Qiuhe Peng is mainly engaged in nuclear astrophysics, particle astrophysics and Galactic Astronomy research. In the field of Nuclear Astrophysics, his research project involved a neutron star (pulsar), the supernova explosion mechanism and the thermonuclear reaction inside the star, the synthesis of heavy elements and interstellar radioactive element such as the origin of celestial 26Al. In addition, through his lectures, he establishes Nuclear Astrophysics research in China, He was invited by Peking University, by Tsinghua University (both in Beijing and in Taiwan) and by nuclear physics institutes in Beijing, Shanghai, Lanzhou to give lectures on Nuclear Astrophysics for many times. He has participated in the international academic conferences over 40 times and he visited more than 20 countries. In 1994, he visited eight institutes in USA to give lectures. He is the first Chinese Astrophysicist to visit NASA and to give a lecture on the topic, “Nuclear Synthesis of Interstellar 26Al”. In 2005, he visited USA twice and gave lectures in eight universities again. Inviting six astronomers of USA to give series lectures, he has hosted four consecutive terms summer school on gravitational wave astronomy. After the four summer school obvious effect, at least 20 young scholars in China in the field of gravitational wave astronomy specialized learning and research. 220 research papers by him have been published.

Brunello Tirozzi of Mathematical Physics at the University of Rome La Sapienza, Department of Physics. Retired in 2015, since then associate to Enea Research Center of Controlled Fusion at Frascati, Rome. I have published 170 research papers on different fields: elementary particle physics, quantum lattice models, classical dynamics of particle systems, Gibbs random fields for classical spins, central limit theorem for Gibbs random field, Gibbs state for the system with random interaction, neural networks, storage of patterns, Hopfield model. Models of biological neurons. Neural networks description of the immune system. Solutions of hydrodynamical equations, asymptotic expansions. Application to typhoon and tsunami propagation, Maslov operator, run-up. Plasma physics, the study of the solution of photosphere plasma, application to accretion disks of stars, propagation of em waves in a plasma.

Antonio Codino obtained his university degree in 1976 at the University of Rome investigating electron positron collisions at the Adone Storage Ring. For five years participated at CERN experiments, in Geneva, using the SPS Accelerator of 400 GeV where the lifetime of charmed mesons and electromagnetic radii of charged pions and kaons have been measured. Then, he worked for several years at the Saturne Accelerator in Paris, France, making Nuclear Physics experiments. Later he had a permanent position at the University of Perugia working in cosmic-ray experiments led by Robert Golden who had discovered antiprotons in the primary cosmic radiation. These experiments measured positron, electron and antiproton fluxes during many years, in several balloon flights in Canada and New Mexico. Concomitantly, he developed Gallium Arsenide and Silicon detectors for time-of-flight measurements for Nuclear Physics experiments, funded by INFN. An unsurpassed time resolution of one hundred picoseconds was achieved with Silicon detectors. In the last two decades he has been performing simulation of cosmic-ray trajectories in the Galaxy in collaboration with other physicists. The results are described in many publications, conference proceedings and books. Research activity was paralleled by teaching Electromagnetism and Classical Mechanics at university.

Laura Mersini Houghton is a cosmologist and theoretical physicist. Currently, she is a professor of theoretical physics and cosmology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a visiting professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge, and CITA at the University of Toronto in Canada. The main focus of her work is on the early and late universe, and the global structure of space-time. Her investigation of the first moments in the life of our universe led her to a theory of the origin of the universe from the vast landscape of a quantum multiverse. She was the first to propose using quantum entanglement to test the existence of the multiverse right here in our sky. Contrary to the belief that we are limited by the speed of light to glimpse at moments before our universe existed and beyond its horizon (with two collaborators, R. Holman and T. Takahashi), she calculated a series of predictions for anomalous signatures of our cosmic origins left over in our sky. The signatures, most notably the Cold Spot, were found by the WMAP and Planck satellite experiments. The status of her predictions with the current data was analyzed in a series of papers with E. di Valentino and shown to be in excellent agreement. The evolution of the universe at late times and its ultimate destiny are controlled by dark energy, which is similar in nature to the Big Bang inflationary energy. With M. Bastero-Gil, using nonlinear dispersions, she developed a model where dark energy is contained in the vacuum of space-time, at shortest distances, known as Trans- Planckian scales. The problem of vacuum at the shortest scales (where known theories break down), and, the architecture of space-time at global scales, remain open problems. In an effort to building a coherent view of the global structure of space-time, she proposed two principles: the principle of correlation which states correlated (interacting) universes must be embedded in the same space-time; and, the principle of no perpetual motion, which, through the quantum relation between energy and a time parameter, conjectures that time is a fundamental parameter while the arrow of time emerges locally and is caused by the emergence of a universe. This addresses a long standing problem in physics, the fact the our universe has a time’s arrow pointing from past to future, yet all known and trusted theories and laws of nature cannot tell the difference. She organized a conference on ‘A Debate in Cosmology: Times Arrow’ at the NY Academy of Science, with B. Green and J. Khoury, which resulted in a book with the same title. She believes that singularities are mathematical rather than physical objects. To that end she proposed a model that avoids the singularity at the center of a black hole, and organized the historic Hawking Conference in Stockholm (with S. Hawking, K. Freese and M. Perry), to explore this question with the founding fathers of black hole physics. She has been the subject of hundreds of articles in leading popular science magazines and has appeared on the Science Channel’s ‘Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman’, and in documentaries on the Discovery Channel and BBC- Horizon. For fifteen years her Wikipedia page has been regularly edited by humans and robots. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.

Dr. Gaskin is a Research Astrophysicist at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center where she leads the X-ray Astronomy Group. She is currently on Detail to the NESC as the Deputy to the Technical Fellow for the Sensors and Instrumentation Technical Discipline Team and she is the Deputy Principal Investigator on the LargE Area burst Polarimeter (LEAP) Phase A Explorers Mission of Opportunity study. She has worked for NASA for over two decades (as a contractor or Civil Servant). Her professional career includes leading, managing and supporting large to small projects across X-ray and gamma-ray astrophysics, and planetary science. Dr. Gaskin’s background is on the development of instrumentation for high-energy astrophysics and planetary missions, and on large mission concept development. She serves on the NASA Astrophysics Advisory Committee for the Astrophysics Division and is an associate editor for the Journal of Astronomical Instrumentation (JAI). A few awards include: NASA Silver Achievement Medal (2021), UAH Alumni of Achievement Award (2020), NASA Group Achievement Award to Astrophysics Large Mission Study Team (2019), NASA MSFC Innovation Peer Award (2019), NASA Federal Women’s Program Outstanding Achievement Award (2018), Science Olympiad – UAH Appreciation Award for 20 years of Service (2018), and the NASA Honor Award for Early Career Achievement Medal (2014).

LAURA MERSINI-HOUGHTON is an internationally renowned cosmologist and theoretical physicist and is one of the world’s leading experts on the multiverse and the origins of the universe. Currently, she is a professor of theoretical physics and cosmology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and a visiting professor at the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at the University of Cambridge. She has been the subject of hundreds of articles in leading popular science magazines and has appeared on the Science Channel’s Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman, as well as on documentaries on the Discovery Channel and the BBC. She lives in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.