Baptiste Leroy is an associate professor in the Laboratory of Proteomics and Microbiology at the University of Mons in Belgium. He has been studying fundamental aspects of metabolism in cyanobacteria and purple bacteria. In recent years, he has focused his research activities on carbon metabolism and redox homeostasis in phototrophic purple bacteria (PPB), aiming to understand how these fascinating organisms can thrive under diverse environmental conditions.
This knowledge is now being applied to develop cultivation strategies to produce food- and feed-grade PPB biomass using by-products from the food industry. Recently, he co-founded a startup company called PurpleTech, with the goal of developing innovative, health-promoting ingredients derived from raw PPB biomass for food and feed applications.
Today, he co-leads this young company and coordinates several international projects aimed at evaluating the health-promoting properties of PPB, notably within ambitious initiatives such as PROTEBoost (Foodwal – Win4Excellence) and Purple4Life (CBE-JU, Horizon EU). He is also an active member of the PurpleGain COST Action.

PROTEBoost https://www.foodwal.be/proteboost/
https://purple4life.eu/
https://purplegain.eu/

Prof. dr Maria Barbosa is Professor in Bioprocess Engineering and is Director of AlgaePARC (www.AlgaePARC.com) at Wageningen University and Research Centre, the Netherlands.
She has been president of the Dutch Biotechnology Association (NBV). She holds a PhD in Bioprocess Engineering obtained at Wageningen University. She has worked at ETH (Swiss Federal Institute of Technology), Switzerland, IBET, and at EMBO (European Molecular Biology Organisation), Germany.
She presently leads the group on microalgal biotechnology and coordinates several large research programs covering the entire microalgae production chain and applications in the food and feed sectors.
Her scientific interests are in microalgae strain improvement, cultivation and scale-up.

Dr. Gabriel Capson-Tojo is a researcher at the Laboratory of Environmental Biotechnology of the French National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food and the Environment (INRAE-LBE), where he heads the Process Engineering and Integration group.
His academic journey began with a degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Santiago de Compostela, followed by an Erasmus Mundus MSc in Environmental Engineering from Ghent University. After earning his PhD from INRAE-LBE in 2017, Gabriel expanded his expertise through postdoctoral roles at Suez (CIRSEE), the USC Biogroup, and the Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology at the University of Queensland.
Since 2019, Gabriel has dedicated his research to the advancement of Purple Phototrophic Bacteria (PPB) biotechnology. His work has covered various key novel aspects, from mechanistic modeling and system ecology to up-scaling and diazotrophy. While his previous work at UQ focused on direct resource recovery from wastewater, his current research at LBE pioneers the generation of high-value products from gaseous streams using PNSB.

Koenraad Muylaert (19.03.1972) obtained a degree in MSc Biology at University Gent (Belgium) in 1996 and a PhD at the same university in 1999. After obtaining his PhD, he continued to work as an FWO post-doctoral researcher at University Gent until he obtained a professorship at KU Leuven University in 2007 where he is now full professor. His research focuses on eutrophication of aquatic ecosystems and biotechnological applications of microalgae. His work on microalgae biotechnology focused on an important challenge in the microalgae industry: developing low-cost and sustainable technologies for harvesting microalgae. His group has in the past years been highly active in flocculation-based harvesting of microalgae, doing pioneering work exploring several novel flocculation technologies.
https://orcid.org/my-orcid?orcid=0000-0001-9645-4063

Dr. Victor Monsalvo is Head of the Eco-efficiency Area at the Innovation and Technology Department of Aqualia. He leads an active team working on wastewater treatment and reuse, biowastes and biogas management, processes involved in drinking water and desalination. He got his PhD on Chemical Engineering from University Autonoma de Madrid and got a position as Assistant Professor in Chemical Eng. Department from 2005 to 2014, and visiting researcher in different Universities: Leeds (2007), Cranfield (2009), Sydney (2011) and Aachen (2013). Then, he was appointed as Head of Technological Area – Water in Abengoa Research until 2016. Involved in more than 50 public and private innovation projects, and he has directed R&D contracts with private companies, (co) authored 8 patents (national and international), around 110 journal and referred conference papers, 1 book chapter and edited 4 books. He has collaborated with different public and private entities on the organization and promotion of numerous national and international scientific and technical conferences. He has received 8 national and international awards and recognitions.

Damián Monllor-Satoca is an associate professor in the Department of Physical Chemistry of the University of Alicante (Spain). He holds a double BSc and MSc in Chemistry (University of Alicante, 2003) and a BSc Honours in Chemistry (University of Strathclyde, UK, 2003). He obtained a PhD in Materials Science (University of Alicante, 2010). He moved to South Korea as a junior postdoc (POSTECH, 2010-2012); later, In 2013 he was hired as a tenure-track researcher in Barcelona (Catalonia Institute of Energy Research, IREC). In 2015, he gained a Lecturer position at the IQS-University Ramon Llull (Barcelona). In 2019, he moved back to the University of Alicante as a senior researcher and in 2025 gained his current tenured position. He has published 42 articles, including 1 review, 1 feature article, 2 book chapters, and 3 proceedings. His h-factor is 27. His research interests focus on: (i) photo(electro)chemistry and environmental applications (e.g., water decontamination, artificial photosynthesis) of semiconductor materials, (ii) electrochemical synthesis (e.g., adipic acid derivatives) and valorisation of raw biomaterials (e.g., lignin), and (iii) solar redox flow batteries.

Paolo Fornasiero holds the Chair of Inorganic Chemistry at the Dep. of Chemical and Pharmaceutical Sciences, University of Trieste since December 2016. He is Vice-rector for Research, Deputy Director of the Department and Member of the Academic Senate of the University of Trieste. He is Fellow of the European Academy of Sciences (2021), of the Academia Europaea (2022), and of the of the European Academy of Sciences (2025).  Dr. Fornasiero’s research interests focus on inorganic chemistry, with attention to the design and development of multi-functional nano-systems and their advanced applications in energy related processes and environmental heterogeneous catalysis. 
He has published over 350 articles, which have been cited over 44,000 times (H index = 94 Scopus). He serves the community as Executive Editor of the journal ACS Catalysis. He received various awards including the 2005 Nasini Medal, the 2013 Chiusoli Medal, the 2022 Malatesta award and the Chini memorial Lectur from the Italian Chemical Society, the 2018 Maria Teresa Messori Roncaglia and Eugenio Mari Award from Accademia dei Lincei, the 2017 Edoardo Kramer award from Istituto Lombardo Accademia di Scienze e Lettere, the 2017 Rudolf Zahradník Lecture (Czech Republic) and the 2016 Heinz Heinemann Award from the International Association of Catalysis Societies. He was 2018 Visiting Scientist Fellowship of the Chinese Academy of Science.