Bio
Mauro D’Onofrio obtained his PhD in Astrophysics from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in 1991, with a thesis entitled “Study of the stellar components of spiral galaxies”, under the supervision of Prof. M. Capaccioli and D.W. Sciama. He obtained the position of Astronomer at the University of Padova in 1992. His research interests encompass galaxies and clusters of galaxies, quasars and active Galactic nuclei (AGN), novae and Cepheid stars. His main scientific interest is the study of the scaling relations of galaxies and their evolution across time.

Bio
Cesare Chiosi is an Emeritus Professor of the Padova University. He has been Chairman of the Astronomy Department and of the PhD Program at the Astronomy Department. He was a Member of the Astronomical Research Council (CRA) of the Ministry of University, Scientific Research and Technology of Italy and Member of the Astronomy Division Council of the National Council of Research of Italy (GNA-CNR). He was awarded the "Antonio Feltrinelli Prize" for Astronomy by the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei of Italy, in 1992, and of the "Grande Ufficiale dell'Ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana" for scientific achievements on the nomination of the President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi (Rome 27-12-2006). His research interests span: stellar structure and evolution; stellar pulsation; stellar nucleosynthesis; star clusters, evolution of stellar populations: star formation; structure and evolution of the milky way; galaxy structure and evolution; chemical, spectral and photometric evolution of galaxies; dynamical models of galaxies; cosmology. He has authored about 454 publications, including original scientific reports in major journals, invited review articles, and contributed papers to international meetings.

Bio
Paola Marziani obtained her PhD in Astrophysics from the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA) in 1991, with a thesis on Accretion Flows in Active Galaxies, under the supervision of Prof. D. W. Sciama. After postdoctoral experiences in the USA, Mexico and Italy, she joined the research staff of the INAF-Osservatorio Astronomico di Padova in December 1995. Her research interests encompass the quasars and active Galactic nuclei (AGN), photoionization and dynamical modelling of gaseous regions producing emission lines in a variety of contexts (from emission line stars to the most powerful quasars), small and large scale structures in the universe, and observational cosmology.

Bio
Dr. Ignacio Trujillo is a researcher at the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias. His main line of research is the evolution of galaxies with cosmic time. He is a world-recognized expert on the low surface brightness astronomy. He is currently leading the low surface brightness group at the IAC. Among his most important contributions to this field is the current deepest ever view of a nearby galaxy from the ground (taken with the GTC), reaching low surface brightness limits of 31.5 mag/arcsec2. He has supervised many PhD projects, published over 100 refereed papers in high impact journals (including Nature), and provided a large number of reviews and summary talks in international conferences. His current H-index is 50 and has 28 papers (11 as a first author) with more than 100 citations each.