Bernard Valeur received his engineering diploma from the Ecole Superieure de Physique et de Chimie Industrielles de Paris (E.S.P.C.I.) and his PhD degree from the Universite Pierre-et-Marie-Curie (Paris, France), followed by postdoctoral research at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (USA). After being an associate professor at E.S.P.C.I, he became full professor of physical chemistry at the Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (Paris) in 1979, where he is emeritus professor since 2008. Professor Valeur is a member of the laboratory Photophysique et Photochimie Supramoleculaires et Macromoleculaires at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan since 1996. From 1995 to 2000 he served as an elected member of the French Comite National de la Recherche Scientifique. He is the author of over 170 articles or book chapters, five books, and the editor of one book. In addition, he is a member of several editorial boards.


Mario Nuno Berberan-Santos graduated in chemical engineering from Instituto Superior Tecnico (IST, Technical University of Lisbon, Portugal). After a brief stay at the National Research Council of Canada (Ottawa), he received his PhD in chemistry from IST in 1989. He was a post-doctoral fellow with Bernard Valeur at Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers (Paris, France), and at Laboratoire pour l'Utilisation du Rayonnement Electromagnetique (Univ. Paris-Sud, Orsay, France). He is full professor of Physical Chemistry at IST, and was invited full professor at the Ecole Normale Superieure de Cachan (France). He is a member of several editorial advisory boards and is president of the Portuguese Chemical Society (2010-2012). He has authored over 180 publications, including 150 papers in scientific journals, several book chapters, and was the editor of one book.