Niek Lopes Cardozo is professor of Science and Technology of Nuclear Fusion at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands, where he initiated the dedicated, interdisciplinary MSc programme on nuclear fusion. Before focusing on the education and training of the ‘ITER generation’, he directed the Dutch fusion research programme and served on many European
scientific and managerial fusion committees. He received the Royal Shell prize for sustainable development and energy for his scientific work in nuclear fusion as well as his efforts in outreach.
In parallel to his work as a researcher and educator he has been active in science policy. In
the period 2017-2020 he was member of the Executive Board of NWO, the Dutch National
Research Council, chairing the Science Domain. In the preceding 7 years he chaired the Dutch
Organisation for Fundamental Research on Matter (FOM).
Climate change and the energy transition have been long time interests (and concerns). In recent
years his research has focused on the socio- and techno-economics of the energy transition, and
the potential role of fusion energy therein.
Ulrich Meier studied Chemistry at the Universities of Bochum, Germany and St. Andrews, Scotland. He received a PhD in Quantum Chemistry at the University of Bochum 1988. Before joining IQM Quantum Computers he worked for almost 30 years as a High Performance Computing expert for companies like Convex Computers, Silicon Graphics, Sun Microsystems and Go Virtual Germany. Ulrich’s responsibilities evolved from performance benchmarking and system architectures to marketing and market development.
Idelfonso Tafur Monroy obtained his MSc from Saint Petersburg University of Telecommunications (Russia) in 1992 and his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Eindhoven University of Technology (TU/e) in 1999. He also took courses at Stockholm University (Sweden), KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden) and Utrecht University. Tafur Monroy worked as Assistant Professor in Electro-Optical Communications at TU/e from 1999 to 2006, after which he became Associate Professor and later Full Professor at DTU Fotonik (Denmark). In the meantime, Tafur Monroy also worked at Beijing University of Post and Telecommunications (China), UC Berkeley (USA) and ITMO University (Russia) as visiting professor.
Tafur Monroy founded Bifrost Communications in 2015. In 2017, he returned to TU/e to become Full Professor in the Electrooptical Communication (ECO) group of the electrical engineering department and to join the Institute for Photonic Integration. He is currently the leader of the team Quantum and Terahertz Systems (QTS) within the ECO group.
