Keynote Speakers

Jacobo Asorey is a an associate professor at the Department of Theoretical Physics at the Universidad de Zaragoza and part of the Centro de Astrofísica y Física de Altas Energías at Universidad de Zaragoza (CAPA). He is an astrophysicist and cosmologist with expertise in the use of statistics to use the large-scale structure of the Universe to constrain cosmological parameters from different extragalactic surveys in different wavelengths, from optical to radio. He has been part of several international collaborations such as Euclid, Dark Energy Survey and SKAO. He obtained his PhD at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Before joining Universidad de Zaragoza, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA), University of Queensland (Australia), Korea Astronomy and Space Science Institute (South Korea), Centro de Investigaciónes Energéticas, Medioambientales y Tecnologicas (Spain) and Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain).

Originally from Perth, Australia, Jeffrey Hodgson did his PhD at the Max Planck Institute for Radio Astronomy in Bonn, Germany. Then he moved to Korea as a Post-Doc before coming an Assistant Professor at Sejong University in Seoul. He is primarily an observational astronomer that uses Very Long Baseline Interferometry (the technique that made the famous black hole image) to do observational cosmology and ask the big questions - how fast is the universe expanding? Is the universe flat? What is Dark Energy?

Anurag Jayswal is Professor in the Department of Mathematics and Computing, Indian Institute of Technology, Dhanbad, India. He obtained his Master in mathematics from Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India and was awarded first order of merit. He received his PhD degree in mathematics from the Department of Mathematics, Banaras Hindu University, Varanasi, India. He received a young scientist project from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India. He has more than 21 years of academic experience and teaching in BIT Mesra, Ranchi and Indian Institute of Technology, Dhanbad, India. His research interest is continuous optimization, nonsmooth optimization, generalized convexity, control theory and variational inequalities problems. He is the author and coauthor of more than 100 journal papers in the field of continuous optimization and variational inequalities and has supervised more than 12 PhD students. He is editorial board member of Opsearch, India and Advances in Variational Inequalities, USA. He visited several countries to deliver their talks in international conferences. He is a reviewer of various international journals.

Ioannis Liodakis is an astrophysicist and ERC group leader at the Institute of Astrophysics of the Foundation for Research and Technology - Hellas in Greece. He is an expert in supermassive black holes focusing on understanding their polarized emission across the electromagnetic spectrum. Before joining the Institute of Astrophysics, he was a NASA postdoctoral fellow at the Marschall Space Flight center, a Gruber fellow at the Finnish Center for Astronomy with ESO in Finland, and a Kavli fellow at Stanford University. He obtained his PhD at the University of Crete and Skinakas observatory in Greece.

Mirel Bîrlan started his professional trajectory in 1991 as astronomer at the Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy. He completed his doctoral studies in 1997 at the Paris Observatory, with a dissertation focusing on the physical properties and dynamics of atmospheric-free celestial bodies. Commencing in 2001, he joined the National Center for Scientific Research (CNRS) in France, operating within a research unit at the Paris Observatory. In 2021, he was appointed director of the Astronomical Institute of the Romanian Academy.

Mirel Bîrlan's scientific output comprises over 164 specialized articles in the fields of astronomy and planetology, natural bodies of the Solar System, and artificial satellites. He also provides doctoral supervision within these disciplines. His commitment to education and scientific dissemination is underscored by his authorship of three children's books and his active participation in print media, radio, and television, both in France and Romania. Since 2001, asteroid number 10034 has been designated Birlan, acknowledging his significant contributions in the field of astronomy and planetology.

Cezar Lupu is an assistant professor at the Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications (BIMSA) and Tsinghua University. He obtained his PhD degree from the University of Pittsburgh in 2018 with a thesis on special values of Riemann zeta and multiple zeta functions. Between 2018-2021, he was a postdoctoral scholar at Texas Tech University. In 2021, he moved to China as a postdoctoral fellow at the Beijing Institute of Mathematical Sciences and Applications (BIMSA) and Tsinghua University until 2024. His main research interests are in the areas of number theory, analysis and special functions. Most of his recent research is centered around special values of L-functions and multiple zeta functions which play an important role at the interface of analysis, number theory, geometry and physics.

Prof. Dr. Eng. Gabriel Raicu is the Rector of Constanța Maritime University (CMU) and Director of the Maritime Cybersecurity Center of Excellence - MARCYSCOE. His academic and research activity focuses on maritime cybersecurity, cyber resilience, artificial intelligence, cyber ranges, critical infrastructure protection, and civil-defence cooperation in cybersecurity. He has coordinated and contributed to several European and international projects, including ECYBRIDGE, CYRESRANGE and CYMAROP, supporting the development of advanced training, research and operational capabilities in the maritime cyber domain. He is actively involved in European and NATO-related research initiatives and promotes interdisciplinary cooperation between academia, industry, public institutions and security stakeholders.