Claude P. Gros has been a Full Professor of Organic Chemistry at the medicinal/pharmaceutical school of the Université de Bourgogne since 2009. He obtained his PhD from the same University in 1995 under the supervision of Prof. Roger Guilard, following up with a one-year postdoctoral position at the University of California Davis with Prof. Kevin M. Smith, working on chlorins and pyrroloporphyrins. His research interests include the synthesis and reactivity of porphyrins, corroles, BODIPYs and dipyrrins and their metal complexes, along with their applications in energy and electron transfers, gas sensors and medicinal chemistry. In 2021, he was elected as a National Foreign Expert of the People’s Republic of China, where he served at the University of Nanjing. He is also the actual Director of the National Research Network GDR Mapyro: https://mapyro.chimie.unistra.fr. Claude P. Gros has organized and co-chaired numerous international conferences, especially in France and China, and was also awarded several international programs, most notably the Åsgård programs of the Institut Français de Norvège. Over May 30–31, 2024, he hosted a highly successful 1st Åsgård Horizon French-Norwegian Inorganic and Materials Chemistry Symposium in Dijon.

Abhik Ghosh is a professor of inorganic and materials chemistry at UiT The Arctic University of Norway. He grew up in Kolkata, India, and did his B.Sc. (Honours) at Jadavpur University. He did his Ph.D. at the University of Minnesota under the supervision of Paul G. Gassman, while also extensively collaborating with Jan Almlöf. After postdoctoral stints in bioinorganic chemistry with Larry Que and David Bocian, he joined UiT as Associate Professor in 1996, rising to full professor in 2000. He was a Senior Fellow of the San Diego Supercomputer Center (1997–2004) and a Visiting Professor at the University of Auckland (on several occasions) and at the University of Rome Tor Vergata (2024). Since 2021, he has led UiT’s Center for Sustainable STEM Education. He edited the popular science book Letters to a Young Chemist (Wiley, 2011) and coauthored the textbook Arrow Pushing in Inorganic Chemistry: A Logical Approach to the Chemistry of the Main Group Elements (Wiley, 2014); the latter won the 2015 PROSE Award for Best Textbook in the Mathematical and Physical Sciences. A fluent Sanskrit speaker, he coauthored an influential essay “The Grammar of the Elements: Did the Sanskrit alphabet influence Mendeleev’s periodic table?” with Stanford University linguist Paul Kiparsky. Ghosh is an elected member of several academies and learned societies including the European Academy of Sciences and Academia Europaea. In 2022, he received the Hans Fischer Career Award for Lifetime Achievements in Porphyrin Chemistry. In June 2025, Ghosh plans to host the 2nd Åsgård Horizon French-Norwegian Inorganic and Materials Chemistry Symposium in Tromsø.