Christoph J. Brabec is full professor at the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg, Germany heading the chair i-MEET "materials for electronics and energy technology" at the department of material science. After completing his PhD in 1995, he joined the group of Prof. Alan Heeger at the University of Santa Barbara, USA, for a sabbatical in 1996, and continued to work on the opto-electronic properties of organic semiconductors as assistant professor at the University of Linz with Prof. Serdar Sariciftci. In 1998, he became senior scientist at the Christian Doppler Laboratory working on organic solar cells, which he left in 2001 to join Siemens Corporate Technology as project leader for organic semiconductor devices. From 2004 on he became headed the printed photovoltaics programme at Konarka Technologies as director and later on as CTO, before he joined Erlangen university in 2009. He finished his habilitation in physical chemistry at the Johannes Kepler University of Linz in 2003, and is author or co-author of more than 250 papers and inventor or co-inventor of over 100 patents. He is co-chair of the editorial board of the Wiley-VCH journal "Advanced Energy Materials".

Ullrich Scherf is full professor for Macromolecular Chemistry at Bergische Universitat Wuppertal, Germany, and director of the interdisciplinary research cluster "Institute for Polymer Technology". He studied chemistry at Friedrich-Schiller-Universitat Jena, Germany, obtaining his PhD in 1988 and subsequently spent one postdoctoral year with Heinz Penzlin, Saxonian Academy of Sciences, Jena. He joined the Klaus Mullen group at Max Planck Institute for Polymer Research in Mainz in 1990 and completed his habilitation in 1996 on polyarylenetype ladder polymers. Ullrich Scherf was Professor for Polymer Chemistry at Potsdam University (2000-02) and, since 2002, Professor for Macromolecular Chemistry at Wuppertal University. He has authored or co-authored more than 500 refereed journal papers.

Vladimir Dyakonov is full professor of experimental physics at the University of Wurzburg, Germany, and scientific director of the Bavarian Centre of Applied Energy Research (ZAE Bayern) in Wurzburg. He obtained his diploma degree in physics from the University of Saint Petersburg, Russia his PhD from the A. F. Ioffe-Institute in Russia and his habilitation degree from the University of Oldenburg, Germany, in 1986, 1996 and 2001, respectively. From 1996 to 1998, he worked as a post-doctoral fellow at the universities of Antwerp, Belgium, and Linz, Austria.