Panels
Panel on Lean Six Sigma
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Panel of Global Engineering Education
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Panel Speaker I
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Panel on Industry 4.o
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Diversity & Inclusion Panel Sponsored by Ford Motor Company
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Women in Industry and Academia (WIIA)
Panel Chair
Mervat El-Hoz
Founder and CEO
Environmental Engineering Consulting
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
She holds a BS, and MS from Middle East Technical University in Turkey and a Ph.D. from the University of Sydney, Australia in Environmental Engineering. She has been advising policymakers, communities, and businesses on sustainable solutions to environmental issues since 1998. In higher education, she was the founder and chair of the Environmental Engineering Programs at the Master Level (MS in Environmental Engineering 2012-2020, and MS Minor Degree in Environmental Engineering 2000-2011) and the founder and director of the Environmental Engineering and Water Quality Laboratories at the University of Balamand (2012-2020, 2000-2011), Lebanon. In the field of consultancy, Prof. El-Hoz is the Founder and Executive Director of the Environmental Engineering Consulting Office 2002-2021. She is active in the Middle East and North Africa region where she worked as a project manager and local coordinator for several environmental projects and trainer in workshops on water, wastewater, solid waste, and air quality. Her academic and technical work has been recognized internationally. She has published numerous research papers that have been cited by scientists from around the world. She received several first awards in international conferences such as Solid Waste Management and Technology (USA and India), Environmental Science and Technology (USA), and Women in the Environment (Euro-Arab region). She has been invited as a keynote speaker to many national and international conferences. She is a member of numerous editorial boards and scientific committees of major international journals and conferences and also serves as a reviewer for Elsevier journals. She has been invited to speak at prestigious academic institutions around the world. She is also an environmental expert for various policies and projects funded by WB, USAID, EU, and UNDP.
Panel Speaker I
Dr Spring Zhou
Faculty of Business and Law
School of Business
University of Wollongong
Dr Quan (Spring) Zhou is a Lecturer in the Operations Discipline Group, School of Management, Operations and Marketing, Faculty of Business, at University of Wollongong. She obtained a PhD in Operations and Supply Chain Management from University of Auckland in 2016 for her research in managing medical supplies in national reserves. Prior to joining University of Wollongong, Spring worked as a lecturer at Massey University (2016-2018) and a Research Fellow at University of Auckland (2016) in New Zealand. Her research interests are in supply chain management, non-profit operations, inventory management of perishable products, and agricultural value chains.
As a strong proponent of practice-inspired research, Spring is passionate about combining her research interests with practical needs. Spring has been actively involved in practice-driven, applied research. For example, her PhD project was motivated by the serious expiration problem in the medical reserve stocks. In that project, she studied rotation schemes and provided suggestions on managing the medical supplies, considering the perishability of long-life medical products. Spring has also worked with AgResearch in New Zealand to evaluate on-farm changes when delivering desirable credence attributes for agri-products and explore ways to motivate changes in land use practices.
Panel Speaker II
Dr Sumana Biswas
Associate Fellow
Higher Education Academy (AFHEA)
Capability Systems Centre School of Engineering and Information Technology
University of New South Wales, Canberra
Dr. Sumana Biswas is an enthusiastic engineering person with expertise in technology decision making, capability model development, autonomous systems planning, artificial intelligence, data-driven optimization algorithms and simulation models.
Dr. Biswas obtained her PhD in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Canberra, Australia. She received her B.S.C. and M.S.C. degree in Mechanical Engineering, from Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET), Bangladesh, in 2006 and 2014, respectively. Currently, she is working as a Research Associate in Capability Systems Centre, School of Engineering and Information Technology at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Canberra, at the Australian Defence Force Academy, Australia.
Dr. Biswas has more than 13 years of research and teaching experience in the higher education sector in Bangladesh and Australia. She was an Assistant Professor at the Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology (CUET), Bangladesh. Dr. Biswas has supervised a number of undergrad and master’s students over these years. She has published more than 25 peer-reviewed journals and conference papers.
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