Plenary & Keynotes
Prof. Jianglong Yu
Title: From the plastic layer research to the development of a smart coke-making system based on digital twin technology
Short bio: Professor Jianglong Yu currently acts as the Vice-President (Education) of Monash University Suzhou Campus and the Vice-Dean of the Monash-Southeast University Suzhou Joint Graduate School, and a professor of Chemical Engineering at Monash University. He received his PhD degree in Chemical Engineering at the University of Newcastle in 2003. His current research interests include coal and biomass pyrolysis, hydrogen energy, smart coke-making technology, advanced carbon materials, and pollution control. He has undertaken 62 projects so far with 9.52 million Australian dollars in research funding. He has supervised 82 high-degree research students including 46 PhD students. He has published more than 300 articles in international journals and conferences with several high-citation papers and four international journal special issues. Professor Yu has been granted 21 patents and has won several Chinese local government talent program titles in his academic career.
Prof. Kyung-Chun Kim
Title: The role of artificial intelligence on thermo-fluids research and development
Short bio: Prof. KC Kim received his MS and Ph.D degree at KAIST, Korea in 1981 and 1987 respectively. Since 1983, he was hired as a faculty member in Pusan National University (PNU), Korea. In 2004, he was selected as a member of National Academy of Engineering of Korea. He was invited as a visiting professor from Ottawa University in Canada, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA and the University of Tokyo, Japan. KC Kim was selected as a PNU Distinguished Professor in 2018. He received the outstanding paper awards (1995, 2002) from KSME and KOSEF. In 2009 and 2016, he received the Academic award and the first Yeosong award from KSME. He received Nakayama award in 2012 and Asanuma award in 2014 based on contributions in world Visualization society. In 2019, he received Busan Science and Technology award. He is currently serving as an Editor in Chief for Journal of Visualization. For 2008-2009, He was in charge of the president of Korean Society of Visualization. In 2020, he was selected as the director of Regional Leading Research Centre for Eco-friendly Smart Ship. Professor Kim published more than 700 technical papers in the SCI journals and other domestic academic journals.
Prof. Chang-Seok Kim
Title: Recent 3D optical imaging technologies for clean energy and advanced materials
Short bio: Professor Chang-Seok Kim, a professor at Pusan National University (PNU), is currently the Director of Engineering Research Center for Color-modulated Extra-sensory Perception Technology (ERC/CEPT), one of the biggest and oldest research center programs of the National Research Foundation (NRF) of Korea. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2004 from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, USA, for research in the area of biomedical imaging and fiber laser systems, after finishing his Master's degree in 1999 from Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST) and his Bachelor degree in 1996 from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea. Subsequently, he held a postdoctoral fellowship at the Beckman Laser Institute and Medical Clinic, University of California at Irvine, USA, for biophotonics and biomedical imaging research. He returned to the Department of Optics and Mechatronics Engineering, PNU, as a faculty member in 2005 and is now a Professor. He has served as a Dean of the College of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, PNU, during 2022 and 2023. His early research covered fiber optics and fiber lasers. Following his initial wide experience with the fundamentals of specialty optical fiber, his research interests have moved to applications of optical fiber laser including sensor materials, and interferometric sensor systems since 2004. Nowadays, his research has diverged to the practical system for industrial sensing and 3D imaging applications based on wavelength-tunable light sources, such as optical coherence tomography (OCT) imaging, photo-acoustic tomography (PAT) imaging, and FMCW (frequency modulated continuous wave) light and detection and ranging (LIDAR) imaging. His work has led to over 200 technical publications in the SCI journals and other conference papers and patents.
Prof. Wei-Hsin Chen
Title: Trends in Hydrogen Application for Sustainable Iron and Steel Industry
Short bio: Professor Wei-Hsin Chen is a Distinguished Professor at the Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics and Director of Energy Industry Talent Education Center, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. He is also the Honorary Chair Professor at Tunghai University, Chair Professor at the National Chin-Yi University of Technology, Research Fellow of the National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan, and Vice President of the Institute for Liquid Atomization and Spray Systems-Asia (ILASS-Asia). He received his Ph.D. from the Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, National Cheng Kung University in 1993. He was a visiting professor at Princeton University, USA; the University of New South Wales, Australia; the University of Edinburg, UK; the University of British Columbia, Canada; the University of Lorraine, France; and RWTH Aachen University, Germany. He was also an invited lecturer at the University of Lorraine. His research interests include hydrogen energy, bioenergy, clean energy, carbon capture and utilization, and atmospheric science. He has published over 620 peer-reviewed journal papers with a h-index of 92 (Scopus). He is the Editor-in-Chief, Section Editor-in-Chief, associate editor, and editorial board member of several prestigious journals. He also serves as a Guest Editor of around 20 SCI-indexed journals. In recent years, his important awards include Outstanding Research Award (National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan), Highly Cited Research and Review Paper Awards (Applied Energy, Elsevier), Outstanding Engineering Professor Award (Chinese Institute of Engineers), Highly Cited Review Article Award (Bioresource Technology, Elsevier), TECO Award, and seven consecutive years (2016-2022) Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science) Highly Cited Researcher Award.
Prof. Wei-Hsin Chen
Title: The Role of Technology and Market In the Era of Carbon Neutrality
Short bio: Dr. Jeong Lak Sohn is currently a professor at the Graduate School of Green Growth & Sustainability (GGGS) of the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) since 2023. He spent more than 30 years developing gas turbines for power generation in academia, industry, and national laboratories. After retiring from the Korea Institute of Machinery and Materials (KIMM) in January 2020, he served as a Managing Director of Energy Industry in the Office of R&D Strategic Planning (OSP) of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (MOTIE) of the Korean government. His role in the OSP was to manage the overall government budget for energy R&D in MOTIE and to long-term perspectives for energy industry technologies. At OSP, Dr. Sohn was responsible for the national energy R&D roadmap for carbon neutrality and contributed to the development of an innovative carbon neutrality strategy. The role of hydrogen as a clean energy source in many areas including power generation for the carbon neutrality was one of his concerns.
Prof. Sankar Bhattacharya
Title: Rare Earth Metals Extraction and Separation from Low-value Wastes
Short bio: Professor Bhattacharya joined academia in 2009 having worked in industry for over twenty years in three different countries – in India on power plant design and commissioning, in France managing the Cleaner Fossil Fuels program at the International Energy Agency, in Australia as a Principal Process Engineer with Anglo Coal Australia and as a Principal Research Engineer with the Lignite CRC in Australia operating large pilot plants in Australia and the USA. At Monash University, Professor Bhattacharya’s research areas include a)thermo-catalytic processing of wastes to liquid fuels, chemicals and hydrogen, gasification, b) rare earth metal recovery from wastes, c) conversion of biomass to high-value platform chemicals. He leads a group of 16 PhD students and a research fellow, having supervised 36 PhD students to completion. Professor Bhattacharya advises several governments, domestic and international, on energy issues. He is the holder of three patents, edited three books, authored six book chapters and over 200 journal papers on energy, fuels and biochemicals. He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Energy.
Prof. Ajayan Vinu
Title: Amorphous and Crystalline Nanoporous Carbon Nitrides with Tunable Nitrogen Contents for Clean Hydrogen Production
Short bio: Professor Vinu made a significant contribution in the field of nanoporous materials and their application in energy storage, fuel cells, carbon capture and conversion, hydrogen technologies, catalysis and drug delivery. His contribution has led to ca. 530 papers with 32,200 citations and a H-index of 93, and more than 32 patents. He has been ranked number 1 (last 20 years) and number 7th (last 50 years) in Australia among the Top 2% scientists in the field of “Materials” as per the database created by the Stanford University in 2020, reflecting his high-quality research and research impact that he made in this field. Prof. Vinu is honoured with the Fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry, RACI, World Academy of Ceramics, World Academy of Art and Science, Indian Chemical Society, and Asia-pacific Academy of Materials. Prof. Vinu heads the Australia-Korea Center for Green Ammonia Integrated Power Generation.