Angelo Albini is full professor of Organic Chemistry at the University of Pavia, Italy. He did postdoctoral work at the Max-Plack-Institut for Radiation Chemistry (Mulheim, Germany) and has been a visiting professor at the Universities of Western Ontario (Canada) and of Odense (Denmark) and a professor at the University of Torino. His scientific activity has always centered on organic photochemistry in different aspects, mechanistic studies, synthetic applications, mild generation of highly active intermediates, 'green chemistry', photoinduced degradation of pollutants,
phototoxicity of drugs). Besides research papers, he is coauthor of two books and since 2009 senior reporter of the RSC Specialistic Report on Photochemisty. He has been the recipient of the Federchimica prize for creativity in chemistry in 1990.

Maurizio Fagnoni graduated at the University of Pavia (Italy) with a thesis on the use of photoinduced electron transfer reactions in organic synthesis under the guidance of Prof. Angelo Albini. He spent part of his PhD period at the University of Muenster (Germany) working on the photochemistry of cyclopropylketones (Prof. J. Mattay as the supervisor). In 1996 he obtained a fellowship from the "Istituto Superiore della Sanita" for the study of the photostability of drugs. He then moved to the Istituto Ronzoni (Milan) where he worked on the synthesis of peptidomimetics and functionalized chitosans. In 1998 he returned to the University of Pavia where in 2008 was appointed associate professor. His interests lie in the application of photochemistry to organic (green) synthesis encompassing photocatalysis and phenyl cation chemistry.