Sergei Kalinin is a Weston Fulton Chair Professor at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville. In 2022–2023, he was a Principal Scientist at Amazon Special Projects (Moonshot Factory). Prior to that, he spent 20 years at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he was a Corporate Fellow and Group Leader at the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences. His research focuses on the application of machine learning and artificial intelligence methods in piezoresponse force microscopy and electron microscopy for characterization of ferroelectric and electrochemical phenomena on the nanometer and atomic scales. At UTK, his team has realized fully AI-controlled SPM and STEM systems and co-orchestration workflows between multiple characterization tools for scientific discovery.

Sergei has co-authored over 650 publications, with ~60,000 citations and an h-index of ~121. He is a Fellow of NAI, Academia Europaea, AAAS, RSC, AAIA, MRS, APS, IoP, IEEE, the Foresight Institute, and AVS. His honors include the Feynman Prize (2022), Blavatnik Award for Physical Sciences (2018), RMS Medal for Scanning Probe Microscopy (2015), Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (2009), Burton Medal of the Microscopy Society of America (2010), and five R&D 100 Awards (2008, 2010, 2016, 2018, 2023), among many others. He is a founder and, for more than 15 years, organizer of the PFM Workshop series, now part of ISAF, and is widely recognized as a leading figure in AI-driven microscopy and autonomous experimentation in materials science.

Prof. Seungbum Hong graduated summa cum laude with a B.S. from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) in 1994 and received his Ph.D. in the field of nanoscale observation of ferroelectric thin films at KAIST in 2000. After a year of post-doc experience at EPFL in Switzerland from 2000 to 2001, he joined the probe storage project team as a project leader at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology from 2002 to 2007. In 2007, he moved to Argonne National Laboratory as a tenured staff scientist and worked as a principal investigator in local domain and transport studies of oxide heterostructures and polymer ferroelectrics using atomic force microscopy until 2017. In 2017, Prof. Hong joined KAIST as an associate professor with tenure in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering (DMSE) and created the Materials Imaging and Integration (MII) Lab. He was promoted to full professor in 2021 and served as the department head of DMSE from 2021 to 2024. He is currently the vice president in the office of academic affairs and the institution’s Global Competitiveness Advisor. He has led the Global Singularity Project of Materials and Molecular Modeling, Imaging, Informatics and Integration (M3I3) at KAIST from 2019 to 2023, and he is leading the STEAM Project on Development of AI-based Multiscale Data Integrative Lithium-ion Secondary Battery Engineering Platform from 2023 to 2027.

He has broad experience in linking fundamental science with industrial applications (232 peer-reviewed journal papers, 5 book editions, 8 book chapters, 79 patents) with profound knowledge in nanoscale characterization of ferroelectric and piezoelectric materials. He has been invited to major conferences or universities, has been awarded the Young Investigator Outstanding Achievement Award from the International Symposium on Integrated Ferroelectrics in 2008, was elected as the Frontier Scientist by the Korean Academy of Science and Technology in 2014, and has worked as a symposium organizer in MRS Spring 2006 and 2008, MRS Fall 2010, and APS March Meeting 2013 and as a General Chair of Asia-Pacific PFM 2019 Workshop, and PFM General Chair of Joint Conference of the IEEE International Frequency Control Symposium & IEEE International Symposium on Applications of Ferroelectrics (ISAF) in 2020 and IEEE ISAF-PFM in 2025.

He visited EPFL as an invited professor in 2014 and was appointed a senior fellow by Northwestern Argonne Institute of Science and Engineering from 2016 to 2018. He was the chair of the CNM user executive committee in 2015 and worked as a member of the MSD colloquium committee at Argonne National Laboratory and the Vision 2031 committee member at KAIST from 2017. He is currently serving the PFM International Advisory Board since 2018.

Vincenzo Esposito is a Professor of Ceramic Science and Engineering Materials in the Department of Energy Conversion and Storage at the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), where he leads research on functional oxides and coupled electro-chemo-mechanical phenomena. He received his M.Sc. degree in Materials Science from the University of Padova and completed his Ph.D. through an international doctoral program involving Italian institutions and the University of Florida.

His research spans the synthesis, design, and nanoscale characterization of oxides with coupled polar, ionic, and mechanical degrees of freedom. A particular focus is on ferroelectrics, ferroionics, and non-classical electromechanical responses in thin films and heterostructures, and on how nanoscale architecture and defect engineering enable emergent functional coupling mechanisms. His group integrates advanced materials processing with operando nanoscale probes to address both fundamental questions and device-relevant challenges in electroactive materials.

Vincenzo has published more than 200 peer-reviewed articles, with more than 4,400 citations and an h-index of 37, including work in leading journals, reflecting sustained influence in ferroelectrics, functional oxides, and nanoscale electromechanical materials. He is an IEEE Senior Member, actively engaged in international and interdisciplinary research initiatives, and contributes to graduate education and mentoring in materials science and electroceramics.