Dario Bassani, Editor-in-Chief
University of Bordeaux, France
Dario Bassani is a CNRS Senior Researcher at the Institute of Molecular Sciences of the University of Bordeaux. He obtained his PhD at Northwestern University and undertook postdoctoral fellowships at the University of Basel and the University of Strasbourg. His research interests are at the intersection of photochemistry and supramolecular chemistry, in particular regarding the use of non-bonded interactions to control excited state properties. He is the recipient of the Grammaticakis-Neumann Prize in photochemistry and of the young investigator awards from the physical chemistry division of the French chemical society and the Inter-American Photochemical Society.
Rex Tyrrell, Editor-in-Chief
University of Bath, UK
Rex Tyrrell is currently Editor-in-Chief of Photochemical and Photobiological Sciences and has been an associate editor for eight other journals. He is President of the European Society for Photobiology and served previously as secretary general of the International Photobiology Association from 1984 to 1992 and was the first treasurer of the European Photobiology Society from 1986 to 1993. He has served on several national and international committees including the sub-committee on ultraviolet that formed part of the National (UK) advisory group on non-ionizing radiation and was member of the working group for both the IARC monograph on sunlight and the later monograph on sunscreens. In 2003 he received the Medal of the European Society of Photobiology given for "outstanding research contributions to photobiology".
Santi Nonell
University Ramon Llull, Spain
Santi Nonell is Professor of Physical Chemistry at the Institut Químic de Sarrià (IQS), University Ramon Llull, Barcelona, Spain and Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He earned his PhD for work carried out at the Max-Planck-Institut für Strahlenchemie and conducted postdoctoral research at the Arizona State University and the University of California Los Angeles. His core research interests lie in the area of biological photochemistry, with a focus on singlet oxygen and the photochemical aspects of photodynamic therapy, where he has published more than 140 papers and numerous book chapters. He serves currently as Deputy Editor-in-Chief of the journal Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences and is President-Elect of the European Society of Photobiology.
Patrizia Agostinis
KU Leuven, Belgium
Professor Patrizia Agostinis received her master in Biology at the University of Padova (Italy) and her PhD in biomedical science at the KU Leuven, Belgium where she is now Full Professor. Patrizia Agostinis started her own research group in the late 90th, with a focus on mechanisms of cancer cell death induced by UVB irradiation and Photodynamic Therapy (PDT) and since 2000 she is the group leader of the Cell Death Research & Therapy lab, at the Department of Cellular & Molecular Medicine of the KU Leuven. One of the major interest of her laboratory is harnessing PDT for the induction of immunogenic cell death and the development of novel next-generation immunotherapies against cancer. She is currently the President-Elect of the European Cell Death Organization (ECDO).
Mauricio S. Baptista
University of São Paulo, Brazil
Mauricio S. Baptista is professor of Biochemistry at the University of São Paulo (USP, Brazil). He earned Bachelor (1990) and Master (1992) degrees in Biochemistry from USP and holds a doctoral degree (1996) in Chemistry from Marquette University (USA). He did his post-doctoral training at UW-Madison (1997) and was visiting professor (2006) at the Université Joseph Fourier (Grenoble-France). His main interests are photochemistry/photobiology, membranes/interfaces and mechanisms of cell death, where he published over 140 papers. He currently serves as Associate Editor of the Photochemical & Photobiological Sciences (RSC) and as treasury of the Brazilian Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.
Kristian Berg
University of Oslo, Norway
Kristian Berg is currently Professor II at the School of Pharmacy, University of Oslo. He has more than 30 years of experience in experimental and preclinical research within the field photodynamic therapy (PDT). Since 1995 the focus has been to utilize PDT to induce intracellular delivery and activation of drugs that accumulate in endocytic vesicles, including macromolecular therapeutics under development for clinical use in e.g. recombinant immunotoxin therapy, gene therapy and oligonucleotides for inhibition of gene expression, nanotechnology as well as some cases of chemotherapy. This technology is named photochemical internalization (PCI). Kristian Berg has been the President of ESP, Director of the ESP Photobiology School since its start in 2010 and contributed to establishment of the photomedical companies Photocure and PCI Biotech.
Ellen Bruzell
Nordic Institute of Dental Materials in Oslo, Norway
Ellen Bruzell is a senior scientist at the Nordic Institute of Dental Materials in Oslo, Norway since 2001. She earned her MSc degree in materials science and engineering from the University of Utah in 1988 and a Ph.D. in biophysics from the Norwegian University of Science and Technology in 2003. Her main research interests are combination effects of optical radiation with materials and chemicals relevant for dental treatment, antimicrobial PDT, optical radiation protection in the dental clinic and biocompatibility of materials. Bruzell is appointed as expert to national and international scientific committees performing risk assessment as well as to standardisation committees.
Paolo Di Mascio
Universidade de São Paulo, Brazil
Paolo Di Mascio obtained his PhD with Professor Helmut Sies at the “Institut für Physiologische Chemie I, Heinrich Heine Universität”, Düsseldorf, Germany / Professor Marcel Roberfroid at the “Université Catholique de Louvain”, Brussels, Belgium. Paolo Di Mascio is full Professor of Boiochemistry at the “Departamento de Bioquímica” and vice director of the “Instituto de Química”(IQ), University of São Paulo (USP), São Paulo, Brazil.
His main research activities deal with aspects of chemistry and biochemistry of oxidatively-generated and photo-induced damage to biomolecules. His studies focus on providing the mechanism by which singlet molecular oxygen (1O2) and other ”reactive oxygen species play their physiological and pathological roles. He has devoted efforts to develop 1O2 generators based on the thermolysis of endoperoxides including endoperoxide isotopically labeled as a source of singlet molecular oxygen-18, where he was awarded by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation.
Ken Ghiggino
University of Melbourne, Australia
Ken Ghiggino is the Masson Professor of Chemistry in the School of Chemistry at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is Fellow of both of the Royal Society of Chemistry and the Royal Australian Chemical Institute and is a past President of the Asian and Oceanian Photochemistry Association. He was the organizing chairman of the International Conference on Photochemistry (2005) and co-chair of the Asian Photochemistry Conference (2010). He received his PhD from the University of New South Wales on aspects of protein photochemistry followed by postdoctoral studies at the University of Southampton. He has spent periods of leave at the Royal Institution, University of Arizona, Imperial College, and the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven. His research interests are in the areas of ultrafast laser spectroscopy, artificial photosynthesis, solar energy conversion and fluorescence imaging. He has published more than 200 journal papers and book chapters.
Prue Hart
University of Western Australia, Australia
Prue Hart is a Principal Research Fellow, Telethon Kids Institute, Perth, Australia and Adjunct Professor, University of Western Australia. She is a Past President of the Australian Society for Medical Research and the Australasian Society for Dermatology Research. Her research interests include cellular immunology and inflammation control. Prue runs an NHMRC-funded trial of UVB phototherapy for people with their first demyelinating disease, an early form of multiple sclerosis. This trial follows 20 years of basic research investigating the mechanisms by which UV radiation is immunomodulatory. Prue leads a complementary research programme studying the effects of UV radiation on myeloid progenitor cells in the bone marrow.
Gareth Jenkins
University of Glasgow, Scotland
Gareth Jenkins is Professor of Plant Cell and Molecular Biology at the University of Glasgow. He has researched aspects of plant photobiology for over 35 years, including work with different photoreceptors, species and a range of physiological, genetic, molecular biological, biochemical and biophysical methods. The focus of his research since 2000 has been to understand the cellular and molecular mechanisms of plant responses to UV-B, in particular photoreception, signalling and responses mediated by the UVR8 photoreceptor. This research has included uvr8 mutant isolation and physiological studies in Arabidopsis, structure-function analysis of UVR8, and biophysical characterisation of the photoreceptor.
Aba Losi
University of Parma, Italy
Aba Losi received her PhD in Biophysics in 1997, at the University of Parma, Italy. During her post-doc with Silvia Braslavsky (1998-2000) at the Max Planck Institute for Radiation Chemistry (MH, Germany), she explored the energy landscape of photosensing proteins by means of time-resolved photoacoustics and spectroscopical techniques. She is presently Associate Professor at the University of Parma, teaching physics, photobiophysics and photobiology. Her research is focused on functional aspects of novel blue-light bacterial photoreceptors in bacteria, their energetics, their potential applications in biophysics, as well as their evolution and physiological role. Aba Losi published more than 70 peer-reviewed articles on international scientific journals and books. She is associate editor for Photochemical and Photobiological Sciences since 2006.
Tim Maisch
University Medical Center Regensburg, Germany
Tim Maisch studied Biology at the Univ. of Erlangen-Nuremberg, Germany. In 1997 he received his diploma and achieved his Ph.D. with a thesis titled "Upregulation of protein expression on endothelial cells infected with human cytomegalovirus” in 2001. Since 2002, he has been working as postdoctoral fellow at the Dept. of Dermatology, University Hospital of Regensburg on photodynamic inactivation of multi-resistant bacteria. He gained his Postdoctoral Habilitation in 2009 (venia legendi) and currently he is the project leader of the Antimicrobial Photodynamic and Cold Plasma Research Unit at the Dept. of Dermatology. Since 2006, he achieved several Awards to support the research interest in antimicrobial photodynamic inactivation of microorganisms.
Jochen Mattay
Universitat Bielefeld, Germany
Jochen Mattay has been Professor and Chair at Bielefeld University since 1998. Before he took various positions from associate professor to full professor at the universities of Aachen (1985-89), Münster (1989-95) and Kiel (1995-98). He also was Visiting Professor at Osaka University (1995) and the University of Berne (1996). Current research in his group revolves around various aspects of photochemistry as well as supramolecular chemistry including self-assembly of non-covalent capsules, molecular recognition in the gas phase and at single molecule level using MS and AFM techniques, chiral recognition, optical switches, nanoparticles, and last and not least solar (green) photochemistry. He has published over 330 papers in peer-reviewed journals and edited several books on Photochemistry and Electron Transfer.
Richard McKenzie
National Institute of Water & Atmospheric Research NIWA), New Zealand
Richard McKenzie is an atmospheric research scientist with an interest in UV radiation, its variability, its environmental impacts, and its interactions with climate change. He has extensive experience with measuring and modelling spectral UV irradiance, and measuring trace gases (e.g., ozone) and aerosols that affect UV propagation through the atmosphere. He has published about 150 papers in the peer-reviewed literature, and has convened several conferences and workshops on UV radiation. Initially his focus was on the effects of ozone change and other atmospheric parameters on UV radiation, especially in the New Zealand context. But more recently, his focus has moved to UV radiation and its effects- both positive and negative - on humans. Richard believes that communication of science, in simple terms that can be grasped by the public, is key. Richard has worked closely with relevant health and environmental agencies both in New Zealand and Internationally. He has been closely involved with the development and calibration of the personal UV dosimeter badges and their use in clinical trials. Richard has also helped to develop methods to process, analyse and interpret data from them. In addition to his ongoing roles at NIWA and with UNEP, Richard is now a private UV Consultant, and is currently involved in the development of educational UVI Apps.
Patrick Neale
Smithsonian Environmental Research Center, USA
Dr. Neale is a senior scientist at the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center where he directs the Photobiology and Solar Radiation laboratory. After graduation with an undergraduate degree in environmental studies from SUNY Purchase College, Neale completed a M.A. at Columbia University and Ph.D. at the University of California, Davis. He joined the SERC staff in 1993. His research focuses on the effects of sunlight, especially ultraviolet radiation, on the environment. He has mainly worked in freshwater and marine systems focusing on the responses of the smallest organisms in those systems, the plankton. A research objective has been to establish spectral response functions for UV effects in aquatic systems, e.g. biological weighting functions for inhibition of photosynthesis. These have been applied to assessing the effects of increased UV-B due to Antarctic ozone depletion on the productivity of the Southern Ocean and more recently, to picophytoplankton production in the temperate/tropical oceans. Dr. Neale also supervises the Smithsonian solar-radiation monitoring program which has been measuring UV-B radiation in Maryland since the 1970s compiling one of the longest records of spectral irradiance in the world.
Vivienne Reeve
University of Sydney, Australia
With a background in chemistry and biochemistry, Vivienne Reeve obtained her PhD (1980) from the University of Sydney, on Chemical Carcinogenesis in the Rat. By the mid-1980s, an interest in the effects of UV radiation on the skin, the development of an inbred hairless mouse colony and a simulated solar UV radiation source established Australia’s first photobiology research group that has remained active in the Faculty of Veterinary Science since. Vivienne remains a strong advocate for photobiology research in Australia. Her group has focussed on protection from skin cancer by topical substances, dietary factors, or endogenous pathways, making full use of the productive hairless mouse/UV model. Critical cutaneous targets, UVA/UVB waveband specificities, inflammation and immune suppression in response to UV exposure could be related to the photocarcinogenic outcome measurable in the mice and relevant for skin cancer risk in humans.
Evelyne Sage
Centre Universitaire, France
Evelyne has been a CNRS Research Director and research team leader at Institut Curie, Paris (France) and is currently Emeritus researcher. She received her Ph.D in Biophysics in 1981 at the University of Orleans (France) and did a post-doctoral training at Dana-Farber Cancer Institute/Harvard Medical School, in Boston. Evelyne’s research has focused on radiation-induced DNA damage and maintenance of genome stability. Since she joined Institut Curie in 1984, Evelyne has been strongly engaged in Photobiology, and active in the field of DNA damage, repair, mutagenesis and oxidative stress induced by photosensitizers and by various components of solar UV radiation, in particular by UVA. Evelyne is largely involved with the french, european and international societies for Photobiology.
Paola Taroni
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Paola Taroni is full Professor of Physics at Politecnico di Milano, Milan, Italy, since 2011.
Chair of the PhD Programme in Physics at Politecnico di Milano since 2013.
Co-author of more 120 scientific papers on international refereed journals.
Conference Chair of “Diffuse Optical Imaging” (European Conference on Biomedical Optics, ECBO) in 2011, 2013, 2015; Lasers Applications in the Life Sciences (LALS) in 2014; Gordon Research Conference on Lasers in Biology and Medicine in 2016.
Her research activity concerns mainly the development of laser systems for time-resolved spectroscopy and imaging, and their applications in biology and medicine, including:
- time domain diffuse optical spectroscopy for the non-invasive characterization of biological tissues
- time domain optical mammography
- time-resolved fluorescence spectroscopy for the photophysical characterization of endogenous and exogenous pigments and photosensitizers
- fluorescence lifetime imaging for microscopy studies and medical diagnostics.
Franz Trautinger
University of Vienna, Austria
Franz Trautinger was born in 1962 and lives in Austria; he is married with two children. He obtained his M.D. at the University of Vienna, Austria, followed by post-doctoral positions at the Institute of Tumor-Biology in Vienna and at the Departments of Dermatology in Vienna and Münster, Germany. Since 2006 he is chairman of the Department of Dermatology and Venereology at the University-Hospital in St. Poelten, Austria, and head of the Karl Landsteiner Institute of Dermatological Research. Franz Trautinger is specialist in clinical dermatology and his scientific interests concern the photobiology of human skin with a special emphasis on clinical photodermatology.
Cristiano Viappiani
Universita di Parma, Italy
Cristiano Viappiani is full professor in Applied Physics at the University of Parma, where he received his PhD in Physics in 1993. He is Chair of the Doctoral Studies Committee in Physics. His research activity mainly deals with the study of protein function and dynamics by means of time resolved optical spectroscopies. He is the author of over 110 papers dealing with topics such as ground and excited state proton transfer reactions, protein folding, ligand binding and conformational changes in heme proteins, photoconversion reactions in photochromic autofluorescent proteins, development of protein probes for superresolution imaging, and photosensitization by protein based photosensitizers.
