Prof. Lihui Wang

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

Lihui Wang is a Professor and Chair of Sustainable Manufacturing at KTH, Sweden. He is also the Director of Centre of Excellence in Production Research (XPRES) — one of the five national strategic research centres at KTH. He has served as the President (2020-2021) of North American Manufacturing Research Institution (NAMRI) of Society of Manufacturing Engineers (SME), and the Chairman (2018-2020) of Swedish Production Academy. Professor Wang was elected one of the 20 Most Influential Professors in Smart Manufacturing in 2020, and the Gold Medal recipient from Society of Manufacturing Engineers in 2024.

He received his PhD and MSc from Kobe University (Japan) in 1993 and 1990, respectively, and BSc in China in 1982. He was an Assistant Professor of Kobe University and Toyohashi University of Technology (Japan) prior to joining National Research Council of Canada (NRC) in 1998, where he was a Senior Research Scientist before moving to Sweden in 2008. His research interests are presently focused on real-time monitoring and control, human-robot collaboration, brain robotics, digital twin, cyber-physical and sustainable production systems. His research work has won one Best Poster Award in Switzerland (2003), five Best Paper Awards in Germany (2002), USA (2016), Serbia (2020), Sweden (2020) and Hong Kong (2023), and two Outstanding Paper Awards in Mexico (2008) and USA (2016). In 2021 and 2025, he received the two Best Paper Awards of Journal of Manufacturing Systems. He is also an eight-time winner of NRC Institute Awards on Excellence and Leadership in R&D, Multidisciplinary Collaborative Research, Global Reach, and Outstanding People. He is also a Fellow of The Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE), a Fellow of The International Academy for Production Engineering (CIRP), a Fellow of International Academy of Engineering and Technology (AET), a Fellow of SME, a Fellow of ASME, and a registered Professional Engineer in Canada.

Prof. George Q. Huang

Chair Professor of Smart Manufacturing; Director of Research Institute for Advanced Manufacturing

The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China

George joined Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University in December 2022 as Chair Professor of Smart Manufacturing. Prior to this appointment, he was Chair Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Head of Department in Department of Industrial and Manufacturing Systems Engineering at The University of Hong Kong. He gained BEng and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Southeast University (China) and Cardiff University (UK) respectively. He has conducted research projects in areas of Smart Manufacturing, Logistics, and Construction through IoT-enabled Cyber-Physical Internet and Systems Analytics. His research has been supported with substantial government and industrial grants. He has directed a strong research team and collaborated closely with leading academic and industrial organizations through joint projects and start-up companies. He has published extensively and his works have been highly cited by research communities. He serves as associate editors and editorial members for several international journals. He is Chartered Engineer (CEng), Fellow of IEEE, IISE, ASME, HKIE, IET and CILT.

Prof. Yongsheng Ma

Southern University of Science and Technology, China

Dr. Yongsheng Ma has joined Southern University of Science and Technology (SUSTech) in Shenzhen, China since July, 2021 as a full professor. Before that, Dr. Ma had been a full professor with the University of Alberta (UA) since 2007. He was an associate professor with Nanyang Technological University, Singapore during 2000-2007. Dr. Ma started his career as a polytechnic lecturer in Singapore (1993-1996); and then a research fellow, senior research fellow and group manager (1996-2000) at Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology.

Dr. Ma received his B.Eng. from Tsinghua University, Beijing (1986), both M.Sc. (1990) and Ph.D. (1994) from UMIST, UK. Dr. Ma has had an established research profile with many research projects from different sources, and published more than 200 papers internationally in recognized top journals, conferences, and book chapters. Dr. Ma had served as an Editorial Board Member of Advanced Engineering Informatics (ADVEI, Elsevier) since 2012, and became an associate editor since 2020. Concurrently, he also serves as an associate editor for ASME Journal of Computer Information Science and Engineering (JCISE), and an Editorial Member of Scientific Reports (Springer Nature). Dr. Ma had also been an associate editor of IEEE Transaction of Automation Science and Engineering (2009-2013). Dr. Ma is a member of ASEE, SME, SPE, ASME, CSME and a Canada (Alberta) registered Professional Engineer (P.Eng.) since 2009. In 2012, he won the prestigious ASTech award sponsored by The Alberta Science and Technology Leadership Foundation together with Drader Manufacturing Ltd. Dr. Ma had also served as a senator of UA during 2014-2016.

Zhiyun Lin

Foreign academician of the Russian Academy of Engineering, Fellow of IEEE、IET

Southern University of Science and Technology, China

Zhiyun Lin is currently a tenured full professor at Southern University of Science and Technology. He received his PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from University of Toronto, Canada, in 2005, and then he worked as a Postdoctoral Research Associate in University of Toronto from 2005 to 2007. He joined College of Electrical Engineering, Zhejiang University in 2007 as a research professor and then promoted to a tenured full professor in 2011. In 2017, he moved to Hangzhou Dianzi University and worked as the Director of Artificial Intelligence Institute. He joined Southern University of Science and Technology in 2021. He held visiting professor positions at several universities including The Australian National University (Australia), University of Cagliari (Italy), University of Newcastle (Australia), University of Technology Sydney (Australia), and Yale University (USA). His research interests focus on multi-agent systems, distributed artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and swarm robots, and cyber-physical systems. He has authored and coauthored two monograph and over 230 peer-reviewed papers in leading international journals and conferences. According to Google Scholar, his work has been cited over 8600 times. From 2014 to 2023, he has been consecutively selected in the list of Mostly Cited Chinese Researchers by Elsevier. He is a Foreign Full Member of the Russian Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of IET and a Fellow of AAIA.  

Prof. Yanguo Jing

FBCS, MIEEE, MIET, PFHEA, CMBE, Leeds Trinity University, UK

Professor Yanguo Jing is the Dean of Faculty of Business, Computing and Digital Industries, Leeds Trinity University, UK. He is a Professor of Artificial Intelligence, a Principal Fellow of the Advance HE (PFHEA), a Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a Certified Management & Business Educator. He is a council member of the Chartered Association of Business Schools in the UK. He is interested in the use of AI and machine learning algorithms to learn behaviour patterns and develop intelligent applications. His recent work focuses on the use of AI and machine learning algorithms in sports science, HR, business and education.  

Title: The use of AI in Job Grading in Higher Education in the UK

Abstract: Job grading is a time consuming and to some extend a subjective task. The HERA (High Education Role Analysis) method is used broadly by most universities in the UK to provide the job grading consistency. This project aims to use machine learning algorithm to learn the grading process and automatically provide the job grade. A preliminary has been carried out, among four different type of job elements in the job descript, this research has produced an accuracy between 80% to 92%. Future recommendations of this work will be provide, as well as the ethical considerations of using AI in human resource domain.