Bio
Dr. Elisa Felicitas Arias was born in Argentina in 1952. She received her degree in Astronomy from La Plata National University (Argentina) and a PhD in Astrometry, Celestial Mechanics, and Geodesy from Paris Observatory. She served as a professor at La Plata National University and a researcher at the Argentinian National Research Council until November 2017. From 1999 to 2017, Dr. Arias was the Director of the Time Department at the Bureau International des Poids et Mesures, where she was responsible for the computation of Coordinated Universal Time (UTC). Between 1990 and 2000, she oversaw the international celestial reference system activities at the International Earth Rotation and Reference Systems Service (IERS), based at Paris Observatory. She continues her work in this field, collaborating with Paris Observatory and serving as a member of the International Astronomical Union's relevant working group. She was also the Director of the Buenos Aires Naval Observatory (Argentina) from 1991 to 1999. Dr. Arias is an active member of several scientific organizations, including the Bureau des Longitudes in France. Although she retired at the end of 2017, Dr. Arias continues her professional contributions in astronomy and time and frequency metrology at Paris Observatory. She has supervised several PhD students and authored or co-authored approximately 130 scientific articles and book chapters. Recently, she served as guest editor for two ASR-Elsevier Special Issues on Global Navigation Satellite Systems and is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the MDPI Time and Space journal.

Bio
As the Director of ICRANet and coauthor of more than 800 scientific publications and 13 books, Remo Ruffini received his doctorate at Sapienza in Rome in 1967. He taught in Hamburg, at Princeton University and the Institute for Advanced Study in Japan, Australia and CBPF (Brazil). Some of his major achievements include research on boson stars, “Introducing the Black Hole” with J.A. Wheeler, and the limiting critical mass of neutron stars. He identified the first black hole in our Galaxy using UHURU satellite data with Giacconi (Nobel recipient 2002), and received the Cressy Morrison Award (1973). Returning to Sapienza (1978), he promoted a Rome–Stanford collaboration on gravitational wave detectors. With European, US and Chinese institutions, he established the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics (ICRA) and later ICRANet in Italy, Armenia, France and Brazil (2005). He developed an understanding of gamma ray bursts, confirmed by the largest telescopes on Earth and from space, from their discovery in 1973, to their cosmological origin in 1997, to determining seven different GRBs families and their conceptual understanding in 2018. This has enabled GRBs, the largest explosions in the Universe, to be used to enlighten our comprehension of our Universe.

Bio
Professor Costas Varotsos is the Dean of the School of Science at the National and Kapodistrian University of Athens (NKUA) and a leading expert in Remote Sensing, Climate Dynamics, Atmospheric Physics, and Environmental Change. He has established four international research laboratories and published 15 books and over 300 peer-reviewed papers, with an H-index of 60. He holds honorary and adjunct positions at prestigious institutions, including the University of Mining and Technology in China and the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences. Varotsos has participated in over 50 research projects and received numerous awards, including the A.S. Popov Medal and recognition from the U.N. for his work on the Antarctic ozone hole. He has also held editorial roles for several major scientific journals and continues to contribute to the scientific community as a reviewer and editor.