Christopher Barner-Kowollik is a leading expert in photochemistry, exploiting precision photochemical concepts for advanced soft matter material synthesis, including for light-driven 3D printing. He and his team developed a wide array of multi-colour photochemical reactions modes and pioneered wavelength-resolved photochemical action plots, which have demonstrated wavelength-dependent reactivity that is often mismatched with molecular absorptivity. He currently leads research teams at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT).
After a PhD in Göttingen, he held leadership roles in Australia and Germany, including at UNSW and KIT, before establishing QUT’s Soft Matter Materials Laboratory. In 2026, he was appointed Institute Director and Alexander von Humboldt Professor at the KIT.
His work has earned numerous international awards, including the UK Macro Medal (2020), the European Polymer Federation Prize (2022), the Royal Society of Chemistry Centenary Prize (2023), and Germany’s Alexander von Humboldt Professorship (2025).

Yu Shrike Zhang is Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine at Harvard Medical School and Associate Bioengineer in the Division of Engineering in Medicine at the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. Dr. Zhang is directing the Laboratory of Engineered Living Systems (www.shrikezhang.com), where the research is focused on innovating medical engineering technologies, including 3D bioprinting, organs-on-chips, microfluidics, and bioanalysis, to recreate functional tissues and their biomimetic models, for applications in regenerative medicine and personalized medicine. His scientific contributions have been recognized by >50 international, national, and regional awards.

After completing his Diplom and PhD in physics at Johann Wolfgang Goethe-Universität Frankfurt (Germany) in 1986 and 1987, respectively, Martin Wegener spent two years as a postdoc at AT&T Bell Laboratories in Holmdel (U.S.A.). From 1990-1995 he was professor (C3) at Universität Dortmund (Germany), since 1995 he is professor (C4, later W3) at Institute of Applied Physics of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Since 2001 he has a joint appointment as department head at Institute of Nanotechnology (INT) of KIT, since 2016 he has been one of the directors at INT. From 2001-2014 he was the coordinator of the DFG-Center for Functional Nanostructures (CFN) at KIT. Since 2018 he has been spokesperson of the Cluster of Excellence 3D Matter Made to Order. His research interests comprise ultrafast optics, (extreme) nonlinear optics, optical laser 3D nanoprinting, photonic crystals, optical, mechanical, electronic, and thermodynamic metamaterials.