Born in Saaremaa, the future energy hub of Estonia, PhD Riinu Härmas is a young researcher from the Institute of Chemistry in the University of Tartu. She defended her PhD thesis on porous carbon materials and H2 storage in these materials last year. With the encouragement of prof. Enn Lust, the main proponent of hydrogen technologies in Estonia during decades, PhD Riinu Härmas has been studying more and more about hydrogen technologies, their possibilities and limitations on a wider scope. She helped to design an open online course on hydrogen technologies and for that course, put together comprehensive lectures on energy storage, hydrogen production, hydrogen storage and synthetic fuels. To date, that course has had more than 600 participants from all areas of life. Lately, PhD Härmas has been evermore extending her knowledge with the aim of making hydrogen technologies become a reality in Estonia. For that, she contributed to the writing of the Estonian Hydrogen Valley project and several projects related to hydrogen in her home island Saaremaa. In addition, she is an active member of the Estonian Hydrogen association, which she helped to represent in the European Hydrogen Week in october last year.

Born in Southern China, Professor Da-Wen Sun is a global authority in food engineering research and education. He is an Academician of six academies, including Royal Irish Academy, the highest academic honour in Ireland; Academia Europaea (The Academy of Europe), one of the most prestigious academies in the world; Polish Academy of Sciences, the highest lifetime honour bestowed by the Polish government; International Academy of Food Science and Technology; International Academy of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, and International Academy of Refrigeration. He is also the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Food and Bioprocess Technology (Q1), one of the most prestigious food science and technology journals; Series Editor of “Contemporary Food Engineering” book series with already over 50 volumes published; and the Founding President of the International Academy of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (iAABE). In addition, he served as the President of the International Commission of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (CIGR), the world largest organisation in the field, in 2013-2014, and is now Honorary President of CIGR. He has significantly contributed to the field of food engineering as a researcher, as an academic authority, and as an educator.

His main research activities include cooling, drying and refrigeration processes and systems, quality and safety of food products, bioprocess simulation and optimisation, and computer vision/image processing and hyperspectral/Raman imaging technologies. Especially, his many scholarly works have become standard reference materials for researchers in the areas of hyperspectral imaging, computer vision, ultrasonic freezing, vacuum cooling, computational fluid dynamics modelling, etc. Results of his work have been published in over 1,000 papers including more than 700 peer-reviewed journal papers indexed by Web of Science (Web of Science h-index = 112, SCOPUS h-index = 121, Google Scholar h-index = 144), among them, 71 papers have been selected by the Essential Science Indicators^SM as Highly Cited / Hot Papers in Field, ranking him No. 1 in the world in Agricultural Sciences (January 2020). He has also edited 17 authoritative books. In addition, Professor Sun has been named Highly Cited Researcher in the last 8 consecutive years (2015- 2022) by Clarivate Analytics and has also topped the Stanford University list of World’s Top 2% Scientists (in the 996^th position of 161,441 listed scientists).

He received a first-class BSc Honours and MSc in Mechanical Engineering, and a PhD in Chemical Engineering in China before working in various universities in Europe. He became the first Chinese national to be permanently employed in an Irish University when he was appointed College Lecturer at the National University of Ireland, Dublin (University College Dublin) in 1995, and was then continuously promoted in the shortest possible time to Associate Professor, Professor, and Full Professor. Dr Sun is now the Full Professor of Food and Biosystems Engineering and Director of the Food Refrigeration and Computerised Food Technology Research Group at University College Dublin (UCD).

As a leading educator in food engineering, Professor Sun has significantly contributed to the field of food engineering. He has trained many PhD students, who have made their own contributions to the industry and academia. He has also given lectures on advances in food engineering on a regular basis in academic institutions internationally and delivered plenary or keynote speeches at major international conferences. In recognition of his significant contribution to Food Engineering worldwide and for his outstanding leadership in the field, the International Commission of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering (CIGR) awarded him the “CIGR Merit Award” in 2000, in 2006, and again in 2016, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers (IMechE) based in the UK named him “Food Engineer of the Year 2004”, in 2008 he was awarded “CIGR Recognition Award” in honour of his distinguished achievements as the top one percent of Agricultural Engineering scientists in the world. In 2007 he was presented with the only “AFST(I) Fellow Award” in that year by the Association of Food Scientists and Technologists (India). In 2010 he received the “CIGR Fellow Award”, the title of Fellow is the highest honour in CIGR, and is conferred to individuals who have made sustained, outstanding contributions worldwide. In March 2013, he was presented with the “You Bring Charm to the World Award” by Hong Kong based Phoenix Satellite Television with other award recipients including the 2012 Nobel Laureate in Literature and the Chinese Astronaut Team for Shenzhou IX Spaceship, in July 2013 he received “The Frozen Food Foundation Freezing Research Award” from International Association for Food Protection (IAFP) for his significant contributions to enhancing the field of food freezing technologies, this is the first time that this prestigious award was presented to a scientist outside the USA. In June 2015 he was presented with the “IAEF Lifetime Achievement Award”, this IAEF (International Association of Engineering and Food) award highlights the lifetime contribution of a prominent engineer in the field of food, and in February 2018, he was conferred with the honorary doctorate degree by Universidad Privada del Norte in Peru.

Further details about Professor Sun’s research activities can be found at http://www.ucd.ie/refrig, http://www.ucd.ie/sun

Currently a Professor at the Sustainable and Renewable Energy Engineering Program at University
of Sharjah (2012-present), Prof Alami has received his PhD from Queen’s University in Kingston,
Ontario, Canada in 2006. Since then, he has held the positions of Assistant Professor of Mechanical
Engineering at the Hashemite University in Jordan (2006-2010) and Mechanical Engineering
Faculty at the Higher Colleges of Technology, Al Ain (2010-2012).
The current area of interest of Prof Alami is the synthesis and analysis of materials used in third
generation photovoltaic solar cells, solar thermal energy utilization and augmentation (selective
solar absorbers, evaporative cooling of PV modules) and novel ways of mechanical energy storage
(CAES, CGES and buoyancy force).