Biography: Professor Chenguang (Charlie) Yang holds the Chair in Robotics with Department of Computer Science, University of Liverpool, UK. He is leading the Robotics and Autonomous Systems group. He was a Professor of Robotics with University of the West of England, Bristol, leading Robot Teleoperation Group at Bristol Robotics Laboratory. He is a member of European Academy of Sciences and Arts, and holds fellowships of Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET), Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE), Aisa-Pacific AI Association (AAIA), and British Computer Society (BCS). He is the corresponding Co-Chair of IEEE Technical Committee on Collaborative Automation for Flexible Manufacturing (CAFM). He was awarded EPSRC Innovation Fellowship (2018-21) and EU FP-7 Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship grant (2011-13). As the lead author, he received the prestigious IEEE Transactions on Robotics Best Paper Award (2012) and IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems Outstanding Paper Award (2022). He previously served as President of the Chinese Automation and Computing Society in the UK (CACSUK) and has organized several conferences as the general chair, including the 25th IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology (ICIT) and the 27th International Conference on Automation and Computing (ICAC).

 

Assoc. Prof. Ting Zou
Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada

Biography: I graduated from Xi’an Jiaotong University (China) with the degree of bachelor in electrical engineering in 2005 and master of engineering in automation in 2008. I received my PhD in mechanical engineering from McGill University in 2013, focusing on mechanism design & fabrication of an innovative bi-axial accelerometer based on microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and its strapdown to ease current rigid-body pose (position and attitude) and twist (velocity and angular velocity) estimation.

After completing my PhD in 2013, I worked as a Post-Doc fellow at the Centre for Intelligent Machines of McGill University. My Post-Doc work was mainly composed of two research projects: optimum design of the next-generation multi-speed transmissions for electric vehicles and nonlinear motion control of autonomous tracked vehicles for mining drilling operations.

Then I joined the Department of Mechanical and Mechatronics Engineering at Memorial University in 2018. My current research focuses on the mechanism design of robotic mechanical systems, biologically inspired robots, mobile robots, nonlinear control and state estimation of robotic systems, advanced human machine interaction, applied machine learning for robotics, intelligent manufacturing, and oceanic robots.

 

Dr. Sritama Sarkar
ABL Group, UK

Biography: Dr Ir. Sritama Sarkar is a Chartered Engineer (MRINA) with over 18 years’ experience in subsea and offshore engineering. In her current role, she provides marine warranty services for the offshore oil and gas, offshore windfarm and marine industry as well as consultancy on legal/ insurance cases.

As MWS, Sritama has worked in the capacity of either lead engineer for major oil and gas projects or as project manager for the transportation of gas plant modules.

Sritama is responsible for technical reviews of method statements, procedures, design, testing and installation analyses/ calculations for offshore rigid/ flexible/ HDPE pipelines, subsea structures, umbilical and cables. She has extensive knowledge for trenching and backfilling operations for subsea pipelines and cables. Sritama also has experience in lifting, load-in/load-out operations, land and sea-transportation analyses of LNG plant/ Gas plant modules and subsea structures. Sritama has good knowledge of mooring analyses, FPSO suction piles installation and hook-up operations. As MWS, she has participated in HIRA and HAZOP meetings for the pipeline projects, FPSO Hook-up and suction pile installations.

In her previous roles, Sritama has worked for inland dredger manufacturer, subsea vehicles manufacturer, offshore flexible pipeline manufacturer, offshore installation contractor and consultancy firms for offshore operations. She has worked with finite element packages like Orcaflex, MCS Pipelay, Sage Profile and Ariane for rigid/ flexible pipeline design, installation, and mooring analyses.

Sritama holds a bachelor’s degree in Geology (with Honours) and a master’s degree in Geology from Calcutta University, India. She holds a second master’s degree in Mechanical engineering (specialising in Dredging) from Delft Technical University, The Netherlands. Sritama obtained a Doctorate in Ocean and Naval Architectural Engineering from the Memorial University of Newfoundland, Canada. To date, Sritama has published 15 papers.