Peter Fratzl is director at the Max Planck Institute of Colloids and Interfaces in Potsdam, Germany, heading the Department of Biomaterials. He received an engineering degree from Ecole Polytechnique in Paris, France, and a doctorate in Physics from the University of Vienna, Austria. He is honorary professor at Humboldt University Berlin and at Potsdam University. Before moving to Potsdam in 2003, he has been holding professor positions in materials physics at the Universities of Vienna and of Leoben, Austria.

Peter Fratzl’s lab studies the relation between (hierarchical) structure and mechanical behaviour of biological and bio-inspired composite materials, and conducts research on osteoporosis and bone regeneration. His research interests include biomaterials systems for mechanosensing and actuation. Peter Fratzl has published more than 400 papers in journals and books.

Peter Fratzl serves on a number of editorial advisory boards, including Science, Nature Communications, Advanced Functional Materials, Advanced Healthcare Materials, Journal of Structural Biology, Calcified Tissue International and several others. He is member of Scientific/Supervisory Boards for a number of institutions in Europe and in US. Since 2010, he is also interim director at the Max Planck Institute for microstructure physics in Halle, Germany.

Recent awards include the Max Planck Research Award 2008 from the Humboldt Foundation and the Leibniz Prize 2010 from the German Science Foundation. He delivered the Herbert Johnson Memorial Lectures at Cornell University (Ithaka, USA) and the Seidman Family Memorial Lectures at Technion (Haifa, Israel), both in 2007, as well as the 2013 Jerome B. Cohen Distinguished Lecture Series at Northwestern University (Evanston, USA). He received an honorary doctorate from the University of Montpellier in 2010 and was elected corresponding member of the Austrian Academy of Sciences in 2007 and Fellow of the Materials Research Society (USA) in 2012.

Professor at the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne Michael Graetzel directs there the Laboratory of Photonics and Interfaces. He pioneered the use of mesoscopic materials in energy conversion devices including photovoltaic cells, photo-electrochemical devices for the generation of fuels by sunlight as well as lithium insertion batteries. He discovered a new type of solar cell based on dye sensitized nanocrystalline oxide films. His recent awards include the Swisselectric Research Award. the Albert Einstein World Award of Science, the Paul Karrer Gold Medal, the Gutenberg Research Award, as well as the 2010 Millenium Technology Grand Prize, the Galvani Medal the 2009 Balzan Prize and the 2008 Harvey Prize in Science and Technology.. He received a doctoral degree in Natural Science from the Technical University Berlin and ten honorary doctor’s degrees from European and Asian Universities. Author of over 1000 publications, which received so far some 115’000 citations (H-factor 158) and several books, he is a fellow of the European Academy of Science and of the Royal Society of Chemistry (UK) as well as a Max Planck Fellow, a member of the Swiss Chemical Society and a Honorary member of the Bulgarian Academy of Science as well as the Société Vaudoise de Sciences Naturelles.

Professor Yuval Golan obtained his BSc from Tel-Aviv University and his MSc and PhD from the Weizmann Institute of Science. He then moved to California and spent three years as a postgraduate researcher at UC Santa Barbara. In 1999 he joined the Department of Materials Engineering at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is currently the permanent director of the Ilse Katz Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology at BGU. Professor Golan is an active researcher in the area of nano-materials and thin films, has published over 100 papers in peer-reviewed international journals and supervised some 25 research students and postdocs.

DORON AURBACH is a Professor in the Department of Chemistry at Bar Ilan University, leading a rather large Electrochemistry research group (40 members).  Prof. Aurbach and his team study the electrochemistry of active metals in non-aqueous electrochemical  systems, develop spectroscopic methods (in situ and ex situ) for electrochemical systems, study electrochemical intercalation processes, electrochemical water desalination  and develop rechargeable high energy density batteries and ultra- capacitors.  As of today, Aurbach’s group published ~450 papers in peer reviewed Journals. D. Aurbach serves as the chairman of the Israeli national authority for labs accreditation, as an associate editor in 3 leading electrochemistry juornals, and he is a Fellow of the ECS, ISE and MRS. He is the head of INREP I-core: Israel National Research Center for Electrochemical Propulsion.