Professor Marcela Bilek holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, UK, a BSc from the University of Sydney and an MBA from the Rochester Institute of Technology, USA. Prior to her present appointment as Professor of Applied Physics at the University of Sydney (since 2000), she worked as a visiting Scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in Berkeley, USA, held a visiting Professorship at the Technische Universitat Hamburg-Harburg in Germany and a Research Fellowship at Emmanuel College, University of Cambridge, UK.

Professor Bilek heads the Applied and Plasma Physics Research Group. Research projects in these areas are a stimulating mix of fundamental physics and practical applications, in areas which include materials physics, plasma deposition and processing, thin film materials, vacuum glazing, renewable and sustainable energy and cross-disciplinary research in the areas of biointerfaces and medicine.

Marcela has received a number of honours for her work including the Malcolm McIntosh Prize for Physical Scientist of the Year in 2002, an ARC Federation Fellowship and an MIT TR100 Young Innovator award in 2003, the Australian Academy of Science Pawsey Medal in 2004 an Australian Innovation Challenge Award in 2011 and an ARC Future Fellowship in 2012. In 2013 she was elected to the Fellowship of the American Physical Society (APS) "for outstanding contributions to the physics of plasma processing, resulting in plasma sources, processes and materials with applications to industries ranging from information technology to biomedicine". In 2015 she was elected to the Fellowship of the Institute of Electronic and Electrical Engineers (IEEE) "for contributions to the science and application of plasma processes for materials modification and synthesis".

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.

Talk Title: Plasma cleaning and treatment of art objects