Holger Kersten is a Professor at the Institute of Experimental and Applied Physics at University of Kiel, Germany since 2006. Prior Professor Kersten was the head of the plasma processes group at the Leibniz Institute for Plasma Science and Technology (INP Greifswald) in Greifswald, Germany. The focus of his research includes basic studies and diagnostics on the interaction of plasmas with surfaces, complex plasmas and their applications in plasma technology. In 1999, he received the Greifswald Plasma Physics Prize in recognition of his research. Professor Kersten was furthermore the president of the German Society for Plasma Technology from 2009 to 2013. From 2015 until 209 he was an Editor-in-Chief of the European Physical Journal D (EPJD) and currently he is an Editor-in-Chief of the European Physical Journal of Techniques and Instrumentation (EPJTI). In 2019 Kersten was the chair of the ICPIG conference and in 2024 of the PSE conference.
Tony Murphy was born in Sydney, Australia (unlike Vasco Guerra) many years ago. He received a PhD in Physics from the University of Sydney, and subsequently did a postdoc at Max-Planck-Institut für Plasmaphysik. Since 1989, he has worked at CSIRO, Australia’s main government research organisation, where he is now a Chief Research Scientist. (A prize will be awarded to all who can say what CSIRO stands for).
Tony’s main research area is thermal plasma processes, including arc welding, waste treatment, and plasma property calculation. He has also worked on several other topics, including water splitting using solar energy, ice crystal nucleation in jet engine exhausts, and metal 3D printing. He was a member of the team that developed the PLASCON waste destruction process, and has led plasma modelling projects with several companies, including General Motors, Boeing and Siemens. He has over 200 refereed journal publications, and has been awarded research medals by the Institute of Physics (UK), Australian Academy of Science, Australian Institute of Physics and the Royal Society of NSW. He is Editor-in-Chief of Plasma Chemistry and Plasma Processing, and a member of the Editorial Boards of Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics and Scientific Reports; you are encouraged to submit your best work to these journals.
Key publications:- Calculation and application of combined diffusion coefficients in thermal plasmas. A B Murphy, Sci. Rep. 4 4304 (5 pp.) (2014).
- Thermodynamic properties and transport coefficients of arc lamp plasmas: argon, krypton and xenon. A B Murphy, E. Tam, J. Phys. D: Appl. Phys. 47 295202 (10 pp.) (2014).
- A perspective on arc welding research: the importance of the arc, unresolved questions and future directions. A B Murphy, Plasma Chem. Plasma Process. 35 471–489 (2015).
Nevena Puač (Institute of Physics Belgrade, Serbia)
Dr. Nevena Puač is a principal research fellow at the Institute of Physics Belgrade working in the low temperature plasma physics field - low and atmospheric pressure plasmas, expert in numerous diagnostics methods and application of plasmas in biology, medicine and agriculture. She obtained her PhD at the University of Belgrade with a part of the thesis completed at the Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon, Portugal. She was a PI of national technological project (TD 23016, Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, 2008-2010), multidisciplinary project (III41011, Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development, 2011-2019) and PI at several bilateral projects. Currently she is the Action Chair and coordinator of the multidisciplinary COST Action, PlAgri-CA19110, “Plasma Agriculture for smart and sustainable agriculture” and was a leader of Marie Sklodowska Curie ITN project (Nowelties 812880) at the Institute of Physics. She has published more than 70 articles in international journals and publications. Her h-index is 24 with more than 1300 citations. Most of the highly cited papers that she has published are in the field of applications of plasma in biology and medicine. Until now she has supervised several PhD and Master and Diploma theses. She was co-chair and organizer of several conferences and workshops.
Key publications:- N Puač, M Gherardi, M Shiratani, Plasma agriculture: A rapidly emerging field, Plasma processes and polymers 15 (2), 1700174 (2108)
- C Bradu, K Kutasi, M Magureanu, N Puač, S Živković, Reactive nitrogen species in plasma-activated water: Generation, chemistry and application in agriculture, Journal of Physics D: Applied Physics 53 (22), 223001 (2020)
- S Tomić, A Petrović, N Puač, N Škoro, M Bekić, ZL Petrović, M Čolić, Plasma-activated medium potentiates the immunogenicity of tumor cell lysates for dendritic cell-based cancer vaccines, Cancers 13 (7), 1626 (2021)
Achim von Keudell (Ruhr-University Bochum, Germany)
Achim von Keudell is professor for experimental physics at Ruhr-University Bochum since 2003. Before, he was staff scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Plasma Physics in Munich.
A. von Keudell specialised in plasma and surfaces physics. His experience encompasses in-situ ellipsometry, infrared spectroscopy and treatment of surfaces with plasma discharges. His group has been the first to quantify elementary surface processes in plasma surface interactions involving hydrocarbon radicals and hydrogen atoms. These serve as model experiments for the understanding of thin film growth in glow discharges.
The projects until 2010 focussed on plasma technology particularly with regard to clusters in plasmas and plasma sterilisation. Since a few years, the research on reactive microplasmas developed with the emphasis on the fundamental understanding of the reaction chemistry as well as on on reactive magnetron sputtering and HPPMS discharges.
Key publications:- Direct insertion of SiH3 radicals into strained Si-Si surface bonds during plasma deposition of hydrogenated amorphous silicon films. A von Keudell, J R Abelson, Phys. Rev. B. 59, 5791 (1999)
- Elementary processes in plasma-surface interaction:H-atom and ion-induced chemisorption of methyl on hydrocarbon film surfaces (review). A von Keudell, W Jacob, Progress in Surface Science 26, 21-54 (2004)
- Atmospheric microplasma jet source as depositing tool. J Benedikt, K Focke, A Yanguas-Gil, A von Keudell, Appl. Phys. Lett. 89, 251504 (2006)