Texas A&M University Professor, Director at Texas A&M Energy Institute, Dow Chemical Chair
Τίτλος Ομιλίας: The Quest Towards Sustainable Energy Transition – ‘Are we getting there?’
Decarbonization, electrification, net-carbon neutrality and low-carbon technology constitute important drivers in energy transition efforts. Important and open challenges toward such a societal and industrial goal include (i) how to tame the impact of intermittency of many renewable technologies and the critical role of energy storage, (ii) the need for rigorous life-cycle based carbon accounting, (iii) understanding the material transition requirements as an enabler for the energy transition, and (iv) managing the costs of the various technologies relevant to the transition at different and evolving technology readiness levels. Here, we will attempt to provide a systematic framework of how to address such challenges in a holistic, integrated way toward realistic and sustainable energy transition scenarios. We will discuss the salient interactions in energy-material-mobility transition, the potential opportunities of industrial electrification, carbon capture and utilization and the hydrogen economy, and the role of policy especially in the context of circular economy. The impact of wider issues, such as the resilience of the integrated energy transition supply chain systems, and the Water-Energy-Food Nexus will be also addressed, through the lenses of a comprehensive multi-scale energy systems engineering approach. Opportunities and challenges for the future of chemical engineering will be highlighted.
Βιογραφικό:
Professor Pistikopoulos is the Director of the Texas A&M Energy Institute and holds the Dow Chemical Chair Professorship in the Artie McFerrin Department of Chemical Engineering at Texas A&M University. He was a Professor of Chemical Engineering at Imperial College London, UK (1991-2015) and a former Director of its Centre for Process Systems Engineering. He holds a Ph.D. degree from Carnegie Mellon University and he worked with Shell Chemicals in Amsterdam before joining Imperial. He has authored or co-authored over 550 major research publications in the areas of modelling, control and optimization of process, energy and systems engineering applications, 15 books and 3 patents. A co-founder of Process Systems Enterprise (PSE) Ltd (now Siemens PSE), he is a Fellow of AIChE and IChemE and the current Editor-in-Chief of Computers & Chemical Engineering. Prof. Pistikopoulos was a co-recipient of the prestigious Mac Robert Award from the Royal Academy of Engineering in 2007, the recipient of the AIChE/CAST Computing in Chemical Engineering Award in 2013 and Distinguished Service Award in 2023, the IChemE’s Sargent Medal in 2020, and the AIChE’s Sustainable Engineering Forum Award in 2021. He was elected a Member of the Academy of Medicine, Engineering and Science of Texas (TAMEST) in 2021. In 2013, he was elected Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering in the UK. In 2022, he received The Association of Former Students Distinguished Achievement Award for Research, and in 2023, he was named a University Distinguished Professor, at Texas A&M.
University of Delaware Newark, DE - Unidel Dan Rich Chair in Energy Professor of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering - Director, Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation (CCEI) - Director, Delaware Energy Institute (DEI)
Τίτλος Ομιλίας: Toward Sustainable Chemical Manufacturing
Climate change demands a paradigm change in the chemical industry and waste stream valorization. Sustainability requires advances in chemical recycling, the production of renewable chemicals, fuels, and products, and the decarbonization of chemical processes to minimize waste streams. We will present several examples, such as the production of bio-lubricant base oils from lignocellulosic biomass as an example of upcycling of renewable carbon, renewable pesticides for sustainable agriculture, and plastic (polyolefins) upcycling to branched, liquid fuels, including diesel, jet, and gasoline-range hydrocarbons, lubricants, and monomers. Finally, we will touch on electrification, such as using plasmas, microwaves, and Joule heating, toward decarbonizing the future chemical industry.
Βιογραφικό:
Dionisios (Dion) G. Vlachos is the Unidel Dan Rich Energy Chaired Professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, a Professor of Physics at the University of Delaware, and the Director of the University of Delaware Energy Institute (DEI) and of the Catalysis Center for Energy Innovation (CCEI), an Energy Frontier Research Center (EFRC). He has also been a lead in the Process Intensification Fundamentals of the RAPID Manufacturing Institute. Professor Vlachos is the recipient of the R. H. Wilhelm Award in Chemical Reaction Engineering from AIChE, the Philadelphia Catalysis Club Award, the Irving Wender Award for Excellence in Catalysis from the Pittsburgh-Cleveland Catalysis Society, Exceptional Achievements in Catalysis Award of the Catalysis Science & Technology Division (CATL) of the ACS, an ExxonMobil Visiting Chair Professorship at the National University of Singapore, and an AAAS Fellow. He also received an NSF Career Award and an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award. His current research interests include catalysis and reaction engineering for a circular economy, renewable fuels and chemicals, plastics recycling, modular and distributed manufacturing, process intensification and electrification, multiscale modeling, data science, uncertainty quantification, and in silico prediction of catalysts.
University College London, Professor of Fluid Mechanics Dept of Mechanical Engineering
Τίτλος Ομιλίας: Engineering healthcare technologies for future global health
Despite advances in healthcare technologies, ensuring health and well-being for all remains a challenging task. Chronic conditions, such as cardiovascular, diabetes and cancer, kill 41 million people annually and many of these deaths occur prematurely. With an ageing population and overstretched healthcare systems post pandemic, the burden of such conditions is expected to rise. New technologies to improve disease diagnosis, enable the management of complex conditions and personalise and optimise treatments are urgently needed. The talk will demonstrate how we can harness fluid dynamics across the scales to address healthcare challenges. The first part of the talk will focus on vascular disease, -the number one killer worldwide. It will provide an overview of our application of in vivo, in silico and in vitro tools to understand the haemodynamics of complex vascular pathologies, aid the development of diagnostics and intervention planning towards personalised healthcare. This will be followed by our work on understanding microscale flows in point of care diagnostics. We will demonstrate how microfluidics can shed light into microhemodynamics, aid the development of medical devices and new therapeutics and optimise treatment. The final part of the talk will focus on oral healthcare, presenting extracts of our recent experimental efforts in oral formulations and dental interventions with a view to optimise antimicrobial therapies. We will close with some insights on the future of personalised healthcare in an era of data driven technologies.
Βιογραφικό:
Stavroula Balabani (FIChemE, Professor of Fluid Mechanics) obtained a Chemical Engineering degree from the National Technical University of Athens (NTUA, Greece) and a PhD from King’s College London where she started her academic career. She joined UCL in 2011 where she leads an experimental fluid mechanics group (FluME), applying high resolution, optical diagnostic techniques to probe complex flows and transport phenomena, both at the macroscale and microscale, with applications to healthcare, energy and manufacturing. Her research interests evolve around cardiovascular flows, fluid structure interaction, microscale flow technologies for energy recovery, diagnostics and drug delivery, particle suspension flows, viscoelastic instabilities and elastoinertia transitions in polymeric flows. She has received funding from EPSRC, BBSRC, EU, Innovate UK and charities (BHF) and her research has appeared in prestigious fluid mechanics journals. Stavroula is a member of the EPSRC College, a Fellow of IChemE, an executive committee member of the international Microflows Nanoflows conference (MNF) and the Hellenic Society of Rheology. She currently serves as an Associate Editor for Medical Engineering and Physics as well as ASME Journal of Engineering and Science in Medical Diagnostics and Therapy. https://wp.cs.ucl.ac.uk/flume/