Tsinghua-University of Waterloo Joint Research Centre for Micro/Nano Energy and Environmental Technology
University of Waterloo
200 University Avenue West
Waterloo, Ontario, Canada
N2L 3W8
Contact Zhongchao Tan, Executive Director
JULY 29 – AUGUST 1, 2019, WATERLOO, ONTARIO, CANADA
The Tsinghua-Waterloo Joint Forum on Advances in Energy and Environmental Technologies will bring together leading experts in the fields of sustainable energy management, novel energy production, biofuels, pollution mitigation, fuel cells, and next-generation rechargeable energy systems. The four-day Forum will include internationally renowned plenary speakers, scientific presentations on technological advances in energy, round-table discussions on research and entrepreneurship, and networking events.
SPEAKERS
Opening Ceremony Speaker: Nobel Laureate Professor Donna Strickland
Donna Strickland is a professor in the Department of Physics and Astronomy. Professor Strickland is one of the recipients of the Nobel Prize in Physics 2018 for developing chirped pulse amplification with Gérard Mourou, her PhD supervisor at the time. They published this Nobel-winning research in 1985 when Strickland was a PhD student at the University of Rochester in New York state. Together they paved the way toward the most intense laser pulses ever created. The research has several applications today in industry and medicine — including the cutting of a patient’s cornea in laser eye surgery, and the machining of small glass parts for use in cell phones.
Open Lecturer: Professor Qi-Kun Xue, Vice President of Research, Tsinghua University
Qi-Kun Xue, received his BSc in Shan-Dong University in 1984, and PhD degree in condensed matter physics from Institute of Physics, the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) in 1994. From 1994 to 2000, he worked as a Research Associate at IMR, Tohoku University, Japan and a visiting Assistant Professor at Department of Physics, North Carolina State University, USA. He became a professor at Institute of Physics, CAS in 1999. He was elected into The Chinese Academy of Sciences in 2005. Since 2005, he has been a professor in Department of Physics, Tsinghua University. From 2010 to 2013, he was the Chair of Department of Physics and the Dean of School of Sciences. He became the Vice President for Research in May 2013, Tsinghua University. He won the Future Science Prize for Physical Science in 2016 and the TWAS Prize in Physics in 2010.
His research interests include scanning tunneling microcopy/spectroscopy, molecular beam epitaxy, low-dimensional and interface-related superconductivity, topological insulators, and quantum size effects in various low-dimensional structures. He has authored/coauthored ~400 papers with a citation of ~15000 times. He has presented more than 150 invited/keynote/plenary talks at international meetings/conferences, such as American Physical Society March Meeting (1996, 2005, 2010, 2012, 2014). Currently, he is the Fellow of American Physical Society, the Associate Editor of National Science Review, the Editors-in-Chief of Surface Review & Letters, and on the Editorial Board of Physical Review B, Applied Physics Letters, Journal of Applied Physics, Surface Science Reports and AIP Advance.
Plenary Speaker: Professor Hai Wang, Stanford University
Hai Wang is Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Stanford University. Prior to his appointment at Stanford, he was the Northrop Chair in Engineering and Professor of Aerospace and Mechanical Engineering at USC. He received his Ph.D. in Fuel Science from Penn State in 1992. He was a Professional Research Staff at Princeton University from 1994 to 1996 before starting his faculty career at the University of Delaware. He is best known for his work on the mechanism of soot formation in combustion and development of chemical kinetic models for fuel combustion. He has made contributions in the application of ab initio quantum chemistry and reaction rate theory in chemical kinetics. He developed stochastic methods for detailed combustion modeling and uncertainty quantification. He contributed to the transport theory of nanoparticles and large molecules, atmospheric heterogeneous chemistry, nanocatalysis, and nanomaterials synthesis, characterization and applications. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER award in 1999, a Senior Research Award from the Viterbi School of Engineering at USC in 2011, the AIAA Propellant and Combustion Award in 2018, and the Humboldt Research Award in 2019. He is a fellow of ASME and the Combustion Institute. He currently serves as the Editor-in-Chief of Progress in Energy and Combustion Science.
Plenary Speaker: Professor Fengqi You, Cornell University
Fengqi You is the Roxanne E. and Michael J. Zak Professor at Cornell University, and is affiliated with the Graduate Fields of Chemical Engineering, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Operations Research and Information Engineering, Systems Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Applied Mathematics. He also serves as Chair of Cornell Systems Engineering PhD Studies and Associate Director of Cornell Energy Systems Institute. Fengqi earned a B.Eng. from Tsinghua University and received his Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University. He was on the faculty of Northwestern University from 2011 to 2016, and worked at Argonne National Laboratory as an Argonne Scholar from 2009 to 2011. He has published more than 120 peer-reviewed journal articles, and has an h-index of 50. Some of his research results have been editorially highlighted in Science and Nature, featured on journal covers (e.g. Energy & Environmental Science, ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering, and Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research), and covered by major media outlets (e.g. The New York Times, BBC, BusinessWeek, and National Geographic). His recent awards include American Institute of Chemical Engineers (AIChE) W. David Smith, Jr. Publication Award (2011), Northwestern-Argonne Early Career Investigator Award (2013), National Science Foundation CAREER Award (2016), AIChE Environmental Division Early Career Award (2017), AIChE Sustainable Engineering Research Excellence Award (2017), Computing and Systems Technology (CAST) Outstanding Young Researcher Award from AIChE (2018), Cornell Engineering Research Excellence Award (2018), and ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering Lectureship Award (2018), as well as a number of best paper awards. He is currently an Editor of Computers & Chemical Engineering, a Consulting Editor of AIChE Journal, and an editorial board member of several leading journals (e.g. ACS Sustainable Chemistry & Engineering and Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research). His research focuses on novel computational models, optimization algorithms, statistical machine learning methods, and multi-scale systems analysis tools for smart manufacturing, digital agriculture, data analytics, energy systems, and sustainability. For more information about his research group: www.peese.org
Plenary Speaker: Professor Jesse Zhu, Western University
Dr. Jesse Zhu is a Distinguished University Professor and Canada Research Chair in Chemical Engineering, at Western University. Dr. Zhu has many years of experience in the research area of powder handling, fluidized bed and multi-phase flow systems and has worked on a very wide range of R&D projects, many from the industry. In addition to fundamental research, he is particularly active in technology development and transfer, with several inventions commercialized or being commercialized. He is a Fellow of Royal Society of Canada and has received many awards including the highest career award from the Canadian Society for Chemical Engineering.