Keynote Speakers

Biography: David Chiaramonti, PhD, is a full professor at Polytechnic of Turin, Torino, Piedmont, Italy where teaches Bioenergy Conversion Technologies. Previously he was a member of CREAR and chairman of the Renewable Energy COnsortium for R&D (RE-CORD), University of Florence. His main scientific interest is on the production and use in engines/turbines of biofuels, either liquid, gaseous or solid, and on bioproducts, mainly focusing on thermochemical biomass conversion and process development. Recent activities cover aviation biofuel, catalytic pyrolysis and gasification of biomass in pilot/demo reactors, hydrothermal liquefaction and carbonization, methanation, and algae cultivation systems and downstream processing. He is author of more than 180 publications on International Journals and Conferences, and participated to more than 25 EU R&D and dissemination projects, in particular in the field of Biomass. He is member of the International Organising Committee, Scientific Committee and Topic Organiser of major conferences in the field, such as the European Biomass Conference and Exhibition (EUBCE), the International Symposium on Alcohol Fuels (ISAF), and the International Conference on Applied Energy (ICAE). David Chiaramonti has been member and Country Representative of IEA-Bioenergy, Task 34 - Biomass Pyrolysis and IEA Task 39 (Liquid Biofuel), and today Country Representative at UN-ICAO CAEP AFTF (ICAO task force on Alternative Fuels for aviation). He was a member of the Italian and the European Biofuel Technology Platforms, and technical secretary of the Leaders for Sustainable Biofuels: he is now technically coordinating the Alternative and Renewable Transport Fuel Forum (ART Fuel Forum, AFF), a DG Energy tender on market and policy for Advanced Biofuels, and the new H2020 project on Aviation Biofuels BIO4A (starting May2018). David Chiaramonti is member and has been chairing the International Research Advisory Council (RAC) of DBFZ (German Biomass Research Center).
David Chiaramonti has been awarded the Linneborn Prize for outstanding merits in biomass at EUBCE 2017 in Stockhlom.

Biography: Curtis Hays Whitson is professor of petroleum engineering at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), Dept. of Petroleum Engineering & Applied Geophysics; he founded the international consulting company PERA in 1988, as well as Petrostreamz in 2006, a petroleum software company dealing with optimized IAM (Integrated Asset Modeling).
Whitson researches and teaches both university and industry courses on petroleum phase behavior (PVT), gas-based EOR, gas condensate reservoirs, integrated-model optimization, petroleum-streams management, liquid-loading gas well performance, and liquids-rich shale well optimization. He has co-authored two books: Well Performance (Golan and Whitson) and the SPE monograph Phase Behavior (Whitson and Brulé), co-authored more than 100 papers, and has written three chapters of edited books.
Whitson has a B.Sc. degree in petroleum engineering from Stanford University and a PhD degree from the Norwegian Institute of Technology (now NTNU). He is a 25-year member of the Society of Petroleum Engineers, and has twice received the Cedric K. Fergusson award (as co-author with Øivind Fevang, 1997 and Lars Høier, 2001).

Biography: M. R. Riazi received a doctorate degree in Chemical Engineering from Pennsylvania State University (Penn State) and is the author of 150 publications including 6 books in the areas of oil, gas, coal and biofuel characterization, production and processing. In addition he has over 100 conference presentations and about 100 invited lectures and workshops for the petroleum industry in more than 40 countries. He has served as an Assistant Professor at Penn State as well as Visiting Professor / Scholar in the Departments of Chemical and Petroleum Engineering at the following universities: Illinois/Chicago, Texas/Austin, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (Trondheim), McGill (Montreal), Waterloo, and some other universities in US, India and Middle East. He is a professor and former chairman of Chemical Engineering at Kuwait University and is the Editor-in-Chief of IJOGCT. As a result of his work, Dr. Riazi has been honored as the recipient the following awards: Diploma of Honor from United States National Petroleum Engineering Society for the Outstanding Contributions to the Petroleum Industry, KU Outstanding Research and Teaching Awards (received from former Amir of Kuwait) and was an elected Fellow of American Institute of Chemical Engineers. He is a registered and licensed professional engineer in Ontario, Canada.

Biography: Dr Rajender Gupta is a professor in Chemical and Materials Engineering at the University of Alberta. He is a 1972 graduate from IIT Kharagpur and PhD from the University of Newcastle. He has been researching in the general area of clean coal technologies for well over last 35 years. He has published more than 150 technical and research publications including more than 80 research papers in International journals and is member of the editorial board of a number of international journals and of the technical committee of several international conferences.
Dr Gupta, before coming to University of Alberta, led several research projects at Co-operative Research Centre for Coal in Sustainable Development in Australia at the University of Newcastle on advanced coal characterization, mineral to ash transformation and Performance Prediction of Coal Fired Boilers.
Dr Gupta, currently, has been leading coal research in Canadian Centre of Clean Coal Carbon and Mineral Processing (C5MPT) at the University of Alberta. His current research interests include upgrading of low grade coals by reducing minerals and moisture, coal to liquid, coal/biomass/petcoke/asphaltene utilization, gasification and hot gas clean up, oxy-firing, post-combustion capture and underground coal gasification.