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Mario Leclerc was awarded a Ph.D. in chemistry from Université Laval (1987) under the guidance of Prof. R.E. Prud’homme. After a short post-doctoral stay at INRS-Énergie et Matériaux near Montreal with Prof. L.H. Dao, he joined the Max-Planck-Institute for Polymer Research, in Mainz, Germany, as a post-doctoral fellow in the research group of Prof. G. Wegner. In 1989, he accepted a position of Professor in the department of chemistry at the Université de Montréal. He returned to Université Laval in 1998. Since 2001, he has held a Canada Research Chair on Electroactive and Photoactive Polymers. He is the author or co-author of more than 250 publications which have already received more than 35 000 citations (h-index of 93). During his career, he received many awards; including the Canadian Macromolecular Science and Engineering 2008 award, the Urgel-Archambault prize (2011), a Killam Fellowship (2014-2016), the Marie-Victorin Prize from the Government of Quebec (2016). He is now a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (2017-) and according to Web of Science, he is considered to be among the most influential scientists in the world. His current research activities include the development of new building blocks and polymerization methods (e.g. direct heteroarylation) for applications in plastic electronics.

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Sokrates T. Pantelides is University Distinguished Professor of Physics and Engineering, William A. and Nancy F. McMinn Professor of Physics, and Professor of Electrical Engineering at Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee. He holds secondary appointments as Distinguished Visiting Scientist at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing, China. He received his Ph.D. in Physics from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1973. Before joining Vanderbilt in 1994, he spent 20 years at the IBM T. J. Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, where he carried out theoretical research in semiconductors and served as manager, senior manager, and program director. He is author or coauthor of over 650 research articles in refereed journals with ~25,000 citations and editor of nine books. He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, the Materials Research Society, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers. His research focuses on the structure, defect dynamics, and electronic properties of electronic materials and nanostructures, complex oxides, two-dimensional materials, radiation effects, electron microscopy and electron-energy-loss spectroscopy, transport in molecules and thin films, device physics, and catalysis.

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Nicholas A. Peppas is the Cockrell Family Regents Chaired Professor in the Departments of Chemical, Biomedical Engineering, Surgery and Pediatrics, and Pharmacy, and Director of the Institute of Biomaterials, Drug Delivery and Regenerative Medicine of the University of Texas at Austin. His is a member of the Academy of Athens, NAE, NAM, American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering. Work on multidisciplinary approach by blending modern molecular and cellular biology with engineering principles to design the next-generation of medical systems and devices for patient treatment. Honorary doctorates from Universities of Ghent, Parma, Ljubljana, Athens, Patras, Santiago de Compostela, NTU Athens, Thessaloniki, Sichuan, Beihang, PLA Beijing, Northwestern Xi’an, and Peking Medical Union College.