Maria Valentina DINU studied Chemistry at “Al. I. Cuza” University of Iasi, and received her Ph.D. in 2009 from Romania Academy, “Petru Poni” Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry (PPIMC) of Iasi. During her Ph.D. studies, an important part of the work was carried out at Istanbul Technical University, Turkey, and Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland. In April 2010, she won a post-doctoral fellowship, which was financially supported by the European Social Fund – ‘‘Cristofor I. Simionescu’’ Postdoctoral Fellowship Programme. Within the research activities performed during this post-doctoral fellowship (2010-2013), she spent some months as invited PostDoc in Leibniz Institute of Polymer Research Dresden, Germany, and Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, Prague, Czech Republic. After working as PostDoc at the Department of Chemistry, University of Basel, Switzerland, she returned to the Functional Polymers Department of PPIMC, in 2015, as a Senior Researcher. In December 2020, she defended the Habilitation thesis and is Member of the “School for advanced studies of the Romanian Academy” as PhD thesis supervisor in PPIMC. Dr. Dinu is highly active in the field of synthesis and functionalization of various hydrogel-based systems, composite materials, and (bio-) functional self-organized polymeric nanostructures, being co-author of 104 papers, with an H-index of 34. In 2012, she received the “Nicolae Teclu” Romanian Academy Award. Currently, Dr. Dinu is Group Leader in the Department of Functional Polymers, PPIMC and is acting as an editor of Reactive and Functional Polymers from Elsevier, B.V. For more information visit: https://icmpp.ro/laboratories/l4/g2/topics.php.

Dr. Aurel RADULESCU is a senior scientist at Forschungszentrum Jülich GmbH in Germany and is primarily responsible for the small-angle neutron diffractometer KWS-2 at the Jülich Centre for Neutron Science at the Heinz Maier-Leibnitz Zentrum in Garching, Germany. He received his PhD in nuclear physics from the University of Bucharest, Romania, in 2000 and received a Young Scientist Award from the European Neutron Scattering Association in 1999. Between 2016 and 2021, he also served as a specially appointed professor at the University of Osaka, Japan. His current work focuses on semi-crystalline polymers, polymer-protein complexes and methodological developments in neutron scattering.

Agnieszka KOWALCZUK is an Associate Professor at the Centre of Polymer and Carbon Materials PAS, where she leads the Laboratory of Nano- and Microstructural Materials. Her research focuses on developing novel polymers for applications in medicine and nanotechnology. She specializes in anionic and cationic polymerization of oxiranes and cyclic imines, as well as controlled radical polymerization of (meth)acrylates, enabling the synthesis of macromolecules with precise composition, molar mass, and topology. Beyond linear polymers and copolymers, she is interested in designing branched macromolecules, including star-shaped, dendritic, and hyperbranched structures, particularly those responsive to environmental stimuli and functionalized for interactions with bioactive agents.