Sustainable Design and Manufacturing 2024 : Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Sustainable Design and Manufacturing (KES-SDM 2024)

Mark is Professor of Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing at Cranfield University. He has over 40 years’ experience in manufacturing and materials. He spent 13 years working in industry in automotive and tier 1&2 suppliers into manufacturing both in the UK and abroad before moving into academia in 1995. In 2012 he joined Cranfield after 17 years at the University of Birmingham. He has managed over £17.5 M of research projects since 1999 and has over 350 publications, technical reports, articles and books. He was Director of the UKRI Transforming the Foundation Industries Research and Innovation Hub (TransFIRe), and co-Director of the Engineering and Physical sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing which offers a triple degree with the Universities of Warwick and Exeter. Mark is on the Royal Academy of Engineering National Engineering Policy Centre (NEPC) working group on Materials for Net-Zero and sits on the Advisory Board for the Advanced School on Circular Metal Components for the Swedish Manufacturing Industry (CIRCUMET). Until December 2024 Mark was also co-Director of the Circular Economy Network plus in Transport Systems (CENTS). Mark has sat on the EPSRC Peer Review College since 2003 and sits on the council of the Cast Metals Federation. He has been a reviewer of research programmes for the European Space Agency (ESA), Enterprise Ireland, the Romanian Government and CSIR in South Africa.

Mark is a Chartered Engineer (CEng) and Chartered Environmentalist (CEnv) and sits on the Society for the Environment Honorary Fellows Panel. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Materials, Minerals and Mining (IOM3), and is the chair of the Materials Processing and Manufacturing leadership group. He also sits on the IOM3 Sustainable Development and Light Metals leadership groups. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Cast Metals Engineers (ICME). Mark was Chair of the Solidification Committee of The Minerals, Metals and Materials Society (TMS, USA) for two years until 2018. He is a Liveryman of the Worshipful Company of Founders and Freeman of the City of London.

With his co-authors he is the recipient of the 2024 TMS Light Metals Warren Peterson Subject Award for Cast Shop for Aluminum Production with a the paper entitled “Defect Minimisation in Vacuum-Assisted Plaster Mould Investment Casting Through Simulation of High-Value Aluminium Alloy Components”. Mark was the recipient of the 2019 John Campbell Gold Medal awarded by ICME for “continual advancement in sustainable manufacturing and promotion of excellence in casting technologies”. He was the 2010 Winner of the University of Birmingham Josiah Mason Founder’s Award for Business Advancement and in 2008 was the recipient of the Oliver Stubbs Medal (ICME).

His main areas of current research are in circular economy and sustainability including resource efficient manufacturing, process modelling and novel casting processes. He has worked with many well-known names across a number of sectors including Rolls-Royce, Depuy-Synthes (Johnson & Johnson), Bentley, Aston Martin, BAES, Finmeccanica, GKN, EnCirc360, Kimberly-Clark Corporation, Hanson Cement, Constellium, Siemens, TPC AB, Vesuvius, St Gobain, Luxfer, Lucideon, Pilkington Glass, Trent Refractories, and Coca-Cola. He has also championed working with many small companies especially SMEs who supply to large companies

Steffen Scholz is affiliated with   the Institute for Automation and Applied Informatics (IAI), KIT, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He has more than 15 years of experience in the field of system integration and automation, sustainable flexible production, polymer micro- & nano-replication, process optimization and control, with a recent emphasis on additive manufacturing and Industry 4.0 applications. In addition to pursuing and leading research, he has been very active with knowledge transfer to industry. He has been involved in over 30 national and international projects, and he won in excess of 20M EUR research grants, in which he has acted as coordinator and/or principal investigator. Dr. Scholz academic output includes more than 150 scientific papers and 5 books. 

Robert Howlett is the Executive Chair of KES International, a non-profit organization that facilitates knowledge transfer and the dissemination of research results in areas including Intelligent Systems, Sustainability, and Knowledge Transfer.  He is a Visiting Professor at Bournemouth University in the UK. His technical expertise is in the use of intelligent systems to solve industrial problems. He has been successful in applying artificial intelligence, machine learning and related technologies to sustainability and renewable energy systems; condition monitoring, diagnostic tools and systems; and automotive electronics and engine management systems.  His current research work is focussed on the use of smart microgrids to achieve reduced energy costs and lower carbon emissions in areas such as housing and protected horticulture.

Rossi Setchi is Fellow of the Learned Society of Wales and Professor of High-Value Manufacturing at the School of Engineering. She is Director of the Research Centre in AI, Robotics and Human-Machine Systems (IROHMS) and Co-Director of the Centre for Advanced Manufacturing Systems at Cardiff (CAMSAC).

Rossi has a distinguished track record of research in a range of areas including AI, robotics, systems engineering, additive manufacturing, industrial sustainability, Cyber-Physical Systems and Industry 4.0 and, in particular, has built an international reputation for excellence in knowledge-driven symbolic AI, computational semantics and human-machine systems.