[Set Optical Nanospectroscopy, Vol 1+2]

Alfred J. Meixner is a professor of physical chemistry and the director of the Institute of Physical and Theoretical Chemistry at the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen. He studied chemistry at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH), where he received his PhD in 1988 and earned his habilitation in Physics from the University of Basel in 1996. His research interests are in optical single molecule spectroscopy, confocal and near-field optical laser-microscopy and optical nanospectroscopy. Monika Fleischer is a professor of physics at the Institute for Applied Physics at Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen, where she studied physics and received her PhD in 2006. She held an invited professorship at the University of Technology of Troyes and serves on the board of directors of the Tübingen Center for Light-Matter-Interaction, Sensors and Analytics (LISA+). Her research focuses on plasmonic nanostructures, nanofabrication, and optical spectroscopy of hybrid nanosystems. Dieter P. Kern is an emeritus professor of physics at the Institute for Applied Physics of the Eberhard Karls University in Tübingen. He studied physics at the University of Tübingen, where he received his PhD in 1978. He then spent 15 years at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center working on exploratory devices and nanofabrication. In 1993 he initiated the Nanostructures and Nanofabrication chair in Tübingen with emphasis on interdisciplinary applications of nanostructure physics and technology. Christiane Höppener joined the Leibniz Institute of Photonic Technologies in Jena 2017, where she continues her research in the fields of nano-optics and plasmonics with special focus on TERS. Sebastian Mackowski is a professor of physics at the Institute of Physics, Nicolaus Copernicus University in Torun. His research covers plasmonics, organic and carbon materials, artificial photosynthesis, with the common denominator being fluorescence nanospectroscopy. Pierre-Michel Adam is a professor of physics since 2003. His fields of research are nano-optics and nano-spectroscopy, linear and non-linear plasmonics, and surface-enhanced Raman scattering. Raul D. Rodriguez has been a Full Professor at Tomsk Polytechnic University since 2017. His research focuses on developing new nanoscale characterization techniques and materials for technological advancements in flexible electronics, biomedicine, optoelectronics, energy, and safety. Pietro G. Gucciardi is Research Director at the Istituto per i Processi Chimico-Fisici of the National Council for Research, in Messina, Italy. In 2006 he initiated the Optical Nanotechnologies lab working on exploratory experimental techniques in nano-optics, plasmon-enhanced spectroscopies (SERS/TERS), spectroscopic optical tweezers and 2D materials exfoliation for sensing applications. Antonio Cricenti is a Research Director at the Institute of structure of matter (ISM), National Research Council (CNR). He works on Surface Science and has developed Scanning Probe Microscopy applied to early diagnosis of cancer. Ulrich Hohenester is a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Graz, Austria. He works on the theoretical description of nanoscale light–matter interactions with a strong focus on plasmonics and nanophotonics. Manuela Scarselli is an associate professor of experimental solid-state physics at the university "Tor Vergata". Her research interests focus on scanning probe microscopies mainly applied for the characterization of nano-systems and fabrication of pure and hybrid carbon-based nanomaterials for nanotechnological applications.