Luigi Colombo was born in Italy and was educated in the United States where he obtained a B.S. in Physics in 1975, and a Ph.D. in Materials Science in 1980 from the University of Rochester. He joined Texas Instruments (TI) in 1981 where he worked on a variety of materials research and development programs. The principal accomplishments at TI were the development of a liquid phase epitaxy production process of HgCdTe on CdZnTe substrates for infrared detectors (still in production), a chemical vapor deposition (CVD) process BaSrTiO3 as a high-k capacitor material for random access memories, a nitrided Hf-silicate CVD process and a low leakage scaled SiON for 45 nm transistors all of which were taken from the research stage to full production. Recently, in collaboration with the Ruoff group at the University of Texas at Austin, he discovered and developed a large area graphene film growth process on Cu substrates. He now manages the external research and development activities where in collaboration with several university professors he is developing new device flows for beyond CMOS devices. Luigi has also authored and co-authored over 140 refereed papers, made over 150 invited and contributed presentations, has written 3 chapters in edited books, and holds 108 US and international patents. In 1999 he was elected to the level of Fellow at TI, in 2011 he was elected IEEE Fellow, in 2011 he was also granted the distinction of "Cavaliere dell'Ordine "Stella della Solidarieta Italiana"", and has been an Adjunct Professor in the Department of Materials Science & Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas since 2009.

She received her Ph.D. degree in polymer chemistry from the University of Strathclyde (Glasgow, UK) in 2002. From 2001 to 2003, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow working in two European projects related to molecularly imprinted polymers. In 2004, she joined Ferring Pharmaceuticals (previously Controlled Therapeutics) where she worked in the research of new controlled drug delivery systems as a Senior Polymer Scientist. Her contribution led to the granting of three patents in novel biodegradable and biostable polymers for the controlled release of active compounds. In 2010, she became the Scientific Director of Graphenea. At Graphenea, she leads the research and development activities on graphene-based materials. Since joining Graphenea, she has so far filed for fifteen patents and published more than 82 publications in peer reviewed journals, including Nature and Science. Principal Investigator in 21 EU FP7/H2020 funded research projects, 16 collaborative projects including the Graphene Flagship and 3 people training network projects. In the Graphene Flagship, she is a member of the executive board and world package leader in the wafer scale integration (Graphene Flagship) and deputy leader in the wafer scale growth (Experimental Pilot Line) workpackages. In addition, she has also given more than 52 invited talks in international conferences. Her research interests include the synthesis, characterization, and future industrial applications of graphene.