Our research activity was born from a collaboration between ENEA and INFN in Frascati in order to realize advanced diagnostics on plasmas coming from magnetic confinement fusion and from high intensity lasers. GEM detectors found interesting applications for soft-X ray diagnostic on Tokamaks and Laser Produced Plasmas (LPPs). In addition, GEM technology combined with Timepix chip read-out electronics (GEMpix detector) allowed high performance soft-X ray imaging and temperature measurements on LPPs. Experience coming from Timepix technology allowed also some innovative measurements on gamma photons and neutrons, which have great interest to monitor fusion reactions in Tokamaks and high energy electrons and gammas in LPPs. In the seminar, some results on GEM soft-X ray diagnostic obtained in the experimental campaigns of the FTU (ENEA, Frascati), KSTAR (south Korea) and EAST (China) Tokamaks will be shown. Then imaging and temperature diagnostics with GEMpix detector will be introduced and some results coming from ABC (ENEA Frascati), ECLIPSE (Bordeaux, France) and VEGA (Salamanca, Spain) laser facilities will be presented. Finally, gamma and neutron measurements realized with silicon and diamond Timepix detectors will be also shown, pointing out their potential applications for particles diagnostic in plasma physics.