Keynote Speakers

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Keynote Speaker I

Prof. Innocent Kamwa (IEEE Fellow)
Hydro-Quebec Research Institute (IREQ), Canada

Innocent Kamwa obtained his B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Laval University, Québec City in 1985 and 1989 respectively.  He has been a research scientist and registered professional engineer at Hydro-Quebec Research Institute since 1988, specializing in system dynamics, power grid control and electric machines. After leading System Automation and Control R&D program for years he became Chief scientist for smart grid, Head of Power System and Mathematics, and Acting Scientific Director of IREQ in 2016. He currently heads the Power Systems Simulation and Evolution Division, overseeing the Hydro-Quebec Network Simulation Centre known worldwide. An Adjunct professor at Laval University and McGill University, Dr. Kamwa’s Honors include four IEEE Power Engineering best paper prize awards, three IEEE Power Engineering outstanding working group awards, a 2013 IEEE Power Engineering Society Distinguished Service Award, Fellow of IEEE in 2005 for “innovations in power grid control” and Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.  He is also the 2019 Recipient of the IEEE Charles Proteus Steinmetz Award.

Keynote Speaker II

Prof. Aoife Foley
Queen’s University Belfast, UK

Dr Aoife Foley is a Reader in the School of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in Queen’s University Belfast and Editor in Chief of Elsevier’s Renewable & Sustainable Energy Reviews. She is also a member of the Editorial Board of Elsevier’s Renewable Energy and an Editorial Panel member of the Institution of Civil Engineers Proceedings in Transport. She has a BE(Hons) (1996) in Civil Engineering and a PhD (2011) in Energy Engineering from University College Cork and an MScEng (1999) in Environmental & Transportation Engineering from Trinity College Dublin. She is a Chartered Engineer, Fellow of Engineers Ireland and a Fellow of the UK Higher Education Authority and a member of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society (VTS) and Power Energy Society (PES). She returned to academia in 2009 after 12 years in industry. Prior to joining Queen’s University Belfast in 2011, she worked in the School of Engineering in University College Cork as a Lecturer and an Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Research Fellow. While in industry she worked for ESB International, Siemens, PM Group and SWS Energy primarily in projects in energy, waste, pharmaceutical and telecommunications. She has three specific research areas; wind power integration, power and gas systems and transport electrification. Her research income to date includes competitive national and international awards (e.g. EPSRC, US-Ireland SFI NSF DfE & EC H2020) and industry funding (e.g. Carbon Trading Ltd., SSE) totalling £2.4M (ownership £866k since 2010). She has a h-index of 22 (Scopus), 19 (Web of Science) and 23 (Google Scholar) and she has published more than 100 articles.

Speech title: Meeting the challenge of climate change

Abstract: The Paris Agreement prioritises urgent finance, technology and capacity-building to rapidly deploy low-carbon renewable energy technologies. The aim of this is to ensure a resilient, safe and sustainable society that can respond effectively to the challenges and opportunities of climate change. As renewable energy steadily grows globally at all levels in the energy system security of energy supply rules for governments, regulators, producers and end-users will need to be re-evaluated. Thus needing an urgent ‘join the dots’ approach. Currently analyses of energy systems are for the most part high level or piecemeal tending to focus on quantifying energy and greenhouse gas emission transformations and fluxes at a sectoral level. This can be useful to inform, but for a multidimensional complex intersectoral energy system this is just statistical book keeping. New cross-disciplinary approaches are urgently needed by society to respond to the real environmental, technical and economic challenges in order to effectively make our food, energy and water systems resilient, robust and fit for purpose into the future so that our valuable resources are not wasted. This opinion based keynote discusses this dynamic, describes her work and that of others and suggests how we can collaborate successfully to meet the challenge of climate change.

 

Keynote Speaker III

Prof. Mohamed El Hachemi Benbouzid (IET Fellow)
University of Brest, France

Mohamed Benbouzid received the B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from the University of Batna, Batna, Algeria, in 1990, the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the National Polytechnic Institute of Grenoble, Grenoble, France, in 1991 and 1994, respectively, and the Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches degree from the University of Picardie “Jules Verne,” Amiens, France, in 2000. After receiving the Ph.D. degree, he joined the Professional Institute of Amiens, University of Picardie “Jules Verne,” where he was an Associate Professor of electrical and computer engineering. Since September 2004, he has been with the University of Brest, Brest, France, where he is a Full Professor of electrical engineering. Prof. Benbouzid is also a Distinguished Professor and a 1000 Talent Expert at the Shanghai Maritime University, Shanghai, China. His main research interests and experience include analysis, design, and control of electric machines, variable-speed drives for traction, propulsion, and renewable energy applications, and fault diagnosis of electric machines. Prof. Benbouzid is a Fellow of the IET and an IEEE Senior Member. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal on Energy Conversion. He is also an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion and the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. He is a Subject Editor for the IET Renewable Power Generation.

 

Keynote Speaker IV

Prof. Junji Tamura
Kitami Institute of Technology, Japan

Junji Tamura (M’86–SM’92) received his B. Sc. Eng. Degree from Muroran Institute of Technology, Japan, in 1979, and M.Sc. Eng. and Dr. Eng. degrees from Hokkaido University, Japan, in 1981 and 1984 respectively, all in electrical engineering. He became a lecturer in 1984, an Associate Professor in 1986, and a Professor in 1996 at the Kitami Institute of Technology, Japan. From 1991 to 1992, he had joined the Energy Systems Research Center of University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) as a visiting research Professor. He had been a chairman of the committee of Rotating Machinery of IEEJ (The Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan) from 2008 to 2010, and he was a conference chair of　International Conference on Electrical Machines and Systems 2012 (ICEMS 2012, Sapporo, Japan) in 2012. From 2006 to 2014, he had been a Vice President, and from 2014 to 2018 he had been an Executive Vice President of the Kitami Institute of Technology. He is currently a Professor and the Head of the Laboratory of Electric Machinery of the Kitami Institute of Technology, Japan. His main research interests and experience include analysis of synchronous machines, analysis and simulation of power system dynamics and stability, and analysis and control system design of wind power generation system. He has authored or co-authored about 180 peer-reviewed journal papers and presented about 220 papers in international conferences.

 

Keynote Speaker V

Prof. Farhad Rachidi (IEEE Fellow)
Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Switzerland

Farhad Rachidi (M’93–SM’02–F’10) received the M.S. degree in electrical engineering and the Ph.D. degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland, in 1986 and 1991, respectively. He was with the Power Systems Laboratory, Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, until 1996. In 1997, he joined the Lightning Research Laboratory, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada. From 1998 to 1999, he was with Montena EMC, Rossens, Switzerland. He is currently a Titular Professor and the Head of the EMC Laboratory with the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, Lausanne, Switzerland. He has authored or co-authored over 200 scientific papers published in peer-reviewed journals and over 400 papers presented at international conferences.

Dr. Rachidi is currently a member of the Advisory Board of the IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility and the President of the Swiss National Committee of the International Union of Radio Science. He has received numerous awards including the 2005 IEEE EMC Technical Achievement Award, the 2005 CIGRE Technical Committee Award, the 2006 Blondel Medal from the French Association of Electrical Engineering, Electronics, Information Technology and Communication (SEE), the 2016 Berger Award from the International Conference on Lightning Protection, the Best Paper Award of the IEEE Transactions on EMC (2016 and 2018), and the Motohisa Kanda Award for the most cited paper of the IEEE Transactions on EMC (2012-2016 and 2014-2018). In 2014, he was conferred the title of Honorary Professor of the Xi’an Jiaotong University in China. He served as the Vice-Chair of the European COST Action on the Physics of Lightning Flash and its Effects from 2005 to 2009, the Chairman of the 2008 European Electromagnetics International Symposium, the President of the International Conference on Lightning Protection from 2008 to 2014, the Editor-in-Chief of the Open Atmospheric Science Journal (2010-2012) and the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Electromagnetic Compatibility from 2013 to 2015. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and of the SUMMA Foundation, and a member of the Swiss Academy of Sciences.

Keynote Speaker VI

Paul Roege, P.E.
Senior VP for Strategic Initiatives, Typhoon HIL, Inc.

Paul Roege is a lifelong energy aficionado who currently is focusing on the role of energy in growing resilience among communities and regions, building to the enterprise level. He advocates re-thinking the constraints imposed by today’s energy markets, instead invoking new technologies to allow everyone to participate in value creation through energy management, collaboration, and use.  As a US Army officer, Colonel Roege led development of new concepts and strategies that shifted the focus from simply treating energy as a scarce commodity, instead emphasizing creative ways to invoke energy capabilities most effectively to achieve such operational needs as awareness, mobility, and stealth. This concept of Energy-Informed Operations offers a model for more constructive, creative, democratic models for civilian community energy networks, especially in remote and developing areas.

Paul has over 34 years of international experience in both civilian and military capacities, including nuclear operations and safety, energy system engineering, and facility construction and operations. He is a registered professional engineer, a West Point graduate and alumnus of Boston University (MBA) and MIT (Nuclear Engineer).