Zuhair A. Munir is a Distinguished Professor of Materials Science at the University of California, Davis. He received his B.S., M.S., and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley. He has served as Associate Dean and as Dean of the College of Engineering. Professor Munir has been the recipient of numerous awards and honors, including the John Jeppson Award from the American Ceramic Society, The Faculty Research Award and Medal form UC Davis, the Medal of Honor form the International Organization of SHS, the Creativity in Research Award from the National Science Foundation, and the von Humboldt Award from Germany. He is listed as a Highly Cited Author in Materials Science by the Institute for Scientific Information. Professor Munir is a Fellow of the American Ceramic Society and the American Society for Metals. He is currently an Editor for the Journal of Materials Science and an Associate Editor for the Journal of the American Ceramic Society and has served as Editor-in-chief for the Journal of Materials Synthesis and Processing and as a Principal Editor for the Journal of Materials Research. Professor Munir is the author of more than 400 papers and 12 patents. Manshi Ohyanagi is Presidential Aide and Director of Innovative Materials Processing Research Center, and professor of materials chemistry at Ryukoku University, Japan. He also serves as Dean of Ryukoku Extension Center. He received his B.Eng.(1983), M.Eng.(1985) and D.Eng.(1988) in science and engineering at Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. During 1988 to 1989, he was with division of Chemistry at California Institute Technology. His research interests now include the synthesis and processing of ceramics. Recent his research has been focused on mechanical alloying, spark plasma sintering, combustion synthesis and hydrogen storage materials. He is the author or coauthor of approximately 100 published papers and 10 patents and book chapters. M. Tokita is Senior Managing Director and General Manager of R & D Center of SPS Syntex INC., which is one of the affiliated companies of Sumitomo Coal Mining Company Ltd. Tokyo, Japan. He worked at Sumitomo as General Manager of Sintering Systems Department, New Materials & Processing Division long years. He is a graduate of the Tokyo Metropolitan College of Technology. He has been researching and developing in the field of electrical discharge applied to technologies and advanced materials processing since 1968, and had initially presented the Spark Plasma Sintering (SPS) Method in 1989. In 1995-1996 he was appointed as a visiting lecturer of Tohoku University, also in 1996-2000 as chief of the U.S.-Japan Joint Research Program on Functionally Graded Materials (FGM) by SPS. He received an award from the Japan Society of Powder and Powder Metallurgy for his research on the development of advanced SPS technology for Industrial applications. He has published many technical papers related to the SPS technologies on both advanced materials and SPS machine systems and processes. He is Executive Director of the SPS Forum-Japan since 1996. K. A. Khor is Professor at School of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, and Director, Office of Research, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. He obtained both BSc (Hons) and PhD degrees from Monash University, Australia. Since 2005, he serves at the Singapore-MIT-Alliance (SMA) Office as Deputy Director. He is also President, Institute of Materials, East Asia, and is the originator of the annual Materials Processing for Properties and Performance (MP3) conference series held in Asia. His research interests include spark plasma sintering (SPS); thermal spraying; solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) technology; biomaterials; and advanced ceramics powder synthesis. To-date he has published over 220 papers in refereed international journals; made ~ 200 presentations at international conferences and is editor/co-editor of ~ 17 conferences proceedings and special issues of journals. He has been organizer/co-organizer of over 15 international conferences and symposia since 1995. Dr. Toshio Hirai is Executive Director of Japan Fine Ceramics Center (JFCC) and Director of Materials Research and Development Laboratory of JFCC, and Emeritus Professor of Tohoku University, Japan. He has carried on advanced ceramics research for more than 40 years. He is the pioneer in the research field of chemical vapor deposition of ceramic nano-composites and functionally graded materials. He had been the leader of many national projects and has made major contributions to the field of materials sciences. He published more than 400 articles and holds 134 patents. So that, he has received many awards from Japanese government and academic societies and also from USA and China. He was former President of the Ceramic Society of Japan and Vice-President of the Japan Society of Powder and Powder Metallurgy, and is Vice-President of the Functionally Graded Materials Forum. Umberto Anselmi-Tamburini is professor of Physical Chemistry at the University of Pavia in Italy. He has been active for several years in investigations of several aspects of solid state reactivity. His main interests have been the endothermic decomposition reactions, the study of the reaction mechanism involved in the synthesis of high-temperature superconducting oxides, the combustion synthesis of advanced materials. Recently is main interest is focused on the influence high density electric current on the diffusivity in solids, and on the synthesis and densification of bulk functional nanostructured materials using the SPS. He has been member of the editorial board and regional editor of the Journal of Materials Synthesis and Processing.
