Hans Gatzen received a PhD equivalent in Mechanical Engineering from the RWTH Aachen in Aachen, Germany, and held various positions in the computer peripherals industry in Germany and the U.S. from 1973 to 1992. In 1992, he founded the Institute for Microtechnology (imt) at the Hanover University in Hanover, Germany (now Leibniz Universität Hannover) and was its director until his retirement in 2010. He is a Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) and a member of Acatech (National Academy of Science and Engineering).
Volker Saile received a PhD in Physics from the Ludwigs-Maximilians-Universitaet München (LMU), and was later employed as a Staff Scientist at the Deutsches Elektronen-Synchrotron DESY in Hamburg, Germany, until 1989. From 1989 to 1998, he served as the Director of the J. Bennett Johnston, Sr., Center for Advanced Microstructures and Devices (CAMD), Baton Rouge, Louisana, USA. Since 1998, he is Professor of Microstructure Technology at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT). Currently, he serves as Head of the KIT Division 5, Physics and Mathematics.
Juerg Leuthold is the head of the Institute of Electromagnetic Fields (IEF) at ETH Zurich, Switzerland. His research interests are in the field of nano-photonics, plasmonics, integrated optics and optical communications. From 2004 to 2013 he was a full Professor at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in Germany and from 1999 to 2004 he was affiliated with Bell Labs,
Lucent Technologies.