Adrian Bejan is ranked among the top 0.01% of leading world scientists in the 2019 citations "impact" database.
His impact is in top 10 in Engineering worldwide.
He is the author of 700 peer refereed articles and 30 books.
Most recently, he received the Benjamin Franklin Medal, the Humboldt Research Award, and the Prize of the Turkish Academy of Sciences.

Plenary Lecture:          Vascular Materials: Predicting Design Evolution.

Abstract: Porous materials are usually thought of as amorphous mixtures of two or more things, solids, fluids, and voids. The research field started that way, and so did my own activity in it. Along the way, I was drawn to the part of nature (the physics) that was missing from the amorphous view: the structure, flow, configuration, drawing (design), purpose, and evolution. The lecture is pictorial. It begins with defining the terms, because words have meaning: vascular, design, evolution, and prediction (theory). Next, the lecture shows that vascular (tree shaped) architectures flow more easily than parallel channels with only one length scale (the wall to wall spacing). Transport across channels is facilitated when the spacing is such that the channel flow length matches the entrance (developing) length of the flow. The tendency to evolve with freedom toward flow configurations that provide greater access is universal in nature, bio, and non-bio. This tendency is the Constructal Law, which empowers us to predict the evolution toward flow access, miniaturization, high density of heat transfer, and the scaling up (or down) of an existing design. Multiscale vasculatures occur naturally because they flow more easily than their counterparts with a few length scales. The future of evolutionary design everywhere points toward vascular, hierarchical flow architectures that will continue to morph with freedom and directionality.

Dr. Mircea Dumitru is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Bucharest (since 2004). Vice-president of the Romanian Academy since 2022. Executive Director of Romanian-US Fulbright Commission (since 2020). Rector of the University of Bucharest (2011-2019). President of the European Society of Analytic Philosophy (2011 - 2014). President of the International Institute of Philosophy (2017 - 2021). Fellow of Academia Europaea (since 2019), Corresponding Fellow of the Romanian Academy (2014-2021). Fellow of the Romanian Academy (since 2021). Minister of Education and Scientific Research (July 2016 - January 2017). Visiting Professor at Beijing Normal University (2017 - 2022). President of Balkan Universities Association (2019 - 2022). He holds a PhD in Philosophy at Tulane University, New Orleans, USA (1998) with a topic in modal logic and philosophy of mathematics, and another PhD in Philosophy at the University of Bucharest (1998) with a topic in philosophy of language. Invited Professor at Tulsa University (USA), CUNY (USA), NYU (USA), Lyon 3, ENS Lyon, University of Helsinki, Pekin University (Beijing, China), Renmin University (Beijing, China), CUPL (Beijing, China), Xi'an University (Xi'an, China). Main area of research: philosophical logic, metaphysics, and philosophy of language.
Main publications: Modality and Incompleteness (UMI, Ann Arbor, 1998); Modalitate si incompletitudine, (Paideia Publishing House, 2001, in Romanian; the book received the Mircea Florian Prize of the Romanian Academy); Logic and Philosophical Explorations (Humanitas, Bucharest, 2004, in Romanian); Words, Theories, and Things. Quine in Focus (ed.) (Pelican, 2009); Truth (ed.) (Bucharest University Publishing House, 2013); article on the Philosophy of Kit Fine, in The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, the Third Edition, Robert Audi (ed.) (Cambridge University Press, 2015), Worlds of Thought (in Romanian, Lumi ale gândirii, Polirom Publishing House, 2019), Metaphysics, Modality, and Meaning. Themes from the Work of Kit Fine (ed.) (Oxford University Press, 2020). Thinking It Through. Selected Papers of Kit Fine (Oxford University Press, work in progress), Modality and Incompleteness. An Account through Correspondence Theory (Springer, work in progress).

Plenary Lecture:          Promises and Limits of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract: This talk will sketch the main issues raised by, and responses to, the mind-body problem in Philosophy of Mind. This is the philosophical background for framing some philosophical issues of Artificial Intelligence (AI). The talk will address the issue of what is AI. It will explore some philosophical approaches to AI (AI pursued as and out of philosophy). The main argument of the talk is that philosophy of AI is capable of improving the conceptual and logical underpinnings of the huge engineering projects and challenges that AI is currently raising and also baffling us.

Kaushik Rajashekara received his BE, ME, and Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Science. He joined the Delphi division of General Motors Corporation in Indianapolis, IN, USA, as a staff project engineer in 1989. He held various lead technical and managerial positions in Delphi and General Motors. He was a Technical Fellow and the Chief Scientist for developing electric machines, controllers, and power electronics systems for electric, hybrid, and fuel cell vehicle systems. In 2006, he joined Rolls-Royce Corporation as a Chief Technologist for More Electric Architectures and power conversion/control technologies for Electric, More Electric, and Hybrid Electric Aircrafts. In August 2012, he joined as a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. Since September 2016, he has been a Distinguished Professor of Engineering at the University of Houston. He became a member of the US National Academy of Engineering in 2012, Foreign member of the Chinese and Indian National Academies of Engineering. He is a recipient of the 2022 Global Energy Prize and 2021 IEEE Medal on Environmental and Safety Technologies and several other awards. He has published over 250 papers in international journals and conferences, has 37 US and 15 foreign patents, has written one book, and contributed individual chapters to 8 books. His research interests are power/energy conversion, Transportation Electrification, Renewable Energy, and Grid integration.

Plenary Lecture:          Current Trends and Renewable Energy-Based Future Strategies for Powering the Offshore Electrical Systems

Abstract: The offshore extraction of oil and gas is an energy-intensive process that releases CO2 and methane into the atmosphere. To extract the subsea oil and gas, several electrical systems are deployed. Many subsea electrical systems need a high-reliability power grid and power control units on the seabed. To reduce the emissions from offshore energy production, it is important to supply the subsea electrical loads using renewable energy sources. The offshore industry has become more significant in recent years because several offshore wind farms led to a global installed offshore wind capacity of 54.9 GW by the end of June 2022. One of the applications for offshore wind could be to power the electrical systems located on the seabed that is required for oil and gas extraction instead of from the gas turbine or diesel engine generators located on the platform. But there are many challenges for deploying the electrical systems and the power converters on the seabed and supplying renewable electrical power either from offshore wind or onshore. This seminar presents the requirements and challenges of operating in the subsea environment, current trends, and the use of power electronics for efficient power transmission from offshore platforms or onshore to the subsea electrical loads. The presentation also addresses how renewable sources such as offshore wind can be used for powering the subsea electrical loads and other offshore applications such as the production of Hydrogen, shore power, and for powering ocean vessels.

Prof. Juan C. Ordonez (M.S., Energy Systems, Ph.D. ME Duke University) is at the FAMU-FSU College of Engineering since 2003, where he is now a Professor of Mechanical Engineering. His research lies within heat transfer and applied thermodynamics and their application to the design, modeling, and optimization of advanced energy systems. Specific research areas include renewable energy systems, solar thermal systems, modeling and optimization of heat exchangers, fuel cells and fuel cell systems, HTS motors and cables, combined heat and power, HVAC systems, and photobioreactors for microalgae growth. He is a member of ASME and Sigma Xi, and has served as Associate Technical Editor for Thermal Engineering since 2005. He has published over 100 journal publications and more than 110 conference papers.

Plenary Lecture:          Towards Zero-Emission Air Transport

Abstract: Global efforts toward decarbonization have highlighted the importance of addressing emissions in the transportation sector. For ground transportation, this has triggered an imminent transition towards multiple variants of electric vehicles. This talk will focus on air transportation. We will present the IZEA concept - an ongoing effort towards zero emission aviation - which relies on hydrogen as an alternative fuel for turbines and fuel cells. The talk will cover an overview of the proposed power train with emphasis on thermal management of its components (motors, power electronics, HTS cables, among others). The talk will conclude with a summary of ongoing efforts aiming to increase the overall aircraft cooling capacity and illustrating how that increased capacity can enable NOx reduction by supporting an expanded use of direct electrochemical conversion in fuel cells over combustion in hydrogen turbines.

Mircea Popescu is Principal Product Specialist with Ansys UK. He received the M.Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the Politehnica University of Bucharest, Bucharest, Romania, in 1984 and 1999, respectively, and the D.Sc. degree in electrical machines from Aalto University, Espoo, Finland in 2004. He has more than 35 years of engineering experience. Earlier in his career, he was with Helsinki University of Technology (now Aalto University), Finland, SPEED Lab at University of Glasgow, U.K. and Motor Design Ltd, U.K. He has published more than 150 peer reviewed papers and his publications have received three IEEE best paper awards. An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Popescu is Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Industry Applications and IET Electric and Power Applications journal. He served as an Officer of the IEEE Industry Application Society Electrical Machines Committee 2010 - 2017 and Prominent Lecturer for IAS Region 8, 2014-2016.

Plenary Lecture:          Advancements in Digital Design and Manufacture of Electric Propulsion Motors

Abstract: Electric propulsion is widely seen one of the main solutions to improve energy efficiency and reduce CO2 emissions in transportation. Whether hybrid or full electric future propulsion systems will undoubtedly require power electronic driven electrical machines. Industry-led technology road maps across automotive, aerospace, heavy goods transport etc. sectors recognise the importance of electrification and have set demanding targets on future electrical machine power to weight, efficiency and cost, alongside considerations of security of material supply chain and local manufacturing capabilities. There is a strong interest to reduce the volume and cost of active materials in propulsion motor technologies beyond their current state-of-art. Potential solutions include increased motor speeds and higher pole numbers and/or typologies such as reluctance and induction machines reduced dependence on rare-earth materials. In high performance, weight critical applications such as aircraft the limitations of conventional electrical machine construction, comprising laminated iron and organic polymer insulated magnet wire coils, is becoming a major barrier to future performance improvement. As there can be significantly different usage and performance requirements across e- mobility applications adopting a common standard of motor design is unlikely to yield the optimum in terms of overall system energy efficiency and performance. These considerations will be discussed and compared.

Petru Notingher (S '98, M '01) was born in Ploiesti, Romania, in 1971, and graduated from the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Politehnica University of Bucharest, Romania, in 1995. He received the M.Sc. degree from Paul Sabatier University, Toulouse, France, in 1996, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Montpellier, France, in 2000. After completing the Ph.D. degree, he worked as a Teaching and Research Assistant with the Universities of Montpellier and Toulouse. In 2003, he was appointed as an Assistant Professor at the University of Montpellier and promoted to Full Professor in 2012. Since 2003, he has been with the "Institut d'Electronique et des Systèmes" (University of Montpellier/CNRS), where he was the head of the "Energy Systems, Reliability and Radiation" research department between 2012 and 2020. He is currently the Deputy Director of the IES. His research concerns solid insulating materials, electric charge measurement and electrostatic phenomena, in the field of which he co-authored more than 200 papers, conference communications and book chapters. Prof. Notingher is a member of the IEEE Dielectrics and Electrical Insulation Society, of the IEEE Industry Applications Society and of the French Society of Electrostatics.

Plenary Lecture:          Charge Measurements Techniques in Insulating Materials and Structures for High-Field Applications

Abstract: The development of charge-based or charge-controlled devices needs a perfect knowledge of the amount and of the distribution of the electric charge in the different material layers and at their interfaces. This need is particularly acute when high electric fields establish in the structures during operation, as in electrets, MEMS, devices for controlling micro-fluids in lab-on-a-chip, high-voltage high-current integrated devices, micro-electro-thermal heat sinks for micro components etc. On the other hand, electrical charge accumulation in dielectrics (or space charge, as it is commonly referred to) can have dramatic effects when uncontrolled. Thus, the electric field induced by the development of space charges is superimposed to the geometrical electric field applied to the material in its usual operating conditions. The resulting value of the field can approach and even exceed the breakdown threshold, leading to an alteration or to the destruction of the material and, as a consequence, to a possible failure of the system in which it is included. The risk is increased when high electric fields are applied to the component, at the interface between different materials, or in the presence of external factors able to induce significant amount of charges in the insulating layers (e.g. radiations). Even without reaching breakdown, the charges accumulated in the insulating layers of a device may provoke malfunction affecting system reliability. This is a critical problem in contexts with considerable economical dimensions and where human security considerations are essential, such as in electrical power transport, airborne and space applications. This talk aims at giving an insight into the field of non-destructive methods for localizing and quantifying electric charges and field distribution in dielectrics. The fundamentals of the influence (or "stimuli") methods used for measuring space charge and polarization distributions in solid insulating structures are first presented. The possibilities offered today by these methods and their fallouts in the domains of dielectric materials, electrical engineering and electronics structures are then put into evidence using various supporting examples. Experimental set-ups and results obtained in recent years are reviewed, and perspectives of evolution of these methods are discussed. Challenges and expected achievements in the near future are brought into focus.