Biography: João P. S. Catalão is an IEEE Fellow. He received the M.Sc. degree from the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST), Lisbon, Portugal, in 2003, and the Ph.D. degree and Habilitation for Full Professor ("Agregação") from the University of Beira Interior (UBI), Covilha, Portugal, in 2007 and 2013, respectively. Currently, he is a Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP), Porto, Portugal. He was the Primary Coordinator of the EU-funded FP7 project SiNGULAR, a 5.2-million-euro project involving 11 industry partners. He has authored or coauthored more than 500 journal publications and 400 conference proceedings papers, with an h-index of 90 and more than 30,000 citations (according to Google Scholar), having supervised more than 120 post-docs, Ph.D. and M.Sc. students, and other students with project grants. He was the General Chair and General Co-Chair of SEST 2019 and SEST 2020, respectively, after being the inaugural Technical Chair and co-founder of SEST 2018. He is a Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems. Furthermore, he is an Associate Editor of nine other IEEE Transactions/Journals. He was an IEEE Computational Intelligence Society (CIS) Fellows Committee Member in 2022 and 2023. He was recognized as one of the Outstanding Associate Editors 2020 of the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, and one of the Outstanding Associate Editors 2021 of the IEEE Transactions on Power Systems. He has multiple Highly Cited Papers in Web of Science. He has won 5 Best Paper Awards at IEEE Conferences. Furthermore, he was the recipient of the 2017-2022 (for the sixth consecutive year) FEUP Scientific Recognition Diplomas. His research interests include power system operations and planning, power system economics and electricity markets, distributed renewable generation, demand response, smart grid, and multi-energy carriers.

Biography: Dr. Gabbar is a full Professor in the Department of Energy and Nuclear Engineering, the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science, at Ontario Tech University (UOIT), where he has established the Energy Safety and Control Lab (ESCL), Smart Energy Systems Lab, and Advanced Plasma Engineering Lab. He is the recipient of the Senior Research Excellence Aware for 2016, UOIT. He is recognized among the top 2% of worldwide scientists with high citation in the area of energy. He Fellow IET (FIET) and Distinguished Lecturer – IEEE NPSS on Nuclear-Renewable Hybrid Energy Systems and Plasma-based Waste-to-Energy. He is leading national and international research in the areas of smart energy grids, energy safety and control systems, and waste-to-energy using advanced plasma technologies. Dr. Gabbar obtained his B.Sc. degree in 1988 with first class of honor from the Faculty of Engineering, Alexandria University (Egypt). In 2001, he obtained his Ph.D. degree from Okayama University (Japan). From 2001 till 2004, he joined Tokyo Institute of Technology (Japan), as a research associate. From 2004 till 2008, he joined Okayama University (Japan) as an Associate Professor, in the Division of Industrial Innovation Sciences. From 2007 till 2008, he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Toronto. He also worked as process control, safety, and automation specialist in energy and oil & gas industries. Dr. Gabbar has more than 290 publications, including patents, books / chapters, journal and conference papers.
Dr. Hossam Gaber has been collaborating with Japan and Indonesia to promote nuclear-renewable hybrid energy systems, where he was invited to the panel discussions in Indonesia as part of IAEA and was the representative of Canada in IAEA to develop the roadmap of nuclear-renewable hybrid energy system deployments with different energy scenarios based on regional resources and requirements. Dr. Gaber developed novel integrated hybrid energy system simulator to synthesize and optimize different nuclear-renewable scenarios and evaluate different nuclear power plant and SMR technologies based on energy load profiles and local resources. Dr. Gaber prepared nuclear deployment strategies and training programs, and explored in different countries including Canada, USA, Indonesia, UK, Norway, South Africa, Brazil, Egypt, UAE, and Hungary. Dr. Gaber has presented his scholarly research in Wisconsin, Budapest, Tokyo, Cairo, Jakarta, and other cities around the world. Dr. Gaber is also leading national research related to radioactive waste for SMR deployment as part of University Network of Nuclear Engineering (UNENE), Canadian National Laboratory (CNL), Ontario Power Generation (OPG), and NSERC. His research led to patents and products in the market with industrial applications and projects.

Title: Hybrid Energy with Hydrogen Deployment Strategies for the Transition to Zero Carbon Communities

In this talk, hybrid energy with hydrogen deployments strategies are analyzed, modeled usign collaborative simulation. The different modeling levels of hybrid energy systems and hydrogen technologies will be presented as interconnected with community infrastructures. Collaborative simulation approaches are used to evaluate the utilization to plan hydrogen deployment in municipalities and community applications. The concept of energy semantic network is utilized to model energy networks and interconnected infrasturctures while defining key performance indicators. The collaborative simulation will enable the definition of different strategies and scenarios and optimize based on performance, risks, and transactive energy. Case studies will be presnted with energy, nuclear, transportation, hydrogen, and water networks as interfaced with infrastructures.

Biography: Dr. Masafumi Yamaguchi is now Professor Emeritus and Invited Research Fellow at the Toyota Technological Institute, Nagoya, Japan. He is the Chairman, PV R&D Review Committee under the NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization): since 2008. He was the Research Supervisor of the “Creative Clean Energy Generation using Solar Energy” under the JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency): 2009-2017. Prof. Yamaguchi has contributed to R&D for high-efficiency multi-junction, Si tandem and Si solar cells, space solar cells, defects in semiconductors, PV-powered vehicle applications. He has received numerous awards such as The Becquerel Prize from the European Commission in 2004, The William Cherry Award from the IEEE in 2008, The PVSEC Award in 2011, The WCPEC Award in 2014, The Science and Technology Award by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2015, the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Japan Society of Applied Physics in 2025 and the Purple Ribbon Medal from the Emperor in 2025 for his outstanding contributions to the development of science and technology of photovoltaics such as high-efficiency multi-junction solar cells, space solar cells, concentrator solar cells and as one of the world leaders of the development of photovoltaics and as one of the driving forces for international co-operation.

Title: Future Direction of Photovoltaics

Photovoltaic (PV) energy conversion is expected to contribute to creation of a clean energy society. For realizing such a vision, various developments such as high-efficiency, low-cost and highly reliable materials, solar cells, modules and systems are necessary. Cooperation with storage battery is also very important for regulation and self-consumption. Creation of new applications such as building integrated PV, vehicle integrated PV, agriculture PV and floating PV is also very important for further installation of PV and reducing CO2 emission. Sustainability of material consumption, reducing, reuse and recycling are also key issues for widespread deployment of PV. This paper shows overviews current status of photovoltaics and discusses about future directions of photovoltaics from the view-points of high-efficiency, low-cost, reliability, and importance of integrated photovoltaics and sustainability.