To Be Presented at IMECE Keynote, Tuesday, November 19
 (Keynote 8-9:30am; Continental Breakfast 7:30-8am)

Adrian Bejan, Ph.D. earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dr. Bejan received his postdoctoral fellow at Miller Institute for Basic Research in Science, U. California Berkeley; and is J.A. Jones Distinguished Professor Duke University since 1989.

Prestigious Honors include Benjamin Franklin Medal, Humboldt Research Award; 18 honorary doctorates from 11 countries; author of more than 30 books and 700 peer-reviewed journal articles, and frequently sole author. Dr. Bejan built permanent bridges between fields thought to be "disconnected":

• Unified thermodynamics with heat transfer, fluid dynamics, and science of form (flow configuration, image, design), as a counterweight to the doctrine of reductionism, cf., Entropy Generation through Heat and Fluid Flow, 1982.
• Unified the sciences with EVOLUTION as physics, throughout nature. He discovered, taught, and applied the "Constructal Law" of evolution in NATURE—animate and inanimate, human-made, and not human-made, cf., Shape and Structure, from Engineering to Nature, 2000.
• Unified biologists, physicists, engineers, sociologists, philosophers, economists, managers, and athletes with creative books for the public: Design in Nature (2012), The Physics of Life (2016), Freedom and Evolution (2020), Time and Beauty (2022), and 14 Constructal Law Conferences worldwide.

Dr. Bejan's 2021 author WORLD impact rankings: among top 0.01% of the most cited and impactful world scientists, #6 in Mechanical Engineering worldwide, and #11 in all Engineering disciplines, worldwide.

 

Marco Amabili, Ph.D. earned his Ph.D. from the University of Bologna. He is a Chair professor in the School of Engineering at Westlake University, Hangzhou, China. Dr. Amabili is an Emeritus Distinguished James McGill professor at McGill University, Montreal, Canada. He is an International Member of the National Academy of Engineering of the USA, an elected Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Sciences) and the Canadian Academy of Engineering. He is also member of Academia Europaea, European Academy of Sciences and Arts, European Academy of Sciences and Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada. In 2008, Dr. Amabili wrote the monograph "Nonlinear Vibrations and Stability of Shells and Plates" published by Cambridge University Press. For this influential book, he received the Worcester Reed Warner Medal of the ASME in 2020. Dr. Amabili received the 2022 Guggenheim Fellowship in Engineering, the 2021 Mindlin medal of the American Society of Civil Engineers, the 2021 Gili-Agostinelli International prize of the “Lincei” National Academy of Sciences of Italy, the 2022 Blaise Pascal medal of the European Academy of Sciences and the 2022 Rayleigh Lecture Award of the ASME. Dr. Amabili just completed his term as the Chair of the Executive Committee of Applied Mechanics Division of the ASME. He contributed in different roles to the organization of IMECE for the last 24 years.

 

Subir Chowdhury earned his B. Tech (Honors) in Aeronautical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology in Kharagpur, India and his M.A. in Industrial Management from Central Michigan University. Subir has been Chairman and CEO of ASI Consulting Group, LLC 2003 to present; from 1997-2003, he was Executive Vice President at the American Supplier Institute, Inc., and from 1993-1997, Subir was Quality Engineering Consultant at Delphi Automotive Systems. Since 2007-present, Subir established the first school of Quality and Reliability in the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India; the first Center for Bangladesh Studies in USA at the University of California, Berkeley; Graduate Fellowships on Quality and Economics at the Harvard University and London School of Economics; and a Prize at the University of Southern California. Re Non-Profit, since 2007, Subir has been the Founder and Director of the Subir and Malini Chowdhury Foundation; and from 1996-1997, he was the Chairman of the American Society for Quality, Automotive Division. Subir received several recognitions: Doctor of Engineering (Honoris Causa), from Michigan Technological University; Doctor of Commercial Science (Honoris Causa), Central Michigan University; and Doctor of Law (Honoris Causa), University of Western Ontario, Canada.

 

Michael Khonsari, Ph.D. earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin. He holds the Dow Chemical Endowed Chair at LSU and concurrently serves as Associate Commissioner for Research at the Louisiana Board of Regents. Before joining LSU, Dr. Khonsari was a faculty member at Ohio State University, University of Pittsburgh, and Southern Illinois University. Concurrently, he served as a faculty research fellow at NASA Glenn (formerly Lewis) Research Center in Cleveland, the Department of Energy in Pittsburgh, and Wright-Patterson Air Force (Dayton). Dr. Khonsari is the director of the NSF Center for Innovations in Structural Integrity Assurance (CISIA). He was the Editor-in-Chief of ASME Journal of Tribology from 2012-2022. He currently serves on the editorial board of 10 scientific journals and is the Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering. Dr. Khonsari is a Fellow of AAAS, NAI, ASME, and STLE. He has mentored nearly 100 postdocs, Ph.D. and MS graduates, and visiting scholars and authored over 450 archival publications, 3 technical books and 15 articles in encyclopedias. He is also a recipient of numerous awards and honors, including ASME Mayo Hersey, ASME Burt NewKirk, and NLGI Clarence E. Earle Memorial awards.

 

Zhuomin Zhang, Ph.D. currently holds the J. Erskine Love, Jr. Professor in George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He earned his B.S. and M.S. degrees from University of Science and Technology of China and Ph.D. degree from MIT. Dr. Zhang worked at National Institute of Standards and Technology and University of Florida before joining Georgia Tech in 2002. He has made important contributions to the theory and measurements of spectral radiative properties of solids and thin films, micro/nanostructures including photonic crystals, gratings, carbon nanotube arrays, metamaterials, two-dimensional electronic and phononic materials, etc. He has co-authored over 240 journal papers and book chapters. Dr. Zhang has given more than 400 keynotes, invited talks, and contributed presentations at international conferences and seminars at many universities around the world. Dr. Zhang is the author of Nano/Microscale Heat Transfer (1st ed. 2007; 2nd ed. 2020), which has been adopted by many universities worldwide and translated into Chinese in 2016. He has supervised over 70 Ph.D. and M.S. students, visiting scholars, postdoctoral fellows, and undergraduate researchers. Many of his former students and mentees have established successful careers at major universities and industries in the United States and other countries.

 

Jean Zu, Ph.D. earned her B.Sc and M.Sc. from Tsinghua University in China and a Ph.D. from the University of Manitoba, Canada. Dr. Zu joined the Department of Mechanical & Industrial Engineering at the University of Toronto as an Assistant Professor in January 1994. She was promoted to Associate Professor in 1999 and to Professor in 2004. She served as Associate Chair for Research and as Chair of the department from July 2009 to April 2017. Since May 1, 2017, she has served as the Lore E. Feiler Dean of Schaefer School of Engineering and Science at Stevens Institute of Technology, overseeing the largest school of the university with a total annual budget of $65 million, over 50 undergraduate and graduate programs, 200 faculty, and over 5,000 students.

Dr. Zu's research is focused on mechanical vibrations and energy harvesting. She has successfully collaborated with several companies on research projects with focus on automotive applications. She raised $5 million in research funding, primarily as PI, with 40 grants and sponsored programs. Dr. Zu has published 340 papers including 180 journal papers and obtained five patents, and she has advised 36 PhD students in her academic career. She is a Fellow of CAE, ASME, EIC, CSME, and AAAS. She served as President of Canadian Society for Mechanical Engineering in 2006-2008, as a member on NSERC Grant Selection Committee in 2004-2007, and as the Associate Editor of ASME Journal of Vibration and Acoustics in 2007-2013. Dr. Zu also served as the President of Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC) in 2012-2014. She received numerous awards and was recognized in 2019 as one of the Notable Women in Technology by Crain’s New York Business.

 

M. Stanley Whittingham FRS, Ph.D. is a Distinguished Professor of Chemistry and Materials Science and Engineering at Binghamton University. Dr. Whittingham was named a Knight Bachelor "for his Services to Research in Chemistry" as part of King Charles' June 2024 official birthday honours list. This honor entitled him to be known as Sir Stanley or Sir Stanley Whittingham. He was the 2019 Chemistry Nobel Laureate for the discovery of lithium rechargeable batteries, and the 2023 VinFutures $3M Grand Prize winner. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and Fellow of The Royal Society. He presently leads the Battery-NY $113M economic development effort, and is the Chief Innovation Officer of the recently awarded NSF Upstate New York Energy Storage Engine. He is a founding member of NYBEST, and serves on the Board as Vice-Chair for Research, and Chief Scientific Officer of NAATBatt.