Prof. Ramesh K. Agarwal (Fellow of IEEE, AAAS, AIAA, APS, ASME, CSAA, SME and ASEE)

William Palm Professor of Engineering
Washington University in St. Louis, USA  

Professor Ramesh K. Agarwal is the William Palm Professor of Engineering in the department of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at Washington University in St. Louis. From 1994 to 2001, he was the Sam Bloomfield Distinguished Professor and Executive Director of the National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State University in Kansas. From 1978 to 1994, he was the Program Director and McDonnell Douglas Fellow at McDonnell Douglas Research Laboratories in St. Louis. Dr. Agarwal received Ph.D in Aeronautical Sciences from Stanford University in 1975, M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1969 and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India in 1968. Over a period of forty years, Professor Agarwal has worked in various areas of Computational Science and Engineering - Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Computational Materials Science and Manufacturing, Computational Electromagnetics (CEM), Neuro-Computing, Control Theory and Systems, and Multidisciplinary Design and Optimization. He is the author and coauthor of over 500 journal and refereed conference publications. He has given many plenary, keynote and invited lectures at various national and international conferences worldwide in over fifty countries. Professor Agarwal continues to serve on many academic, government, and industrial advisory committees. Dr. Agarwal is a Fellow eighteen societies including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), American Physical Society (APS), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Royal Aeronautical Society, Chinese Society of Aeronautics and Astronautics (CSAA), Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME) and American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE). He has received many prestigious honors and national/international awards from various professional societies and organizations for his research contributions.

Prof. Daohua Zhang (Fellow of InstP, IET)

Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Professor Dao Hua ZHANG received his MSc degree from Shandong University, China and PhD degree from the University of New South Wales, Australia. He joined Nanyang Technological University in 1991 as a lecturer and is currently a full professor, Deputy Director, Centre for Semiconductor lighting and Display, Director, Photonic Nano-Structure and Applications program and Senator. He also served as Deputy Head of Microelectronics Division, School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Senator of NTU etc. Professor Zhang’s main research interests include semiconductor materials, devices and technology, photonic metamaterials and applications. He has successfully completed over 30 research projects. One of them is the first $10M Competitive Research Program (CRP) of NTU (as Lead Principal Investigator), which was assessed as “outstanding word class research progress” by the international evaluation committee members including a Nobel laureate. He has published over 530 papers in international journals and international conferences, 6 books/ proceedings, and 3 book chapters and he also filed 7 patents. He received Singapore President national day medal and several best paper awards. Professor Zhang is the editor and guest editor of over 10 international journals. He is in International Advisory Committee of several international conferences. He has also chaired and co-chair of over 10 international conferences. He is a fellow of Institute of Physics (FInstP) and Institute of Engineering and Technology (FIET).

Invited Speakers

Assoc. Prof. Basil TungLiong Wong

Swinburne University of Technology, Malaysia

Dr. Basil T. Wong obtained his Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1999, Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering with research emphasis on radiation/light scattering in participating media in 2001, and Doctor of Philosophy in Mechanical Engineering in 2006 at the University of Kentucky, USA. His Ph.D. dissertation topic was on modeling thermal transport due to an impinging electron beam/field emission of electrons from a nanoprobe. Since graduation, he worked as a post-doctoral scholar under Professor M. Pınar Mengüç and focused on research area in the field of near-field radiation, light scattering, and most importantly nanoscale thermal conduction. He joined Swinburne University of Technology, Sarawak as a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Engineering, Computing, and Science in September 2010, and was subsequently promoted to Associate Professor in 2015.
His research interests include theoretical modeling of nanoscale heat transport, heat removal (cooling) at nanoscales, improving solar/thermal photovoltaic cell efficiency (near-field radiation coupled with nanoscale thermal transport), applications of electron-beam, and radiative heat transfer in participating media.