Prof. Janaka Ekanayake
University of Peradeniya, Sri Lanka
(Fellow of IEEE (USA), IET (UK), and IESL, IEEE PES distinguished lecturer)
Biography:
Janaka Bandara Ekanayake obtained BScEng (First Class Honours) from Peradeniya University in 1990 and PhD from the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, UK in 1995. He has published over 80 refereed journal papers and 100 conferences papers and co-authored 7 books. He has a Google Scholar h-index of 45 with 11839 number of citations, the highest for engineering in Sri Lanka. He has held research grants in Sri Lanka and UK that total 2 million GBP An article published by researchers from Stanford University and Elsevier BV in 2020 ranked him among the top 2% of researchers in the world (2nd in Sri Lanka). He obtained the CVCD Excellence Awards in 2018, NSF Research Award for Scientific Excellence in 2018, and 7 Presidential Awards for Research. Prof. Ekanayake is a Fellow of IEEE (USA), IET (UK), and IESL. He is also recognized as an IEEE PES distinguished lecturer. He has given keynote and invited speeches at many conferences in the UK, China, and India. Prof. Ekanayake has contributed to renewable energy generation and integration in the UK, Bangladesh, Vietnam and Sri Lanka. He a member of the editorial board of IEEE Transaction on Energy Conversion (2007 to 2019), IET Journal of Renewable Energy (2015 to date), Journal of Wind Energy (2013 to date), and Ceylon Journal of Science (2016 to 2018). He was the Organising Vice Chairperson of the First IEEE PES conference of Innovative Smart Grid Technologies (2012) held in Tianjin, China. Prof. Ekanayake is the Chair Professor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering of the University of Peradeniya. He is also a visiting professor at Cardiff University, UK and Universiti Tenaga National, Malaysia. Further, he served as a Visiting Professorial Fellow of the School of Electrical, Computer and Telecommunication Engineering, the University of Wollongong, Australia for the period 2017 - 2020. He is the Chairman of the Expert Committee on Renewable Energy since May 2020 and was Chairman of the NIFS (2019).
Prof. Ping Zheng
Harbin Institute of Technology, China
(Chair of the Electric Drive Technology Subcommittee of IEEE PES Electric Vehicle Satellite Committee - China, IEEE Senior Member)
Biography:
Ping Zheng, female, born in December 1969, holds a Doctorate in Engineering. She is a professor and doctoral advisor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Automation, Harbin Institute of Technology, and the academic leader of the discipline "Motors and Electrical Apparatus." She is a member of the 8th Discipline Evaluation Group of the Academic Degrees Committee of the State Council, a recipient of the National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, and a nationally recognized high-level talent. She serves as the director of the Ministry of Education Key Laboratory of Electric Drive and Electric Propulsion Technology and leads the Heilongjiang Provincial Research Team on "Special Motors and Intelligent Computing." Her main research areas include special motors and their drive control technologies, electric vehicles and related technologies, motor cloud computing and supercomputing design platforms, robotic servo control technologies, and motor fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control. As a principal investigator, she has led over 40 research projects, including those funded by the National Key R&D Program, National 863 Program, major projects of the National Natural Science Foundation of China, key projects of the National Natural Science Foundation, joint key projects of the National Natural Science Foundation, and the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology’s high-quality special projects. She has received more than 40 awards and honors, including the Second Prize of the National Technological Invention Award, the China Youth Science and Technology Award, the First Prize of Tianjin Science and Technology Progress Award, the First Prize of the China Electrotechnical Society Science and Technology Progress Award, and the Second Prize of the Heilongjiang Natural Science Award. She has published over 320 scientific papers, more than 100 of which have been indexed by SCI, and over 210 by EI. She has filed 2 PCT international patents and over 120 Chinese invention patent applications, with more than 80 patents granted; among these, one won the Silver Award at the National Invention Exhibition, and another received the China Invention Patent Excellence Award. Under her supervision, doctoral and master's students have won over 80 provincial, ministerial, and university-level awards and honors, including one nomination for the National Excellent Doctoral Dissertation Award, one recipient of the Ministry of Education “Academic Newcomer Award for Doctoral Students,” four provincial outstanding master's theses, and five university outstanding doctoral dissertations.