Robert Bittl has studied physics at Technische Universität (TU) München (Germany) up to the doctorate (1988) working on the theory of stochastically modulated magnetic field dependent doublet pair spin dynamics. After a short stay at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (US) he worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Universität Stuttgart (Germany) on the electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopic detection of zero-quantum coherences after electron transfer in photosynthetic systems. This was initially theoretical work which led over to experiments at TU Berlin (Germany). There, he obtained the habilitation (1997) with work on time-resolved EPR to cofactor geometries in photosystems, in particular distances between cofactors.

Since 2001, he is professor for experimental physics at Freie Universität Berlin and applies a range of EPR spectroscopic methods to a variety of different problems in biological, chemical, materials, and medical physics. The methods include less-common variants e.g. electrically detected magnetic resonance and synchrotron-based frequency domain Fourier transform EPR. Examples for studied systems are blue-light photoreceptors, (catalytic) multi-nuclear metal centers, (in)organic photovoltaics materials, and Gadolinium-based magnetic resonance imaging contrast agents. More recently, he became interested in the chiral-induced spin selectivity effect, in particular its study by EPR methods on photo-induced donor-acceptor systems.

Gunnar Jeschke studied chemistry at Technical University Dresden and graduated in 1992 with a thesis on analysis of sideband patterns in 31P solid-state NMR. Further stages were work on magnetic field effects on chemical reactions at RIKEN (Wako-shi, Japan), a doctoral thesis on new concepts in solid-state pulsed EPR (ETH Zürich, Switzerland 1996), solid-state NMR on inorganic materials (University of Bonn, Germany, 1997), and EPR studies on synthetic polymers and membrane proteins at MPI for Polymer Research (Mainz, Germany). Following appointment as full professor for physical chemistry at University of Konstanz (Germany) in 2006, he returned to ETH Zürich in 2008 as Full Professor for Electron Spin Resonance.

His research interests range from spin dynamics via EPR instrumentation to biophysics. Application work focuses on RNA-binding proteins and heterogeneous catalysis, while fundamental work focuses on electron spin decoherence due to the nuclear spin bath and ensemble structure determination of partially ordered proteins.

Maxie Rӧßler is an Associate Professor in Chemistry and Director of the Centre of Pulse EPR spectroscopy (PEPR) at Imperial, London. She completed her DPhil with Prof. Fraser Armstrong FRS at the University of Oxford in 2012, took up a lectureship at Queen Mary University of London in 2013 and moved to Imperial in 2019, where she built up PEPR.

In her research she seeks to understand and exploit electron transfer reactions in chemical and biological systems. Her group combines EPR spectroscopy with electrochemistry, biochemistry and material science and has been developing film-electrochemical EPR spectroscopy as a new tool to gain mechanistic insights into complex metalloenzymes and electrocatalysts.

Recent awards include the Royal Society of Chemistry Joseph Black Prize (2024), the Imperial President’s Medal for Excellence in Research (2023) and the European Bioinorganic Chemistry Medal (2022).

Throughout her career, Sabine Van Doorslaer has been working at the interface between chemistry and (bio)physics. After obtaining a Master in Chemistry (1991), Master in Physics (1992) and PhD in Physics (1996) at Ghent University (BE), she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at ETH Zurich (CH) in the lab of Arthur Schweiger, till she was appointed as a professor at the University of Antwerp (BE) in 2002. From 2008-2024, she was also a guest professor at the University of Hasselt (BE).

Her research is focussed on the development and application of EPR, with an emphasis on hyperfine spectroscopy. The EPR techniques are, where necessary, complemented with optical techniques and quantum-chemical methods. Her research group focusses on the characterization of a wide range of (bio)materials, including metalloproteins, homogeneous and heterogeneous catalysts and hybrid materials for applications in (bio)sensing, catalysis, membranes and organic (photo)voltaics. In 2018, she received the Bruker Prize granted by the ESR Spectroscopy Interest Group of the Royal Society of Chemistry.

My major interest is developing imaging methodology approach for studying tumor microenvironment. Electron Paramagnetic Resonance (EPR) oximetry, together with other tumor microenvironment parameters, such as oxidative stress, redox status, pH, allow broader approach to noninvasive studies of the tumor microenvironment. Tissue pO2 and hypoxia are our main focus. For example, we have shown that both hypoxia and vasculature play a role in tumor response to photodynamic therapy (Krzykawska et al., 2014), the role of vasculature changes in tumor tissue perfusion (Drzal et al., MRI 2022), or changes in the structure and function of the vasculature of tumors growing in the eye (Leszczynski et al., 2018). We also develop image analysis methods, such as co-registration of images acquired using different modalities (Gonet et al., 2019, Dziurman et al., 2025).

Today in our lab, we use EPR for pO2 determination, ultrasound for tissue structure, color Doppler ultrasound for blood flow, DCE-US and DCE-MRI for tissue perfusion, luminesce in vivo for metastasis development, and CT for tissue structure and metastasis. Recently, we have obtained optoacoustics imager, allowing the blood saturation measurements, as well as spatial distribution of collagen, melanin and other molecules. These noninvasive modalities are combined with molecular biology, confocal microscopy, and histology. Such a methodological approach allows us to study complex interactions within the tumor microenvironment and its role in tumor resistance to therapies. Our goal is to find out how the physical parameters of the tumor microenvironment, such as intratumoral pressure, perfusion, and pO2, interact with the biological factors and whether it is possible to modify these factors to achieve more effective antitumor therapies.

Professor Ilya Kuprov (Weizmann Institute of Science) is a specialist in theoretical modelling of spin dynamics and the principal author of Spinach software package that covers the whole of magnetic resonance spectroscopy and imaging. He has published over 120 papers and a book, mostly on theoretical and computational aspects of spin dynamics, and maintains a Magnetic Resonance education portal (https://spindynamics.org) with 100+ hours of lecture videos and 400+ pages of handouts. IK is also the physical sciences Editor at Science Advances, the open-access branch of the Science magazine.

Alessandro obtained a Ph.D. in computational inorganic chemistry in 2016 from the University of Florence. His Ph.D. dissertation focused on the computational and theoretical investigation of molecular magnets and their interaction with typical solid-state environments. In 2016 he joined the School of Physics at Trinity College Dublin as a research fellow and started working on machine-learning methods for the design of new molecular materials and first-principles theory for spin relaxation in magnetic molecules. In 2020 he was awarded a European Research Council Starting Grant, in 2021 he was appointed as Assistant Professor in Physics at Trinity College Dublin, and received tenure in 2025.

Alessandro’s group develops ab initio multi-scale computational strategies for the design of spin systems of interest for quantum science, magnetic resonance, spintronics and many other fields. In particular, he has developed a first-principle theory of spin relaxation able to make quantitative predictions for crystals of magnetic molecules and solid-state defects. Moreover, his group is spearheading the development of machine learning methods for the automatic design of magnetic molecules.

Klaus Lips is Professor for Physics at the Freie Universität Berlin (FUB), Germany and is head of the Department Spins in Energy Materials and Quantum Information Science (ASPIN) at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin für Materialien und Energie (HZB) in Berlin. Klaus is also Adjunct Professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy at the University of Utah, Salt Lake City, USA. Klaus studied physics at the University of Leiden, (Netherlands) and the University of Marburg (Germany), where he received his PhD in 1994. He worked at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), Colorado, USA and joined HZB, formerly Hahn-Meitner Institut Berlin in 1996.

His research interests are transport and defect states in semiconductor materials as well as materials and their application for solar cells, quantum sensors and batteries. In particular, he concentrated his efforts on the development and application of new magnetic resonance based techniques such as EPR-on-a-Chip (EPRoC) for material research and detection of ultra-small spin ensembles for quantum sensing as well as catalysis and electrochemical storage. Klaus has pioneered electrical detection of spin coherence in silicon and is author of over 200 journal papers and holds 14 patents (several for EPRoC) and has given over 160 invited lectures at many national and international conferences and research schools. Klaus has received many scientific prizes among which HZB’s Technology Transfer Prize, which was awarded in 2019 jointly also to Jens Ander (Univ. Stuttgart, Germany) for the development of EPRoC.

Klaus is a passionate triathlete and has finalized the Long Distance “Ironman” Challenge in Roth on 4th place in his age group in July 2024.

Stephen Hill currently holds the title of Distinguished Research Professor at Florida State University (FSU) with a primary appointment in the Department of Physics and an affiliated appointment in Chemistry and Biochemistry. He also serves as Quantum Chief Scientist at the United States National High Magnetic Field Laboratory (NHMFL). Hill previously held faculty positions at Montana State University and the University of Florida before moving back to FSU in 2008. Hill received both his Bachelors and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Oxford in the United Kingdom.

He has over 30 years of experience performing microwave and far-infrared magneto-optical spectroscopy of materials in high magnetic fields, using a wide array of compact radiation sources and measurement techniques. Through this work, he has gained an international reputation in the spectroscopy of low-dimensional conducting, superconducting and magnetic systems in high magnetic fields, including significant technique development. Hill’s recent research has focused on fundamental studies of quantum phenomena in molecule-based magnets, as well as structure property relationships in a variety of inorganic coordination compounds.

Dr Athanassios Boudalis is a CNRS Senior Researcher at the Institute of Chemistry in Strasbourg, a joint research infrastructure between the French CNRS and the University of Strasbourg. He obtained his Diploma in Chemistry from the National Kapodistrian University of Athens (Greece) and his PhD in Inorganic Chemistry from the University of Patras (Greece). His PhD work involved an extended stay at the Laboratoire de Chimie de Coordination du CNRS in Toulouse (France). Subsequently, he carried out post-doctoral studies at the Institute of Materials Chemistry at the NCSR "Demokritos" in Greece. After working in the private sector, he continued his research as a postdoctoral fellow at Florida International University (USA). He returned to Europe under a Marie Curie fellowship at the Institute of Chemistry in Strasbourg. He then worked at the IPCMS (Strasbourg) and at the Karlsruhe Institute for Technology (Germany), before joining the CNRS.

His research revolves around EPR spectroscopy and its application in the study of magnetic molecules. Among other things, he is interested in different experimental setups involving combinations of magnetic and electric fields in the study of magnetoelectricity in various types of materials. Such an example is half-integer-spin triangles, a family of molecules that can combine magnetoelectricity with spin chirality.

Fernando Luis is a CSIC research professor at the Institute of Nano and Materials Science (INMA) in Zaragoza, Spain. His work has focussed on studying quantum phenomena that magnetic nanomaterials, and in particular magnetic molecules, exhibit near absolute zero. Currently, he leads INMA’s experimental activity in the field of quantum technologies that aims to develop a hybrid quantum processor based on molecular spin qudits coupled to, and through, superconducting circuits as well as to develop high-sensitivity on-chip magnetic resonance based on the same experimental platform.

Susanne Mossin obtained a PhD in Inorganic Chemistry at the University of Copenhagen before joining the group of Karsten Meyer at the Friedrich-Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg as a postdoc. In 2010 she received the Young Elite Investigator Award of the Danish Research Council and was appointed Assistant Professor at the Technical University of Denmark.

Her research focuses on elucidation of electronic structure in transition metal compounds and developing in-situ and operando EPR methodologies for application on heterogeneous catalysts.

Now as full Professor, her group is investigating transition metal centres in porous materials as well as other materials for environmental catalysis and sustainable chemistry. They combine in-situ EPR as well as other spectroscopic methods and materials characterisation methods for the elucidation of reaction mechanisms, deactivation pathways and electronic structure with focus on industrially relevant systems for environmental catalysis and sustainable chemistry.

Dr. James Eills is Helmholtz Young Investigator Group Leader at Forschungszentrum Jülich, Germany, where he leads the Hyperpolarization Methods Lab in the Institute of Structural Biochemistry. He studied chemistry at the University of Southampton and carried out his Masters research project at UC Berkeley. He completed his PhD at Southampton on parahydrogen-enhanced NMR. Following postdoctoral research positions at JGU Mainz and IBEC Barcelona, he established his independent research group in Jülich in 2024. His research group focuses on nuclear spin hyperpolarization methods that combine chemistry and physics to create spin-polarized molecules for applications in NMR and MRI. Current work explores new approaches using parahydrogen-induced polarization, spin relaxation, and applications ranging from zero- and ultralow-field NMR to metabolic imaging.

Sabine Richert is a full professor of chemistry at Ulm University in Germany. She studied Chemistry at the TU Graz before joining the group of Prof. E. Vauthey in Geneva, where she worked on femtosecond laser spectroscopy. Her doctorate was carried out in the group of Prof. C. Timmel at the University of Oxford, where she was introduced to modern pulse EPR techniques.

Currently, her group is working at the interface between physics, chemistry and materials science, exploring spin communication in photogenerated multi-spin systems for applications in molecular spintronics. She employs different spectroscopic techniques to study the optical and magnetic properties of the species formed after light-excitation and combines the results with insights from quantum chemical calculations.

She was awarded the Young Investigator Award of the International EPR/ESR Society in 2020 and the prestigious Heinz-Maier-Leibnitz of the German Research Foundation in 2023.

Petr Kostelník received his masters and Ph.D. degrees from the Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, Brno university of Technology in 2003 and 2009, respectively. In 2008 he has joined ON Semiconductor (now onsemi) as the Material Science Engineer with focus on the development of silicon epitaxial processes. He has since expanded his expertise in the research and development of Silicon-on-Insulator wafers, GaN-on-Si epitaxy and SiC wafer manufacturing technologies. In 2023 he assumed the role of the Manager of the Material Science engineering group at the Rožnov pod Radhoštěm onsemi site.