Michele Penza is a Senior Researcher at ENEA – Italian National Agency for New Technologies, Energy and Sustainable Economic Development, Brindisi, Italy. His research focuses on materials science and engineering, functional materials, nanomaterials, sensor devices, gas sensors, environmental measurements, air-quality monitoring, materials processing and characterization, and critical raw materials technologies. He received his degree in Physics from the University of Bari in 1990 and joined ENEA in 2001. He currently leads research projects and teams on functional materials, sensor technologies and sustainable applications at the Brindisi Research Centre. Since 2015, he has served as Head of the Laboratory of Functional Materials and Technologies for Sustainable Applications at ENEA. He has authored or co-authored more than 180 peer-reviewed publications, 3 book chapters, 9 special issues, 2 WMO international reports, numerous conference papers, and 2 national patents. His H-index is 40 in Web of Science, 42 in Scopus and 47 in Google Scholar. He has served as organizer, session chair, scientific committee member and invited/plenary speaker at major international conferences, including EUROSENSORS, EMRS, MRS, IEEE SENSORS and IMCS. He has also served as Associate Editor for several journals, including Journal of Sensors and Sensor Systems, Journal of Sensors, Chemosensors, Sensors and Frontiers in Materials, and has acted as Guest Editor for multiple special issues published by Elsevier, IEEE, Hindawi, Copernicus, MDPI and other publishers. He was Chair of the COST Action EuNetAir and is Chairman of the European Sensor Systems Cluster. Since 2019, he has also served as Coordinator of the EIT RawMaterials Hub – Regional Center Southern Italy.