Ernest Kian Jon Chua
National University of Singapore, Singapore
 

Biography: Dr. Chua Kian Jon is an internationally recognized expert in clean thermal energy systems. His research spans thermal energy recovery, hybrid cooling, desiccant dehumidification, solar-assisted systems, and thermal energy storage for buildings and industrial applications. He is internationally recognized for pioneering work in dew-point evaporative cooling, membrane dehumidification, and waste heat recovery, enabling low-energy solutions for sectors such as buildings, data centres, EVs, and district cooling. Dr. Chua has published over 280 SCI-indexed journal papers, eight monographs, and holds more than 10 patents. A Fellow of the Royal Society, IET, Energy Institute, and IMechE, he ranks among the top 1% of scientists globally (USERN) and top 2% of energy researchers per Stanford since 2021, with 17,500+ citations and an H-index of 70. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of Thermal Science and Engineering (Nature Portfolio) and serves as Associate Editors of numerous journals in Elsevier, Springer, Wiley, and Taylor & Francis. A two-term NUS Dean’s Chair holder, he has received multiple international awards and leads major competitive research projects and is frequently invited to deliver plenary and keynote lectures and serve on technical committees at major international conferences. His work continues to shape the future of sustainable thermal energy systems across Asia and beyond.

Speech title "Clean and Green Thermal Energy Technologies for a Decarbonized Future"
Abstract-Clean thermal energy technologies are playing an increasingly vital role in global decarbonization efforts, particularly in the heating and cooling sectors, which together account for a significant portion of total energy use. This presentation introduces an innovative smart quad-generation system designed to simultaneously deliver electricity, heating, cooling, and potable water through a highly integrated and energy-efficient process. Tailored for tropical regions, the system leverages a smart thermal cascading strategy that recovers and redistributes waste heat to maximize overall system efficiency. Compared to conventional systems, this approach offers up to 30% energy savings and 2 to 4% reductions in CO2 emissions, making it a promising clean energy solution for both building and industrial applications. Its compact footprint and resource efficiency address critical regional needs, particularly in water-scarce and cooling-intensive environments. Aligned with international clean energy objectives, this work showcases a scalable and impactful approach to strengthening the synergy between energy, water, and environmental sustainability.

 

 

 

 

Dong-Won Kang
Chung-Ang University, South Korea
 

Biography: Dong-Won Kang received his Ph.D. degree from the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Seoul National University, Korea, in 2013. He subsequently conducted postdoctoral research in the Department of Physical Electronics at the Tokyo Institute of Technology, Japan (2013–2014). He then served as an Assistant Professor in the School of Solar & Energy Engineering at Cheongju University (2015–2017). Since 2018, he has been an Associate Professor in the Department of Energy Systems Engineering at Chung-Ang University, Korea. Dr. Kang’s research interests cover a wide range of semiconductor materials and optoelectronic devices, including silicon-, organic-, and perovskite-based systems. His group focuses on energy materials and devices such as perovskite-based tandem photovoltaics and memristors. In recent years, he has placed particular emphasis on metal halide perovskite materials, exploring exciting research directions in tandem solar cells and lead-free perovskite technologies, achieving significant scientific outcomes. To date, Dr. Kang has published over 130 SCIE-indexed journal papers and holds 20 patents (filed and registered). His continuing research aims to advance high-performance, stable, and sustainable optoelectronic materials and devices for next-generation energy technologies.

 

Speech title "Compositional Engineering on Metal Halide Perovskites for Efficient Tandem Photovoltaics"

Abstract-For long-term energy requirements, utilization of renewable energy is promising to address environmental pollution and carbon neutralization[Dincer, 2000 #1]. Of various renewable energies, solar energy is the most abundant and significant for next-generation technology. Despite high efficiency in silicon-based technology, one of the major challenges is the processing cost of these devices and their limited availability. Organic-inorganic metal halide perovskites (OIHPs) are promising candidates and made rapid progress over the past decades, due to wide-range bandgap tunability, ease in dopant-induced optoelectronic modification, longer diffusion length, and high carrier mobility. Perovskite solar cells (PSCs) already reached the certified power conversion efficiency of 27.3%, not far from the Shockley-Queisser limit. However, the unutilized solar energy is ascribed as spectral loss due to the limited optical response of photo-absorbers. Single-junction solar cells are incapable to avoid the excess thermalization loss and cannot exploit photons with energy less than the bandgap and hence suffer from the limited optical response. For further efficiency enhancement, tandem PSCs have been suggested, which can harness maximum photons in a broad spectral range. In this presentation, various sub-cell technologies using OIHPs and Pb-free perovskite light harvesters have been developed to realize perovskite/perovskite tandem PSC architectures.