Keynotes

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keynote speaker 1 - Sustainable Air-conditioning and air distribution systems during a pandemic and beyond

 Chandra Sekhar

OVERVIEW

Prof Sekhar is a tenured Professor and Co-Director (Centre for Total Building Performance) in the Department of Building, National University of Singapore. He is also a Founding Director of Enhanced Air Quality Pte Ltd., a NUS Spin-off Company, incorporated in June 2004, arising out of his research in the fields of indoor air quality (IAQ) and energy. His research interests include thermal comfort, ventilation/IAQ, energy efficient HVAC systems and building energy analysis, with about 275 publications in these fields in international journals and conferences. He is a co-inventor and holds 3 US and other patents. He is a Fellow of ASHRAE and ISIAQ. He has delivered 9 Keynote talks in international conferences around the world. He has been an ASHRAE Distinguished Lecturer since 2006 and is regularly invited as a speaker around the world (60 invited presentations to date). He has been recognized through several awards, including: Environmental Health Award, Exceptional Service Award and Distinguished Service Award from ASHRAE; Uichi Inouyi Memorial Asian International Award from SHASE, Japan; SPRING Singapore Merit Award, ASEAN Energy Award and The Enterprise Challenge (TEC) Award of the Prime Minister’s Office.  He is currently a Director-At-Large on the ASHRAE Board of Directors.  He is active in Standards and Technical committees in ASHRAE and is also actively involved in local standardization activities in Singapore.

Keynote 2 - Heating and Cooling: Essential For the Health of People and of the Planet 

 Andrea Voigt

OVERVIEW

Andrea Voigt was appointed Director General of EPEE, the voice of the refrigeration, air-conditioning and heat pump industry (HVACR) in Europe, in 2009. Headquartered in Brussels and dedicated to creating favorable framework conditions for the development and deployment of sustainable technologies, EPEE represents leading manufacturers as well as associations from Europe, Asia and North America.

Voigt’s experience in the HVACR industry spans over two decades with a strong focus on energy efficiency, renewable energies and climate related topics. Under her leadership, EPEE has become one of the leading HVACR industry trade associations on a European and global level, partnering with UN Environment (UNEP) on several projects, working with international initiatives such as the Cool Coalition and the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC) and leading the CountOnCooling Campaign for sustainable cooling.

She is a member of ASHRAE, the German engineers’ society DKV and a Board member of the EU Coalition for Energy Savings, a leading cross-sectoral association advocating for a stronger focus on energy efficiency.

A German national, Voigt is fluent in English and French, holding degrees in public administration (MPA), applied linguistic science (MA) and marketing (CIM).













Keynote 3 - Climate Resilience and indoor environmental quality in buildings occupied by vulnerable populations

 Anna Mavrogianni

OVERVIEW

Dr Anna Mavrogianni is an Associate Professor in Sustainable Building and Urban Design at the Institute for Environmental Design and Engineering (IEDE) at the Bartlett Faculty of the Built Environment, University College London (UCL).  Anna trained as an architect engineer specializing in building physics and environmental design at the School of Architecture at the National Technical University of Athens and the Bartlett School of Graduate Studies, UCL and has several years of experience in architectural design and environmental consultancy. She is an expert in indoor environmental quality, building energy retrofit and climate change adaptation of the built environment sector, with a focus on overheating and heatwave vulnerability at the building and urban scale. She leads interdisciplinary research in building performance analysis used by policymakers to evaluate impacts of energy efficiency, urban growth and climate change on energy use, carbon emissions, health and wellbeing. She has produced over 100 peer-reviewed publications to date and has contributed to policy reports, including the UK Government’s 2017 Climate Change Risk Assessment. She is a Co-Secretary of the International Building Performance Simulation Association-England (IBPSA-England) and an Associate Editor in the Energy and Buildings journal.


Keynote 4 - Advanced HVAC&R solution enabled by novel design, materials and manufacturing processes

 Kashif Nawaz 

OVERVIEW

Dr. Kashif Nawaz earned his BSc in Mechanical Engineering from Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Technology in Pakistan in 2007 and his MSc and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign (UIUC) in 2010 and 2013 respectively. After graduation, he joined the Heat Transfer Center of Excellence at Johnson Controls (JCI), where he worked as Senior Heat Transfer Engineer until 2016. During the same period, he also worked as adjunct faculty in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Oklahoma. In 2016 he joined the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where he is currently working as a senior scientist in the Building Equipment Research Group with a joint appointment to the Tennessee Technology University at Cookeville, TN.  Over the past fifteen years of active research and development work, Dr. Nawaz has established himself as a leader in fundamental and applied energy conversation science and technology. He is widely recognized for his work in different aspects of buildings heating, cooling, dehumidification systems including novel heat exchanger, enhanced phase change processes through the deployment of additive manufacturing, porous media and surface morphology, heat pump air and water heating, efficient separate sensible and latent cooling systems and emerging refrigerants. He has pioneered the development of a new generation of high-temperature heat exchangers manufactured with ceramics and composites using additive manufacturing. More recently, his research has led to the development of unique concepts for direct air capture of carbon dioxide using existing buildings’ infrastructure. Dr. Nawaz has authored or coauthored more than 110 peer-reviewed publications including journal articles, conference papers, and reports. He has more than 20 invention disclosure and two provisional patents on heat exchanger design and energy conversion processes. Dr. Nawaz is the recipient of the 2018 Distinguish Service Award by the American Society of Heating, Refrigerating, and Air-Conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE), JCI Excellence in Innovation during 2016, and the UIUC Alumni Teaching Fellow Award during 2011 and 2012.