Tassos Karayiannis studied at the CityUniversity London (BSc hons in Mechanical Eng.) and the University of Western Ontario (PhD in Eng. Science – Convective Heat Transfer). He started his career as a researcher at Southampton University and later as a British Technology Group Researcher at City University. Subsequently he worked at London South Bank University and joined Brunel University London in 2005 where he is now Professor of Thermal Engineering,Leader of the Two-Phase Flow and Heat Transfer Group and Director of the Energy Efficient and Sustainable Technologies Research Centre.Professor Karayiannis carried out fundamental and applied research in a number of single-and two-phase heat transfer areas. He has been involved with two-phase flow and heat transfer for over 30 years. Initially he worked on the enhancement of pool boiling and condensation processes using high intensity electric fields (Electrohydrodynamicenhancement of Heat Transfer). In parallel, he carried out extensive experimental work in pool boiling heat transfer with plane and enhanced surfaces. Professor Karayiannis has also been very actively involved with research in flow boiling in small to micro tubes and micro-multi-channels. He has published more than 260 chapters in books,papers and industrial reports. He is a Fellow of the EI, the IMechE and the WSSET, Member of the Assembly for International Heat Transfer Conferencesand the Chairman of the UK National Heat Transfer Committee.

Professor Jiju Antony is recognised worldwide as a leader in Lean Six Sigma (LSS) methodology for achieving and sustaining operational excellence. He is a Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering and certified LSS Master Black Belt in the department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Khalifa University, Abu Dhabi. He has a proven track record for conducting internationally leading research in the field of Quality Management, Continuous Improvement and Operational Excellence. Professor Antony has authored over 450 journal, conference and white papers and 12 textbooks. He has published over 280 papers on Six Sigma and Lean Six Sigma topics and is considered to be one of the highest in the world for the number of Six Sigma publications. He has an h-index of 87 according to Google Scholar with a total of over 28000 citations on quality management and operational excellence topics, the highest in the world. He is currently serving as the Editor of the International Journal of Lean Six Sigma, Associate Editor of the TQM and Business Excellence Journal, Associate Editor of TQM Journal (Emerald) and Associate Editor of Quality in Education (ASQ). He is serving on the Editorial Board of six international journals. Professor Antony has worked on a number of consultancy projects with several blue-chip companies such as Rolls-Royce, Bosch, Siemens, Parker Pen, Siemens, Johnson and Johnson, GE Plastics, Ford, Scottish Power, Tata Motors, Thales, Nokia, Philips, General Electric, NHS, Glasgow City Council, ACCESS, Scottish Water, Police Scotland, University Sectors and a number of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises. He has successfully supervised more than 15 PhD students and over 250 MSc students. Professor Antony is a Fellow of the Royal Statistical Society, UK; Fellow of the Chartered Quality Institute, UK; Fellow of the Institute of Operations Management, UK; Fellow of the American Society for Quality, Fellow of the International Lean Six Sigma Institute and Fellow of the Institute of Six Sigma Professionals. He has been elected to the International Academy of Quality as an Academician last year, the first one ever elected from Scotland and fourth from the UK. He has recently won the lifetime achievement award for his contribution to the field of Lean Six Sigma research from the International Lean Six Sigma Institute and Outstanding Contribution to quality management practice from the leading professional-quality body in the UK (Chartered Quality Institute).

Dr. Guangbo Hao is a Senior Lecturer with University College Cork, Ireland. His research areas lie in design of compliant mechanisms and robotics and their applications in precision engineering, energy harvesting and biomedical devices. He obtained his PhD degree in Mechanical Engineering from Heriot-Watt University in 2011. He is a member of ASME and an elected member of the ASME Mechanisms and Robotics Committee. He is serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the IFToMM affiliated journal: Mechanical Sciences and the Associate Editor of ASME Journal of Mechanisms and Robotics. He has won some accolades including the 2017 and 2018 ASME Compliant Mechanisms Awards in a row. He has published over 160 peer-reviewed papers. Recently he has developed interest in demonstrating how Origami creativity can inform Robotics/Engineering education.

Dr. Haiping Du received the PhD degree in mechanical design and theory from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China, in 2002. He was a Research Fellow with the University of Technology, Sydney, from 2005 to 2009, and was a Postdoctoral Research Associate with Imperial College London from 2004 to 2005 and the University of Hong Kong from 2002 to 2003. He is a Professor at the School of Electrical, Computer and Telecommunications Engineering, University of Wollongong, Australia, since 2016. He is a Subject Editor of the Journal of Franklin Institute, an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics and IEEE Control Systems Society Conference, an Editorial Board Member for some international journals, such as Journal of Sound and Vibration, IMechE Journal of Systems and Control Engineering, Journal of Low Frequency Noise, Vibration and Active Control, and a Guest Editor of IEEE Transactions on Mechatronics, IET Control Theory and Application, IET Intelligent Transportation Systems, Mechatronics, Advances in Mechanical Engineering, etc. His research interests include vibration control, vehicle dynamics and control systems, robust control theory and engineering applications, electric vehicles, robotics and automation, smart materials and structures.

Daniele received the bachelor and master degrees in Control Engineering with highest honors from ”Sapienza”, University of Rome, in 2007 and 2009, respectively. In 2009, he also received the ”Excellence Path Award” from Sapienza. In 2013, he earned the PhD title with a thesis prepared at INRIA Sophia Antipolis, France, under the supervision of Tarek Hamel and Claude Samson. From 2013 to 2017, he has been a postdoc at the Istituto Italiano di Tecnologia (IIT) working within the EU project CoDyCo. Since August 2017, he is the head of the Dynamic Interaction Control lab. The main lab research focus is on the humanoid robot locomotion problem, with specific attention on the control and planning of the associated nonlinear systems. Also, the lab is pioneering Aerial Humanoid Robotics, whose main aim is to make flying humanoid robots. Currently, the lab is implementing iRonCub, the jet-powered flying version of the humaonid robot iCub. Daniele is also the scientific PI of the H2020 European Project AnDy, task leader of the H2020 European Project SoftManBot, and coordinator of the joint laboratory between IIT and Honda JP. In 2019, he was awarded as Innovator of the year Under 35 Europe from the MIT Technology Review magazine. Since 2020 and in the context of the split site PhD supervision program, Daniele is a visiting lecturer at University of Manchester. In July 2020, Daniele was selected to represent Italy at the Global Partnership on Artificial Intelligence (GPAI, conceived by Canada and France during their G7 presidencies) for the working group on COVID-19 response. Since September 1st 2021, Daniele is the PI leading the Artificial and Mechanical Intelligence research line at IIT.

Prior to joining the faculty at Washington University in 2001, Professor Agarwal was the Chair of the Aerospace Engineering Department at Wichita State University from 1994 to 1996 and the Executive Director of National Institute for Aviation Research from 1996 to 2001. From 1994 to 2001, he was also the Bloomfield Distinguished Professor at Wichita State University. From 1978 to 1994, Professor Agarwal worked in various scientific and managerial positions at McDonnell Douglas Research Laboratories in St. Louis. He became the Program Director and McDonnell Douglas Fellow in 1990. From 1976 to 1978, Professor Agarwal worked as a NRC Research Associate at NASA Ames Research Center and as a Principal Research Engineer at Rao and Associates in Palo Alto, California from 1975 to 1976. Over a period of 45 years, Professor Agarwal has worked in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Computational Magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) and Electromagnetics, Computational Aeroacoustics, Multidisciplinary Design and Optimization, Rarefied Gas Dynamics and Hypersonic Flows, Bio-Fluid Dynamics, and Flow and Flight Control. More recently, he has devoted some of his efforts in nanotechnology and renewable energy systems - in particular wind, solar and biomass. He is the author and coauthor of over 600 publications and serves on the editorial board of more than 20 journals. He has given many plenary, keynote and invited lectures at various national and international conferences in over 60 countries worldwide. Professor Agarwal continues to serve on many professional, government, and industrial advisory committees.

Dr. Yang is a full professor in the School of Engineering, RMIT University, Australia. His main research interests include advanced composite structures, nanocomposites, structural stability and dynamics, smart structures and control, and nano/micro-mechanics. He is an author of over 400 papers including 250 journal papers which have so far attracted over 16900 Google Scholar citations with h-index 75. He is the Highly Cited Researcher (Cross Field) in 2019, 2020, and 2021 by Clarivate Analytics and is named Global Field Leader in Mechanical Engineering in 2020, Australia’s Research Field Leader in Mechanical Engineering in 2019, 2020, and 2021, and Australia’s Research Field Leader in Structural Engineering in 2021 by Australian Research Magazine. Prof Yang is the Editor-in-Chief of Engineering Structures (JCR Q1), the Associate Editor and Editor Board Member for many international journals.

Dr. Istvan Gabor Gyurika is an associate professor and the head of Department of Mechanics at the University of Pannonia in Hungary. He is the president at the Manufacturing System Department of the Hungarian Scientific Association for Mechanical Engineering. He has lecturer and researcher experience for more than 15 years. He started scientific career at the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in 2006. He has been teaching and researching at the University of Pannonia since 2016. He coordinates a national funded project cooperating with manufacturing companies on development of new type CVD coating and CVD equipment. Currently he is guiding 4 PhD scholars. His research interest include industry 4.0, digital manufacturing and the cutting of different brittle materials.