| Prof. Udaya K. MadawalaThe University of Auckland, New Zealand Udaya K. Madawala graduated with a B.Sc. (Electrical Engineering) (Hons) degree from The University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, and received his PhD (Power Electronics) from The University of Auckland, New Zealand as a Commonwealth Doctoral Scholar. At the completion of his PhD, he was employed as a Research and Development Engineer by Fisher & Paykel Ltd, New Zealand, to develop new technologies for PM motor drives. At present as a Full Professor in the Department of Electrical, Computer & Software Engineering at University of Auckland, New Zealand, he leads a group of researchers focusing on a number of power electronics projects that are related to energy and wireless EV charging systems for V2X applications. Udaya is a Fellow of the IEEE and Royal Society New Zealand, and has industry and research experience in the fields of power electronics and energy. He has served both the IEEE Power Electronics, Industrial Electronics and Industry Applications Societies in numerous roles, relating to editorial, advisory, conferences, administrative & technical committees and chapter activities. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Industrial Electronic Society, and the recipient of the IEEE PELS Milan M. Jovanović Award for Power Electronics Emerging Technology and the University of Auckland Research Excellence Medal in 2024. Udaya, who has over 300 journal and conference publications, holds a family of global patents related to wireless power transfer (WPT) technology and power converters, and is a consultant to industry. |
| Senior Engineer Ming LiChina Southern Power Grid Energy Development Research Institute Co., Ltd. / Guangzhou Electric Power Design Institute Co., Ltd., China Li Ming, Professor-level Senior Engineer, Leading Technical Expert of China Southern Power Grid Company, Deputy Chief Engineer of Guangzhou Electric Power Design Institute. His research focuses on AC/DC system analysis, HVDC transmission and AC/DC control & protection. He took part in system design, research and tests of multiple EHV/HVDC projects in CSG as a key technical member. He has published over 20 papers (first/corresponding author), holds more than 10 authorized invention patents and received several provincial/ministerial and industry awards. |
| Prof. Pietro Simone OlivetoSouthern University of Science and Technology, China Pietro S. Oliveto is a Professor of Computer Science at the Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) Shenzhen, China. He received the Laurea degree and PhD degree in computer science respectively from the University of Catania, Italy in 2005 and from the University of Birmingham, UK in 2009. He has been EPSRC PhD+ Fellow (2009-2010) and EPSRC Postdoctoral Fellow (2010-2013) at the University of Birmingham, UK and Vice-Chancellor's Fellow (2013-2016) and EPSRC Early Career Fellow (2015-2020) at the University of Sheffield, UK. Before moving to SUSTech he was Chair in Algorithms at the Department of Computer Science, University of Sheffield, UK. His main research interest is the performance analysis, in particular the time complexity, of bio-inspired computation techniques including evolutionary algorithms, genetic programming, artificial immune systems, hyper-heuristics and algorithm configurators. He is currently building a Theory of Artificial Intelligence Lab at SUSTech. He has guest-edited journal special issues of Computer Science and Technology, Evolutionary Computation, Theoretical Computer Science, IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation and Algorithmica. He has co-Chaired the IEEE symposium on Foundations of Computational Intelligence (FOCI) from 2015 to 2021 and has been co-program Chair of the ACM Conference on Foundations of Genetic Algorithms (FOGA 2021) and Theory Track co-chair at ACM GECCO 2022, ACM GECCO 2023 and ACM GECCO 2026. He is part of the Steering Committee of the annual workshop on Theory of Randomized Search Heuristics (ThRaSH), and was Leader of the Benchmarking Working Group of the EU-COST Action ImAppNIO, member of the EPSRC Peer Review College and recently completed his term as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation. |
| Prof. Alam Md. MahbubHarbin Institute of Technology, Shenzhen, China Alam Md. Mahbub, hailing from Bangladesh, is a professor at Harbin Institute of Technology (China) since 2012. He worked as a senior lecturer at the University of Pretoria (South Africa), research and postdoctoral fellow at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University, and lecturer at the Rajshahi University of Engineering and Technology (Bangladesh). More than 450 technical articles have been authored and co-authored, including 300+ SCI journal papers. Most of the papers have been published in top-tier journals, including Journal of Fluid Mechanics, Journal of Fluids & Structures, Ocean Engineering, Physics of Fluids, and Journal of Sustainable and Energy Reviews. His papers are well-cited: 11,685+ (h-index 57) in the WoS database and 16,900+ (h-index 67) in the Google database. He has been listed as a highly cited researcher for 2018 - 2025 (single year) by Web of Science, ranked top 2%. He has edited four special issues in ‘Wind and Structures, an International Journal’ and one in Energies. He has delivered 50+ Keynote speeches at international conferences. His research has mostly involved flow-induced vibrations, bluff-body wake, fluid-structure interactions, hydrodynamics of swimming animals, and energy harvesting from wind and ocean currents. Prof Alam has received a number of awards: Japan Government Scholarship (monbusho) for Masters and PhD studies; JSPS (Japan Society for Promotion of Science) Postdoctoral fellowship; South Africa National Research Foundation (NRF) rating ‘Promising Young Researcher, Y1’; China 1000-young-talent scholar (青年****); Shenzhen High-Level Overseas Talent; 2015 Shenzhen Outstanding Teacher; and 2017 Nanshan-District High-Level Talent. |
