Born in 1970 in Ezpeleta (Argentina), Martín Sombra studied Mathematics at the University of La Plata and obtained his PhD from the University of Buenos Aires with a thesis in Computer Algebra. He did postdoctoral stays at the MSRI in Berkeley, the IAS in Princeton, and the IMJ in Paris. He became Maître de Conférences at the University of Lyon 1, then spent four years as a “Ramón y Cajal” Researcher at the University of Barcelona (UB) and became afterwards Full Professor at the University of Bordeaux 1. He finally moved back to Barcelona in 2009, joining ICREA as a Research Professor and UB as a Profesor Asociado. He has also held visiting positions at the IPAM in Los Angeles, the MSRI in Berkeley, and the University of Buenos Aires. He is currently a member of the Board of Directors of the FoCM Society, and of the Advisory Board of the MEGA conferences.

Dr. Rovira is ICREA Research Professor at the University of Barcelona (UB). She did part of her PhD in USA (NC State University and Southern Illinois University) and obtained her PhD degree in Chemistry from the UB in 1995. She performed postdoctoral stays at the Max-Planck-Institut für Festkörperforschung (Stuttgart, Germany, 1996-1998) and the UB (1999-2001). In 2002 she obtained a Ramón y Cajal position and started her research group at the Parc Científic de Barcelona. She was appointed ICREA Research Professor in 2007 and moved to the Department of Chemistry of the UB in 2012. Dr. Rovira has received research awards from the Catalan Government (Distinció de la Generalitat 2003), the Barcelona City Council (City Prize 2016) and the European Carbohydrate Organization (Emil Fisher Award 2019). She received an ERC SyG Grant in 2020. Rovira is the author of about 170 publications, mainly in the fields of Theoretical Chemistry and Computational Biology.

In 1983 JG Russo obtained a fellowship to study physics at the Instituto Balseiro, Bariloche, Argentina, where he obtained the degree (Licenciatura) in Physics (12/1986). He was awarded a SISSA fellowship to follow the PhD programme at SISSA, Trieste, Italy, where he finished his PhD (10/1990) under the supervision of Daniele Amati on Quantum gravity and String theory. As a postdoc at Stanford University, USA, he collaborated with L. Susskind on black hole physics. He continued his research on black holes and string theory first at the University of Texas at Austin, USA, and then at CERN, Geneva. In 1998 JG Russo moved to the University of Buenos Aires as a Professor and in 04/2003 joined ICREA as a Research Professor.