Mohini Sain
University of Toronto, Canada

Prof Sain serves as the Founding Director of Centre CBBP at the University of Toronto since year 2001 and he is the former dean and founding Endowed Ford Motor Canada Chair Professor in Sustainable Materials in the Department of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto, a world’s No.1 University in Sustainability. Acting as a founding Director of Centre for Biocomposites and Biomaterials Processing, first in kind research commercialization driven by transdisciplinary education, training and research, centre focuses on sustainable and low carbon materials. Formerly Dean of Faculty of Forestry, University of Toronto. Prof. Sain provided leadership and vision with a transdisciplinary approach. As a highly accomplished researcher-entrepreneur and Hi-Cited research scholar with an impressive record of impactful publications including Nature and Science family of journals, he also founded multiplesuccessful spin-off companies with his collaborative approach. Prof. Sain, a fellow of Royal Society of Chemistry, Royal Society of Canada and Canadian Academy of Engineers. He was awarded honorary degree Doctor Honoris Causa. Prof. Sain is known globally for his pioneering work on the Biocar Initiative: in 2009, an issue of Toronto Life magazine featured his idea as second best among 25 World Changing Ideas from the Smartest Torontonians. After receiving his PhD as a UNESCO Fellow from Technical University in 1988, he served several industries in consulting positions including Barum, Europe and Aspen Research Division of Anderson Corp, St Paul, USA. Prof. Sain holds numerous prestigious international and national awards: A few recent ones are the North American Entrepreneurship Award, the Plastic Innovation Award and the KALEV PUGI Award for innovation and contribution to industry. He is world-renowned for his expertise in transforming research idea into commercialization. Among his co-founded companies that are spin-offs from his research findings. Natures Affinity Inc. HyCLight Inc. Greencore Composites Inc and GreenNano Technologies Inc made a distinct impact in societal value addition in sustainable and renewable products and manufacturing. To date he has made over 100 technology transfers to industries and has helped create new companies for making products including circular materials economy, Biomass and CO2 to Hydrogen, waste plastics and solid management and valuecreation, Battery and Fuel Cell energy materials, CO2 capture and utilization, Lightweight functional products, biomedical devices. He also served G20 advisory Committee Bioeconomy lead and founding member of many recycling and sustainable materials NGOs including CNCC ( Canadian natural Composite Council (2000), BioAuto Council (2008). His H-index is 91 and published in Nature and other high impact journals in energy and energy materials.

 

 

Ernest Kian Jon Chua
National University of Singapore, Singapore

Dr. Chua Kian Jon is an internationally recognized expert in clean thermal energy systems. His research spans thermal energy recovery, hybrid cooling, desiccant dehumidification, solar-assisted systems, and thermal energy storage for buildings and industrial applications. He is internationally recognized for pioneering work in dew-point evaporative cooling, membrane dehumidification, and waste heat recovery, enabling low-energy solutions for sectors such as buildings, data centres, EVs, and district cooling. Dr. Chua has published over 280 SCI-indexed journal papers, eight monographs, and holds more than 10 patents. A Fellow of the Royal Society, IET, Energy Institute, and IMechE, he ranks among the top 1% of scientists globally (USERN) and top 2% of energy researchers per Stanford since 2021, with 17,500+ citations and an H-index of 70. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Thermal Science and Engineering (Nature Portfolio) and serves as Associate Editors of numerous journals in Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis. A two-term NUS Dean’s Chair holder, he has received multiple international awards and leads major competitive research projects and is frequently invited to deliver plenary and keynote lectures and serve on technical committees at major international conferences. His work continues to shape the future of sustainable thermal energy systems across Asia and beyond.

 

 

Dong-Won Kang
Chung-Ang University, South Korea

Dong-Won Kang received his Ph.D. degree from the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Seoul National University, Korea, in 2013. He subsequently conducted postdoctoral research in the Department of Physical Electronics at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan (2013–2014). He then served as an Assistant Professor in the School of Solar & Energy Engineering at Cheongju University (2015–2017). Since 2018, he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Energy Systems Engineering at Chung-Ang University, Korea.

Dr. Kang’s research interests cover a wide range of semiconductor materials and optoelectronic devices, including silicon-, organic-, and perovskite-based systems. His group focuses on energy materials and devices such as perovskite-based tandem photovoltaics and memristors. In recent years, he has placed particular emphasis on metal halide perovskite materials, exploring exciting research directions in tandem solar cells and lead-free perovskite technologies, achieving significant scientific outcomes.

To date, Dr. Kang has published over 130 SCIE-indexed journal papers and holds 20 patents (filed and registered). His continuing research aims to advance high-performance, stable, and sustainable optoelectronic materials and devices for next-generation energy technologies.