Freddy, C. V. Adams has been Emeritus Professor and Honorary Rector of at the University of Antwerp, Belgium (UA) since the end of 2003. During his long scientific carrer he was Professor of Chemistry at the UA with teaching assignments in analytical chemistry and radiochemistry (1972-2003).Rector of the Graduate School of the UA (1983-1995). He is also a co-founder of the Centre of Micro-and Trace Analysis (MiTAC) serving as its Director from 1980 to 2003. He was a Research Director of various projects of the Flemish Community, the Belgian Federal Government, the EU and different Belgian and international organisations on fundamental analytical chemistry and applications in the materialand environment sciences and art & archaeology.

His research interests include instrumental microscopic analysis with beam techniques and synchrotron X-ray sources; ultra-trace speciation analysis; applications in materials sciences, environmental chemistry and archaeology.

He served as member of Belgian National Research Council (1989-1995); Flemish Council for Scientific Research (1994-1998); Flemish Industrial Research Board (1995-1997); the IUPAC Analytical Division Committee (1998- 2002), the Steering Committee of Science for Peace Programme of NATO, vice-President of the Flemish Institute for Biotechnology (1995-2004); 1997-2004 and President-General of the Royal Flemish Chemical Society (1995-1998).

Professor Adams received many awards including Louis Gordon Memorial Award (1979), Castaing Award (1984), Environment Policy Prize of Coca-Cola Foundation (1990), Pregl Medal of Austrian Chemical Society (1996) and “Torch” Award of Winter Plasma Conference on Plasma Spectrochemistry (Norway, 2001). He is also a Doctor Honoris Causa of the University of Iasi, Romania (1998) and the University of Chisinau, Moldova (2005).

Professor Adams is a co-author of 5 books and ca 500 publications in the international scientific literature.

Jean-Michel Mermet was Research Director at the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) until his retirement end 2004. He was born in Lyon, France, conducted his graduate degree at the University of Strasbourg in 1964, received his doctor's degree in chemistry from the University of Lyon in 1974, and worked as post-doctoral fellow at the University of Florida in 1977 with Prof. J.D. Winefordner. In 1985, he was appointed Director of the Laboratory of Analytical Sciences at the University of Lyon. His research interests have been focused on spectrochemistry of plasmas and lasers from fundamental, analytical and instrumental aspects.

He has published 250 papers, reviews and book chapters, and presented 390 talks, of which 140 were invited lectures. He is currently consultant.

In recognition of his contribution to plasma spectrochemistry, he has received several awards including those from the French Chemical Society, the Analytical Chemistry Division of the American Chemical Society, the Royal Society of Chemistry, along with honour issues of Spectrochimica Acta, Canadian Journal of Analytical Sciences and Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry.

Klaus Gustav Heumann is Emeritus Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the Johannes-Gutenberg-University Mainz, Germany. He received his Diploma degree in Chemistry at the Technical University Darmstadt in 1966. After his Habilitation in Analytical Chemistry, he was appointed in 1974 Professor for Inorganic and Analytical Chemistry at the University of Regensburg/Bavaria, where he taught 1974 to 1996. In 1996 he became Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the University of Mainz. Dr. Heumann's research interests lie in the development and application of analytical methods for the determination of trace elements and trace amounts of elemental species, using ICP-MS, TIMS, different types of optical atomic spectrometry, and electroanalysis as detection methods, and HPLC, CE or capillary GC as separation methods. His research group has considerable experience in isotope dilution mass spectrometry (IDMS). They were the first to use IDMS in connection with the negative thermal ionization technique (NTI-MS) for trace element analysis and to introduce on-line IDMS into hyphenated techniques for elemental speciation. Dr. Heumann has received several awards that include the Clemens-Winkler-Medal of the German Society for Analytical Chemistry in 1994 for his scientific lifework and for continuous support of Analytical Chemistry in Germany.

In 2007 he received the European Award for Plasma Spectrochemistry. He is member of several national and international scientific societies and he was a member of the IUPAC Commission on Atomic Weights and Isotopic Abundances for twelve years and chairman from 1991 to 1995. Since 2002 he is Editor of Analytical and Bioanalytical Chemistry (ABC).

Professor Ebdon CBE obtained both his BSc and PhD at Imperial College, London. After lectureships at Makerere University, Kampala and Sheffield Hallam University, he became Reader in Analytical Chemistry at the University of Plymouth.

Promoted to a personal chair in 1986, he was appointed Head of Environmental Sciences in 1989.

In the same year, he was appointed Deputy Director and became Deputy Vice Chancellor (Academic) at the University of Plymouth in 1992, a position he held until his appointment as Vice Chancellor at the University of Luton in September 2003.

On August 1 2006 he became VC of the University of Bedfordshire.

Professor Ebdon’s research interests are in environmental analytical chemistry and his contributions to sensor development and understanding of the importance of trace elements in the environment have led to more than 250 publications and several awards.

Robert Samuel Houk, received his undergraduate training at Slippery Rock University of Pennsylvania (B.S. 1974) and completed his doctoral work at Iowa State University (Ph.D. 1980). Following postdoctoral work at Ames Laboratory, he joined the Iowa State faculty in 1981. His awards include the Lester W. Strock Award, 1986; Maurice F. Hasler Award, 1993; ACS Award in Chemical Instrumentation, 1993; Wilkinson Teaching Award, 1993, the Anachem Award, 2000 and the ACS award for Spectrochemical Analysis in 2012.

He serves on the Editorial Board of Spectrochimica Acta Part B and the Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry.