Speakers

       
Ali Arefi, Murdoch University, Australia
IEEE Senior Member

Ali Arefi received a B.Sc. (Honours), M.Sc., and Ph.D. all in electrical engineering in 1999, 2001, and 2011, respectively. He has been a lecturer and Research Fellow in Queensland University of Technology (QUT) since 2012. During this time, he has developed an automated tool for optimal investment strategy in electric distribution networks over large areas and long planning horizons for Energy Queensland Limited. He is a chief investigator in the awarded Discovery Project titled “Transition to Customer Response Driven Networks”, which is funded $390k by Australian Research Council (ARC) in 2015. Moreover, he is contributor/author of two research grants including Linkage Project funded more than $0.5M by ARC and supply industry. He is an IEEE Senior member and a member of several IEEE Working Groups and Committee and Task Force. He has more than six years’ experiences with electric distribution industry. He has been the consultant for 5 industry-funded research projects. He has also carried out energy audits and power quality analysis for more than 30 factories and electric distribution networks. Moreover, he has delivered many talks for industries in the field of energy efficiency and power quality. His research interests are mainly in the areas of sustainable electric distribution planning, state estimation, and energy efficiency.

Jiashen Teh, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Malaysia
IEEE Senior Member

Dr. Teh demonstrates the advantages of flexible transmission line rating on high voltage (138-400kV) power grids to enhance the integration of solar and wind energies. The research is state-of-the-art because the new relationships of the flexible line rating technology with existing conditions and legacy technologies are investigated.  The research enables the optimal enhancements of line ratings while preserving the life-cycle of transmission lines, and thereby improving the reliability of transmission grids. With this new discovery, electric utilities worldwide can safely increase the power capacity of their existing grids, which can enhance the integration of renewable energy and improves the delivery of clean energy to consumers at a minimal cost. Consequently, the dependency on traditional, carbon-emitting fuels is reduced. This assists electric utilities to reduce carbon emissions and, enable them to commit to higher level of ESG standard. Dr. Teh is also a Technical Director of UPE-Power in Taiwan, which he has implemented his research findings on line sensor products developed for applications in Taiwan and Japan. He has published more than 50 journal articles indexed in the globally recognized SCIE database, which he is the first/corresponding author in 34 (>70%) of them, and 30 (>65%) of the articles are ranked in the database’s first quarter. His publications have attracted 2085 citations and 28 h-index on Google Scholar. He has secured around RM800k of research funding, where more than 40% of the amount was obtained abroad (Taiwan, Saudi). He has accumulated RM30k of local consultancy projects. He has 1 pending patent filed in Malaysia. He is the main supervisor of 4 graduated PhD students, and another on-going 9 PhD students. For three consecutive years in 2019, 2020 and 2021 he was the top 2% world-most-cited-researchers according to field by Stanford University. He was the 2021 Outstanding Engineer by the IEEE Power & Energy Malaysia and the 2022 Outstanding Young Professional by the IET Malaysia.


Zhenbin Zhang, Shandong University
IET Fellow，IEEE senior Member

Prof. Zhenbin Zhang (Fellow, IET) received Ph.D. degrees from Technische Universität München,,Germany in 2016 respectively. From 2016 to 2017, he was a Research Fellow and Group Leader in Technische Universität München,,Germany. From 2018 to now, he is a visiting professor in Technische Universität München,,Germany. From 2017 to now, he is a professor and doctoral supervisor in Shandong University.
Prof. Zhenbin Zhang is an IET Fellow from 2022, IEEE Senior Member from 2021, IET Chatered Engineer from 2021 and Associate Editor of IEEE Trans. Power Electron from 2021. He was an Associate Editor of IEEE Trans. Ind. Electron from 2018 to 2021. He was the technical program committee chair in The 5th IEEE International Conference on Predictive Control of Electrical Drives and Power Electronics in 2019. He was the general chair of the 6th IEEE International Conference on Predictive Control of Electrical Drives and Power Electronics in 2021.