Speakers of 2025

Saad Mekhilef (IEEE Fellow)

Swinburne University of Technology, Australia

Universiti Malaya (UM), Malaysia

Profile:Prof. Dr. Saad Mekhilef is an IEEE and IET Fellow. He is a Distinguished Professor at the School of Science, Computing and Engineering Technologies, Swinburne University of Technology, Melbourne, Australia, an Honorary Professor at the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Malaya, and a distinguished visiting professor at the Institute of Sustainable Energy, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Malaysia. He authored and co-authored more than 800 publications in academic journals and proceedings, five books with more than 60,000 citations, an H-index of 113, and more than 85 Ph.D. students who graduated under his supervision. He serves as an editorial board member for many top journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics, IEEE Open Journal of Industrial Electronics, IET Renewable Power Generation, E-Prime, Journal of Power Electronics, and International Journal of Circuit Theory and Applications.

Prof. Mekhilef has been listed by Thomson Reuters (Clarivate Analytics) as one of the world's Highly Cited (World's Top 1%) engineering researchers. He is also listed in the world's top 2 % of scientists by Stanford University, USA. He is actively involved in industrial consultancy for major corporations in Power Electronics and Renewable Energy projects. His research interests include Power Conversion Techniques, Control of Power Converters, Maximum Power Point Tracking (MPPT), Renewable Energy, and Energy Efficiency.

Professor Haynes works in the areas of soil and environmental science. His present research interests are on rehabilitation and revegetation of mine tailings, the use of constructed wetlands to treat drainage from tailings storage areas and the role of silicon in crop production. He has extensive experience having worked as both an applied research scientist and as a university professor and has worked in New Zealand, South Africa and Australia. He has published over 190 original research papers in international journals, over 25 review papers in international volumes as well as many conference and extension papers and contract reports. He has been an invited keynote speaker at many international conferences and has served on the editorial board of 4 international research journals. He has acted as principal supervisor and co-supervisor of PhD, MSc and honours students in both South Africa and Australia.

Professor Haynes has carried out research in commercial horticultural, pastoral, arable and forestry production as well as in small-holder semi subsistence agriculture. He has also worked on bioremediation of soils contaminated with organic pollutants, rehabilitation of mined sites, application of organic and inorganic wastes to soils and the effects of heavy metal contaminants on soil processes. His research has been mainly in the areas of applied soil chemistry and soil microbiology/biology with links to soil physical properties and to pollution of air and water. He has specialised in working on applied problems and maintains strong links with industry. Major areas of research have included the role of grazing animals in the fertility of pastoral soils, N cycling and gaseous and leaching losses from arable and pastoral systems, soil quality and soil degradation under agricultural land use, effects of soil contaminants on soil processes, rehabilitation and remediation of contaminated, degraded and mined sites and use of wastes as soil amendments.