Dr. Fred Barez is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at San Jose State University (SJSU). Dr. Barez is also director of the Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Technology Laboratory where he is engaged in research related to advanced transportation including electric drive propulsion system, collision avoidance sensors and application, smart and driverless vehicles , vehicle mobile connectivity, vehicle cyber security, virtual driving, distracted driving, and autonomous vehicles through collaboration with industry. He teaches Dynamic Systems Vibration and Control, Electronics Packaging and Design, Hybrid and Electric Vehicle Fundamentals, Dr. Barez has authored over 60 journal and conference publications, 4 book manuscripts and 2 book chapters. He has supervised 180 graduate student projects and theses. Dr. Barez is an active reviewer for several national and international publications related to energy, battery storage, energy efficiency and management, and smart sensors and devices. Prior to joining San Jose State University, Dr. Barez worked in Disk Drive Storage industry and was co-founder and founder of two successful start-ups. Dr. Barez is a member and Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), a member of the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), and Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

His research involves Smart Vehicles, Advanced Transportation, Machine Learning, Cyber Security, Smart Home and Energy Efficiency. He is also involved in space exploration and developing self-contained habitation modules for use in orbit or on planets.

Eduardo B. Farfán, a professor of Nuclear Engineering in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been at Kennesaw State University since 2014. He was born in La Paz Bolivia and completed his undergraduate studies in Nuclear Physics at the Belorussian State University in Minsk, Belarus. He then obtained a second B.S. in Nuclear Engineering at the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL. Farfán earned a Masters of Engineering and Ph.D. in Nuclear Engineering Sciences at the University of Florida. As a graduate student, Farfán received a U.S. Department-of-Energy Applied Health Physics Fellowship from the Oak Ridge Institute for Science and Education and U.S. Department-of-Energy Nuclear Engineering and Health Physics Fellowship from the Office of Nuclear Energy, Science, and Technology to complete his ME and Ph.D., respectively. His experience includes fifteen years of experience in Nuclear Engineering and Health Physics fields involving radiation protection, internal/external/environmental dosimetry and radiation detector/radiation mapping prototype development with increasing responsibilities of program development, technical complexity, project management, and leadership. Farfán has actively participated in radiation safety programs and their field implementation. He has developed procedures to determine suitable engineered radiological controls and dose exposure reduction methods. Some of the tools used for this purpose include mapping technologies, photon/gamma ray shielding and dose assessment programs, Monte Carlo/deterministic simulations, and analyses of radiological survey data. In addition, Farfán has developed and taught undergraduate and graduate health physics/nuclear engineering/mechanical engineering courses, provided health physics training, and mentored less experience personnel and several interns. He worked as an Assistant Professor for the Nuclear Engineering Program at South Carolina State University and the Department of Physics at Idaho State University. Farfán also worked as a Principal Engineer for the U.S. Department of Energy’s Savannah River National Laboratory. He is fluent in Spanish and Russian. His knowledge of the Russian culture has helped him tremendously with several projects involving radiological risk assessments of the Chernobyl Accident. Farfán has a large number of publications and has presented his work extensively at meetings of scientific societies. He has a few US patents. Farfán has had several positions in professional societies including Chair of the American Nuclear Society’s Decommissioning and Environmental Sciences Division and President of the Savannah River Site Chapter of the Health Physics Society.

Small Modular Reactors, New Nuclear Fuels, Nuclear Fuel Heat Transfer and Vacancy formation, Environmental/Internal/External Dosimetry, Monte Carlo Simulations, Radiation Detection and Mapping.

Bruce Chehroudi has accumulated years of technical and leadership experiences in different capacities and organizations. This includes such positions as President at Advanced Technology Consultants, Principal Scientist and Group Leader appointment at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) ERCInc, a Chief Scientist at Raytheon STX, a Visiting Technologist at Ford’s Advanced Manufacturing Technology Development (AMTD) center, a tenured Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Kettering University and University of Illinois, and served as a Senior Research Staff/Research Fellow at Princeton University. Chehroudi directed numerous multi-million dollar interdisciplinary projects in areas involving chemically reacting flows, combustion and emission of pollutants, sustainable and alternative energy sources, distributed ignition, material/fuel injection, advanced pollution reduction technologies, propulsion concepts, gas turbine and liquid rocket engines, combustion instability, laser optical diagnostics, spectroscopy, supercritical fluids and applications in environmental and propulsion systems, advanced composites, MEMS, nanotechnology, and micro fluidics.

chemically reacting flows, combustion and emission of pollutants, sustainable and alternative energy sources, distributed ignition, material/fuel injection, advanced pollution reduction technologies, propulsion concepts, gas turbine and liquid rocket engines, combustion instability, laser optical diagnostics, spectroscopy, supercritical fluids and applications in environmental and propulsion systems, advanced composites, MEMS, nanotechnology, and micro fluidics.

Ramamurthy Prabhakaran,joined at Old Dominion University in 1979 and working as an eminent professor of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, has been at the Old Dominion University since 1987. He obtained his PhD in Mechanical Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology in 1970. He worked as a Graduate Research Assistant, I.I.T., Chicago from 1967-1970; Research Associate, I.I.T., Chicago from 1971- 1972; and worked as Assistant Professor in Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India; promoted to full Professor in 1980; Associate Professor, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, from 1979- 1985; Professor, Old Dominion University from 1985- 1987.

Composite Materials, Experimental Mechanics, Aeronautics, Recent Advances in Mechanical Engineering

Ramesh K. Agarwal is the William Palm Professor of Engineering and the director of Aerospace Research and Education Center at Washington University in St. Louis. From 1994 to 2001, he was the Sam Bloomfield Distinguished Professor and Executive Director of the National Institute for Aviation Research at Wichita State University in Kansas. From 1978 to 1994, he 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. Dr. Agarwal received Ph.D in Aeronautical Sciences from Stanford University in 1975, M.S. in Aeronautical Engineering from the University of Minnesota in 1969 and B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India in 1968. He is the author and coauthor of over 400 publications and serves on the editorial board of 20+ journals. He has given many plenary, keynote and invited lectures at various national and international conferences worldwide. Professor Agarwal continues to serve on many academic, government, and industrial advisory committees. Dr. Agarwal is a Fellow of sixteen societies including the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), American Association for Advancement of Science (AAAS), American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), American Physical Society (APS), American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME), Royal Aeronautical Society and American society for Engineering Education (ASEE). He has received many prestigious honors and national/international awards from various professional societies and organizations for his research contributions.

Computational Fluid Dynamic,Flow Control,Computational Electromagnetics.

Julius Kaplunov has received his PhD and DSC from the Institute for Problems in Mechanics. Moscow. He is Professor and Head of Mathematics Research Centre at Keele University, UK. He has co-authored around 130 publications and served as an editorial board member of a number of reputed journals, such as Mathematics and Mechanics of Solids and Mechanics of Time Dependent Materials. His awards and honors include a Humboldt Fellowship at TU Munich, Russian State Prize in Science in Technology, along with visiting positions at University of Alberta, Bordeaux University, University of Modena, City University of Hong-Kong, and Tel-Aviv University

My research interests lie in the general area of physical applied mathematics, including continuum mechanics, acoustics, asymptotic analysis, and multi-scale modelling.

Dr. Beyene received his Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Power Engineering from Warsaw University of Technology. He joined the faculty of SDSU in 1989. His research has been concerned with energy systems: renewables, efficient power sources with emphasis on combined heat and power applications, cycle and energy analyses, mathematical modeling, and simulation. He has won numerous grants from US Department of Energy, San Diego Gas and Electric, California Energy Commission, Oakridge National Lab, University City Science Center, Lockheed Martin, California Institute for Energy Efficiency, and Southern California Edison Co. In his spare time, he plays soccer and skis on the famous slopes of the Sierra.

Energy systems: renewables, efficient power sources with emphasis on combined heat and power applications, cycle and energy analyses, mathematical modeling, and simulation.

Chan Ham, an Associate professor and Department Chair of Mechatronics Eng. at Kennesaw State University, since 2015. He obtained his PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering at University of Central Florida in 1995. He is working as a faculty member at Southern Polytechnic State University/ Kennesaw State University, USA from 2010. Now he is working as an Associate Prof. & Dept. Chair of Mechatronics Eng. at Kennesaw State University.

Nonlinear control systems, Space systems, Mechatronics, and Maglev

J.F. Woodward completed a Ph.D. in history (of science) at the University of Denver in 1972 after obtaining bachelors and masters degrees in physics at Middlebury College and New York University in the 1960s. Retired in 2005, he is emeritus professor of history and adjunct professor of physics at California State University Fullerton where he continues to do experimental work on advanced propulsion and the enigmatic sciences (gravity manipulation). Noting that inertia in general relativity is a gravitational phenomenon where local objects are seemingly instantaneously coupled to distant matter in the universe, he has elaborated a way that transient phenomena can be used to perform said manipulation. This, and other material related to this talk, can be found in his recent book: Making Starships and Stargates: the Science of Interstellar Propulsion and Absurdly Benign Wormholes published by Springer Verlag in 2013. His work is supported by the exotic propulsion initiative of the Space Studies Institute.

Advanced propulsion and enigmatic sciences

Timothy Sands completed his PhD at the Naval Postgraduate School and postdoctoral studies at Stanford University and Columbia University. He is Dean and Senior Military Professor at the Air Force Institute of Technology. He has published research in archival journals, conference proceedings, a book chapter, in addition to keynote and invitational presentations.

Nuclear Deterrence, Command and Control Communications, Korean Affairs, Chinese, Defense Systems Acquisitions, Guidance and Control, Space Systems, Astronautics, Aerospace, Mechanical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Electronic Warfare

Prof. Dr. Ir. Dean Vučinić, has joined Vesalius College (VeCo), which is affiliated to the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), as senior scientist and advisor in 2017. He has been affiliated to VUB since 1988. Before joining VeCo, he was guest professor and senior research scientist at the VUB Faculty of Engineering Sciences (IR) as member of two of its departments: Mechanical Engineering (MECH) and Electronics & Informatics (ETRO). He is part-time associate professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Information Technology (FERIT), University of Osijek, holding the chair of Visual Computing.His Ph.D. thesis became a book in 2010, ISBN 978-3-8383-3500-1. In the early 90's he developed "CFView - Computational Field Visualization System", the first-time-ever interactive visualization software adapted to numerical simulation solvers, completely based on the object-oriented technology, and fully implemented in C++. It has to be noted that VUB spin-off NUMECA is still using his software after more than 20 years, and in addition, more than 20 VUB PhD-s applied CFView in their visualization and data analysis tasks. During almost 30 years at VUB, he successfully participated in more than 20 European projects under the European Frameworks, EUREKA/ITEA and Tempus educational programs. He is author of more than 50 scientific papers in international reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and in addition, author of several book chapters. He is member of International Advisory Boards and Scientific Committees of Journals and Conferences, acting as chair, session organizer, reviewer and editor of respective papers proceedings. Due to his international presence, he is promoting and encouraging international cooperation in research and development, and education, just mentioning some of the realized initiatives with USA, Canada, Russia, Brazil, India and Japan, among others. He is the European Commission expert in H2020 and member of international organizations as follows: AIAA, IEEE,ACM,SAE&ASME.

His work is mostly related to Research and Development (R&D) projects, and his interest covers the topics of Scientific Visualization, Modelling and Simulation, Optimization methodologies and techniques, which are very often found together in solving complex problems within the multidisciplinary engineering and computer science domains.

Dean Vučinić, has joined Vesalius College (VeCo), which is affiliated to the Vrije Universiteit Brussel (VUB), as senior scientist and advisor in 2017. He has been affiliated to VUB since 1988. Before joining VeCo, he was guest professor and senior research scientist at the VUB Faculty of Engineering Sciences (IR) as member of two of its departments: Mechanical Engineering (MECH) and Electronics & Informatics (ETRO). He is part-time associate professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Computer Science and Information Technology (FERIT), University of Osijek, holding the chair of Visual Computing.His Ph.D. thesis became a book in 2010, ISBN 978-3-8383-3500-1. In the early 90's he developed "CFView - Computational Field Visualization System", the first-time-ever interactive visualization software adapted to numerical simulation solvers, completely based on the object-oriented technology, and fully implemented in C++. It has to be noted that VUB spin-off NUMECA is still using his software after more than 20 years, and in addition, more than 20 VUB PhD-s applied CFView in their visualization and data analysis tasks. During almost 30 years at VUB, he successfully participated in more than 20 European projects under the European Frameworks, EUREKA/ITEA and Tempus educational programs. He is author of more than 50 scientific papers in international reviewed journals and conference proceedings, and in addition, author of several book chapters. He is member of International Advisory Boards and Scientific Committees of Journals and Conferences, acting as chair, session organizer, reviewer and editor of respective papers proceedings. Due to his international presence, he is promoting and encouraging international cooperation in research and development, and education, just mentioning some of the realized initiatives with USA, Canada, Russia, Brazil, India and Japan, among others. He is the European Commission expert in H2020 and member of international organizations as follows: AIAA, IEEE,ACM,SAE&ASME.

His work is mostly related to Research and Development (R&D) projects, and his interest covers the topics of Scientific Visualization, Modelling and Simulation, Optimization methodologies and techniques, which are very often found together in solving complex problems within the multidisciplinary engineering and computer science domains.

Dr. Podowski is Professor of Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics in the Department of Mechanical, Aerospace and Nuclear Engineering at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and Director of Center for Multiphase Research. Professor Podowski has over 350 technical publications, including 7 books/book-chapters and 60+ journal papers. He is Fellow of American Nuclear Society (ANS) and recipient of the 2014 ANS Compton Award.

His research interests include fundamentals and applications of multiphase flow and heat transfer, computational multiphase flow dynamics (CMFD), supercritical-pressure turbomachinery and systems, dynamics and stability of multiphase systems and nuclear reactor thermal-hydraulics and safety