Professor Bo Brummerstedt Iversen is Professor of Chemistry at Aarhus University (AU), VILLUM Investigator, and Director of the ESS Lighthouse SMART. He formerly directed the AU Center for Integrated Materials Research (iMAT) and the Danish National Research Foundation Center for Materials Crystallography. He obtained his Ph.D. from AU in 1995 (including one year with Prof. Philip Coppens at SUNY Buffalo) and, after a postdoctoral stay with Prof. Galen Stucky at UC Santa Barbara, returned to AU in 1998, becoming Full Professor and Chair of Inorganic Chemistry in 2004. His research focuses on crystallography and materials chemistry, particularly structure–property relationships in functional materials. Prof. Iversen holds both a Doctor of Science (AU, 2002) and a Doctor of Technology (DTU, 2010) degree. He has served as General Secretary and Treasurer of the International Union of Crystallography and on advisory boards of ESS and MAX IV. Prof. Iversen was knighted by Queen Margrethe II of Denmark in 2015. He has published more than 595 peer-reviewed papers (~75% as corresponding author), with over 30,000 citations (h-index ~90).

Professor Kenneth D. Karlin received his B.S. in Chemistry from Stanford University (1970) and Ph.D. from Columbia University (1975), followed by a N.A.T.O. postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Cambridge. He began his independent career at the State University of New York at Albany in 1977 and, since 1990, has been Professor of Chemistry at Johns Hopkins University, where he holds the Ira Remsen Professorship and previously served as Department Chair. His research focuses on bioinorganic and coordination chemistry, particularly synthetic modeling of copper- and heme-containing enzyme systems. His group investigates oxygen transport, activation and reduction, nitrogen oxide reactivity, and pollutant dehalogenation, combining ligand design, metal complex synthesis, and mechanistic studies. Prof. Karlin has served as Editor-in-Chief of Progress in Inorganic Chemistry and held leadership roles within the American Chemical Society. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and recipient of the 2009 F. Albert Cotton Award in Synthetic Inorganic Chemistry. He has authored 388 publications with more than 30,000 citations (h-index ~ 100).

Professor Robert Podgajny, born in Kraków, Poland (1974), is Professor at the Faculty of Chemistry, Jagiellonian University, where he has been affiliated with the Inorganic Molecular Materials Group (ZNMM) since his studies. He obtained his Ph.D. (2002), habilitation (D.Sc., 2013), and full professorship (2021) at Jagiellonian University. His international research experience includes stays at institutions in France, Japan, and Poland, among them UPMC Paris, ICMCB Bordeaux, LCC Toulouse, the University of Tokyo, and the University of Strasbourg. Since 2021, he has led the Multicomponent and Hierarchical Molecular Architectures (WHAM) group within ZNMM. His research focuses on the modular synthesis of bi- and trimetallic coordination complexes and hybrid non-covalent networks involving multisite anion receptors, with emphasis on structural hierarchy, spin-crossover phenomena, anion binding, chirality, and photoluminescence. Prof. Podgajny has co-authored over 100 publications, including reviews and a book chapter, with more than 3,000 citations (h-index 31). He also teaches inorganic and materials chemistry and serves as Chairman of the Faculty Seminar Lecture Series.

Doctor Illia Guralskyi is a Senior Research Associate at Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv. He is also an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Chemistry, where he lectures on colloid chemistry and X-ray diffraction. He obtained a joint Ph.D. in 2012 from Paul Sabatier University, France (group of Dr. A. Bousseksou), and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv, Ukraine (group of Prof. I. Fritsky). He carried out postdoctoral research at the Laboratory of Coordination Chemistry in Toulouse, France (2013), and was a Marie Curie Postdoctoral Fellow at Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, Germany (2015–2017, group of Prof. W. Tremel). He was awarded the Doctor of Science (habilitation) degree in 2021. His research focuses on hybrid organic–inorganic perovskites and stimuli-responsive molecular materials, with emphasis on synthesis, structural characterization, and structure–property relationships. His group investigates new hybrid perovskites, their crystallography and optoelectronic properties, semiconducting nanomaterials, and chiral perovskites based on amino acids. He has published approximately 100 papers, with over 2,500 citations (h-index 26).