Dimiter N. Petsev graduated from University of Sofia in Bulgaria in 1996. Then took a postdoctoral research position in the Chemistry Department at Purdue University, and research positions at the University of Alabam in Huntsville, the University of Houston and the University of New Mexico. Dr. Petsev has joined the faculty at the University of New Mexico in 2005. The research interests of Dr. Petsev are in the area of electrokinetic phenomena, surface and colloid science, statistical mechanics and fluid dynamics of complex fluids and dispersions.  More specifically he is interested in Interactions and stability of nanometer-sized particles, structures of complex fluids, stability of emulsions and microemulsions,  liquid-liquid and liquid-solid phase transitions in protein solutions, protein separations, molecular and Brownian dynamics of elastic and inelastic particles and particles with internal degrees of freedom, guided self-assembly of nanostructures and materials thermodynamics and self-assembly of amphiphilic molecules, colloid and biomolecular crystallization, application of colloid and protein structures as templates for material synthesis.

Frank van Swol is a Research Professor in the Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering at the University of New Mexico, USA. He received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from the University of Amsterdam in 1988. He was a Ramsay Memorial Fellow at the Physical Chemistry Laboratory at Oxford University, UK. He then moved to the US, as a visiting faculty at the Chemical Engineering Department of Cornell University and subsequently joined the Chemical Engineering Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He joined Sandia National Laboratories in 1994 and retired from there in 2015. His research focus concentrates on interfacial phenomena including colloids and electrolytes. He is also interested in additive manufacturing processes such as selective laser melting.