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Professor Stephan Link received a Diplom of ¾ÅÖÝÓ°Ôº in 1996 from the Technical University of Braunschweig in Germany, followed by graduate work at the Georgia Institute of Technology under the supervision of Professor Mostafa El-Sayed. After postdoctoral research experiences at the Georgia Institute of Technology and then at the University of Texas at Austin, where he worked with Professor Paul Barbara, Stephan started his independent academic career in the ¾ÅÖÝÓ°Ôº Department at Rice University in 2006. He was promoted to associate professor in 2013, full professor in 2017, and the Charles W. Duncan, Jr.-Welch Chair in ¾ÅÖÝÓ°Ôº in 2021. In 2024, he moved to the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, where is the Charles W. and Genevieve M. Walton Professor of ¾ÅÖÝÓ°Ôº. He has a joint appointment in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and has served as a Senior Editor for The Journal of Physical ¾ÅÖÝÓ°Ôº. He is an AAAS Fellow and received an NSF CAREER Award and the Norman Hackerman Award in Chemical Research from the Welch Foundation.

Alexandra Boltasseva is a Ron and Dotty Garvin Tonjes Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with courtesy appointment in Materials Engineering at Purdue University. She received her PhD in electrical engineering at Technical University of Denmark, DTU in 2004. Boltasseva specializes in nanophotonics, quantum photonics, and optical materials. She is the 2023 recipient of the R.W. Wood Prize (Optica, formerly Optical Society of America), 2022 Guggenheim Fellow, 2018 Blavatnik National Award for Young Scientists Finalist and received the 2013 Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Photonics Society Young Investigator Award, 2013 Materials Research Society (MRS) Outstanding Young Investigator Award, the 2011 MIT Technology Review Top Young Innovator (TR35), the 2009 Young Researcher Award in Advanced Optical Technologies from the University of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany, and the Young Elite-Researcher Award from the Danish Council for Independent Research (2008). She is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), MRS, IEEE, Optica, and SPIE. She served on MRS Board of Directors and is former Editor-in-Chief for Optical Materials Express journal.
 
Photo credit: Sam Barker Photography

Dr Sven Askes is an Assistant Professor in the Physics & Astronomy department at Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. He obtained his PhD in ¾ÅÖÝÓ°Ôº from Leiden University in 2016, followed by postdoctoral research at Friedrich Schiller University Jena and AMOLF. He started his independent career in plasmonic materials and photocatalysis in 2019 and established his research group in 2023. His work lies at the crossroads of nanophotonics and heterogeneous catalysis, with a particular focus on using pulsed illumination to drive catalytic reactions, thereby opening up new opportunities to control reaction rates and selectivity. His long-term goal is to develop energy-efficient catalytic processes for a sustainable chemical industry