Keynote Speakers

Prof. Udaya Madawala（IEEE Fellow）
The University of Auckland New Zealand

Udaya K. Madawala graduated with a B.Sc. (Electrical Engineering) (Hons) degree from The University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka in 1987, and received his PhD (Power Electronics) from The University of Auckland, New Zealand in 1993 as a Commonwealth Doctoral Scholar. At the completion of his PhD, he was employed by Fisher & Paykel Ltd, New Zealand, as a Research and Development Engineer to develop new technologies for motor drives. In 1997 he joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Auckland and, at present as a Full Professor, he focuses on a number of power electronics projects related to wireless EV charging systems for V2G applications. Udaya is an IEEE Fellow and a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Power Electronic Society (PELS), and has over 32 years of both industry and research experience in the fields of power electronics and energy. He has served both the IEEE Power Electronics and Industrial Electronics Societies in numerous roles, relating to editorial, advisory, conference, technical committees and chapter activities. Currently, Udaya is an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, and a member of both the Administrative Committee and Membership Development Committee of the IEEE Power Electronics Society. He is also the Chair of IEEE Southern Power Electronics Conference (SPEC) Steering Committee. Udaya, who has over 300 IEEE and IET journal and conference publications, holds a number of patents related to wireless power transfer (WPT) and power converters, and is a consultant to industry.

Prof. Yang Shi (IEEE Fellow)
University of Victoria, Canada

Yang Shi received his B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in mechanical engineering and automatic control from Northwestern Polytechnical University, Xi’an, China, in 1994 and 1998, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, in 2005. From 2005 to 2009, he was an Assistant Professor and Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada. In 2009, he joined the University of Victoria, and now he is a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, Canada. His current research interests include networked and distributed systems, model predictive control (MPC), cyber-physical systems (CPS), robotics and mechatronics, navigation and control of autonomous systems (AUV and UAV), and energy system applications. Dr. Shi received the University of Saskatchewan Student Union Teaching Excellence Award in 2007, and the Faculty of Engineering Teaching Excellence Award in 2012 at the University of Victoria (UVic). He is the recipient of the JSPS Invitation Fellowship (short-term) in 2013, the UVic Craigdarroch Silver Medal for Excellence in Research in 2015, the 2017 IEEE Transactions on Fuzzy Systems Outstanding Paper Award, the Humboldt Research Fellowship for Experienced Researchers in 2018. He is Vice President of IES, Chair of IEEE IES Technical Committee on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems, and was on the IES Fellow Evaluation Committee during 2017-2019. Currently, he is Co-Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics; he also serves as Associate Editor for Automatica, IEEE Transactions on Automatic Control, IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics, etc. He is General Chair of the 2019 International Symposium on Industrial Electronics (ISIE) and the 2021 International Conference on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPS).  He is a Fellow of IEEE, ASME, CSME, and Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), and a registered Professional Engineer in British Columbia, Canada.

Prof. Carlo Alberto Nucci (IEEE Fellow)
University of Bologna, Italy

Carlo Alberto Nucci is a Full Professor of Electric power systems at the Department DEI – “Guglielmo Marconi”, University of Bologna. He is an IEEE and CIGRE Fellow. Prof. Nucci is Doctor Honoris Causa of the University Politehnica of Bucharest, a member of the Academy of Science of Bologna Institute and Advisory professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing. His research interests concern smart grids, energy communities, smart cities, power systems dynamics and electromagnetic transients, with particular reference to restoration after blackout and lightning impact on power systems. He has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Electric Power Systems Research journal (Elsevier) from 2010 to 2021. He has served as the President of the Italian Group of the University Professors of Electrical Power Systems (GUSEE) from 2012 to 2015. He is presently serving as the Italian Representative in the Horizon Europe Mission “Climate-Neutral and Smart cities”, serving as MUR reference for the MITE revision of the National Strategy for Sustainable Development, and as a member of the Technical Scientific Committee of the Regional Energy Plan of Emilia Romagna Region, Italy. He is also serving as chair of the International Conference on Lightning Protection, ICLP.