Professor Rosaria Rinaldi is currently Full Professor of Condensed Matter Physics at the Department of Mathematics and Physics “E. De Giorgi” of University of Salento, and she is a member of the Academic University Senate. Since 2019 she is Member of the Ministry of University and Research (MUR) Evaluation Committee for Flag Projects and Interest Projects to be implemented by public research institutions. Prof. Rinaldi is currently in charge of the research center in "Nanomedicine, Nanobioelectronics and Nanobiotechnology", at University of Salento. In 2005 R.R. was awarded the medal of "Le Scienze" and the medal of the President of the Republic (Carlo Azeglio Ciampi) for research carried out in the field of Nanobiotechnology. Since 2010, she was head of the Natural Sciences Area of and vice-director of University excellence school ISUFI till 2020. In 2015 she was visiting professor, winning an international selection for the "Eleonore Trefftz" chair, at the Technical University of Dresden in Germany. She was the coordinator of the doctoral school in Interdisciplinary Sciences and Technologies and Nanoscience at S.S. ISUFI and the coordinator of the doctoral school in Physics and Nanoscience, till 2020. She won the "ITWIIN-High Education" award (2016) and was one of the finalists for the 2017 EuWIIN “European Women Inventors and Innovators Network” contest prize. R.R. has coordinated or been a partner in more than 30 scientific projects at regional, national and EU level, in the last 15 years. R.R. is author and co-author of about 310 papers published in international scientific journals,13 monographs and book chapters, and 12 patents (H-index:40).
Nuno C. Santos was born in Lisbon, Portugal, in 1972. He graduated in Biochemistry from the Faculty of Science, University of Lisbon, in 1995, and received his PhD in Theoretical and Experimental Biochemistry in 1999 from the same University, although all the experimental work was conducted at Instituto Superior Técnico (Technical University of Lisbon) and University of California (Santa Barbara). Currently, he is Associate Professor with Habilitation of the Faculty of Medicine, University of Lisbon, and Head of the Biomembranes & Nanomedicine Lab at the Gulbenkian Institute for Molecular Medicine (GIMM), which was created in 2024 upon the merging between Instituto de Medicina Molecular (iMM), where he was previously Group Leader, and Instituto Gulbenkian de Ciência (IGC). Among other distinctions, his work was awarded with the Gulbenkian Prize for young researchers (2001), Dr. José Luis Champalimaud Prize – Basic Research (2004), Dr. José Luis Champalimaud Prize – Applied Research and Technology (2005), the UL – Caixa Geral de Depósitos Prize (2017 and 2023), and the FMUL Teaching Merit Prize (2025). He is (co)author of 201 articles in per-reviewed international journals, which received more than 12 600 citations (h-index 60 and i10-index 166, publishing since 1996), presenting a Journal Citation Reports impact factor sum of 1127.1 (average 5.7 per article). In addition to these publications, he (co)authored 10 articles in Portuguese scientific journals, 15 book chapters (mostly published outside Portugal, in English), 3 books (editor, published by Wiley, Springer and MDPI) and 3 international patents. Among different National and International research projects, he was the coordinator of a European Union-funded consortium including 10 different research groups from Europe and Brazil. He is member of the Executive Committee of the European Biophysical Societies’ Association (EBSA) since 2019, Vice-President of the Academic Council of the Faculty of Medicine of the University of Lisbon since 2024, and Director of the M2B-PhD Doctoral Program in Medical Biochemistry and Biophysics (involving 5 different institutions) since 2016. He was President of the Portuguese Biophysical Society from 2015 to 2021. He has supervised 18 completed PhDs, 11 as main supervisor and 7 as co-supervisor.
Prof. Jesus M de la Fuente (Barakaldo-Spain) finished his PhD work in 2003 working in the evaluation of carbohydrate-carbohydrate interactions using gold nanoparticles in the Institute of Chemical Research from CSIC. During his PhD training, he has carried out different stays in the University of Nottingham (UK), University of Kalmar (Sweden), Institute of Physical-Chemistry “Rocasolano”-CSIC (Madrid, Spain) and National Centre of Biotechnology-CSIC (Madrid, Spain). With all this research, he was a pioneer in the emerging field of Glyconanotechnology. Once he obtained his PhD, he moved to the Centre for Cell Engineering University of Glasgow (UK) to develop a research project involving the nanoparticles development and its biological application during two years. In July 2005, he went back to the Institute of Chemical Research (Seville, Spain). His research was oriented to the vectorization of paramagnetic nanoparticles with biologically relevant carbohydrates to label and visualize brain tumors. In June 2007, Dr de la Fuente established the Nanotherapy and Nanodiagnostic Group at the Institute of Nanoscience of Aragon (University of Zaragoza, Spain). Dr. de la Fuente has supervised 14 PhD students (to completion) and he is presently supervising 12 PhD students. Since then, Dr de la Fuente has created a large research group with outstanding scientific results and excellence research projects. As principle investigator, he has received a European Research Council-Starting Grant for “Multifunctional Magnetic Nanoparticles: Towards Smart Drugs Design-NANOPUZZLE” (2010-2015), a European Research Council-Proof of Concept-HOTFLOW (2017-2018) and ERANET project “Multifunctional Gold Nanoparticles for Gene-Therapy-NANOTRUCK” (2009-2012), he is PI of a FP7-NMP “Nanotherapeutics for Antibiotic Resistant Emerging Bacterial Pathogens-NAREB” (2014-2018) and he has supervised 1 IOF and 2 IEF FP7 Marie Curie Fellows and 2 IF HORIZON2020 Marie Sklodowska-Curie Fellows. He has actually 6 licensed PCT patents. To date, he has more than 160 papers, cited more than 5,600 times and with an h-factor of 40. He was awarded with the “Shanghai-1000 People Plan” in 2013 to be Chair Professor at Jiao Tong University (Shanghai, China). Since 2014, he is a Permanent Researcher at the Spanish National Research Council- Aragon Materials Science Institute (Zaragoza, Spain).
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
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).