Keynote Speakers
Professor Ahmad Zuhairi Abdullah
Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
Professor Dr Ahmad Zuhairi Abdullah received his B. Tech (Hons), MSc, and PhD in 1995, 2000, and 2004, respectively. He was the Deputy Dean (Industry and Community Network) at School of Chemical Engineering, Universiti Sains Malaysia between 2010-2012 and Deputy Dean (Research and Postgraduate Studies) between 2013-2018. He will also serve his deanship of the school in 2022-2024. He is registered as a Professional Technologist at Malaysian Board of Technologists (MBOT) and a Fellow Member of Institut Kimia Malaysia. His research works mostly involve the use of ordered porous materials in oleochemical reactions, renewable energy, waste treatment, and waste valorization. He has nearly 300 refereed publications in journals and book/book chapters mainly as the main author, and also involves as a technical committee member to nearly 150 international scientific conferences. He is often invited to share his research experiences in international conferences held in Malaysia, Laos, Indonesia, Vietnam, Pakistan, The Philippines and China. In addition, he is an evaluator for research proposals from different agencies locally as well as from several international scientific bodies in the USA, Oman, Qatar, Kazakhstan, and Chile. He is also an expert panel of the Department of Environment Malaysia for the evaluation of Environmental Impact Assessment reports for various proposed projects related to petrochemical complexes, paper mills, metal smelting, chemical, lead-acid battery recycle plants, etc. He is one of the recipients of the Top Research Scientists Malaysia (TRSM) award in 2014 and listed in the List of World’s Top 2% Scientists by Stanford University in 2020 and 2021. His h-index (Scopus) currently stands at 54 with more than 10,000 citations.
Assoc. Prof. Muhammad Irfan
Middlesex University, United Kingdom
Prof. Muhammad Irfan is currently working as an Associate Professor at Middlesex University, United Kingdom. He is also an adjunct Faculty Member at Lebanese American University, and a visiting Professor at ILMA University. He is serving as an Editor-in-Chief of the Energy Technologies and Environment, Journal of Comprehensive Business Administration Research, and Editor of The Journal of Strategic Information Systems. Prof. Irfan is the leading guest editor of top-notch International Journals, including Energy Economics, Resources Policy, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Sustainability, Frontiers in Environmental Science among others. His research achievements have been published in the form of over 200 research papers in top international Journals. According to Elsevier and Stanford University, he has consistently been ranked among the top 2% of scientists worldwide in 2022 and 2023 and is awarded top 1% highly cited researcher across WOS researcher database in 2023. He is among the top 5% of economists in the world, according to the IDEAS/RePEc database. He is the highly cited Researcher of 2023 by Elsevier and Shanghai Ranking database. He was given the Best Scholar Award by the University of the Punjab, the Best Paper Award by North China Electric Power University, and the Outstanding Scholarship Award by the China Scholarship Council (CSC). Many of his highly cited papers fall under (top 1%) and (top 0.1%) categories. He has over 12,000 scholarly citations, and h-index is 64.
Prof. Yifei Wu
Xi'an Jiaotong University, China
Yifei Wu was born in Zhejiang, China. He is now a professor in Xi'an Jiaotong University (top young talent) and supported by the national youth talent plan. He has hosted over more than 10 scientific research projects including the NSFC, the Key R&D Program of Shaanxi Province, and the State Grid Corporation's Science and Technology Project. He also published more than 70 SCI/EI papers in high-level journals at home and abroad, including 30 SCI papers as the first/corresponding author. He is a senior member of IEEE, authorized 19 national invention patents, 10 U.S. patents, 2 European patents. He won the Second Prize of Science and Technology of Shaanxi Province.
Invited Speakers
Assoc. Prof. Xueqian Fu
China Agricultural University, China
Xueqian Fu (Senior Member, IEEE) is Vice Chairman of IEEE Smart Village-CWG, IEEE Young Professionals. He is a one of World’s Top 2% Scientists 2023, and he is recognized as 'Outstanding Talent' and 'Young Star B’ by China Agricultural University. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from North China Electric Power University in 2008 and 2011, respectively. He received his Ph.D. degree from South China University of Technology in 2015. From 2015 to 2017, he was a Post-Doctoral Researcher with Tsinghua University. He is currently an Associate Professor at China Agricultural University. His current research interests include Statistical Machine Learning, Agricultural Energy Internet, and PV system integration. He serves as the Deputy Editor-in-Chief for Information Processing in Agriculture and holds positions as an associate editor for IET Renewable Power Generation, Artificial Intelligence and Applications, Protection and Control of Modern Power Systems and Journal of Data Science and Intelligent Systems. He also serves as a youth editor for Clean Energy Science and Technology and holds the Lead Guest Editor role for International Transactions on Electrical Energy Systems.
Dr. Julian David Hunt
International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA), Austria
Julian Hunt is a research scholar in the Sustainable Service Systems (S3) Research Group of the IIASA Energy, Climate, and Environment Program where he focuses on implementing daily and seasonal storage energy technologies in MESSAGE models and analyzing the impact of these technologies on long-term energy planning. His research interests include analysis of energy systems, water-energy-land interfaces, climate change risks, energy security, and energy storage. In addition to his position at IIASA, Hunt is also a visiting professor in the postgraduate program in mechanical engineering at the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS), Brazil, where he teaches energy storage and supervises master's and doctoral students. Prior to joining the S3 group, Hunt received a two-year IIASA/CAPES-Brazil research grant to map the global potential for seasonal pumped storage. He joined IIASA from the National Commission for Nuclear Energy (CNEN) in Brazil, developing hybrid nuclear and seawater desalination projects. He also previously worked at the Energy and Climate Change Branch of the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO). Hunt holds a D.Phil in Engineering Science from the University of Oxford and a B.Eng degree in Chemical Engineering from the University of Nottingham.
Prof. Farhad Shahnia
Murdoch University, Australia
Professor Farhad Shahnia received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Brisbane, in 2012. He is currently an A/Professor at Murdoch University. He is also a Fellow member of Engineers Australia, Senior Member of IEEE, and member of the Australasian Association for Engineering Education. Farhad’s research falls under Distribution networks, Microgrid and Smart grid concepts. He has authored one book and 11 book chapters and 100+ peer-reviewed scholarly articles in international conferences and journals, as well as being an editor of 6 books. Farhad is currently a Subject Editor, Deputy Subject Editor, and Associate Editor of several journals including IEEE Access, IET Generation, Transmission & Distribution, IET Renewable Power Generation, IET Smart Grid, IET Energy Conversion and Economics, and International Transaction on Electrical Energy Systems and has served 35+ conferences in various roles such as General, Technical, Program, Publication, Publicity, Award, Sponsorship, and Special Session Chairs. Farhad has led the IEEE Western Australia Section as the 2020-2021 Chair, and was the 2019 Founding Chair of the IEEE Western Australia Industrial Electronics Society (IES) Chapter. He is currently the 2021-2022 Secretary of the IES’s Technical Committees on Smart Grids.