Dr. Ajayan holds joint appointments in the Departments of Materials Science and NanoEngineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Chemistry. Dr. Ajayan earned his B. Tech in metallurgical engineering from Banaras Hindu University in 1985 and Ph.D. in materials science and engineering from Northwestern University in 1989. After three years of post-doctoral experience at NEC Corporation in Japan, he spent two years as a research scientist at the Laboratoire de Physique des Solides, Orsay in France and nearly a year and a half as an Alexander von Humboldt fellow at the Max-Planck-Institut fur Metallforschung, Stuttgart in Germany.
In 1997, he joined the materials science and engineering faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute as an assistant professor and was the Henri Burlage Chair Professor in Engineering until 2007. He joined Rice University in July 2007.

Peter Bøggild is professor and group leader at DTU Physics at the Technical University of Denmark. He obtained his PhD in low temperature solid state physics at the Copenhagen University in 1998, and became a full professor in 2013 at DTU. He has worked across numerous areas, including nanomechatronics/robotics, topology optimization, nanometrology, nanotubes/nanowires, surface science, material synthesis and microfabrication, mesoscopic physics and simulations, but is today is leading a group entirely focusing on graphene and other 2D materials, with emphasis on large scale fabrication/applications, electronics, terahertz metrology and material science. He has published nearly 200 papers, most of which are on 2D materials, and is committed to push fundamental research in two-dimensional materials towards real and viable technologies and applications. He is main organizer of the international conference Carbonhagen, which has run annually since 2010, latest in 2020 as an online meeting.

Dr Sivasambu Bohm received his first degree in Chemical Engineering, followed by an MSc at Hahn Meitner Institute (Max Planck Institute) in Berlin. After gaining his PhD at the University of Bath in Chemistry, he worked at different academic institutions, University of Swansea, TU Delft, The University of Birmingham and India Institute of Technology, Bombay, University of Cambridge and Imperial College London. Siva has 20 years of industrial experience (TATA, Talga, CAMI, VEMS, Ceylon Graphite and AM) in various research fields; metallurgy, protective coatings, energy storage in the automotive industry, smart coatings and nanotechnology, synthesis, and applications of graphene. Dr Bohm has published 40 patents and 98 scientific publications. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry and a Fellow of Technical Surface Coatings. Dr Bohm has been awarded the Royal Society Industry Fellowship initial at University of Cambridge, Cambridge Graphene Centre from 2017 and till 2021 fellowship at Imperial College London and AM Commercial UK Ltd, also Chief Scientific Officer of Ceylon Graphite Corp. Dr Bohm was Director of R&D in Zhejiang Hanano R&D and creating Industrialisation in Middle east and Europe customers.

Mandar has been a researcher at TIFR for 20 years, and his current interests are in studying the physics of Josephson junctions and the topological properties of van der Waals materials.

Professor Falko is one of the UK's leading condensed matter theorists. He has made substantial contributions towards the understanding of the electronic and optical properties of graphene, including the discovery of bilayer graphene. He has played a pivotal role in shaping the European graphene and other two-dimensional material research community, establishing the 'Graphene Week' conference series and leading the European Graphene Flagship work package: 'Fundamental Science of Graphene and 2D Materials Beyond Graphene'. He is also Co-Director of the Graphene NOWNANO Centre for Doctoral Training programme, based at The University of Manchester.

Andrea C. Ferrari earned a PhD in electrical engineering from Cambridge University, after a Laurea in nuclear engineering from Politecnico di Milano, Italy. He is Professor of Nanotechnology and the Director of the Cambridge Graphene Centre and of the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Graphene Technology. He is Fellow of Pembroke College, the American Physical Society, the Institute of Physics and the Materials Research Society. His research interests include nanomaterials growth, modelling, characterization, and devices. He was awarded the Royal Society Brian Mercer Award for Innovation, the Marie Curie Excellence Award, the Philip Leverhulme Prize, The EU-40 Materials Prize, The Royal Society Wolfson Research Merit Award. He is also the Chairman of the Executive Board of the EU Graphene Flagship

Costas Galiotis is the Principal Investigator (PI) of the ERC Advanced – Tailoring Graphene project. He is a Professor at the Department of Chemical Engineering (Univ. of Patras) and former Director of the Institute of Chemical Engineering Sciences (ICE-HT) which is one of the 7 academic research institutions of the Foundation of Research and Technology-Hellas (FORTH). In its over 26 years of operation FORTH/ ICE-HT has developed into a world-leading centre for the advancement of high quality scientific knowledge in the fields of material science and in the computer aided design and simulation of new materials and processes. It comprises of approximately 150 personnel and has a running yearly budget of 5 M€. Prof. Galiotis is also a member of the Board of Directors of FORTH (since July 2007). FORTH has been ranked as the first Research Centre in the field domain in Greece in 3 successive evaluations. Prof. Galiotis had an auspicious term of office as Director of the Institute in the years 2009-2014. Being also the coordinator of the Hellenic participation and national representative of “Graphene” he contributed in establishing the Graphene Center by joining the research forces of three FORTH institutes, ICE-HT, IESL and ICAM. Despite the Country's intense economic situation he expanded the Institute by literally setting the foundations to the Institute's new modern building that will house research laboratories.

Arindam Ghosh is JRD Tata Chair Professor of Physics and the Convenor of the Quantum Technology initiative at the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore, India. He is an alumnus of the University of Cambridge and has been a Visiting Research Fellow in Nanotechnology at the T J Watson Research Centre of IBM. Arindam is among the first few to engage in graphene research in India, contributing heavily in understanding noise, optoelectronics and several other phenomena in 2D over 20 years. Arindam is also the co-founder and CEO of Quan2D Tech. Pvt Ltd – a deeptech startup developing commercializable manufacturing protocols of 2D materials, and building functions sensing devices.

Satheesh Krishnamurthy is a Professor and the Director of The Surrey Ion Beam Centre is the lead site for the UK National Ion Beam Centre and sits within the Advanced Technology Institute of the University of Surrey. The Ion beam centre caters wide variety of interdisciplinary research using ion implantation, ion irradiation and ion beam analysis from 2D materials to batteries and cell biology.
Professor Satheesh Krishnamurthy FRSC, FIMMM, joined University of Surrey in September 2023, Prior to that he was a professor at The Open University, UK. He earned his Bachelors, Masters in Physics from University of Madras, Chennai, India and Ph.D. in Materials Science and Engineering from University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. His Ph.D was sponsored by Overseas Research Scholarship, an award is among the most selective and prestigious awards offered to international students and scholarships are awarded on the basis of academic excellence and research potential by the UK Higher Education Authority. After spending 4 years as a postdoctoral researcher in Trinity College Dublin and further 4 years in Dublin City University. He has more than 100 publications with over 10000 citations. He has delivered more than 150 invtied or plenary talks in leading conferences around the world.

Mainak Majumder is a professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering of Monash University, where he has been since 2010. He joined Monash after a two-year postdoctoral stint at Rice University, USA with Professors P.M. Ajayan and Matteo Pasquali. He earned a PhD with Professor Bruce J. Hinds at the University of Kentucky, USA studying mass and molecule transport in aligned carbon nanotube membranes. Currently, he is the Director of the Australian Research Council’s Research Hub on Advanced Manufacturing with 2D Materials (https://am2d.org), which is a $9M initiative of the Australian government in partnership with Graphene industries to support commercialization of Graphene-enabled technologies. He is also the Senior Advisor of the Monash Energy Institute (https://www.monash.edu/energy-institute), an organization dedicated to maximising the impact of energy research at Monash University. He is the co-founder of Ghove Energy, a Monash spin-out, which is commercializing Lithium Sulfur battery technology for the advanced air mobility market.

Professor Sanjay Mathur is an inorganic chemist, the director of the Institute of Inorganic and Materials Chemistry at the University of Cologne in Germany, and currently acting as a new Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Electroceramics. He brings broad research experience and unique skills to the journal. He is also the Fellow of the European Academy of Science, the Founding Director of the Institute of Renewable Energy Sources at the Xian Jiao Tong University, Xian, China and a World Class University Professor at the Chonbuk University in Korea. He is a Visiting Professor in the Institute of Global Innovation Research at TUAT, Japan and a SPARC Faculty at IIT Madras, India. His research interests focus on application of nanomaterials and advanced ceramics for energy technologies and biomedical applications. He holds 11 patents and has authored/co-authored over 500 original research publications (h-index, 75) and has edited several books. He is an Academician of the World Academy of Ceramics and Fellow of the American Ceramic Society, ASM International and Materials Research Society, USA.

Dr Titash Mondal is currently serving as an Assistant Professor in the Rubber Technology Centre, IIT Kharagpur. Before joining academia, he worked at Momentive Performance Materials (formerly GE Silicones) on silicone rubber composites. His research focuses on elastomer composite-based flexible/wearable sensors, as well as triboelectric nanogenerators. With over a decade of work on graphene–polymer systems, he has authored numerous high-impact papers, holds international patents, and edited a book. Dr Mondal has received several awards, including the 2025 SPARKS-THOMAS Award from the American Chemical Society (USA) and the Faculty Excellence Award 2024.

Dr. Kazuo Muramatsu is the CEO of Incubation Alliance, Inc. (InALA), based in Kobe, Japan. He completed his studies in materials science at Toyohashi University of Technology in 1985. During his university years, he conducted research on graphite intercalation compounds and collaborated with Dr. Ralph Setton (CNRS), one of the pioneers of graphene.
He later joined Kobe Steel, Ltd., where he worked on the development of “new carbon” materials using Hot Isostatic Pressing (HIP) equipment, and contributed to the development and commercialization of graphene electrodes for hydrogen generators, carbon substrates for HDDs, and substrates for semiconductor processes.
In 2007, he founded InALA and has since been promoting the development of mass synthesis methods for graphene and the commercialization of Graphene Flower® products.
He earned a doctoral degree from Oita University in 2024. In 2025, he received the Technical Award from the Carbon Society of Japan and the Kondo Memorial Foundation Award from the Kondo Memorial Foundation

Professor Barbaros Özyilmaz is best known for his work on developing new device applications based on 2D materials such as graphene, black phosphorus, and monolayer amorphous carbon (MAC). He graduated in 1999 from RWTH Aachen University, Germany, with his Diplomarbeit in Physics at the European High Magnetic Field Laboratory of the Max-Planck-Institute in Grenoble, France. He undertook his PhD studies (1999-2004) with Prof Andrew Kent at New York University in collaboration with IBM pioneering spin transfer torque. He did his postdoctoral work (2004-2007) at Columbia University in Prof Philip Kim’s group pioneering graphene research in the USA. He joined the Physics Department at NUS in 2007 as an Assistant Professor and was instrumental in establishing Graphene Research in Singapore. He is currently the Deputy Director of the NUS Centre for Advanced 2D material (CA2DM) and has greatly contributed to establishing NUS as one of the globally leading Centre’s for 2D material research. Since 2019 he is also the Department Head of the Materials Science and Engineering Department at NUS. He is the recipient of numerous awards including the NRF Fellowship and the NRF Investigator Award, NUS Young Investigator Award and the Institute of Physics Award, Singapore.

Vincenzo Palermo is the director of the CNR Institute for Organic Synthesis and Photoreactivity (ISOF) in Bologna, Italy, and associated professor of Chalmers University of Technology (Sweden). He uses nanotechnology and supramolecular chemistry to create new materials for electronics, aerospace and biomedical applications. He published >200 scientific articles on international journals in chemistry, nanotechnology and materials science (>11 000 citations, h-index 53), collaborating with key industrial partners in Europe (Airbus, FCA, Leonardo, BASF, Nokia, STMicroelectronics etc.). He has been awarded the Lecturer Award for Excellence of the Federation of European Materials Societies (FEMS), the Research Award of the Italian Society of Chemistry (SCI) and the Science dissemination awards of the Italian Book Association.

Dr. Rakhi received her M.Sc. and M.Phil.in Physics from University of Kerala in 2000 and 2002, respectively, and her PhD in Physics under the guidance of Prof. S. Ramaprabhu from Indian Institute of Technology Madras (IITM), Chennai in 2009. Her PhD work involved the synthesis and energy storage applications of Carbon based nanocomposites, for which she received the best thesis award for the year 2009. Dr. Rakhi joined King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) as a post-doctoral fellow in 2010, in the group of. Prof. H.N. Alshareef, where she started her research in the area of supercapacitors. In recognition for her research contribution in the field of electrochemical energy storage devices, she was awarded with the SABIC Postdoctoral Fellowship award consicutively for the years 2012 and 2013.

Prof. Stephan Roche is a theoretician with more than 25 years’ experience in the study of transport theory in low-dimensional systems, including graphene, carbon nanotubes, semiconducting nanowires, organic materials and topological insulators. He has published more than 250 papers in journals such as Nature, Review of Modern Physics, Nature Physics, Nano Letters and Physical Review Letters and he is the co-author of the book titled “Introduction to Graphene-Based Nanomaterials: From Electronic Structure to Quantum Transport” (Cambridge University Press, 2020-second edition). He received the qualification to supervise PhD students from the Université Joseph Fourier (Grenoble, France) in 2004, and since then he has supervised more than ten PhD students and about 25 postdoctoral researchers in France, Germany and Spain. In 2009 Prof. Roche was awarded the Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel Research Award by the Alexander Von-Humboldt Foundation (Germany) and, since 2011, he has been actively involved in the European Graphene Flagship project as deputy leader of the Spintronics Work Package (WP). He is serving as leader of this WP since April 2020 and will continue until March 2023. He is also Division Leader of the Graphene Flagship.

Prof. Chandra Sekhar Rout is a distinguished full professor at the Centre for Nano and Material Sciences (CNMS), Jain University. He was elected as the fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry (FRSC) in London, UK in 2024. Before joining CNMS, he was a DST-Ramanujan Fellow at IIT Bhubaneswar, India, from 2013 to 2017. Prof. Rout has received numerous accolades, including the prestigious Ramanujan Fellowship and Young Scientist Award from the Department of Science and Technology, Govt. of India (2013), Brain Pool Research Fellowship from the National Research Foundation (NRF), S. Korea, the Emerging Investigator Award from Elsevier (2017), the IAAM Medal from the International Association of Advanced Materials (2017), Emerging Scientist award 2023 from Adv. Powder Mater. Journal-Elsevier, and the Young Researcher Award from the Venus International Foundation (2015). His research focuses on the synthesis and characterization of two-dimensional layered materials and their hybrids for applications in chemical sensors, biosensors, supercapacitors, energy storage devices, field emitters, and electronic devices.

Prof. Shaijumon obtained his M.Sc in Physics from St. Thomas college (University of Calicut, India) and Ph.D in Physics from Indian Institute of Technology Madras. He spent more than 3 years in the United States as a postdoctoral research fellow at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York and Rice University, Houston, Texas. Later he spent nearly a year and half as a senior postdoctoral researcher at Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France. He joined IISER Thiruvananthapuram as an Assistant Professor in School of Physics in 2010. In 2017, he got promoted to Associate Professor and currently he has been appointed as Professor, since 2023.

Takashi Taniguchi is a Fellow and director of research center for Materials Nanoarchitectonics (MANA) at National Institute for Materials Science (NIMS). He obtained his PhD in materials science at Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1987. That same year, became an Assistant Professor in the Department of Inorganic Materials Engineering, Tokyo Institute of Technology. Joined the National Institute for Research in Inorganic Materials (NIRIM) in 1989 (reorganized into the NIMS in 2001). Since obtaining his degree, he has consistently engaged in materials synthesis research under ultra-high pressure, particularly focusing on developing techniques for synthesizing high-purity nitride single crystals using reactive solvents under high pressure. Recipient of the 2018 Japan Society of High Pressure Science and Technology Award; 2023 James C. McGrady New Materials Award (American Physical Society); 2024 Japan Ceramics Grand Prize ; 2025 Asahi Prize, Tsukuba Prize, and Medal with Purple Ribbon in Japan.

Valentyn S. Volkov, PhD, is an internationally renowned expert in the field of nanophotonics and advanced materials, with two decades of experience at leading universities and research centers. His contributions to the field have been substantial, with over 300 published papers and an impressive citation count exceeding 10000.
Valentyn’s research spans a wide range of topics in nanotechnology and materials science, including linear and nonlinear nano-optics, near-field optical microscopy and spectroscopy, plasmon-based nanophotonics, and integrated optics. He is particularly renowned for his pioneering work in nano-optics and the development of nanophotonic waveguide structures, including photonics integrated circuits based on low-dimensional and van der Waals materials. These results form the backbone for the development of XPANCEO smart lenses. His current research interests primarily focus on the field of graphene nanophotonics, 2D materials, sensing, biosensors, and functional 2D materials-based devices.