National University of Singapore, Singapore

Speech Title: Past and Present + Future of Sustainable and Ecofriendly Magnesium Based Materials for Mitigating Global Warming

 

Dr Manoj Gupta was a former Head of Materials Division of the Mechanical Engineering Department and Director designate of Materials Science and Engineering Initiative at NUS, Singapore. He did his Ph.D. from University of California, Irvine, USA (1992), and postdoctoral research at University of Alberta, Canada (1992). He is currently among top 0.6% researchers as per Stanford’ List, among Top 1% Scientist of the World Position by The Universal Scientific Education and Research Network and among 1% among scientists as per ResearchGate. His international rank among Materials Researchers in World is currently at 1305. To his credit are: (i) Disintegrated Melt Deposition technique and (ii) Hybrid Microwave Sintering technique, an energy efficient solid-state processing method to synthesize alloys/micro/nano-composites. He has published over 650 peer reviewed journal papers and owns two US patents and two Trade Secrets. His current h-index is 79, citations greater than 21500 and reads greater than 100,000 (Research Gate). He has also co-authored eight books, published by John Wiley, Springer and MRF - USA. He is Editor-in-chief/Editor of twelve international peer reviewed journals. A multiple award winner, he actively collaborate/visit Japan, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, China, USA and India as a visiting researcher, professor and chair professor.

Speech Title: Beneficial Nonlinear Design in Engineering: The X-Structure/Mechanism Approach

 

Prof. JING received his B.S. degree from Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, China, M.S. degree and PhD degree in Robotics from Shenyang Institute of Automation, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shenyang, China, respectively. Thereafter, he received a PhD degree in nonlinear systems and signal processing from the Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering, University of Sheffield, Sheffield, U.K.He is now a Professor with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong. Before joining in CityU, he was a Research Fellow with the Institute of Sound and Vibration Research, University of Southampton, followed by assistant professor and associate professor with Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His current research interests include: Nonlinear dynamics, Vibration, Control and Robotics, with a series of 200+ publications of 9300+ citations and H-index 50 (in Google Scholar), with a number of patents filed in China and US.

The University of Texas at Arlington, USA

Speech Title: Role of Fillers in Hydrothermal Durability of Pultruded Composites

 

Vistasp M. Karbhari is a Professor in the Departments of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, &Civil Engineering, at the University of Texas at Arlington, where he served as the 8th president from 2013 to 2020. An internationally reputed researcher, Dr. Karbhari is an expert in the processing and mechanics of composites, durability of materials, infrastructure rehabilitation, and multi-threat mitigation and has authored/coauthored over 460 papers in journals and conference publications and is the editor/co-editor of 6 books. He is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS); the National Academy of Inventors (NAI); the American Society of Civil Engineers; ASM International; the International Association of Advanced Materials (IAAM); the International Institute for Fiber-reinforced Polymers in Construction; the International Society for Structural Health Monitoring of Intelligent Infrastructure; ASCE’s Structural Engineering Institute, and is an elected member of the European Academy of Science and Arts. He was named a fellow of Complete College America for his work on student success focused on access and attainment.

La Trobe University, Australia

Speech Title: Novel Polymer Nanocomposite Bioink for 3D Bioprinting

 

Ing Kong is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering at La Trobe University. She received both her first degree and PhD in Materials Science at National University of Malaysia in 2005 and 2009, respectively. She completed her Postgraduate Certificate in Higher Education (PGCHE) at University of Nottingham in 2015.
Prior to joining La Trobe, she worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow for two years at National University of Malaysia (2009-2010) and RMIT University (2010-2011) and as an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical, Materials and Manufacturing Engineering at University of Nottingham from 2012 to 2017.
Her research interests are in the development of advanced materials, particularly functional polymer composites, magnetic nanoparticles, carbon nanomaterials and superconductors and the additive manufacturing technology, which is one of the industrial technologies make up Industry 4.0 and. She has authored and co-authored more than 100 publications, including 6 invited book chapters, over 60 refereed journal articles and more than 50 conference proceedings. She is serving as an editorial board member and a peer reviewer for many materials and mechanical engineering journals and she has chaired and co-chaired multiple international conferences.

Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea

Speech Title: Engineering Carbon Materials for High-Performance Electro-Ionic Artificial Muscles

 

Dr. Mahato is a full-time Research Associate Professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Korea, specializing in structural carbon materials for application in soft robotics and flexible energy devices. His research focuses on antagonistic nanoengineering for developing active materials, particularly metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) and covalent–organic frameworks (COFs) and creating mechanically flexible and robust membranes for substantial contribution in these fields. Mahato’s research on COFs and MOFs as active electro materials addresses and resolves the existing technological challenges of electrochemical soft robots, such as back relaxation, low mechanical force, and controllable mechanical bending at ultra-low power. He has pioneered the development of soft touch fingers for human-machine interaction and a fluidic switch for fluid flow control in confined channels. His aim to further explore MOFs and COFs for developing miniature smart microrobots, with a focus on active biomedical devices.

University of Maryland, USA

Speech Title: Continuously Scanning Laser Doppler Vibrometry for Vibration Measurement: Principles, Recent Developments, and Applications

 

Weidong Zhu is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and the founding director of its Dynamic Systems and Vibrations Laboratory and Laser Vibrometry and Optical Measurement Laboratory. He received his double major BS degree in Mechanical Engineering and Computational Science from Shanghai Jiao Tong University in 1986, and his MS and PhD degrees in Mechanical Engineering from Arizona State University and the University of California at Berkeley in 1988 and 1994, respectively. He is a recipient of the 2004 National Science Foundation CAREER Award. He has been an ASME Fellow since 2010, and has served as an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Vibration and Acoustics and the ASME Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement, and Control, and as a Subject Editor of the Journal of Sound and Vibration and Nonlinear Dynamics. His research spans the fields of dynamics, vibration, control,  structural health monitoring,  renewable energy,  metamaterials, and involves analytical development, numerical simulation, experimental validation, and industrial application. He has published 323 SCI-indexed journal papers in these areas and has ten issued U.S. patents. He is a recipient of the 2020 University System of Maryland Board of Regents Faculty Award for Excellence in Research and the 2024 ASME Rayleigh Lecture Award.