scientific societies in numerous appointed and elected positions such as being a member of the Young Academy of the Austrian Academy of Sciences, President of the Austrian Vacuum Society, Chair of the Advanced Surface Engineering Division of the American Vacuum Society (AVS). Paul is Fellow of AVS for Seminal contributions in the development of vapor phase deposited nanostructured materials and self-hardened protective coatings of ternary nitrides and borides.
Giuseppe Carbone received the MSc Mechanical Engineering Degree on February 1998 and in February 2002 the Ph. D. degree in Advanced Production Systems at Politecnico di Bari (Italy). He is currently Full Professor of Applied Mechanics, Head of the Department of Mechanics Mathematics and Management at Politecnico di Bari (Italy), and President of the Italian Tribology Association. In 2010 he founded the Tribology Lab at Polytechnic University of Bari. He has been Visiting Scientist at the Juelich Research Center (Germany) and at the Eindhoven University of Technology (Netherlands), Academic Visitor at the Imperial College London, and Visiting Scholar at University of North Texas. He is Research Associate at the Institute of Photonics and Nanotechnologies of the National Council of Research - Italy. His scientific interests focus mainly on tribology, contact mechanics, viscoelastic materials, adhesion, biomimetics, mechanical transmissions, mechanical vibrations, system dynamics, soft robotics grips, swarm intelligence and complex systems. His research has been funded from National and European programmes and private companies with more than 8 million €. He is founding member of PoliMech s.r.l. a Spinoff company of Polytechnic University of Bari. He serves as Associate Editor of Chaos Solitons and Fractals, and of the Journal Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering (Tribology Section). He is member of the Editorial Board of (i) Tribology International, (ii) Biomimetics, (iii) ISRN Tribology. He also served as Guest Editor of Tribology International, Biomimetics, Coatings, Lubricants, and Applied Science. His H-index is 40 (source: Scopus). He authored about 300 publications, of which about 165 in archive journals indexed in Scopus.
Holger Kersten is a Professor at the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics at University of Kiel, Germany since 2006. Prior Professor Kersten was the head of the plasma processes group at the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP Greifswald) in Greifswald, Germany. The focus of his research includes basic studies on the interaction of plasmas with surfaces, complex plasmas and their applications in plasma technology. In 1999, he received the Greifswald Plasma Physics Prize in recognition of his research. Professor Kersten was furthermore the president of the German Society for Plasma Technology from 2009 to 2013. He is currently an Editor-in-Chief of the European Physical Journal Techniques and Instrumentation (EPJTI) and Vice Dean of the Faculty of Mathematics and Natural Sciences at Kiel University.
Jochen Schein studied electrical engineering at the Ruhr University and had his Phd in plasma technology in 1996. From 1996 to 1998 he was a postdoc in plasma diagnostics at the Department for Mechanical Engineering at the University of Minnesota (USA). He then moved to Alameda Applied Sciences Corp. as a Principal Scientist. in California (USA), where he worked in the field of satellite propulsion. From 2004 to 2006 he was a Senior Scientist at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory on the National Ignition Facility's fusion experiments in that laboratory. Since August 2006 he is a professor at the Institute for Plasma Technology and Mathematics within the Faculty for Electrical Engineering and Information Technology at the University of the Federal Armed Forces in Munich. His research interests are in plasma physics, plasma technology and satellite propulsion.
Prof. Auezhan Amanov is currently professor at Tampere University, Finland. He joined in 2015 the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Sun Moon University, Rep of Korea as associate professor. Prof. Amanov was a director of the Institute for Manufacturing System Technology. He received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from Sun Moon University in 2011. He was a postdoctoral fellow at Tokyo University of Science (Japan) from 2012 to 2014. He is a member of STLE, TMS, ASM, AIST, and KTS societies. He got several Best Paper Awards (SMT28, NanoToday 2015, MSEA2018, etc. He has published over 150 papers in various international peer-reviewed journals with a Hirsch index of 31. His recent research interests focus on materials engineering, tribology, corrosion, and fatigue properties of materials including coatings and additive manufacturing through the application of surface severe plastic deformation (S2PD).
Sungmo Moon is a principal researcher at Korea Institute of Materials Science (KIMS) and a professor in the department of advanced materials engineering at University of Science and Technology (UST). He is the president of Korean Society of Surface Science and Engineering(KSSSE) and vice president of International Union for Surface Finishing (IUSF). He got his Ph.D at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 1997. He had stayed at the Corrosion and Protection Centre in University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST) for anodizing research, Hokkaido Univ. for pattering of aluminium alloy using laser irradiation technique after anodizing and National Research Council of Canada (NRC) for studying of direct methanol oxidation for DMFC. He has been working for KIMS from 2003. His research area mainly includes surface treatments of light metals such as anodizing, plasma electrolytic oxidation and chemical conversion coatings of Al, Mg and Ti, corrosion failure analyses, surface modification for biomaterials, chemical and electrochemical polishing and polymer electrolyte fuel cells.
Hana Barankova is professor in Science of Electricity at the Department of Engineering Sciences (Angstrom Laboratory), Uppsala University. She studied Solid State Engineering at the Czech Technical University in Prague and obtained her PhD degree in Electronics and Vacuum Technology from the Czech Academy of Sciences in Prague. She is a research leader of the Plasma Group and leader and/or principal investigator of several national and international programs. She participates in both research and cooperation projects with industry in- and outside Sweden. She has published over 130 publications, chapters in 7 books, and holds several patents on plasma systems. Her main research area is design, development and applications of different plasma sources and processes. She is a recipient of Mentor Award by the Society of Vacuum Coaters (SVC) for “development of numerous novel plasma sources”. She is currently Secretary of the SVC, member of several program committees at major international conferences, and member of the International Editorial Board of Surface and Coatings Technology (Elsevier).
Ewald Badisch is currently key researcher for functional surfaces as well as member of the scientific management at the Austrian Centre of Competence for Tribology (AC2T). He was graduated in materials science in 2000 from the University of Leoben and obtained his PhD degree in 2003. The PhD thesis was focussed on “Tribological Investigations of Tool Steels and Low-Friction Coatings”. After finishing his PhD, he then joined AC2T research GmbH - Austrian Centre of Competence for Tribology - as a researcher. His research fields of interest are industrial maintenance and wear protection, new technologies in tribology (e.g. additive manufacturing), design and application of tribological coatings (ranging from µm to mm – PVD thin films, thermal spray coatings, hardfacings and laser claddings), tribology under extreme conditions (CO2 corrosion, high temperature tribology, hydrogen atmosphere). He has published ~100 papers in various international peer-reviewed journals with about 3100 citations and a Hirsch index of 31 (google scholar).
Monica Bollani, is a researcher at IFN in LNESS laboratory (Como, Italy). She obtained a European PhD in 2000 in Materials Physics (Marseille,France) and until 2004, she moved to a research post-doc position targeting the SiGe epitaxial growth at the ETH in Zurich (CH). Then she became a researcher at CNR in Italy working in the semiconductor growth and, starting form 2009, in optical and electron-beam lithography group in L-NESS, mainly dedicated to nano-fabrication of low-dimensional semiconductor systems. She is responsible of the nano and microfabrication activity on semiconductor materials at LNESS laboratory. She has a broad and multi-disciplinary education integrated by an extended experience in sensors fabrication, in photonics and plasmonic, project management and lab and clean room operations.
Projects (Activities in the last 5 years):
- 2023-2025: She is coordinator (principal investigator) of the Italian PRIN 2022 PNRR project (ACONITE: Food safety via microbial detection with photonics nanoresonators, Grant n° P2022HRTYH).
- 2021-2025: She is involved in European FET-OPEN project in the CNR unit (X-PIC project, “e-Xtreme ultraviolet to soft-X-ray Photonic Integrated Circuits”, Grant n°964588) as responsible of validation of new technological platform for the development of a EUV - soft X-ray integrated photonics.
- 2022-2024: together with the IFN - CNR colleagues in Trento, she obtained the funding of a @CNR.it project linked to photonics for agrifood (EPOCALE, “Flexible photonic platforms for the detection of Bacillus cereus in Food production”).
- 2019 – 2023: she was coordinator (principal investigator) of the European project NARCISO (FET-OPEN, grant n° 828890, “NAtuRal instability of semiConductors thIn SOlid films for sensing and photonic applications”).
- 2020-2024: she is unit CNR responsible in the Italian PRIN project NOMEN (NOnlinear photonics with metal-less NAnoantennas and Metasurfaces, grant n° 2017MP7F8F).
- 2017-2023: she was unit CNR responsible in the European project SONAR (MSCA-RISE, grant n° 734690 “Localized Surface Plasmon Resonance in doped semiconductor nanocrystals”).
- 2019 – 2023: she was work package responsible (devices fabrication) for the Italian ASI project QUASIX (Sorgente integrata di singoli fotoni in silicio per comunicazioni quantistiche nello spazio, Integrated single photon source in silicon for quantum communications in the space). n. 2019 5 U.0
Decision-making role in congresses or scientific events:
She was part of the organizing committee of the 8th ESPS-NIS conference (Como, 14-18 June 2010), the organizing committee of FisMat2013 conference (Milano, 9-14 September 2013), the organizing committee of MNE 2021 conference (Torino, September 20th - 23rd, 2021), the organizing committee of ISTDM-ICSI2023 conference (Como, 21-25 May 2023).
She was also involved in the scientific advisory committee for the XTOP 2014 Conference (Grenoble, Sept. 2014, http://xtop2014.org/index.php/committees), for the plasmonic school, scheduled for July 2016 (http://www.sbai.uniroma1.it/scuole/plasmonics2016/ ), for the SPIE Photonics Europe, call “Fiber Lasers and Glass Photonics: Materials through Applications”, 3-7 April 2022, Strasbourg, France https://spie.org/conferences-and-exhibitions/photonics-europe)and for D-Photon 2023 conference (Bari, July 2023 https://d-photon2023.fbk.eu/home).
Starting from September 2023, she is member of the international steering committee of the MNE congress, the most important committee linked to nano and microfabrication events in Europe.
Dr. Bollani has also been active in the dissemination area by organizing for several photonic science introduction events to students at primary and secondary schools in Milan or at MEETmeTONIGHT event in Milano. Starting from 2017, she is responsible of Pint of Science events in Milano, also obtaining the involvement and funding of private companies and associations (https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=lDDmWLYAAAAJ).
Dirk Hegemann is a physicist and materials scientist. He earned his Ph.D. from TU Darmstadt, Germany, in 1999 dealing with plasma deposition methods. He then worked with Fraunhofer IGB, Germany before moving to Empa, Switzerland in 2003. Currently, he is leading the group Plasma & Coating at the Advanced Fibers lab in St.Gallen. His research interests focus on plasma etching and plasma deposition processes using chemical and physical methods, while process development and reactor design enable the transfer to industry. He is appointed to the board of directors of the Swiss Physical Society (SPS), the Swiss Vacuum Society (swissvacuum), and the International Plasma Chemistry Society (IPCS). Furthermore, he acts as Editor-in-chief for the journal Plasma Processes and Polymers.
Carsten Gachot received his PhD from the Saarland University in Germany in 2012 where he studied the effects of laser interference patterning on the microstructure and topography of metallic surfaces with a focus on tribological applications under Prof. Dr. Frank Mücklich and Prof. Dr. Martin H. Müser. For this work, Dr. Gachot was awarded by the European Honda initiation grant in 2011. Prof. Gachot was academic visitor at the tribology Group at the Imperial College London and is currently the head of the tribology research Group at the Vienna University of Technology. Additionally, Prof. Gachot is a visiting Professor at the Pontifical Catholic University in Santiago de Chile and chief editor of the peer reviewed journal "Industrial Lubrication and Tribology of the Emerald Publishing Group Leeds UK.
Research Topics:
Alberto graduated in Physics at Università degli Studi of Milan (Italy) with full marks (110/110 cum laude) on 11/10/2001, with an experimental subnuclear physics thesis carried out at CERN laboratories (Geneve, Switzerland). Title of thesis: “La ricerca del chargino con il rivelatore DELPHI a LEP2” (Searching for charginos with the DELPHI detector at LEP2).
He got a Ph.D. in Physics at Politecnico di Milano (Italy) on 18/05/2005, with an experimental activity focused on the investigation of thin films and interfaces of magnetic materials, oxides and semiconductors through ultra-high vacuum spectroscopy and microscopy techniques. Title of thesis: “Properties of NiO and Fe Magnetic Thin Films in Layered Structures”.
From 2005 to 2007 he obtained a research grant for collaborating to the project “Electron spectroscopy of polymers grown onto inorganic semiconductors” at Physics Department of Politecnico di Milano.
In 2007 he obtained a research grant for collaborating to the project “Magnetic nanostructures studied through electron microscopy and spectroscopy techniques” at Physics Department of Politecnico di Milano.
At the end of 2007 he became researcher at Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario per le Scienze fisiche della Materia (CNISM, national university pool for condensed matter physical sciences). Subject of research: “Electron spectroscopy of magnetic surfaces, thin films and multilayers”.
From december 2008 to december 2014 he is Assistant professor at the Physics Department of Politecnico di Milano. His current position is Associate Professor, in the same Deparment.
The research activity has developed in the fields of Surface Physics and Condensed Matter Physics, by focusing on the growth and characterization of thin films, surfaces and interfaces of magnetic materials and semiconductors (both inorganic and organic), by means of several experimental techniques. During his scientific activity, he also acquired a good experience in performing surface science experiments at synchrotron radiation facilities
Deputy Director and the head of the Department of Electrochemical Materials Sciences of the Center for Physical Sciences and Technology (Vilnius), Professor (part-time) of the Faculty of Chemistry and Geosciences at Vilnius University. Ph.D. since 1980 and habilitated Doctor of science since 1999. Professional history: 1987-1989 the member of the International Metal Corrosion Testing laboratory, Havana, Cuba, 1994-1998 research associate at the Research and Advanced Study Center in Merida, Mexico. Research interests embrace metal passivity and corrosion, electroless and electroplating of metals and alloys, electrocatalysis, electrochemical materials sciences. Co-authors of more than 100 scientific papers.
Full member of the Lithuanian Academy of Sciences (since 2014), Member of the International Society of Electrochemistry (ISE), Regional representative of Lithuania in (ISE) and member of ISE council (2009-2014), Fellow of The Institute of Materials Finishing (since 2012), Lithuanian lead delegate of the Board of Funders of the FET Flagships in European Commission (since 2015), Steakholder of the European Technology Platform for Sustainable Chemistry “SusChem” (since 2014), Member of the Editorial boards of the journals Transactions of the Institute of Metal Finishing (Maney Publishing) and Chemija (Lithuanian Academy of Sciences).
Professor Margaret Stack, BE MSc PhD DSc has been based in the Department of Mechanical Engineering in the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, since January 2001. She was awarded a DSc from UMIST (University of Manchester) in 2003 based on her published work. She is the author of 140 papers on wear (solid particle erosion, sliding wear and micro-abrasion) of materials in corrosive environments and has presented the work at over 50 national and international conferences. Much of her work has focused on the development of mechanistic maps to describe materials behaviour in tribo-corrosion conditions (in dry and in wet environments), and on the development of mathematical models of these processes. Professor Stack is a member of several editorial boards including Tribology International and Open Applied Physics. She is a Fellow of the Institute of Physics and of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and is currently the UK representative to the EFC working party on Tribo-Corrosion.
Professor Margaret Stack research interests include tribo-corrosion of engineering materials in oil and gas conversikon, renewable energy technologies and bio-medical engineering environments. The interactions of tribology and corrosion are complex and they involve many different variables. Professor Stack has pioneered the concept of the tribo-corrosion map in aqueous conditions which addresses this issue and provides an engineering tool for controlling the process and optimizing the material surface modification for exposure to these environments. She has presented her work at over 70 conferences to date and has published over 200 papers.
Prof Dongfeng Diao received the B.S. degree in mechanical Engineering from Changchun Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (China) in 1983 and the M.S. degree from Chinese Academy of Sciences Changchun Institute of Optics and Fine Mechanics (China) in 1986. He received his Ph.D. in Coating tribology from Tohoku University(Japan) in 1992. He used to work in Shizuoka University(Japan) as an Associated Professor in 1995-2001 and in Xian Jiaotong Univeristy(China) as a professor in 2002-2012. He was appointed as the distinguished professor of Shenzhen University(China) from 2012. Over the past fifteen years, Diao’s research has been at the ECR-plasma Sputtering Carbon Film’s Science and Technology. The significance of the previous discoveries by Diao is reflected by more than 200 publications in various archival journals(Nanoscale, Carbon, Acta Materialia, Applied Physics Letters, ASME-Journal of Tribology, etc), conference proceedings and 23 patents, the best paper has been cited 161 times, and graduation of 10 PhD and 39 MS students. He is the Editoral Board of Journal of Lubrication Science and the associated editor of Friction.