Gianpiero Colonna is Research Director in the Institute for Plasma Science and Technology at the National Research Council (CNR), Bari, Italy. His research activities are focused on plasma modeling, state-to-state self-consistent kinetics in gas discharges and hypersonic flows, thermodynamic and transport properties of plasmas, and modeling plasma plumes produced by nanosecond laser pulses. Antonio D’Angola is Associate Professor at the University of Basilicata in Italy and Associate Researcher at Institute for Plasma Science and Technology at the National Research Council (CNR), Bari, Italy. His scientific interests are numerical methods for the simulation of plasmas using particle-in-cell and Monte Carlo codes, the calculation of thermodynamic and transport properties of ionized plasmas for industrial and aerospace applications, the investigations of radio-frequency thermal discharges, non-neutral plasmas for ultra-high vacuum systems and laser–plasma interactions for medical applications.