■ Keynote Speaker 1

Dong Ho Park, Professor, Korea

Founder and Honorary President of the Korean Reliability Society
Fellow in the Korean Academy of Science and Technology (KAST)

Title: Maintenance and warranty policy for repairable system subject to lemon law conditions

Abstract: The search for an optimal maintenance and warranty policy has been a hot issue for a long time in the field of reliability engineering and a number of research results have been proposed in the literature. This presentation focuses on the maintenance and warranty policy for a repairable system subject to the “lemon law” conditions and its recent related works. The lemon law is a regulation to protect the customers from the defectives when the system failures occur repeatedly or the accumulated repair time exceeds a certain limit and is widely enforced over most industrialized nations. In most situations, the period during which the lemon law is effective is shorter than the warranty period and is set different from region to region. Recent research works on various situations are reviewed and the case for mutual interaction of the system components are briefly discussed as well.

Biography: Dong Ho Park is a professor, emeritus at Hallym University, Chuncheon, Korea. He received his B.S. degree in Applied Mathematics from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Florida State University, Tallahassee, USA, in 1980 and 1982, respectively. He was formerly an associate professor at University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA, until 1995 and was a director of Statistics Division, Department of Mathematics and Statistics during 1992-1993. He is a founder of the Korean Reliability Society in 1999 and assumed the presidency of that society from 1999 to 2004. In 2009, he received a prestigious presidential medal for his contribution in developing the Korean science and technology and in 2010, he was elected as a fellow in the Korean Academy of Science and Technology(KAST). He also was a recipient of a Gallup award from the Korean Statistical Association in 2012. Since his retirement in 2012, he has been working as a research professor at Industry Academic Cooperation Foundation in Hallym University, Korea. At present time, he is an honorary president of The Korean Reliability Society. He has published a large number of research papers in various areas of reliability theory, including nonparametric classes of life distributions and hypotheses life testing, Bayesian estimation, software reliability, and system warranty and maintenance policy, in a wide variety of international journals.

■ Keynote Speaker 2

Liudong Xing, PhD, Professor

University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, USA

Title: Reliability in the Internet of Things

Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) aims to enable seamless connections between people and diverse objects, transforming our society toward becoming efficient, smart, and convenient incurring potentially vast economic and environmental benefits. During the past decade, the IoT technology has developed rapidly in various application domains, spanning from smart healthcare to smart energy, smart manufacturing to smart agriculture, smart environmental monitoring to smart ocean, smart cities to smart supply chains, and so on. Due to the critical nature of IoT applications, reliability is a vital requirement for deploying and operating robust IoT systems. Based on a layered IoT architecture, this talk presents the reliability-related issues and research on IoT systems. Particularly, reliability modeling, analysis, and design issues and solution methods will be discussed for the IoT perception technologies, IoT data communications, IoT support technologies, and IoT applications and services. Several open problems in the reliability of IoT will also be presented.

Biography: Liudong Xing is a Professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth, USA. She received her PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Virginia, Charlottesville in 2002. Her research interests include reliability and resilience modelling, analysis and optimization of complex systems and networks. She is the author or co-author of over 300 journal articles and three books entitled “Reliability and Resilience in the Internet of Things”, “Binary Decision Diagrams and Extensions for System Reliability Analysis”, and “Dynamic System Reliability: Modeling and Analysis of Dynamic and Dependent Behaviors”. Prof. Xing has received multiple teaching and scholar awards, including the 2015 Changjiang Scholar Award. She was also corecipient of 2018 Premium Award for Best Paper in the journal of IET Wireless Sensor Systems, and the Best (Student) Paper Award at several international conferences. She currently serves as Associate Editor or Editorial Board member for multiple journals including IEEE Internet of Things Journal, Reliability Engineering & System Safety, IEEE Access, etc. She is IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer for the class of 2024-2025. She has been the IEEE ComSoc IoT-AHSN TC SIG chair for “IoT in Tactile Internet” since 2023. She is a fellow of the International Society of Engineering Asset Management and a senior member of IEEE.

■ Keynote Speaker 3

David Coit, PhD, Professor

Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA

Title: Maintenance and Design Optimization for Systems of Dependent Degrading Components

Biography: David Coit is a Professor in the Department of Industrial & Systems Engineering at Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ, USA, with visiting professor positions at Universite Paris-Saclay, Paris, France and Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His current teaching and research involves system reliability modeling and optimization, and energy systems optimization. He has over 140 published journal papers and over 100 peer-reviewed conference papers (h-index 64). He is currently an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Reliability and Journal of Risk and Reliability and for 15 years was a Department Editor for IISE Transactions. His research has been funded by USA National Science Foundation (NSF), U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, industry, and power utilities. His NSF grants included a CAREER grant to develop new reliability optimization algorithms considering uncertainty. He was also the recipient of the P. K. McElroy award, Alain O. Plait award and William A. J. Golomski award for best papers and tutorials at the Reliability and Maintainability Symposium (RAMS). Prof. Coit received a BS degree in mechanical engineering from Cornell University, an MBA from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and MS and PhD in industrial engineering from the University of Pittsburgh. He is a fellow of IISE.

■ Keynote Speaker 4

Min Xie, Chair Professor, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Member of European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Fellow of IEEE
Asian Region VP, Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers

Title: Safety and reliability of autonomous systems – from design, development to operation

Abstract: Autonomous vehicle is probably the most widely discussed applications of AI techniques and broadly speaking, autonomous systems have helped us to improve the quality and productivity, at work and at home. However, as many of intelligent systems are also safety-critical, how to design and develop such system is of great concern. Testing and managing the operation of such system will also be very critical. We cannot wait till systems are fully developed and operational, and managing the design and development of AI systems is what engineering management community should pay attention to. Furthermore, for intelligent systems, the data availability and accuracy should also be considered and managed, especially due to the dynamic nature of the data sources and issues with sensor degradation. In this talk, some of these issues will be discussed, with reference to the development of autonomous vehicles and robotics in different applications.

Biography: Min Xie has been a chair professor of Chair Professor at City Univ of Hong Kong since 2011. Prior to that, he was with National Univ of Singapore for 20 years, where he joined as one of the first recipient of LKY research fellow. He entered USTC in 1978 and later received his undergraduate and postgraduate education in Sweden. He has carried out extensive research in quality, reliability and industrial engineering, and published over 300 journal papers and 10 books. He has advised 60 PhD students, now working in industry or academia in different continents. He was elected IEEE fellow in 2005 and in 2022 to European Academy of Sciences and Arts. Prof Xie currently the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society’s Fellow Evaluation Committee Chair.

■ Keynote Speaker 5

Tadashi Dohi, PhD, Professor

Hiroshima University, Hiroshima, Japan

Title: Reliability Evaluation of Modular Software Systems with Bug Prediction

Abstract: Software bug prediction aims at predicting bug-prone modules in advance during the module testing, and is reduced to a statistical discrimination problem, where several kinds of machine learning algorithms are applied to predict the bug-prone probability in each module before conducting the module test. However, it should be noted that the reliability evaluation of 　modular software systems with bug prediction has not been considered yet in the past literature. In my talk, we focus on the fact that estimates of the bug-prone probabilities are mutually independent but not identical, and develop a reliability evaluation method for the modular software systems with bug prediction. Throughout numerical illustrations with actual software development project data, we present how to utilize our reliability modeling and inference in the testing of modular software systems.

Biography: Dr. Tadashi Dohi has served as a Full Professor at Hiroshima University, Japan, since 2002. He is currently appointed as Dean of School of Informatics and Data Science and Associate Dean of Graduate School of Advanced Science and Engineering, Hiroshima University. He received a Doctor of Engineering degree from Hiroshima University in 1995. His research interests include Software Reliability, Dependable Computing, Performance Evaluation, Operations Research. To date, his research has led to 280 journal papers, 340 peer-reviewed conference papers, 25 book editions, and 47 book chapters in the above research fields. Dr. Dohi is a Regular Member of IEICE, IPSJ, REAJ, a Fellow Member of ORSJ, and a Senior Member of IEEE (Computer Society and Reliability Society). He was acting President of REAJ in 2018 and 2019. He has served as the General Chair of 15 international conferences, including ISSRE 2011, ATC 2012, DASC 2019, and ICECCS 2022. Of note, he was a founding member of the International Symposium on Advanced Reliability and Maintenance Modeling (APARM) and International Workshop on Software Aging and Rejuvenation (WoSAR). He has been a steering committee member in AIWARM/APARM, ISSRE, DASC, DSA. He has also worked as a program committee member in several premier international conferences such as DSN, ISSRE, COMPSAC, SRDS, QRS, EDCC, PRDC, HASE, SAC, ICPE, among numerous others. He is an Associate Editor/Editorial Board Member of over 20 international journals, including IEEE Transactions on Reliability.

■ Keynote Speaker 6

Loon Ching Tang, Singapore

Professor, Department of Industrial Systems Engineering & Management National University of Singapore
Fellow, Academy of Engineering, Singapore

Title: A Brief History of Reliability Engineering and Future Challenges

Abstract: We first give an historical account of the origin of reliability engineering so as to understand how it has impacted the development of various major technological breakthroughs in the last 70 years. Knowing the past and how we get here today, we follow up by discussing some challenges that we face now and in the near future. The main objective of the talk is to provide an appraisal of the state of development of reliability and hope to provoke further thoughts and ideas on how we should respond to these challenges.

Biography: Dr Loon Ching TANG is currently a professor of Department of Industrial Systems Engineering & Management at the National University of Singapore and a Fellow of the Academy of Engineering, Singapore. He obtained his Ph.D degree from Cornell University in the field of Operations Research in 1992 and has published extensively in areas related to industrial engineering and operations research. He has been presented with a number of best paper awards including the IIE Transactions 2010 Best Application Paper Award and 2012 R.A. Evans/P.K. McElroy Award for the best paper at Annual RAMS. Prof Tang is the main author of the award-winning book: Six Sigma: Advanced Tools for Black Belts and Master Black Belts. Besides being active in the forefront of academic research, in the last 30 years, Prof Tang has served as a consultant for many organizations, such as the Ministry of Home Affair, Singapore Power Grid, Republic of Singapore Air Force, Seagate, HP, Phillips, etc, on a wide range of projects aiming at improving organizational and operations excellence; especially through better management of engineering assets. He is currently a fellow of ISEAM, the Co-Editor-in-Chief of Quality & Reliability Engineering International, editorial review board member of Journal of Quality Technology.

■ Keynote Speaker 7

Insu Jeon, PhD, Professor, Korea

Chonnam National University, Korea

Title: Phase-changing gels for thermal and electric energy harvesting

Abstract: Hydrated-salt-induced phase changes can be leveraged toward the development of cost-effective and environmentally friendly materials with many invaluable functions, including interchangeable states, energy (heat, electricity, and mechanical) harvesting, and switchable adhesion. However, the use of existing materials presents challenges such as limited supercooling, uncontrolled nucleation, a narrow operational temperature range, and cyclic instability, which collectively limit the practical applications of phase-changing gels. In this study, we propose a strategy that utilizes the synergistic effect of hydrated sodium acetate trihydrate (SAT) and glycerol to develop phase-changing gels with excellent supercoolability (below –80 ℃). The proposed strategy concurrently resolves all the aforementioned issues by creating a stronger yet switchable solvation barrier around the salt ions in the gel network. As a proof of concept, we rationally integrate SAT and glycerol within a polymer gel matrix at the molecular level to develop a supersaturated glycerogel. This supersaturated glycerogel possesses a cyclic, on-demand, and sustainable (by concentrating sunlight) structural transformability (~2000-fold change in stiffness) and exhibits prolonged environmental and mechanical stability. In addition, we demonstrate its ability to generate high-performance heat (~42 ℃) and thermoelectric voltages (~336 mV) at environmental temperatures of −30–37 ℃. Furthermore, it exhibits stable shape adaptability (~100%) and shape-memory ability (~100%), along with extremely tough and reversible adhesiveness (debonding energy for gel/glass adhesion: ~800 J m-2). The utilization of the SAT/glycerol synergy promotes the development of diverse high-performance phase-changing gels for advanced medical and technological applications.

Biography: Insu Jeon is a professor at Chonnam National University, Gwangju, Korea. He received his B.S. degree in Mechanical Design Engineering from Pusan National University, Busan, Korea in 1993 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 1995 and 2000, respectively. Prof. Insu Jeon initiated research on the development of various gels during a one-year visiting research period at Harvard University in USA starting in 2013. Since 2016, he has been conducting research on the development of various functional gels and has continuously published papers in prestigious international journals such as Progress in Materials Science, Advanced Materials, Advanced Functional Materials, Materials Horizons, Water Research, and the Chemical Engineering Journal. He has received various awards from the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers, including Research Excellence Award (2022) and Experimental Mechanics Academic Award (2020) and the Reliability Academic Award (2016) in the Reliability Division, and Yoo-Dam Academic Award (2005) in the Materials and Fracture Division. He served as a Program Member (Review Board) of the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF) from 2018 to 2021 and as the Chair of the Reliability Division of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers in 2019. He served as the chairman and a co-chairman of ICMR (International Conference on Materials and Reliability) held in Jeju, South Korea in 2019 and in Yamaguchi, Japan in 2022, respectively. He is currently serving as the editor of the Journal of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers, Series A (2023~). Furthermore, he is currently appointed as an adjunct professor at Zhejiang University in China.

■ Keynote Speaker 8

Carlos Guedes Soares, PhD, Distinguished Professor, University of Lisbon

Member of the Portuguese Academy of Engineering
One of the 5 founding members of the European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA)

Biography: Carlos Guedes Soares is a Distinguished Professor of the Engineering School (Instituto Superior Técnico) of the University of Lisbon and Scientific Coordinator of the Centre for Marine Technology and Ocean Engineering (CENTEC), which is a research centre of the University of Lisbon, which is rated as “Excellent” and funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology. He concluded his postgraduate studies at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, in 1976 and at the Norwegian Institute of Technology of the University of Trondheim in 1984 and has since then been at the University of Lisbon (Technical University of Lisbon until 2013). He has supervised and co-supervised more than 75 PhD students and has about 35,000 citations in the Web of Science. He has been Chair or Co-Chair of various conferences in the series of OMAE, ESREL, IMAM, ISSC, ICCGS, MARSTRUCT, MARTECH RENEW and QR2MSE. He has been Editor of the Reliability Engineering and Systems Reliability Journal for about 30 years, the last 10 of which as Editor-in-Chief. He is Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Marine Science and Application and is a member of the Editorial Board of more than 15 Journals. He is a Fellow of SNAME, RINA, IMarEST, ASME and the Portuguese Engineering Association (Ordem dos Engenheiros). He was one of the 5 founding members of the European Safety and Reliability Association (ESRA), in which he was General Secretary, Vice-Chairman, Chairman and Newsletter Editor for many years. He is also a Member of the Portuguese Academy of Engineering.