Ramon Aguado is a Senior Scientist at the Spanish Research Council (CSIC) with more of 20 years of experience on many aspects of condensed matter theory. His research deals with quantum materials and applications in quantum technologies. During the last years, he worked on topological materials and, in particular, on various aspects of hybrid superconductor-semiconductor nanostructures, which behave as topological superconductors with Majorana quasiparticles. In this field, his group has become an international reference with many impactful theory works and active collaborations with top-leading experimental groups worldwide. Other recent activities include superconducting qubits based on subgap states, the theory of hybrid materials combinations and novel qubit platforms based on them. Overall, he has published more than 100 research articles with several publications in high impact journals. He appears in various international rankings as a top scientist.Prof. Aguado is an active member of the scientific community and has participated in many evaluation panels, outreach activities, etc. In 2016, he became an Outstanding Referee of the American Physical Society. He coordinates the Quantum Materials and Quantum Technologies research line at Materials Science Institute Madrid (ICMM) and, since 2020, he serves as Vice-president of the Condensed Matter Physics Division of the Royal Spanish Physical Society.Roberta Citro is Full Professor of Theoretical Matter Physics at the Department of Physics of the University of Salerno (Italy). In recent years, she has matured professional experience in many-body techniques of low-dimensional systems and in quantum transport in nanostructures. She completed her PhD in Physics at the University of Salerno (Italy) in 1998 defending a thesis on high-temperature superconductors. After her graduation, she was, first, a Post Doc Fulbright fellow at the Physics Department of Rutgers University (New Jersey, USA) where she collaborated with the Condensed Matter theory group. In 2007 she was a Marie Curie fellow under the EU’s Sixth Framework Programme-Mobility Action at the Lab LPMMC in Grenoble (France) where she developed studies on mesoscopic physics in quantum gases. In 2013 she has been a visiting scientist at Harvard University.Recently, she has established in Salerno a team working on topological superconductivity and quantum metamaterials. Overall, she has published more than 200 research articles with various publications in high impact journals. Prof. Citro has an active synergetic activity in the scientific community and has been member of various organizing committees. She is coordinator of the Doctorate in Physics and Innovation Technology at the University of Salerno, serves as referee of the APS, IOP and Nature Group journals, and is PI of national/EU research projects.Maciej Lewenstein is ICREA Research Professor and leads the quantum optics theory group at ICFO (the Institute of Photonic Sciences) in Castelldefels – Barcelona, Catalonia. He graduated at Warsaw University in 1978 and joined the Centre for Theoretical Physics of the Polish Academy of Sciences in Warsaw, where he remained for 15 years, becoming a professor in 1993. He finished his PhD in Essen in 1983 and habilitated in 1986 in Warsaw. He has spent several long term visits at the University of Essen in Germany, at Harvard University with Roy J. Glauber (Nobel 2005), at the Saclay Nuclear Research Centre (CEA) near Paris with Anne L'Huillier (Nobel 2023), and at the Joint Institute for Laboratory Astrophysics in Boulder, Colorado. He was on faculty of Centre CEA in Saclay during the period 1995-1998, and of Leibniz University in Hannover over the period 1998-2005. In 2005 he moved to Catalonia. His research interests include quantum optics, quantum physics, quantum information, attosecond science, and statistical physics. His other passion is jazz and avant-garde music and is an acclaimed jazz writer and critic. Michael Stern is a Senior Lecturer at the Physics Department of Bar Ilan University. He graduated from Ecole Centrale Paris in 2000 with a specialization in Computer Science and Electrical Engineering. In 2004, he decided to return to academia to undertake a PhD in the fields of semiconductor physics and optical spectroscopy. During his thesis in the group of Prof. Israel Bar-Joseph at Weizmann Institute, Michael investigated the phase diagram of dipolar excitons in coupled quantum wells. He spent two additional postdoctoral years at Weizmann Institute and worked on fractional quantum Hall effect. After this work on semiconductor physics, he opted for a post-doc in mesoscopic physics and spent three postdoctoral years working on superconducting circuits in the Quantronics group at Saclay. In 2015, Michael returned to Israel to start the new Quantum Nanoelectronics Laboratory at BIU, which focuses its research on hybrid quantum systems.
