Kurt Busch has been an Associate Professor at the Department of Physics and the School of Optics: CREOL & FPCE at the University of Central Florida (Orlando, USA) since January 2004. He received his undergraduate (Dipl.-Phys.; 1993) and postgraduate training (Dr. rer. nat.; 1996) at the University of Karlsruhe (Germany) and partly at the Iowa State University (Ames, USA). His professional experience included working at Iowa State University (Ames, USA), the University of Toronto (Canada; 1997-1999) and leading a junior research group within the Emmy-Noether program of the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft at the University of Karlsruhe (Germany; 2000-2003). His research interests lie in light-matter interactions and wave propagation in strongly scattering materials and Photonic Crystals.

Stefan Lölkes graduated in semiconductor physics at the Technical University of Munich, Germany, in 2000. In 2001, he started his Ph.D. thesis on “Electrochemical etching of Photonic Crystals” at the Chair for General Materials Science at the Chr istian-Alb rechts-University of Kiel, Germany. In parallel, he co-organized already several national symposia on Photonic Crystals in the framework of the DFG priority program 1113 “Photonic Crystals”.

Ralf B. Wehrspohn received his diploma degree in physics at the University of Oldenburg in 1995. He then carried out a Ph.D. at the Ecole Polytechnique in France about thin film technology and electrochemistry. In 1998 he joined the Philips Research Laboratories in Redhill, U.K., to work on thin film transistors for AMLCD. From end of 1999 to March 2003 he has been responsible for the activities on photonic crystals and self-ordered porous materials at the Max-Planck-Institute of Microstructure Physics in Halle. Since April 2003 he is full professor in experimental physics at the University of Paderborn where he leads the activities on nanophotonic materials. R. B. Wehrspohn has been awarded with the Heinz Maier-Leipnitz award of the DFG and the TR100 innovation price of the MIT in 2003.

Helmut Föll received his Ph.D. degree in Physics in 1976 from the University of Stuttgart in conjunction with the Max-Planck-Institute for Metal Research in Stuttgart. After postdoctorial work at the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Cornell University and a position as guest scientist at the T.J. Watson Res. Center of IBM in Yorktown Heights, he joined Siemens in 1980, working in the newly founded Solar Energy Department of Central Research in Munich. After various senior positions in microelectronics development, in 1991 he accepted an offer of the Christian-Albrechts-University of Kiel to become the founding dean of the newly established Faculty of Engineering, where he also holds the Chair for General Materials Science. Since 1998 he is back to research, with particular interest in solar cell technology and the electrochemistry of semiconductors. He is one of the pioneers in the field of porous semiconductors and has coauthored more than 150 papers and 20 patents.