Keynote Speakers
Prof. Wei-Hsin Liao, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, China
Biography: Wei-Hsin Liao received his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from The Pennsylvania State University, University Park, USA. Since August 1997, Dr. Liao has been with The Chinese University of Hong Kong, where he is Choh-Ming Li Professor of Mechanical and Automation Engineering. His research has led to publications of over 380 technical papers and 27 patents. He received the T A Stewart-Dyer/F H Trevithick Prize 2005, the ASME 2017 Best Paper Award in Mechanics and Material Systems, the ASME 2021 Energy Harvesting Best Paper Award, and the ASME 2023 Best Paper Award in Structural Dynamics and Control. He is the recipient of the 2020 ASME Adaptive Structures and Material Systems Award and the 2018 SPIE SSM Lifetime Achievement Award, to recognize his outstanding contributions to the advancement of smart structures and materials. He is also the recipient of 2023 ASME Leonardo Da Vinci Award for the eminent achievement in the design and invention. Dr. Liao currently serves as an Associate Editor for Journal of Intelligent Material Systems and Structures, and on the Executive Editorial Board of Smart Materials and Structures. Dr. Liao is a Fellow of ASME, HKIE, and IOP.
Prof. Maria Pia Fanti (IEEE Fellow), Polytechnic University of Bari, Italy
Biography: Maria Pia Fanti (IEEE Fellow and Fellow of the Asia-Pacific AIA) received the Laurea degree in electronic engineering from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, in 1983. She was a visiting researcher at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute of Troy, New York, in 1999. Since 1983, she has been with the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering of the Polytechnic of Bari, Italy, where she is currently a Full Professor of system and control engineering and Chair of the Laboratory of Automation and Control. Her research interests include modeling and control of complex systems, intelligent transportation systems, smart logistics; Petri nets; consensus protocols; fault detection. Prof. Fanti has published more than +310 papers and two textbooks on her research topics. She was senior editor of the IEEE Trans. on Automation Science and Engineering and member at large of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society. Currently, she is Associate Editor of the IEEE Trans. on Systems, Man, and Cybernetics: Systems, member of the AdCom of the IEEE Robotics and Automaton Society, and chair of the Technical Committee on Automation in Logistics of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society. Prof. Fanti was General Chair of the 2011 IEEE Conference on Automation Science and Engineering, the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Service Operations and Logistics, and Informatics and the 2019 Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Conference.
Prof. Chiharu Ishii, Hosei University, Japan
Biography: Chiharu Ishii received his PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Sophia University, Japan in 1997. He worked at Ashikaga Institute of Technology between 1997 and 2002, at Kogakuin University between 2002 and 2009, and at Shibaura Institute of Technology between 2009 and 2010. He has been working at Hosei University since 2010, and currently working as a Professor with the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Faculty of Science and Engineering at Hosei University. Dr. Chiharu Ishii has received several awards such as The Best Paper Award in the area of Tactile and Haptic Interfaces at the 4th International Conference on Human System Interaction (IEEE HSI 2011); Best Paper Award at the 1st International Conference on Computer Science, Electronics and Instrumentation (ICCSE 2012); Best Presentation Award at the International Conference on Intelligent Mechatronics and Automation (ICIMA 2013); Excellent Oral Presentation Award at the 4th International Conference on Soft Computing & Machine Intelligence (ISCMI 2017); 3rd Prize, Excellent Paper Award at the 2021 IEEE 3rd Global Conference on Life Sciences and Technologies (LifeTech 2021). He is currently a member of IEEE, SICE, JSME, RSJ, IEEJ and JSCAS. His research interests are in medical robotics and assistive technology.
