Min Soo KIM received the B.S. (1985), M.S. (1987), and Ph.D. (1991) degrees in mechanical engineering at Seoul National University. He is a Professor of the Department of Mechanical Engineering at Seoul National University since 1994. His major is thermal engineering including refrigeration and heat pump systems. He spent three years from 1992 to 1994 at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in U.S. as a guest researcher. He has more than 250 journal papers and more than 480 conference papers together with about 50 patents in the field of thermal engineering and refrigeration. He is a member of ASME, ASHRAE, IIR, KSME, and SAREK.

In 2010, he served as Policy Advisor to Minister of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology, and during 2011-2013, he was a member of Presidential Advisory Council on Education, Science & Technology. He was delegate of Korea to the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR), and serves now as president of the General Conference of IIR.

He got the Outstanding Academic Award from the Society of Air-conditioning and Refrigerating Engineers of Korea (SAREK) (2006), Outstanding Academic Award from Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers (KSME) (2013). He was designated as 70 Excellent PhDs of College of Engineering at Seoul National University (2016). He received Minister Award from the Ministry of Land, Infrastructure, and Transport (2016), and he received Presidential Citation by the Ministry of Public Administration and Security (2017). Recently, he received the award certificate form the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy (2022). Peter Ritter von Rittinger International Heat Pump Award was granted to him by International Energy Agency (2023).

Jiang Yi received his Ph.D. from Tsinghua University in 1985. He became a professor at Tsinghua University in 1990. He was elected as an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering in 2001. From September 1988 to September 1989, he worked as a visiting scholar at the Building Research Establishment (BRE) in the UK.

He has long been engaged in research in the field of building energy conservation and serves as a member of the Energy Advisory Committee of the State Council, the National Climate Change Expert Committee, and the Science and Technology Committee of the Ministry of Construction. He also serves as Vice Chairman of the Chinese Association of Refrigeration, Vice Chairman of the National Heating, Ventilation, and Air Conditioning Committee, Vice Chairman of the China Urban Research Association, among other professional positions. He is a member of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Assessment Report Writing Group and the International Energy Agency (IEA) Energy Conservation in Buildings and Community Systems (ECBCS) Cooperation Project Council (Chinese representative).

Dr. Srinivas Garimella is the Hightower Chair in Engineering and Director of the Sustainable Thermal Systems Laboratory at Georgia Institute of Technology.  He conducts research in the areas of microscale phase change heat and mass transfer, vapor compression and sorption heat pumps, and heat recovery, upgrade and storage. He is a Fellow of the ASME and of ASHRAE.  He is Editor of the Int. J. Air-conditioning and Refrigeration, and past Associate Editor of the ASME J. Heat Transfer and ASME J Energy Resources Technology, and of the ASHRAE SBTE Journal. He is Past Chair of the Advanced Energy Systems Division of ASME and was on the ASHRAE Research Administration Committee. He held the William and Virginia Binger Associate Professorship of Mechanical Engineering at ISU. He has mentored over 75 postdoctoral researchers, research engineers and students pursuing their M.S. and Ph.D. degrees, with his research resulting in over 375 archival journal and conference publications, a textbook on Heat Transfer and Fluid Flow in Minichannels and Microchannels (2nd Ed., Elsevier 2014), and books on Condensation Heat Transfer (World Scientific Publishing, 2015) and Adsorption Heat Pumps (Springer Nature, 2021.) He has been awarded seventeen patents. He is the recipient of the NSF CAREER Award (1999), the ASHRAE New Investigator Award (1998), the SAE Ralph E. Teetor Educational Award for Engineering Educators (1998), and was the Iowa State University Miller Faculty Fellow (1999-2000) and Woodruff Faculty Fellow (2003-2008) at Georgia Tech.  He received the ASME Award for Outstanding Research Contributions in the Field of Two-Phase Flow and Condensation in Microchannels, 2012 and the Prominent Researcher Award at the Micro Flow and Interfacial Phenomena Conference 2022 for sustained and outstanding contributions to the fundamentals of phase change heat transfer at mini‐ and micro‐scales and coupled heat and mass transfer in binary fluids.  He also received the Thomas French Distinguished Educator Achievement Award (2008) from The Ohio State University, the Zeigler Outstanding Educator Award (2012), and the Sigma Xi Sustained Research Award (2023) at Georgia Tech.

Professor Trygve M. Eikevik obtained his MSc from the Norwegian Institute of Technology (NTH) in 1979, within mechanical engineering, with specialization in refrigeration and heat pumping engineering. He started his scientific work as a researcher in heat pumping technologies at SINTEF Energy Research AS in January 1980. From 1995 he acted as Research Director within refrigeration and air conditioning until end of 2004.

From January 2005 he was appointed and working as full professor at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), within refrigeration and heat pump engineering, with focus on industrial applications. He has been manager of the research group of Process and power at NTNU, with a strong cooperation with the industry. He has been heading of master program in Mechanical Engineering and is head of the Sustainable Energy master program. Industrial processes, using refrigeration and heat pumping system, gives possibilities for energy efficient and environmentally friendly system. In this area Prof. Eikevik have had a strong focus on utilizing natural working fluids. In the industrial processes the high temperature heat pumps is very important, to make the green transition from oil and gas to clean energy.

Prof. Eikevik has published more than 200 publications, supervising more than 160 master student, 24 PhD candidates and 5 Postdocs. He holds 5 patents. He has a strong university cooperation’s with Asian countries like China, Japan, and India.

Pradip Dutta is currently Professor in the Centre for Energy Research and Associate Faculty in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.

Currently, Prof. Dutta’s research group focuses on thermal energy storage, advanced cooling technologies for EVs and high-power electronics, and on technologies related to phase change and adsorption.

Prof. Dutta received his Bachelor’s degree from IIT Kharagpur, Masters from IIT Madras and Ph.D. from Columbia University, New York, all in Mechanical Engineering. He has been elected Fellow of ASME, ASTFE, Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), and of Indian National Science Academy (INSA).  He has received Distinguished Alumnus Awards from both IIT Kharagpur and IIT Madras, J. C. Bose National Fellowship, and Outstanding Teacher Award from the Indian National Academy of Engineering. He is a former President of the Indian Society of Heat and Mass Transfer.

Tenured Professor of Division of Environmental Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering, Hokkaido University

Prof. Katsunori Nagano was born in 1960. He obtained his Master's degree from Hokkaido University in 1986 and his Ph.D. in Engineering in 1995. He has been extensively involved in research on thermal energy storage, ground source heat pump systems, heat pump applications, low-energy house, zero-energy buildings (ZEB), desiccant air conditioning, and energy conservation techniques.

From 1986 to 1988, he worked as a Facility Engineer at Tokyo Gas Co., Ltd. From 1988 to 1995, he served as an Assistant Professor at Hokkaido University. From 1995 to 2006, he was an Associate Professor at Hokkaido University. Since 2006, he has held the position of Tenured Professor at Hokkaido University. In 2014, he became an Advisor to the Executive at Hokkaido University, followed by roles as Advisor to the President from 2015 to 2017, and Director of International Exchange Office from 2018 to 2020. Additionally, since 2017, he has served as a Visiting Professor at Harbin Institute of Technology.

Hatef Madani is Associate Professor and Head of Division of Applied Thermodynamics, Department of Energy Technology at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden.  Beside research management and teaching in Academia, Hatef is working closely with research institutes and industries in Europe and he is currently Senior Scientist at Austrian Institute of Technology.  During the last two decade, he has been involved in several national and international research projects on energy system analysis and energy system modelling. Heat pump systems, Smart Control of heating and cooling systems, Fault Detection and Diagnosis, techno-economic analysis of integrated energy systems, flexibility in electricity grid through different energy technologies, and thermal management of mobile networks are the examples of his recent research projects. Hatef has been teaching energy related topics such as Energy Management, heat pump and solar systems, energy systems and business model innovation. 

Dr. Cordin Arpagaus is a process engineer with a master's degree from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETH Zurich). In 2005, he received his doctorate (Dr. sc. techn.) in the field of plasma treatment of polymer powders from the Institute of Process Engineering at ETH Zurich. He also holds a master's degree in Business Administration from ETH Zurich.

Dr. Arpagaus then worked for several years in the industry in management positions of Swiss companies active in laboratory and process technology. Between 2006 and 2011, he was Product Group Manager for laboratory Spray Dryers and Encapsulation Systems at BUCHI Labortechnik AG. His main focus was on the development of new Nano Spray Drying Technologies and the analysis of current market trends in the pharmaceutical, materials and food industries. From 2011 to 2015, he was a team leader of technical support for sensors and laboratory products at Hamilton Bonaduz AG.

Since April 2015, he has been working as a Senior Research Engineer at the Institute for Energy Systems (IES) at the Eastern Switzerland University of Applied Sciences (OST). His research activities focus on thermal energy systems and energy efficiency in industrial processes, in particular, High-Temperature Heat Pumps and heat pumps with turbo compressors.

So far, Dr. Arpagaus has published more than 100 research articles and review papers in international journals, including a book on High-Temperature Heat Pumps, a book on Spray Drying of Vaccines, and several book chapters on Nano Spray Drying, and has given numerous presentations at international conferences.

Dr. Arpagaus is an active researcher in the International Drying Symposium (IDS) series, a member of the Swiss Society of Process and Chemical Engineers (SGVC), the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR), and a reviewer for several international journals, including International Journal of Refrigeration (IJR), Energy, Applied Thermal Energy, Applied Energy, and Renewable and Sustained Energy Reviews.

Prof. Ercang Luo isnow working at the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences (UCAS), and the Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences (TIPC/CAS). He obtained his Bachelor degree from the Department of Thermal Energy of Tsinghua University in 1990 and his Ph.D. degree from the Cryogenic Laboratory of Chinese Academy of Sciences in 1997. Then, he joined the Cryogenic Laboratory of CAS as a research scientist, and was promoted a full professor of TIPC/CAS in 2001. In 2006, he was selected the outstanding young scholar of the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China. Since 2009 he has been the head of CAS Key Laboratory of Cryogenics, TIPC/CAS. In 2015, he was elected to be the deputy director of TIPC/CAS. Nowadays, he has been severing for the Chinese Association of Refrigeration (CAR) as the vice president, the International Institute of Refrigeration (IIR) as the Commission A1 member, the International Cryogenic Engineering Conference Board member, and the member of the International Stirling Conference Committee, etc.