Invited Speakers

Professor Fei Qi is a distinguished professor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University. He received his Ph.D. from University of Science and Technology of China in 1997, and conducted his postdoctoral work at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Sandia National Laboratories from 1998 to 2003. He has worked as a professor at National Synchrotron Radiation Laboratory, University of Science and Technology of China during 2003-2014. In early 2015, he moved to Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research interests include the development of synchrotron VUV photoionization mass spectrometry and its applications in combustion and energy research.

Prof. Qi has co-authored more than 200 peer-reviewed journal papers including Science, Angewandte Chemie International Edition, Progress in Energy and Combustion Science, Combustion and Flame, Proceedings of the Combustion Institute etc. He was elected as a fellow of American Physical Society (APS Fellow) in 2012, and gave a plenary lecture on the 34th International Symposium on Combustion. He serves as a member of the Board of Directors of the Combustion Institute since 2012, and Secretary for Section Affairs of The Combustion Institute since 2016. Currently he is the Chair of China Section of the Combustion Institute. He served or currently serves as a member of the Editorial Board of several journals including Progress in Energy and Combustion Science, Combustion and Flame, Proceedings of the Combustion Institute and Review of Scientific Instruments etc. He also served as a colloquium coordinator of the 34th International Symposium on Combustion.

Professor Hiroaki Watanabe received his Bachelor and Master degrees in Engineering in 1996 and 1998 from Waseda University in Japan. He received his Doctor of Philosophy degree in 2008 from Kyoto University in Japan. He served as a Research Scientist at Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry (CRIEPI) in Japan during 1998-2014. Concurrently, he served as a Visiting Research Fellow at Center for Turbulence Research, Stanford University during 2010-11 and as a Visiting Associate Professor at the University of Tokyo during 2011-14. He is currently in Department of Mechanical Engineering at Kyushu University.

Professor Hiroaki Watanabe is interested in modeling and simulation of multiphase turbulent combustion. His current focus is dispersed two-phase reacting flow. Especially, LES (large-eddy simulation) modeling of coal combustion/gasification and spray combustion associated with turbulent combustion modeling is a current main subject. Recently, applicability of LES to a practical-scale facility such as gas turbine combustors, coal firing boilers and coal gasifiers is investigated in the MEXT K computer project in Japan. He is also serving on the organizing committee of the International Workshop on Coal and Biomass Conversion (CBC Workshop) and invited to serve as a colloquium co-chair on Solid Fuels Combustion at the 37th International Symposium on Combustion at Dublin in 2018.

Professor In-Seuck Jeung has been a professor at Seoul National University since 1984. While he had completed all of his degrees from Seoul National University, he had also affiliated as a visiting scientist at Hosei University, honorary fellow/University of Minnesota and visiting professor/University of California-Irvine.

Prof. Jeung's current research interest includes scramjet combustion, extremely high pressure hydrogen ignition, aero-optical analysis, and CubeSat SNUSAT-1/1b development as a consortium member of QB50 project supported by EU-FP7 and SNUSAT-2 supported by KARI. His long term interest has been focused on scramjet, ramjet, turbojet, pulse detonation engine, ram accelerators, ramjet intake aerodynamics, laser propulsion, laser plasma flow control, and hypersonic aerothermodynamics.

In addition to serving on the board of the Combustion Institute, and a Colloquium Co-Chair, Prof. Jeung has served on the editorial board of The Proceedings of the Combustion Institute, and Progress in Energy and Combustion Science and is also an active participant in the International Symposium on Combustion (ISC), Asia-Pacific Conference on Combustion (ASPACC), Asia-Pacific International Symposium on Aerospace Technology (APISAT), the Asian Joint Conference on Propulsion and Power (AJCPP), and International Symposium on Shock Waves (ISSW). He is also active in the Korean Society of Combustion (KSC), the Korean Society for Aeronautical and Space Sciences (KSASS), the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers (KSPE), and American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) as well.

Dr Lyle Pickett has been employed at Sandia National Laboratories' Combustion Research Facility, in Livermore, California since 2000, where he is a Distinguished Member of the Technical Staff. He earned a PhD from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and B.S. and M.S. degrees from Brigham Young University, all in mechanical engineering.

His group at Sandia is recognized for state-of-the art research using optical engines and laser-based diagnostics of combustion. Pickett's research expertise is in spray combustion in a unique chamber that produces engine-relevant conditions. Pickett leads an effort to share datasets at these conditions online through the Engine Combustion Network, which is an international experimental and modeling collaboration dedicated to the improvement of engine CFD codes.

Professor Michael Brear is the Director of the Melbourne Energy Institute at the University of Melbourne. He guides the Institute's research on the technical, economic, environmental and social impacts of energy systems. Much of his own research is collaborative with industry and government on:

Professor Satyanarayan R. Chakravarthy received his Bachelor of Technology in Aerospace Engineering in 1991 from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Madras, Chennai, India. He then went on to receive his Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering and Doctor of Philosophy degrees from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia, USA in 1992 and 1995 respectively.

He served as a Post-Doctoral Fellow at Georgia Tech during 1996-97 and as Visiting Faculty at the Department of Aerospace Engineering at IIT Madras during 1997-98, before permanently joining the latter department in 1998 as Assistant Professor. He is a Professor there sicne 2009.

Prof. Satya Chakravarthy is coordinating the National Centre for Combustion Research and Development established by the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, since 2011, and also the Centre of Propulsion Technologies being established with the support of the Defence Research and Development Organization, Government of India. He has over 75 publications in international journals and 230 papers in international/national conferences. He has won the Young Engineer Award from the Indian National Academy of Engineering in 2003, Young Faculty Recognition Award from IIT Madras in 2009, DRDO Academic Excellence Award in 2009, Dalmia-HEMSI-ACHREM Award in High Energy Materials in 2010. He is a member of the editorial board of the Progress in Energy and Combustion Science journal for 2015-18. He has been invited to serve as a colloquium co-chair on Solid Fuels Combustion at the 37th International Symposium on Combustion at Dublin, Ireland in July 2018.

His research interests include propulsion and power, combustion instability, partially premixed flames, spray, flow, and combustion diagnostics, propellant and metal combustion including nano-metals, biomass and coal gasification, and fire research.

Dr Roberts' research interests include experimental combustion, propulsion, and laser-based optical diagnostics for reacting flows. Of fundamental interest is the complex interaction between the various length and velocity scales in turbulent flows and the chemical kinetics associated with combustion. His focus is on understanding these interactions in canonical flames, using advanced techniques to measure scalar and vector quantities of interest. He is currently establishing a unique high-pressure combustion capability at KAUST which will be used to understand combustion phenomena, particularly formation of pollutants such as soot, occurring in practical combustion hardware such as gas turbines and internal combustion engines. Other projects include measurement of unstretched laminar burning velocity of gasolines and it surrogates, with and without additives, at elevated initial pressures, measuring soot morphology and index of refraction at high pressures, developing novel propulsion devices for high efficiency or specific impulse, and cenosphere formation from combustion of heavy fuel oils.

Dr Roberts received his PhD in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Michigan in 1992. Prior to this, he worked in the Strategic Defense Initiative Office for two years and worked at NASA Langley on SCRAMJET concepts after defending his dissertation. He joined NC State University in 1994, where he rose through the academic ranks until leaving for KAUST in 2012. He was an early member of the Clean Combustion Research Center and became the Director in 2014. He is an NSF CAREERS and Army Research Office Young Investigator Award recipient, former chairperson of the Eastern States Section of the Combustion Institute and current vice-chair of the Saudi Section, current member of the AIAA Pressure Gain Combustion PC, and UC Berkeley Springer Professor. He has more than 100 archival publications and 135 conference papers.