Advances in Biofuels and Bioenergy

Shams Al Ajrawi associate faculty of the Department of Cyber Security in University of San Diego, Electrical and Computer Engineering in San Diego State University, and Applied Engineering in National university. Her M.S and Ph.D. degrees at the University of California, San Diego (UCSD) and San Diego State University (SDSU) under the guidance of Dr. Sarkar and Dr. Ramesh Rao. She received her B.S. degree in Computer Engineering in May 2000 from Technology University. She has worked previously as a research scientist at SDSU, San Diego, CA. Her research interest lies in the area of Wireless Data Networks. She is investigating MAC layer power management algorithms and Quality-of-Service issues and protocols in WBANs, sensor networks, and wireless ad-hoc networks

Sung Hoon Kang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He earned a Ph.D. degree in Applied Physics at Harvard University and M.S. degree in Materials Science and Engineering from MIT. He has been investigating bioinspired solutions to address current challenge in engineering materials and mechanical systems with applications including energy, protection, and healthcare. In particular, he and his colleagues have been studying harvesting ambient mechanical energy using rationally designed and/or synthesized piezoelectric materials through the support of the Office of Naval Research and Johns Hopkins University. Throughout his career, he has co-authored 36 peer-reviewed papers, has given over 80 presentations (including ~50 invited talks), and has two patents. He served as an editorial board member of Scientific Reports and currently serves as the Vice Chair of ASME Technical Committee on Mechanics of Soft Materials and will serve as Chair in 2020.

Nesrin Ozalp is a Professor of Mechanical and Industrial Engineering at University of Minnesota Duluth, and an Affiliate Professor at KU Leuven, Belgium. She received her Ph.D. from the University of Washington’s Mechanical Engineering Department. Dr. Ozalp specializes in the areas of designing novel solar reactors for emission-free generation of fuels. She is the Lead Principal Investigator of research projects totaling more than $4M, the corresponding author of 100+ peer reviewed journal, book chapter, and conference papers, Co-PI of completed Phase I of Solar Carbon Black commercialization with Fraunhofer, supervised 25 graduate students’ theses, served in 7 Editorial Boards and 22 Scientific Advisory Boards of international conferences and associations. She has given 30 invited/keynote talks on her research at institutes including the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich, Fraunhofer-IWS, NATO Advanced Research Workshop (ARW), and others. She is an Associate Editor of the ASME Journal of Thermal Science and Engineering Applications, Associate Editor of Frontiers in Mechanical Engineering, and the recipient of many research and teaching awards including the Outstanding Reviewer Award by the ASME Heat Transfer Division, and the College-Level Distinguished Teaching Award by the Texas A&M Association of Former Students. Dr. Ozalp is an ASME Fellow.

Dário has his expertise in investment management, import, export and international representation services. He has 20 years of experience in international business and also works in social project management. He knows how to make the connections between suppliers with their national and international buyers. He has many connections in Brazil and other investor countries to whom his partners' projects and other products are presented. He conducts business roundtables and international business missions to bring partners closer to investors. For each completed trade, he uses 3% of the profit to be invested in social projects and thus help the communities that will benefit from these projects.

Mohammad Moradi is a biotechnologist with experiences in the both medical and industrial biotechnology. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate of microbial biotechnology in the University of Isfahan, Iran. Mohammad is interested in the biotechnology because he believes that it could help making the world a better place to live. He thinks that providing clean energy is critical for the modern society and prevents the environmental problems. Mohammad wants to continue his researches in the field of biotechnology and looks for opportunities in the more developed scientific centers.

Dr. Arshpreet Singh is working asan Assistant Professor in Department of Mechanical Engineering, Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology, India. He received his PhD degree in the area of flexible forming techniques from Indian Institute of Technology Ropar, India in 2017. His research area is prodominantly Manufacturing, with focus on flexible forming techniques, machining, mechanical metallurgy, CAD/CAM, sustainable manufacturing and process analysis through finite element methodology. He has published 14 papers in peer reviewed internal journals and conferences. He has 5 years of teaching and research experience.

Abdel-Hamid's scientific expertise started in water. Since, 1984 the scientific researches have been primarily focused on the integrated assessment of freshwater quality. He has been working with the River Nile in Egypt, for more than 38 years. Water quality characterization is the domain of his researches. Eco-toxicology of industrial pollution is a particular research topic. Bio-assessment of water quality using freshwater microalgae deserved special research interest. Toxicity assessment of pollutants, using standard algal bioassays and biosensors, is a special area of research expertise. Deep research attention was focused on using immobilized algal biosensors for bio-monitoring of water quality. He has largely contributed to the assessment and protection of water quality at both national and international levels. His work on aquatic environments gave him enormous knowledge about the ecology of freshwater microalgae. He gained deep experience, and eventually has developed good expertise in isolation, identification and culturing of microalgae. He gave considerable attention to mass production of microalgae as vital feedstock of useful bio-products and molecules from algae. Thus his research activities and talents were partially shifted towards the field of algal biotechnology. Special interest and great attention are paid to the use of algae biomass as feedstock for the production of biofuels, mainly biodiesel, bioethanol, and jet fuels.

Prof. S Mandal possesses 17 years of teaching experience and has published research papers in the broad area of structural engineering. He has guided 3 PhD theses and 44 M. Tech. dissertations in the broad area of structural Engineering. He has published 19 research papers in peer reviewed journals and 35 papers in National and International Conferences. His main research areas are Wind effects on Structures (WES), Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Advanced Concrete Technology (ACT).

Aïda Ben Hassen Trabelsi, Dr-Ing in Environmental sciences, is currently Associate Professor at the Research and Technology Centre of Energy CRTEn (Tunisia). She took her Engineering degree in Geosciences from the Faculty of Sciences of Tunis (Tunisia) on 2001, her Master Degree (on 2003) and PhD (on 2007) on geochemistry, from Orleans University (France), and her HDR (on 2017) on "Waste Management" from the Faculty of Sciences of Tunis (Tunisia). Aïda Ben Hassen Trabelsi is conducting research activities mainly on biomass recovery and waste management. She is leading the research group "Waste-to-Energy" in CRTEn, working on biomass recovery, waste management, bioenergy, nutrient recovery, green chemistry and circular economy. Her main research interests are are centered in the field environmental geochemistry, focusing in the biomass or biowastes characterization, biofuels production, biochar production and valorisation, biofuels characterization and valorization, innovative technologies for thermochemical conversion of wastes into second generation biofuels environmental aspects associated to biowastes conversion. She has several publications in the environmental field and especially in the solid waste valorization. She has participated in several national and international projects dealing with biowastes valorization as biofuels. She is the coordinator of the MENA Regional Branch of the IWWG (International Waste Working Group).

Carla Duarte-Nass is Civil Industrial Engineer and Master of Philosophy degree in Engineering Sciences with Specialization in Biotechnology from La Frontera University in Temuco, Chile. Currently, she is student of the Program of Doctorate in Engineering Sciences with Specialization in Bioprocesses in the same university. Before she started her doctorate studies, she worked for 4 years in the Research and Development Department of Procesos Naturales Vilkun S.A., a berry dehydrating company, developing new technology related with freeze-drying. Now, she is working on a project related with heavy metal bio-precipitation, particularly in copper removal of wastewater from mining industry. She had presented her work on three Chilean congresses and is co-author in the published article “Can Microbially Induced Calcite Precipitation (MICP) through a Ureolytic Pathway Be Successfully Applied for Removing Heavy Metals from Wastewaters?” (doi.org/10.3390/cryst8110438). Carla grew up in Temuco and loves teaching and make research in food and environmental subjects.

Mr.Vikas Sharma is a senior research fellow in “Internal Combustion Engines Division, Department of Mechanical engineering, Anna University, India. He received his graduate degree in B.E Mechanical Engineering from Vinayaka Mission University India in 2011, and master degree in IC Engine from Vel Tech Technical University, India in 2013. He received his PhD from Anna University, Chennai, India 2019. His areas of research are bio-fuel production and utilisation in Engine application, LTC concept for IC engines. He published 10 research papers in international journals. He presented more than 8 papers in National and International conferences

Dr. Elsayed Elbeshbishy is an assistant professor at Ryerson University. He is collaborating with different Canadian industries and municipalities for developing new technologies for value-added products recovery from wastes. He investigated different pretreatment technologies for enhancement of biohydrogen and biomethane production from municipal solid wastes. He introduced ultrasonication, for the first time, as a novel pretreatment method for enhancing biohydrogen production from solid waste as opposed to the common application of ultrasonication prior to anaerobic digestion to enhance methane formation. He has more than 50 peers reviewed journal article, 70 conference proceeding, and three book chapters with h-index of 22. Dr. Elbeshbishy focuses on developing new solid pre-treatment technologies to enhance the anaerobic digestion process.

Bhagyashree Tiwari is a doctorate student at INRS-ETE, Quebec, Canada. She graduated in Master’s in Biotechnology from Sam Higginbottom Institute of Agriculture, Technology & Sciences, Allahabad, India in 2014. Her doctoral research focused on the removal of pharmaceuticals residues from hospital wastewater using ultrafiltration technology. Further her study reveals the microbial community dynamics during treatment of hospital wastewater in membrane bioreactor. Before joining INRS-ETE, she did her master dissertation from CSIR- IITR, Lucknow, India on degradation of polyaromatic hydrocarbons using selected bacterial strain. Her research interest lies in the treatment of wastewater, identification and characterization of microscopic organisms and on molecular biology approach for emerging contaminant treatment. She is the recipient of prestigious scholarship for doctoral research from INRS-ETE, Canada. She was the recipient of mobility grant from Venice International University to attend the workshop in Venice, Italy. Including 7 book chapters, she has 5 publications and 6 conference presentations

Bhoomika Yadav is a Ph.D. student at INRS-ETE, Quebec, Canada. She has completed her Bachelor’s and Master’s in Biotechnology from Amity University Rajasthan in 2018. In her master’s dissertation, she has worked in National Centre for Microbial Resource, Pune on antibiotic resistance profiling of bacterial population from wastewater treatment plants and how they are responsible for the spread of bacteria and antibiotic resistance genes. Her doctoral research is focussed on the downstream processing of microbial proteins during the recovery of high-value added intracellular products. Currently, she is working on extracellular polymeric substances production and their potential applications. Her research interest focuses on production of bioplastics, treatment of wastewater, bioprocess and downstream processing of proteins. She has received a prestigious scholarship of FONCER TEDGIEER in her doctoral programme. In addition, she has 1 publication and 6 book chapters.

Farokh Kakar is a Ph.D. candidate in a Canadian university and an instructor in the civil engineering school in a college. She holds a MASc in civil engineering and currently pursuing a Doctor of Philosophy degree in Civil Engineering department of Ryerson University focusing on Resource recovery from industrial and municipal waste. She has more than 5 years of project management owning her own company and teaching experience in university as an assistant professor and vice dean. She has presented her research work on effect of hydrothermal pretreatment on biological treatment of waste and resource recovery in many conferences. She is actively involved in community volunteer works by leading two programs in the Society of Women Engineers and the Canadian Association for Water Quality. She is a young water professional passionate about contributing to solving major global challenges of Global Warming and Energy Crisis and changing the future of waterworks in remote areas of developing countries.

Mueen Uddin is a Research Fellow at Khalifa University UAE. He obtained his B.S. & M.S. degrees in Computer Siences from Isra University, Pakistan with specialization in Information Networks, and Ph.D. degree from the Universiti Teknologi Malaysia UTM in 2013 with specialization in Energy Efficient Cloud Data Centers. Mueen has over 80 publications, and has been giving a number of international keynote speeches, invited talks, tutorials, and research seminars on the subjects of Cloud Computing, Blockchain, IoT, and Cybersecurity. He has also been engaged in various research projects (being the Principal Investigator of four of them) supported by the Effat University KSA and UMP university in Malaysia. Dr. Mueen is a Member of the AIS, IAER, IETI, AASCIT, ASCE, AEE, IAENG, SDIWC, & AERE. His research interests include Cloud Data Centers, Energy Efficient Computing, Blockchain, IoT, and MANET routing protocols.

Ali Ghahramani received the B.S. degree in civil engineering from Shiraz University, Iran, in 2011 and he also received the M.Sc. degrees in civil and environmental engineering (2014), computer science (2016), and industrial and system engineering (2016), and the Ph.D. degree in civil engineering (2017) all from University of Southern California, Los Angeles, CA. He is currently a Postdoctoral scholar and Lecturer at the Center for the Built Environment at UC Berkeley. He has published more than 30 articles in the field of human-centered AI for efficient building systems. His research interests are in the areas of sensing, adaptive learning, and optimization systems that are specifically tailored for human-centered smart, resilient, and sustainable civil infrastructures. Non-intrusive sensing methods such as infrared thermography and ultrasound-based sensing, adaptive learning of human behaviors in buildings, statistical methods and machine learning for occupant-building large datasets, and optimal operation of human-in-the-loop building systems are among his research interests.

Muhammad Usman Khan is a graduate student of Biological Systems Engineering and is working on anaerobic digestion of different substrates after pretreatments to enhance methane production. Lignin is considered inert under anaerobic conditions. Mr. Khan is working on lignin pretreatment to enhance its degradation during anaerobic digestion. Lignin conversion to biogas will open new pathway for biofuel industry this abundantly available raw material.

Lei Zuo completed his PhD in mechanical engineering (2005) and MS degrees in both mechanical engineering and electrical engineering from MIT. He is currently a full professor at Virginia Tech and serves as the Director of NSF Industry-University Collaborative Research Center (I/UCRC) for Energy Harvesting Materials and Systems. Lei Zuo’s research interests include energy harvesting, mechatronics design, vibration control, and advanced manufacturing. He authored over 100 papers in academic journals and over 160 papers in technical conferences, including 5 with best paper and 2 with best student paper awards. He has secured over 13 million US dollars of research funding (over $11M as the PI) from NSF, DOE, ONR, EPA federal funding agencies, NY and VA states, and various industry companies. He has advised 10 PhD and over 40 MS students to completion and is currently advising 11 PhD and 6 MS students. The ASME recognized him as “a pioneering researcher in energy harvesting, especially at larger energy scale” with its 2015 Thar Energy Design Award. Zuo is also the sole recipient of the 2017 ASME Leonardo da Vinci Award. He won R&D100 Awards twice (2015 and 2011) from R&D Magazine, which recognizes the top 100 technology innovations in the word of the year. Lei Zuo is an elected Fellow of ASME. He is a general co-chair of the ASME 2019 IDETC/CIE conference.

Dr. Tae-In, Ohm has been working as a professor at the department of environmental engineering, Hanbat National University, Korea since 1995. He majored mechanical engineering to design the incinerator for municipal and industrial solid wastes. Currently, his main research topics are CFD study to design the combustor for solid refuse fuel and development of the recycling process for the waste refrigerant and plastics.

Rimika Kapoor is Post-Doctoral Fellow at CRDT, IIT Delhi. A mechanical engineering graduate, she obtained her MTech and PhD from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi in BioCH4 and BioCO2 production from biogas using water scrubbing technology. She has a great passion about the enthralling world of biogas upgradation technologies and in particular design and development of water scrubbing system. Her co-authored book on biogas upgradation, bottling and utilization is under publication. She has over 20 publications in journals, reports and conferences to her credit. She is actively engaged in research on biogas upgradation systems and worked for many sponsored research and consultancy projects from India and abroad.

Dr. Hossam Gaber is leading research in the area of waste-to-energy with advanced plasma technologies. He worked in international research projects related to biomass/biofuel (Japan), plastic production chain with recycling (Japan), and leading research group to plasma-based plastic-to-oil pyrolysis and MSW gasification process technology. He the founding chair of the IEEE technical committee on Intelligent Green Production Systems (IGPS) and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Process Systems Engineering (IJPSE). He is expert in intelligent safety and control systems and their applications on clean energy technologies. This research facility will extend the research capabilities in the research group within UOIT and will allow ROI for energy from waste. It will support the research activities in plasma generation, diagnostics, and control, and their applications on high performance waste-to-energy process technology.

Marc A. Rosen is a Professor at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology in Oshawa, Canada, where he served as founding Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science. Dr. Rosen was President of the Engineering Institute of Canada. He is a registered Professional Engineer in Ontario, and serves as Editor-in-Chief of several journals and as a Director of Oshawa Power and Utilities Corporation. With over 60 research grants and contracts and 800 publications, Dr. Rosen is an active teacher and researcher in sustainable energy, environmental impact, and energy technology (including renewable energy and efficiency improvement). Much of his research has been carried out for industry, and he has written numerous books. Dr. Rosen has worked for such organizations as Imatra Power Company in Finland, Argonne National Laboratory near Chicago, and the Institute for Hydrogen Systems near Toronto. Dr. Rosen has received numerous awards and honors, and is a fellow of several societies and organizations.

Dr. Ajay Kumar Pandey is Post-doctoral fellow by profession and works with one of the prestigious institute International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology, New Delhi, India. He holds M. Tech. and Ph. D. in Biotechnology. Dr. Pandey has 3 years of teaching experience as assistant professor at National Institute of Technology, Raipur, India. He has published 9 research papers in reputed journals such as Biotechnology for Biofuels, Bioresource Technology, Renewable Energy, Process Biochemistry and PNAS. He has also published 1 book in Lambert publication, Germany and 1 book chapter in Elsevier, USA. His research work is focused on biofuels and biosurfactant production. He has presented papers on lignocellulosic biofuels in various international conference in Hongkong and India and received Best Oral presentation Award and Curious student award. Dr. Pandey grew up in Gorakhpur city of India and is passionate about developing technologies for 2G biofuels.

Confident, motivated and articulate with 12+ years’ experience in Academic and Management Sectors Key skills in academic deliveries, critical analysis of different management principles and thoughts and training and coaching people Capable of developing creative solutions through formulating, implementing and evaluating action plans Major strength in training, counselling, marketing, communication, and thriving new challenges

Murari Mohon Roy Received the Doctor of Engineering degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Kitami Institute of Technology, Japan in 2001. Currently he is serving the Engineering Faculty at Lakehead University, Canada.He has presented or published close to a hundred papers on his research at technical conferences and in ASME, SAE, JSME, IMechE, Elsevier and other journals.

I have completed my PhD at the age of 29 years from TUNIS University. Actually, I have a postdoctoral in the The Research and Technology Center for Energy, The Thermal Processes Laboratory, Hammam Lif, Tunis, Tunisia. I have published 7 papers in reputed journals.

Parmjit Singh is working a Graduate Engineer Trainee in Central Institute of Hand Tools (MSME Tool Room, Jalandhar) Govt of India. He received his Master of Technology degree in Mechanical Engineering from the Lovely Professional University at Jalandhar in 2015. During the past decade his work has focused upon developing cost-effective methods for reducing cost of production of Alternative Fuel. He has two years experience in heat treatment and his area of interest including Heat Treatment and Alternative fuel.

Dr. Debabrata Das has pioneered the promising R&D of Bioenergy production processes by applying fermentation technology. He is actively involved in the research of hydrogen biotechnology for a period of last twenty years. His recent work on biohythane process for the maximization of gaseous energy recovery from the organic wastes is worth mentioning. He has 6 books, 150 research publications in the peer reviewed journals (h-index 48) and 36 chapters in the books published by International publishers. He has two Indian patents. Recently, he successfully demonstrated 10 m3 biohydrogen pilot plant study for the commercial exploitation of biohydrogen production process. He IAHE Akira Mitsui Award in 2008 and BRSI Malaviya Memorial award (for senior faculty) in 2013 for his biohydrogen research work. He is the member of the editorial board of International Journal of Hydrogen Energy;Indian Journal of Biotechnology; Biotechnology for Biofuels; The Open Microalgae Biotechnology Journal; INAE Letters

Sebastian Zapata is a system engineer and PhD in computer science. He holds his PhD in Universidad Nacional de Colombia, and he made a research stay in Imperial College London during 6 months in which he studied the Argentine electricity market. He has also been involved in outbreak investigations of Colombian, Brasil and UK electricity. He has papers in Energy Policy, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Energy, Energies and Sustainable Energy Technologies and Assessments. Daniel grew up in a small town in Colombia and he likes to play basketball and play videogames.

Dr. Gerson P. Almeida is Associate professor at University of Ceará State, on the Brazil’s most impoverished region. His main experience is based on the use and development of cloud models to simulate precipitation processes taking in to account the influence of different aerosols background. He has been active in the area of numerical modelling of cloud microphysics since 2001 and currently he is developing two projects. The first one is dedicated to the development of cloud models to simulate rain. The main propose of this work is to test parameterization of mixed phase to be used in large scale models in cooperation with Brazilian center for weather forecasting and climate studies (CPTEC). The second area of interest is dedicated to study and characterize atmospheric aerosols and its ability to work as CCN over different regions of Brazil.

Sarvar Hussain Nengroo received his B.Tech. degree in Electrical and Renewable Energy Engineering from the Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah University, Jammu and Kashmir, India. Currently, he is a graduate student at Pusan National University, Busan, Republic of Korea. His research interests include renewable energy aggregation, smart microgrids, power system protection, power electronics, and intelligent control for high-power electronics applications.

Professor Thakur, FNASc, FNAAS, FIBA, FBRS, ENESA, Former Dean, presently a Professor in the School of Environmental Sciences, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, developed bacteria by genetic breeding, and characterized by genomics, proteomics and metabolomics for Green House Gases sequestration for biofuel, bioflocculant, bioplastic and biomaterials production. Microorganisms applied for degradation of pentachlorophenol in tannery, lignin biovalorization, degradation of melanoidin, dioxin-like compounds, ecoestrogens, phthalates and emerging contaminants in industries, municipal sludge, landfill leachate, risk assessment and characterization was performed. Cyanobacteria and algae used for biofuel and biodegradation of emerging contaminants in waste water and risk assessment. Metagenomics of microbes from Pangong lake, caves and lysimeter performed for environmental management, pesticide degradation and nutrient management. He published more than 200 research papers in peer reviewed journals, 4 patents and 26 Ph.D. students completed Ph.D. under his supervision.

Dr. Huiming Yin received his Bachelor degree from the Hohai University, China, in 1995, Master Peking University, China, in 1998, and PhD The Iowa University in 2004. Before joining Columbia University in 2008, Dr. Yin was employed by Caltrans as a Civil Engineer, for two years and by University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign as a Post-Doctoral Research Associate in the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering for two years. Dr. Yin’s research focuses on the multiphysical and mechanical characterization and modeling of civil engineering materials and their applications in energy efficient infrastructure systems. He received the NSF CAREER Award in 2010. He founded the Pao Sustainable Engineering and Materials Laboratory, and serves the Site Director of NSF IUCRC Center for Energy Harvesting Materials and Systems. Dr. Yin has actively worked with Columbia Technology Ventures for commercialization of the applied research through small business companies and start-ups. From his research, two STTR projects have been awarded by DOE (for solar roofing materials) and AFOSR (for particulate composites), respectively. He is the leading author of the book - The Introduction to Micromechanics of Composite Materials, CRC Press and Spon Press, 2016, and has authored or co-authored 4 other book chapters and >70 refereed journal papers.

Mubashra Latif is a Pakistani female chemical engineer who is currently doing her PhD at University of Chester, UK. She has three years of work experience of a petrochemical plant. Her PhD is being supported by University of Chester`s Eco-Innovation Cheshire and Warrington Project, which is part-funded by the European Regional Development Fund. Through this programme Mubashra is also supported by a local biomass CHP manufacturing company Biogen Systems. Mubashra is exploring how businesses could upgrade local low quality biomass feedstocks to generate clean heat and power without any operational problems.