The Università degli Studi di Brescia was officially established in 1982, and is composed by 8 Departments serving for over 15,000 students. The University of Brescia offers a wide range of educational programmes with Bachelor’s and Master of Science (MSc) degrees, postgraduate technical courses,schools of specialisation and PhD programmes in most areas: business and economics, engineering and technology, law, medicine and surgery. The University of Brescia is an important university in a city of art and culture with an excellent quality of life, in one of the most important industrial and productive regions in Italy. The University of Brescia provides high quality services to its students, including international students: counselling services, scholarships financial aids, tutoring, computer and multimedia rooms, wireless zones, libraries, on-line services, laboratories and centres of advanced scientific research. Moreover, it offers: accommodation services, dining halls, cultural activities and sports, Italian language courses for foreign students.

Elisabetta Comini earned her Laurea degree in Physics from University of Pisa working on crystals and spectroscopy in 1996; she then pursued her Ph.D. in Material science at the University of Brescia in 2000 on metal oxide thin films for chemical sensing.

EC is a researcher specialist in the growth of metal oxides, particularly nanowires, thin films and the measurement of their electronic, functional and structural properties. She is responsible of SENSOR Laboratory.

She has been organizer of several symposia in the materials and sensing field for Materials Research society and European Materials Research society. She serves as a reviewer for various international journals and she is part of the technical program committee of several conferences in chemical sensing. She is supervising several undergraduate as well as graduate students at the University of Brescia.

She has received the following awards: Outstanding Oral Presentation At Eurosensors XIX Conference (Barcelona, 2005), outstanding oral presentation at EUROSENSORS XX conference (Goteborg, 2006), winner of the first place “Science as art” 2010 MRS Spring Meeting, Eurosensors Fellow Award in 2012.

EC has over 350 technical publications in peer-reviewed journals, book chapters and review papers; she is also editor of various books and holds four patents issued. She is actively involved as organizer of symposia and conferences. She has more than 500 communications, 130 invited communications at conferences and she has given more than 65 invited communications including 6 plenary talk.

EC Hirsch-index (H-index) is 54, with more that 12000 citations (the three most cited articles have been cited 1256, 543, and 457 times, source SCOPUS).

Dario Zappa was born in 1982 in Brescia. He graduated in Information Engineering – Industrial Electronics curriculum – in 2005, with a thesis entitled “Experimental evaluation of the Texas Instruments MSP430 microcontroller for wireless applications”.

In April 2008 he had an internship in the laboratory “Mobile Experience Lab” from MIT in Boston for a joint project between the University of Brescia, MIT and the Province of Brescia.

In 2009 he obtained the Master Degree in Electronics Engineering for Automation – Integrated Systems and Devices – with a thesis entitled “Study of the current transport in OLED”.

In 2013 he obtained the PhD in Materials for Engineering at the University of Brescia, Department Information Engineering (formely Department of Physics and Chemistry) with a thesis entitled “Metal Oxide Nanostructures for Sensing Applications”.

From June 2014 to July 2017 he was a Researcher at the CNR-INO. Actually he is a Senior Researcher and Assistant Professor at “SensorLab”, University of Brescia. He is the responsible of the "Common technological platform for preparation of nanostructured and monodimensional oxides" research line, and his research activities are focused on the synthesis and characterization of nanostructored metal oxides for different applications, including gas sensors, thermoelectric devices and fuel cells. In the last few years, he was involved in some 7th EU programme projects (ORAMA, S3, MSP) and in some national projects (FIRB, SUSBIOREM). Since 2012 he is lecturer in Physics at the University of Brescia.

Dario Zappa has 1 patents and 32 publications in peer reviewed international journals, which got over 700 citations. His Hirsch index (H-index) is 16 (Source: SCOPUS). He served as guest editors of many thematic issues of MDPI Nanomaterials, Materials and Chemosensors and Beilstein Journal of Nanotechnology. He is Associate Editor of SAGE Nanomaterials and Nanotechnology journal.

Vardan Galstyan was born on June 6th, 1981. He studied at Yerevan State University (Armenia) from 1998 to 2002 and got his B.Sc. degree in Physics of Semiconductors and Microelectronics. He earned his M.Sc. degree in Physics of Semiconductors and Microelectronics in 2004 at the same university. He obtained the PhD degree in 2008 from the Yerevan State University with a thesis entitled “Preparation and Investigation of Gas Sensors Based on Porous Silicon and Metal Oxide Semiconductor Nanostructures”.

In 2009 he moved to the University of Brescia to join the SENSOR Laboratory at the Department of Information Engineering (formerly Department of Chemistry and Physics). His research activity mainly deals with the synthesis and characterization of nanomaterials and nanocomposites (mainly metal oxides and graphene based materials) for gas- and biosensors, photocatalysis, energy storage and bio-inspired materials.

V. Galstyan has 2 patents and 45 publications in peer reviewed international journals, which got over 1000 citations. His Hirsch index (H-index) is 19 (Source: Web of Knowledge). V. Galstyan is serving as peer reviewer for the different international journals including Journal of Materials Chemistry C, ChemComm, Journal of Materials Chemistry A, ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces, Nanoscale, Physical Chemistry Chemical Physics, CrystEngComm, Sensors & Actuators: B. Chemical, Talanta, International Journal of Nanomedicine, Applied Surface Science, Chemical Physics Letters, Sensors (Switzerland), Chemosensors, Journal of Alloys and Compounds, etc.

Other courses:

• Economics Course in frames of Armenian Juniors’ Achievements. An Award was granted for achieving academic excellence in the program.
• College on Medical Physics (International Centre of Theoretical Physics), Trieste, Italy.
• Course of preparation, characterization and applications of nanocrystalline porous silicon, University of Pisa, Italy.

Navpreet Kaur was born in 1990 in Punjab (India).

She had obtained Bachelor of Science (major in Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) degree from Govt. College Ropar (Panjabi University, Patiala) in 2010. While, in 2012 she obtained Master of Science in Physics (Horns) from Guru Nanak Dev University Amritsar (India) and her master thesis was on “Structural Properties of Cobalt Doped Lanthanum Iron Oxide LaFeO₃”

In 2014, she was awarded with fellowship for pursuing PhD degree at Department of Information and Engineering (University of Brescia, Italy) under the curriculum of “Physical Science and Engineering”. The main Focus of her research activities during the PhD were synthesize the different metal oxides (NiO,WO₃, ZnO) nanowires and heterostructures (NiO/ZnO) by using vapor phase growth method; characterization of nanostructured materials with different techniques such as SEM, TEM, XRD, RAMAN spectroscopy etc. and sensor devices fabrication using Magnetron Sputtering and their testing towards different gases spices.

On May, 2017 she was awarded with PhD degree with her thesis entitled “Vapor phase growth of NiO, WO₃ nanowires and NiO/ZnO heterostructures for gas sensing applications”.

Moreover, during her PhD degree, she had spent 3 month period as a visiting researcher at Nanyang Technological University (NTU), Singapore. During this secondment, he was worked on the synthesis of Polyaniline (PANI) nanofiber using electrodeposition for sensing applications.

Currently she is working as a Postdoctoral Researcher at University of Brescia (Sensor Laboratory) on a project entitled “Synthesis, optimization and characterization of different metal oxides nanowire based heterostructures using vapor phase growth method for gas sensing applications”

Dr. Mandeep Singh had done Master degree in Physics from Guru Nanak Dev University, Amritsar (India) in 2010 and his master thesis was focused on the “Effect of thickness on the Structural and Optical properties of TiO2 thin flims”.

During his master thesis work, he was also worked as a Part- time lecturer in the Departmet of Food Science and Technology, Guru Nanak Dev University for six months. After the master thesis, he was selected for the DEA-BRNS, India sponsored project entitled “Design and Development of efficient functionalized phthalocyanine derivatives for light emitting and gas sensing applications”.

He had worked as a Junior Research Fellow at Department of Physics, Guru Nanak Dev University under this project from 2010 to 2013. In 2016, he had completed his PhD from Department of Chemistry, University of Bari, Italy with Regione Puglia Fellowship.

His Phd research was focused on “Solution Porcessable ZnO based Electrolyte gated thin film transistor for biosensing applications”.

Currently, he is working as a Postdoctoral Fellow at Sensor lab, University Of Brescia. His present research activity is focused on the fucntionalized nanostrutral materials for gas sensing applications.

Abderrahim Moumen was born in 1991 in Casablanca- Morocco. He is a PhD student at SENSOR Laboratory, Department of Information Engineering, Brescia University.

He graduated in physics – fundamental & applied physics curriculum in 2013 at University of Hassan II Casablanca, with a thesis entitled “the applications of electroactive polymers”.

In 2015 he obtained the master in physics and chemistry of materials and nanomaterials at the University of Casablanca- Department of physics. His master thesis entitled “preparation and characterization of CuO thin films for gas sensing applications” made at faculty of sciences and technology - Mohamedia, it was there where continuing his research after the master period.

In November 2017, his PhD was started in Sensor Laboratory, Brescia University supervised by Prof. Elisabetta Comini. His PhD research activities are mainly focused on the preparation and characterization of Metal Oxides (MOXs) nanostructures for chemical sensors applications. The global aim of his research is elaborating or structuring materials at the nanoscale which will open new possible applications such as chemical sensors and gas sensors in particular.

Giorgio Duina was born on March 11th, 1990 in Brescia. He studied at University of Brescia and got his B. Sc. degree in Electronics and Telecommunications with a thesis entitled “Forecasting techniques to support the control of secondary pollution on urban scale”. He earned from the same university his M. Sc. degree in Microelectronics with a thesis entitled “N-stages boost hybrid converter”.

From September 2017 to October 2018 he was holder of a Research Fellowship at SENSOR Laboratory, Department of Information Engineering, University of Brescia and his work concerned the design and development of a control electronic for a gas sensor array.

Since September 2017 he is also a collaborator of Nano Sensor System s.r.l. (alias NASYS), an innovative start-up founded in October 2016 at the University of Brescia, with the main goal to develop and market innovative and highly technological nano-chemical sensor systems based on advanced materials.

In November 2018 he started his PhD in Physical Sciences for Engineering at SENSOR Laboratory and his research interests comprise the synthesis and characterization of metal oxides-based nanostructured materials for gas sensing applications.