Cosimo Bambi received his laurea from Florence University (Florence, Italy) in 2003 and his doctoral degree from Ferrara University (Ferrara, Italy) in 2007. He worked as a postdoctoral research scholar at Wayne State University (Detroit, Michigan) in 2007–2008, at IPMU at the University of Tokyo (Kashiwa, Japan) in
2008–2011, and in the group of Gia Dvali at LMU Munich (Munich, Germany) in 2011–2012. He joined Fudan University (Shanghai, China) at the end of 2012 as associate professor under the Thousand Young Talents Program of the State Council of the People’s
Republic of China. He was promoted to full professor at the end of 2013 and named Xie Xide Junior Chair Professor of Physics in 2016. In 2015, he was awarded a Humboldt Fellowship to conduct research
at Eberhard-Karls Universitaet Tuebingen (Tuebingen, Germany), which he regularly visited from 2015 to 2018. In 2016, he was awarded an Invitation Fellowship from the Japan Society for the Promotion of
Science (JSPS) to conduct research at Kyoto University (Kyoto, Japan). Professor Bambi has received numerous awards, including the Magnolia Silver Award from the Municipality of Shanghai for outstanding contributions to Shanghai’s development.
Professor Bambi has worked on a number of topics in the fields of high-energy astrophysics, particle cosmology, and gravity. He has published around 200 papers in refereed journals and authored/edited several academic books with Springer: Introduction to Particle Cosmology: The Standard Model of Cosmology and its Open Problems (Springer-Verlag Heidelberg Berlin, 2016), Astrophysics of Black Holes: From Fundamental Aspects to Latest Developments (Springer-Verlag Heidelberg Berlin, 2016), Black Holes: A Laboratory for Testing Strong Gravity (Springer Singapore, 2017), Introduction to General Relativity (Springer Singapore, 2018), and Tutorial Guide to X-ray and Gamma-ray Astronomy: Data Reduction and Analysis
(Springer Singapore, 2020). The book Introduction to General Relativity was published in Chinese by Fudan University Press in 2020 and in Spanish by Editorial Reverte’ in 2021. Professor Bambi has also
written a popular science book, Niente e’ impossibili: Viaggiare nel tempo, attraversare i buchi neri e altre sfide scientifiche (in Italian), published by Il Saggiatore in 2020.
Stavros Katsanevas, professor exceptional class Université de Paris and director of the European Gravitational Observatory (2018-) hosting the Gravitational Wave (GW) antenna Virgo in Pisa/Italy. In the pasrt years, he has been director of the Laboratory of Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology (APC) and co-director of the Laboratory of Excellence (LabEx) UnivEarths (APC and IPGP: Institute of the Physics of the Globe) combining scientific expertise on Earth and environmental sciences, with astroparticle physics and cosmology (2014–2017); coordinator of the cluster of Sciences and Engineering of the community of universities and research institutions that eventually merged in the University of Paris (UdP). First chairman of the European Consortium of Astroparticle Physics (APPEC) gathering the European funding agencies funding the field and proposer and first coordinator of its precursor the EU-funded Network ASPERA (2006– 2012). Deputy director (2002–2012) responsible for Neutrino and Astroparticle Physics and Cosmology of the National Institute of Nuclear and Particle Physics (IN2P3) of CNRS and Director of the CNRS interdisciplinary program “Particules et Univers”. President of the administration council of the European Gravitation Observatory (EGO, 2002–2012), chairman of the resource board of the AUGER High Energy Cosmic Ray Observatory. Member of the resource boards of the FERMI satellite, the ANTARES Deep Ocean Observatory, the LSM Laboratoire Souterrain de Modane, the Double-CHOOZ Reactor Neutrino Experiment, CTA and KM3NET. Also, member of the Committee of Large Research Infrastructures of CNRS, the Evaluation Committee for Space Research (CERES) of CNES, and founding Principal Investigator (2007-) of the Institute of Physics and Mathematics of the Universe (KAVLI-IPMU) at Tokyo. Initiator and chief executive of the Public-PrivatePartnerships (GIS) between CNRS and the companies PHOTONIS on photodetection (2005–2009) and SAGEM on extreme optics (2007–2011). His recent research concerns the possibilit of a gravitational wave antenna deplyed at the Moon (project LSGA), the synergies between GW research and Geosciences (project APOGEIA), muon radiography issues of geoscientific and archaeological structures, distributed fiber and/or robotic sensor networks. He has also been the coordinator of the GW International Committe
