Jan Eijkel received his masters in pharmacy at the University of Amsterdam and his Ph.D. degree in 1995 at the University of Twente with prof.dr. Piet Bergveld. He then became postdoc at Imperial College London with prof. Andreas Manz. Since 2010 he is full professor in Nanofluidics for Lab on a Chip Applications at Twente University. The focus of his research is on the investigation of physicochemical phenomena in micro- and nanofluidic systems, and their practical applications e.g. in Point of Care systems. These investigations include capillary phenomena such as filling and drying, osmosis, o/w two-phase flow, transport and separation of ions and DNA and fluidic energy generation. Jan Eijkel is editor-in-chief of the Microfluidics and Nanofluidics journal and member of the Executive Technical Program Committee of the MicroTAS conference.

James Friend is a Professor in the Center for Medical Devices and Instrumentation at the University of California, San Diego, leading the Medically Advanced Devices Laboratory. He spent 14 years abroad as a faculty member in Japan and Australia before returning to the US. His research interests are principally in exploring and exploiting acoustic phenomena at small scales, mainly for biomedical applications. He currently supervises a team of 7 PhD students. Over the years, he has over 260 peer-reviewed research publications (H-factor = 43) and 28 patents in process or granted, completed 33 postgraduate students and supervised 18 postdoctoral staff, and been awarded over $25 million in competitive grant-based research funding. He is a fellow of the IEEE and awarded the IEEE Carl Hellmuth Hertz Ultrasonics Award from the IEEE in 2015.

Martin A. M. Gijs received his degree in physics in 1981 from the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, and his PhD degree in physics at the same university in 1986. He joined the Philips Research Laboratories in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, in 1987 and the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in 1997. He presently is a professor in the Institute of Microengineering, where he is responsible for the Microsystems Technology Group. His main interests are in developing new microfabrication technologies for microsystems fabrication in general and the development and use of microfluidics for biomedical applications in particular. He is member of the Editorial Advisory Board of the journals ‘Lab on a Chip’ and ‘Microfluidics and Nanofluidics’ and in the Editorial Board of ‘Micromachines’. He has published over 250 papers in peer-reviewed journals and holds over 20 patents.

Dr. Jongyoon Han is currently a professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Department of Biological Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He received B.S.(1992) and M.S.(1994) degree in physics from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, and Ph.D. degree in applied physics from Cornell University in 2001. He was a research scientist in Sandia National Laboratories (Livermore, CA), until he joined the MIT faculty in 2002. He received NSF CAREER award (2003) and Analytical Chemistry Young Innovator Award (ACS, 2009). His research is mainly focused on applying micro/nanofabrication techniques to a very diverse set of fields and industries, including biosensing, desalination / water purification, biomanufacturing, dentistry, and neuroscience.

Professor Lim is the inaugural NUS Society Professor at the Department of Biomedical Engineering and Mechanobiology Institute at NUS. His research interests include the development of microfluidic technologies for disease diagnosis and personalized therapy. Prof Lim has authored more than 320 journal papers, 28 book chapters and delivered more than 310 plenary/keynote/invited talks. He is an elected Fellow of both the AIMBE and the IAMBE. He is also an elected council member of the World Council of Biomechanics. He currently sits on the editorial boards of 20 journals. He and his team have garnered more than 70 research awards and honors including the International Precision Medicine Conference Prize 2017, ASEAN Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award 2016, Asian 100 Scientist 2016, University’s Outstanding Researcher Award 2014, Credit Suisse Technopreneur of the Year Award and Wall Street Journal Asian Innovation Award (Gold) 2012, and President's Technology Award 2011 among others.

Andreas Manz is one of the pioneers in microchip technology used for chemical applications. He was involved in the development of high speed analyzers based on capillary electrophoresis, liquid chromatography and flow injection analysis. These analyzers are based on the microfabrication know-how originally developed for microelectronics. He conducted most of his early research with his group at Ciba-Geigy Ltd. in Basel, Switzerland, then at Imperial College in London, United Kingdom, at ISAS – the Institute for Analytical Sciences, Dortmund Germany, and finally,.at KIST Europe, Saarbrücken Germany. He developed a novel concept for Miniaturized Total Analysis Systems (µ-TAS), which involves sampling, sample pretreatment, separation, and detection performed in an integrated microsystem, with a chemical parameter (for example, the concentration of a compound) that is periodically transformed into an electronic or an optical signal. Such a system is in fact a hybrid which offers the advantages of a sophisticated analysis system within the size of a chemical sensor.

Antonio Ramos is Professor of Electromagnetism at the University of Seville, Spain. He received his bachelor's degree in 1988 and his PhD in 1993, both from University of Seville. He is responsible for the direction of research on Electrohydrodynamics and Electrokinetics in Microsystems in the research group of Electrohydrodynamics and Cohesive Granular Media. He has worked on the Electrohydrodynamics of liquid bridges and drops, the Mechanics of fine cohesive powders and the AC Electrokinetics of particles and fluids in microsystems. Working with Prof. Hywel Morgan, Prof. Antonio Castellanos, Prof. Antonio Gonzalez, and Dr. Nicolas Green, they developed the physical models of Electrohydrodynamics and AC Electroosmosis at the micrometer scale. He has edited a collective textbook on Electrokinetics and Electrohydrodynamcis in microsystems. His actual research interests are concerned with the AC Electrokinetics of conducting and semi-conducting microparticles and the Electrohydrodynamics of electrolytes in microsystems. He is a member of the International Advisory Board of the Electrokinetic Phenomena Conference.

Albert van den Berg received his MSc in applied physics in 1983, and his PhD in 1988 both at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. From 1988-1993 he worked in Neuchatel, Switzerland, at the CSEM and the University (IMT) on miniaturized chemical sensors. In 1998 he was appointed as part-time professor “Biochemical Analysis Systems”, and later in 2000 as full professor on Miniaturized Systems for (Bio)Chemical Analysis in the faculty of Electrical Engineering and part of the MESA+ Institute for Nanotechnology. In 1994 he initiated together with Prof. Bergveld the international MicroTAS conference series. He published over 400 peer reviewed publications (H=51) a.o. in Science, Nature, PNAS, NanoLetters etc. He received several honors and awards such as Simon Stevin (2002), two ERC Advanced (2008, 2015) and ERC Proof of Concept (2011, 2013) grants, Spinoza prize (2009), Honorary University Professorship (Twente, 2010), Distinguished Professor at South China Normal University (SNCU, 2012) and board member of the Royal Dutch Academy of Sciences (KNAW) in 2011. In 2014 he was appointed scientific director of the MIRA institute for Biomedical Engineering.

Quanshui Zheng received his B.S. degree (1982) in Civil Engineering from Nanchang University, M.S. degree (1985) and PhD degree (1989) in solid mechanics from Hunan University and Tsinghua University respectively. Since 1993, he became a full professor at Department of Engineering Mechanics in Tsinghua University. In addition, he was appointed the director of Center for Nano and Micro Mechanics of Tsinghua University when the center was set up in 2010. In the 1980s, he mainly focused on the research of rational mechanics and nonlinear continuum mechanics. In the 1990s, he made his major contribution to modern tensor function represent theory and its application. Since 2000, he started his research on interfaces, which includes nano-mechanics, nanotribology and wetting. His representative works in these fields include the contribution to structural superlubricity, carbon nanostructure based nano-mechanics and extreme hydrophobic. Until now, he has published over 100 papers in authoritative journals and held over 20 research programs.