Speakers

Assaad Masri is currently an ARC-Australian Professorial Fellow in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and Information Technologies at the University of Sydney and Chairman of the Australia and New Zealand section of the Combustion Institute. He is internationally known as a leading scientist in turbulent combustion of gaseous and liquid fuels and laser diagnostics in combustion. He is on the editorial board of three prestigious journals and a founding member of the International Workshops on Measurements and Computations of Turbulent Nonpremixed Flames (TNF) as well as the International Workshop on Turbulent Combustion of Sprays (TCS). He has published over 150 papers, attracted over eight million dollars of research funding and established one of the most advanced combustion laser diagnostics systems in the world.

Yi Yang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Melbourne. Yi received Ph. D from Pennsylvania State University in 2008. He worked as a postdoc at the Combustion Research Facility at Sandia National Laboratories (California) before joining the Department in 2012.

Yi's research aims to develop next-generation engines with low GHG and pollutant emissions. His interests include alternative fuels, advanced compression ignition engines, fuel/engine interactions, combustion chemistry, renewable fuel production, catalytic combustion and emission control.

Hai Wang is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. His interests are in renewable energy conversion, catalysis and combustion. His current research focuses on theories and applications of nanoparticles and nanostructures for rechargeable batteries and supercapacitors, combustion simulations and nanocatalysis. He is the author and coauthor of numerous papers in scholarly journals, including 'Mesoporous titania films prepared by flame stabilized on a rotating surface-Application in dye sensitized solar cells' in Journal of Physical Chemistry C, 'A detailed kinetic modeling study of aromatics formation in laminar premixed acetylene and ethylene flames' in Combustion and Flame, 'Drag force, diffusion coefficient, and electric mobility of small particles. I. Theory applicable to the free-molecule regime' in Physical Review E, 'A new mechanism for the formation of meteoritic kerogen-like material' in Science, 'Gas-nanoparticle scattering: A molecular view of momentum accommodation function' in Physical Review Letters, and 'Formation of nascent soot and other condensed-phase materials in flames' in Proceedings of the Combustion Institute. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of Progress in Energy and Combustion Science, a highly influential energy journal published by Elsevier with an impact factor of 25.2 (2017).

Gus Nathan is the founding Director of The University of Adelaide's Centre for Energy Technology. He has led the centre in developing its vision, identifying priorities and devising and implementing a strategic plan. Under his leadership the Centre has identified novel approaches with strong potential to make a breakthrough in the delivery of low-cost, clean energy technologies and has engaged with partners spanning industry, international research institutions and government agencies.

Professor Nathan is an ARC Discovery Outstanding Researcher who specialises in thermal energy engineering in systems supplied by solar, geothermal and the combustion of fossil and bio-fuels, but also works with hydrogen, wind and wave power. His recent work has focussed on novel approaches to integrate and optimise these different energy sources. He has played a leading role in the development of six patented technologies.

Professor Nathan has published widely in the above fields, jointly authoring some 100 papers in international journals and 150 in peer reviewed conferences. His publications on technology include 8 patents (filed or granted) and 50 consultant's reports. He has also worked widely with industries including power generation, cement, lime, steel, glass and aluminum and has consulted to organisations including Western Mining Ltd, Adelaide Brighton Ltd, British Steel plc, LKAB, Flinders Power, Queensland Electricity Commission and BHP.

Dr Dunn was awarded his PhD in 2009 "Finite-rate chemistry effects in turbulent premixed combustion" under the supervision of Prof Assaad Masri and Prof Robert Bilger in the school of The School of Aeronautical, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering at The University of Sydney. The experimental results exploring highly turbulent premixed combustion from his PhD continue to be a significant challenge for modellers to replicate and have been the subject of focus sessions at several international workshops. From 2009-2011 Dr Dunn was a postdoctoral researcher at the Combustion Research Facility at Sandia National Laboratories at Livermore, California USA. In this position, Dr Dunn worked with Dr. Robert Barlow a distinguished scientist experimentally investigating a broad range of combusting flows ranging from stratified, oxyfuel, nonpremixed, sooting, alternative fuels and premixed combustion.

Since January 2012, Dr Dunn has been a staff member at the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering at the University of Sydney. He is presently engaged in research related to the development and application of advanced laser diagnostics to combustion and reacting flow systems. Since being at Sydney, he has been involved in projects investigating biodiesels, soot precursor and soot evolution in flames, inorganic particle synthesis in flames, turbulent autoignition, premixed combustion, second-generation biofuels and stratified combustion.

Sanghoon (Shawn) Kook is an Associate Professor of the School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) where he directs the UNSW Engine Research Laboratory. His expertise lies in optical/laser-based imaging diagnostics in automobile engines, advanced engine combustion, pollutants formation and alternative fuels. Before UNSW, A/Prof Kook worked as a post-doctoral researcher at Sandia National Laboratories (2007-2009) and earned his B.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (2000), M.S. degree in Nuclear and Quantum Engineering (2002), and Ph.D. degree in Mechanical Engineering (2006) from KAIST.

A/Prof. Kook has authored more than 160 papers including a journal article received the 2005 Horning Memorial "Best Paper" Award from Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) International. Also, he was a winner of JSPS Invitational Fellowship administered by Australian Academy of Science (2011), a finalist of R&D category of Australian Engineering Excellence Award - Sydney Division (2012), a recipient of SAE International Teetor Educational Award (2013), a fellow of JSPS Research Visit to Japan (2014), and a two-time recipient of SAE Outstanding Oral Presentation Award (2016 and 2018).

A/Prof. Matthew Cleary is an academic in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering (AMME) at the University of Sydney where he leads the modelling research conducted by the Clean Combustion Research Group, teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in thermofluids and is the Director of Research. In the past he has held research and academic positions at Imperial College and the University of Queensland and had a visiting position at Princeton University. A/Prof. Cleary's research focuses on the formulation of turbulence models and associated numerical solution methods for combustion and two-phase flows.

Dr Agisilaos Kourmatzis is a lecturer in the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering. His main interests lie in multiphase flows, turbulence, laser diagnostics and energy conversion. He has contributed over 50 publications to this field, of which more than 25 are in peer reviewed journal papers.

Dr Kourmatzis graduated from the University of Nottingham with a BEng (First Class Hons) in Mechanical Engineering and obtained a MSc (with Distinction), in Advanced Mechanical Engineering, from Imperial College London (2007). He worked as a design engineer at Bombardier Transportation (2007-2008) prior to working towards his PhD in Fluid Dynamics at the University of Southampton, where he graduated in 2011. He was a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Sydney from 2011-2015 and was elected a Chartered Professional Engineer (CEng) with the Institution of Mechanical Engineers in 2014. He held an academic position at Macquarie University from 2015-2017, helping to pioneer the new mechanical engineering program there, prior to re-joining the University of Sydney in 2017.

Dr Ruud Eggels received his Ph.D. in combustion modelling at the University Eindhoven in the Netherlands. He joined Rolls-Royce more than twenty years ago. At Rolls-Royce, Dr Eggels is responsible for managing combustion methods development and related research projects within the combustion and turbine department.

In his position, Dr Eggels has worked at the interface between the scientific and industrial worlds, such that he is responsible of initiating and supporting fundamental combustion research, in addition to bring them into an industrial environment to improve the predicting capability of combustion processes. He is currently a member of the board of directors of the German Section of The Combustion Institute.

Prof. Vasily Novozhilov is Director of the Centre for Environmental Safety and Risk Engineering (CESARE) in the College of Engineering and Science. His research expertise is in the areas of Fire Safety Science, Combustion, Heat Transfer, Computational Fluid Dynamics, and Applied Mathematics.

Prof. Novozhilov started his career at the Russian Academy of Sciences, and later moved to Australia with research appointments at the University of Sydney. He subsequently held academic appointments at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore and University of Ulster, United Kingdom (as Chair in Fire Dynamics).

Prof. Novozhilov has contributed over 100 technical publications, delivered a number of invited and keynote presentations, and is a recipient of a number of international awards for this research activities. He is also an Editorial Board member of several international journals. Vasily's major research achievements relate to the development of comprehensive CFD models for prediction of fire dynamics and suppression in buildings, analytical models for heat transfer, and combustion theory studies.

Prof. Novozhilov has recently held a Visiting Professorship appointment with the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and served as a member of Singapore Government Committees on the development of Performance-Based Fire Safety regulations.