Georgia T. Papadakis was born in Crete, Greece. After studying Electrical and Computer Engineering at the National Technical University of Athens (Greece), she moved to CERN (Switzerland), where she was first exposed to the world of Physics. In 2012, she moved to Los Angeles, California (USA), where she carried out her doctoral studies in the area of nanophotonics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). She investigated ways to induce artificial magnetism with man-made materials termed “metamaterials”. In 2018, she moved to San Francisco, California, where she was a TomKat Postdoctoral Fellow in Sustainable Energy, at Stanford University. At Stanford, Georgia worked on heat-to-electricity generation with thermophotovoltaic systems. In 2021, she moved to Barcelona, where she started her tenure-track position as a Group Leader at the Institute of Photonic Sciences (ICFO). At ICFO, Georgia leads the group of Thermal Photonics.

 Georgia is the recipient of the Materials Research Society Best Student Award, the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship, the Marie Curie Postdoctoral Research Fellowship, the Tomkat Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University, the Princeton Pathway Into the Academy Fellowship and the la Caixa Postdoctoral Junior Leader Fellowship. Currently, Georgia’s group investigates ways to utilize thermal radiation for recycling heat and generating energy in a clean ways. Recently, Georgia and her group have been awarded the Best Early Career Paper Award in the Journal of Applied Physics, and the Early Career Award from the Journal Nanophotonics (De Gruyter).

Giancarlo Soavi is a Professor at the Institute of Solid-State Physics at the Friedrich Schiller University Jena, where he leads the Group of UltraFast Optical Spectroscopy (GUFOS). His research focuses on ultrafast and nonlinear optical phenomena in quantum-confined systems, including layered materials, heterostructures, and hybrid photonic devices. Prof. Soavi earned his PhD in Physics from Politecnico di Milano in 2015 and worked as a Research Associate at the Cambridge Graphene Centre, University of Cambridge, from 2015 to 2018. He coordinates several national and international research projects funded by the EU, MUR (FIS), DFG, and BMBF.

Andreas Tittl is Professor for Experimental Physics at LMU Munich, where he focuses on the design and experimental realization of metasurface concepts with novel nanophotonic functionalities for applications in enhanced light/matter coupling and ultrasensitive biodetection. After receiving his Ph.D in Physics from the University of Stuttgart, he has worked as a postdoctoral researcher and Fellow at Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL).

Chiara Trovatello is Assistant Professor of Physics at Politecnico di Milano, and Marie Skłodowska-Curie Global Fellow at Columbia University in New York, working in the field of nonlinear optics with 2D materials. After receiving her PhD in Physics from Politecnico di Milano she moved to New York to conduct her postdoctoral research at Columbia University. Among her prizes and grants, she has been awarded the 2022 Couillaud Prize, the 2023 Young Investigator Bruno Touschek Award, the 2024 L’Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Prize, the 2024 Blavatnik Regional Finalist Award and the 2024 Optica Foundation Challenge Award.

Chiara Trovatello also passionately advocates for ethical research, equal representation and opportunities in STEM. She was the founder and the former president of the Optica Student Chapter of Milan. From 2024 she continues her strong leadership and mentorship activity as an Optica Ambassador.