Demetrios Christodoulides is the Cobb Family Endowed Chair and Pegasus Professor of Optics at CREOL-the College of Optics and Photonics of the University of Central Florida. He received his Ph.D. degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1986 and subsequently joined Bellcore as a post-doctoral fellow. Between 1988 and 2002 he was with the faculty of the Department of Electrical Engineering at Lehigh University. His research interests include linear and nonlinear optical beam interactions, synthetic optical materials, optical solitons, and quantum electronics. He has authored and co-authored more than 350 papers. He is a Fellow of the Optical Society of America and the American Physical Society. He is the recipient of the 2011 Wood Prize and 2018 Max Born Award of OSA.   Jianke Yang is a professor of applied mathematics and University Scholar at the University of Vermont. He received his Ph.D. degree from MIT in 1994. His research focuses on nonlinear waves and nonlinear optics. He is the managing editor of the journal Studies in Applied Mathematics, and a member of the editorial board of Physical Review E. He is also the founding and general co-chair for the international conference series: Nonlinear Waves: Theory and Applications. He has published over 130 journal articles and two research monographs.