Eminent keynote speakers to give lectures on topics including:
- Energy Storage for the Age of Renewables
- Research, Innovation and Commercialization in Sustainable Energy Technologies
- Integrating Planning & Policy, Architecture, Engineering & Economics
- Energy and Environment
- Engineering Thermophysics
- Systemic Change for Cities
- Energy, Water & Food Security Nexus
John Prescott
John Prescott has been a member of British Parliament for a record 40 years representing Hull East as the Labour member of Parliament from 1970 to 2010 and was Deputy Prime Minister from 1997 to 2007, thus becoming the longest-serving UK deputy prime minister with his 10-year term. Whilst Deputy PM he held an expanded brief as Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions.
During this time, he was passionate about improving the energy efficiency of the UK housing stock and he vigorously opposed the privatisation of the rail industry. John Prescott focused on to the role of the car in the wider environmental picture and the need for effective public transport alternatives in order to reduce the volume of cars on the roads.
One of his greatest political legacies may be the Thames Gateway, an enormous area of land including much brownfield land, which became a national priority for urban regeneration, taking advantage of the development opportunities realised by the completion of High Speed 1.
John Prescott was the EU negotiator, a key broker of the Kyoto Protocol, leading the UK EU delegation. In October 2015, he was presented with the Shechtman International Leadership Award at SIPS 2015 (Sustainable Industrial Processing Summit) in Antalya, Turkey, for his contributions to sustainable development in politics.
Prescott was awarded a life peerage in 2010 becoming Baron Prescott, of Kingston upon Hull in the County of East Yorkshire and he continues to campaign on issues involving the environment, energy and sustainability from the House of Lords. He is currently the Council of Europe Chair of the Environment Committee dealing with climate change.
With his numerous associations in Africa and China, Lord Prescott will be a great asset to WSSET in helping to forge new links and strengthen existing ones in these important areas. He will also attend and address the forthcoming SET2019, the 18th International Conference on Sustainable Energy Technologies, which will be held in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, from 20th–22nd August 2019.
Matthaios Santamouris
M. Santamouris is a Scientia Professor of High Performance Architecture at UNSW, and past Professor in the University of Athens, Greece. Visiting Professor : Cyprus Institute, Metropolitan University London, Tokyo Polytechnic University, Bolzano University, Brunnel University and National University of Singapore. Past President of the National Center of Renewable and Energy Savings of Greece.
Editor in Chief of the Energy and Buildings Journal, Past Editor in Chief of the Advances Building Energy Research, Associate Editor of the Solar Energy Journal and Member of the Editorial Board of 14 Journals. Editor of the Series of Book on Buildings, published by Earthscan Science Publishers. Editor and author of 14 international books published by Elsevier, Earthscan, Springer, etc. Author of 320 scientific articles published in journals. Reviewer of research projects in 29 countries including USA, UK, France, Germany, Canada, Sweden, etc.
Xudong Zhao
Xudong Zhao is the Director of Research and Professor at the School of Engineering and Computer Science, University of Hull (UK), and has enjoyed a global reputation as a distinguished academia in the areas of renewable energy and energy efficiency technologies, and sustainable heating, cooling and power systems, with particular strength in integrating renewable solar energy source (via PVs, solar thermal collectors, and PV/Thermal) and energy efficiency technologies (e.g. heat pipe, heat pump, CHP and PCM etc) into various decentralised heating, cooling and power systems, thus creating the de-carbonized, decentralized and off-grid energy systems.
Over more than 30 years of professional career, he has led or participated in 57 research projects funded by EU, EPSRC, Royal Society, Innovate-UK, Royal Academy of Engineering, China Ministry of Science and Technology and industry with accumulated fund value of approximately £18 million, 40 engineering consultancy projects worth £5 million, and claimed 11 patents. Up to date, he has supervised 29 PhD students and 23 postdoctoral research fellows, published 211 peer-reviewed papers in high impact journals and referred conferences, involved authorization of 8 books, chaired, organized and gave keynote (invited) speeches in 30 international conferences. His researches in solar PV, solar thermal, solar PV/T (photovoltaic/thermal), heat pump, and sustainable heating & cooling have achieved world-leading standards, being placed at the ‘2017 world highly cited researchers list’, receiving the ‘European Dragon-STAR Innovation Silver Award (2nd place)’, ‘World Society of Sustainable Energy Technology 1st, 2th and 3th Round Innovation Awards’ in consecutive years of 2016, 2017 and 2018, and being nominated as a candidate for ‘2018 World Eni-awards’. He is currently undertaking a number of important national and international roles: (1) Member of the UK ‘EPSRC Engineering Prioritisation Panel’; (2) Executive Board Member of the ‘World Society of Sustainable Energy Technologies’; (3) Executive Management Board Member of the ‘International Conference Series for Sustainable Energy Technologies’; (4) Steering Committee Member of the ‘European District Heating and Cooling Technology Platform’ involving development of work documents for European Commission in this subject (e.g. Digital District Heating and Cooling etc); (5) Editorial board member of the journals ‘Energy’, ‘Energies’, ‘Future Cities and Environment’, ‘Frontiers in Built Environment and Mechanical Engineering’, ‘Heat Exchangers’, ‘Sustainable Cities and Society’, ‘Journal of Architectural Research and Development (JARD)’, ‘Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning’ and ‘Chinese Journal of Mechanical Engineering’; (6) Guest Lead Editors for the ‘Applied Energy’, ‘International Journal of Photo-energy’, ‘Energies’, and ‘Frontier of Energy Researches’; (7) The referee for EU FP7 programme, colleague member of EPSRC (UK), referee of ESRC (UK), French National Agency (ANR), Kazakhstan National Science and Technology Ministry, Portugal Science and Technology section and Hong Kong Research Grant Council; and (8) UK Newton Fund Programme Advisor focusing on China related research collaboration. Recently, he was selected as the member of the ‘EU Academy of Sciences’, and won the sole ‘Research Excellence Award’ from the University of Hull.
Li Shao
Li Shao is Professor in Sustainable Technology for the Built Environment at the University of Reading, UK. Professor Shao has led major research institutions, groups and consortiums. These include Director of the Technology for Sustainable Development Centre, University of Reading, Director of Research at the Institute of Energy and Sustainable Development, De Montfort University (DMU), UK, and Director of Research for the Faculty of Engineering, DMU, as well as the Co-Director of Institute of Building Technology, University of Nottingham.
Professor Shao has carried out pioneering work on urban green infrastructure and its interaction with the built environment and solar infrared radiation. His innovation in building sensors and data analytics focused on user behaviour, particularly in the work place, to yield, often simultaneously, improvements to energy efficiency, well-being and productivity. Professor Shao serves on the Council of the Building Services Research and Information Association.
Hongxing Yang
Prof. Yang received his BEng in 1982 and MEng in 1985 in the Division of HVACR Engineering of Tianjin University, China. He obtained his PhD in 1993 in the Mechanical Engineering Department, University of Wales College of Cardiff, UK. He is now leading the Renewable Energy Research Group (RERG) in the Department of Building Services Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His research interests cover a number of R&D topics in renewable energy applications and energy saving in buildings in urban areas including solar photovoltaic integration in buildings, indirect evaporation cooling, ground-coupled heat pumps and solar cell related materials.
He has over 400 academic papers and 6 professional books published. According to the ShanghaiRanking’s Global Ranking of Academic Subjects 2016 through Elsevier, he was on the list of 150 world most-cited researchers with impactful research in the disciplines of Civil Engineering. He was also “Highly Cited Researcher” in 2017 and 2018 reported by Clarivate Analytics. He is serving the International Journal of Applied Energy as associate editor, International Journal of Low Carbon Technologies as section editor and other international journals as editorial board member. He has been elected as the founding president of the Solar Energy Society of Hong Kong in 2018.
Kamaruzzaman Sopian
Prof. Dato’ Dr. Kamaruzzaman Sopian obtained his BSc in Mechanical Engineering from the University of WisconsinMadison in 1985, MSc in Energy Resources from the University of Pittsburgh in 1989 and PhD. in Mechanical Engineering from the Dorgan Solar Laboratory, University of Miami in 1997. He is presently the Professor in Renewable Energy at the Department of Mechanical and Material Engineering, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia. Currently, he is the Director of the Solar Energy Research Institute, a center of excellence for the research and development in solar energy technology.
He has been involved in the field of solar energy for more than twenty years. His main contributions are in solar radiation modeling, alternative material for solar absorber, solar water heating system with integrated storage system, solar desalination, solar cooling, daylighting using solar light pipes, solar assisted drying systems, grid-connected photovoltaic system, thin film silicon solar cells, combined Photovoltaic thermal or hybrid collector and solar hydrogen production system. He has published over 400 research papers in journals and conferences. He has delivered keynotes speeches at national and international conferences on renewable energy. He is the founding member of the Malaysian Institute of Energy, member of the World Renewable Energy Network based in the United Kingdom and is an associate editor of the Renewable Energy published by Elsevier Ltd. He heads several national subcommittees on renewable energy by the Malaysian government to promote awareness, market enhancement, policy studies and the applications renewable energy. He received the title of Dato’ from Sultan of Perak in 2011.
Abubakr bahaj
Professor AbuBakr Bahaj (FICE, FIET, FRSA, MInstP, CPhys) leads the 55-strong Energy and Climate Change Division and the Sustainable Energy Research Group at the University of Southampton, where he completed his Ph.D. progressing from a researcher to a Personal Chair in Sustainable Energy. For more than 30 years, Professor Bahaj has pioneered sustainable energy research and established the energy theme within the University. His major research programmes can be found at www.energy.soton.ac.uk. These include Renewable Energy (Solar Photovoltaics, Offshore Wind and Marine Energy), Cities, Energy and Infrastructure, Energy for Development, Data and Modelling, Energy and Behaviour, Energy and Buildings, Environmental Impacts, and Microgeneration Technologies.
Professor Bahaj’s work has resulted in over 300 articles, published in academic refereed journals and conference series of international standing. He founded thefounded the
International Marine Energy Journalfor which he is the Editor-in-Chief. Prof Bahaj also holds
visiting professorships at the Xi’an University of Architecture and Technology (XAUAT), Xi’an, China, (2017 to present), the Ångström Laboratory and Engineering University of Uppsala, Sweden (2011-15) and the King Salaman bin Abdulaziz Visiting Chair for Energy Research, at King Abdulaziz University (KAU), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia (2014 to present). He is a Fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers (FICE), Institution of Engineering Technologies (FIET) and the Royal Academy of Arts (FRSA). He is also the Chief Scientific Advisor to the City Southampton —believed to be the first such appointment in the UK – and also a member Research Advisory Group for the UK Department of International Development. In 2014, he was named by the
UK’s Science Council as one of the UK’s 100 leading practising scientists. More detail about Prof Bahaj’s team, projects, publication and
MSc programmes can be found at
www.energy.soton.ac.uk.
