Hiroaki Misawa is Professor at the Research Institute for Electronic Science at Hokkaido University, Sapporo, Japan. He obtained his B.Sc. in Engineering from the Department of Engineering at Tokyo Metropolitan University in 1979, graduated in Engineering from the University of Tsukuba in 1981 and completed his Ph.D. at the Department of Chemistry there in 1984. After postdoctoral positions at the Universities of Texas and Tsukuba and an Assistant Professorship at Tsukuba, he joined the Micro-photo-conversion project (Exploratory Research for Advanced Technology ERATO of Japan Science & Technology Agency JST). He then moved on to the Department of Engineering at the University of Tokushima in 1993 and was promoted to full professor in 1995. His current research interests include photochemistry, light-matter interaction, ultra-fast processes in materials, photonic crystals, and plasmonics. He has authored more than 200 papers.

Saulius Juodkazis is Associate Professor at the Research Institute for Electronic Science at Hokkaido University, Japan. He received his Physics Diploma in 1986 from Vilnius University, Lithuania, and was later confered a lecturer qualification in Physical Sciences. In 1997, he received his Ph.D. in Physics and Material Science jointly from Vilnius University and l'Universitä laude Bernard in Lyon, France, on the structural and optical properties of CdS doped waveguiding sol-gel films. From 1994, he worked as a researcher at the Semiconductor Physics Department, currently Institute of Material Science and Applied Research, of Vilnius University, and from 1997 to 2000 carried out post-doctoral research at Tokushima University, Japan. His current interests include space-time-spectrum-resolved characterization of light-matter interactions in micro-domains, nano-photonics/plasmonics, laser tweezers, and applications of ultra-fast laser pulses. He has published and co-authored more than 90 scientific papers.