2025 Keynote Speakers

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Previous Keynote & Plenary Speakers

Prof. Chimay Anumba (FREng, FICE, FIStructE, FASCE) University of Florida, USA

Biography: Dean Chimay Anumba graduated at 18 with a First Class Honours degree in Building and worked as a Project Engineer and Design Engineer before studying for his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering (specializing in Computer-Aided Design) at the University of Leeds, UK. He then worked in industry on a wide range of building and civil infrastructure projects, becoming a Chartered/Professional Engineer in 1993. This was followed by academic appointments at a number of UK academic institutions. More recently, he was Professor and Head, Department of Architectural Engineering at the Pennsylvania State University from January 2008 to July 2016.
Dr. Anumba’s research interests are in the fields of construction engineering and management, advanced engineering informatics (AI, CPS, KBS, etc.), concurrent engineering, knowledge management, distributed collaboration, high performance buildings, and sustainable construction. He has over 500 scientific publications, including 21 books and over 200 archival journal papers, in these fields. His work has received over $150m in support from various sources – the National Science Foundation (NSF), the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), National Institutes for Health (NIH), the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC, UK), and a variety of international agencies. He has also supervised 52 doctoral candidates to completion, mentored over 25 postdoctoral scholars, and advised numerous masters’ students.
He has won several awards for his work and has held Visiting Professor/Scholar appointments at more than 10 universities in N. America, Europe, Asia and Africa – including MIT, Stanford and Tsinghua. In recognition of his substantial and sustained original contributions to the field of Construction Engineering and Informatics, Dr. Anumba was awarded the higher doctorate degree of Doctor of Science, D.Sc., by Loughborough University in July 2006. In January 2007, he was also awarded an Honorary Doctorate (Dr.h.c.) by Delft University of Technology in The Netherlands for outstanding scientific contributions to Building and Construction Engineering. He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (the United Kingdom’s National Academy of Engineering) in July 2012. He also holds Fellowships of the following professional institutions: The Institution of Civil Engineers, The Institution of Structural Engineers, and the American Society of Civil Engineers. He is the recipient of the 2018 ASCE Computing in Civil Engineering Award and a member of the U.S. National Academy of Construction.
Dr. Anumba is also Editor-in-Chief of the Engineering, Construction and Architectural Management journal, Co-Editor of the Journal of Information Technology in Construction, and Specialty Editor of the ASCE Journal of Computing in Civil Engineering. He sits on the editorial boards of numerous other journals.
Dr. Anumba joined the University of Florida on August 1, 2016 as Dean of the College of Design, Construction and Planning.

Ir Professor C.W. Lim (FASME, FASCE, F.EMI, FHKIE, RPE, 2020 JN Reddy Medalist) City University of Hong Kong, China

Biography: Currently a fellow of ASME, ASCE, EMI and HKIE, Ir Professor Lim received a B.Eng. from University of Technology of Malaysia, M.Eng. and PhD from National University of Singapore and Nanyang Technological University, respectively. Prior to joining City University of Hong Kong, he was a post-doctoral research fellow at The University of Queensland and The University of Hong Kong. He is also a visiting professor at various universities worldwide. He has expertise in theory of plates and shells, dynamics of smart piezoelectric structures, nanomechanics, metamaterials and symplectic elasticity. He is currently the subject editor for Journal of Sound and Vibration, joint-editor for Journal of Mechanics of Material and Structures, subject editor for Applied Mathematical Modelling, Managing Editor (Asia-Pacific Region) for Journal of Vibration Engineering & Technologies, Associate Editor for International Journal of Bifurcation and Chaos, etc. and also on the editorial board of some other top-ranked international journals. He has published one very well-selling title entitled “Symplectic Elasticity”, co-authored with W.A. Yao and W.X. Zhong from Dalian University of Technology, as recorded by the publisher, World Scientific, in Engineering Mechanics and Mechanical Engineering. He has published more than 350 international journal papers and have more than 12,000 citations. Recently Professor Lim was awarded the prestigious 2020 JN Reddy Medal as a recognition “for significant and original contributions to vibration of plates and shells, smart piezoelectric structures, nanomechanics, and symplectic elasticity”. He was also previously awarded Top Referees in 2009, Proceedings A, The Royal Society. Professor Lim is a registered professional engineer in Hong Kong.

Prof. George Baird Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand

Biography: George Baird is Emeritus Professor of Building Science at the School of Architecture, Victoria University of Wellington, specialising in building environmental science and the assessment of building performance from the point of view of the users. He is a Fellow of the Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers (UK) and of Engineering New Zealand, and was awarded Life Membership of the Energy Management Association (now Carbon and Energy Professionals) of New Zealand in 2013. He received the NZ Science and Technology Bronze Medal in 1999, the international “Pioneers of the World Renewable Energy Network” Award in 2006 and was appointed a Fellow of the Architectural Science Association at their 50th Annual Conference in 2016. Dr Baird has authored innumerable conference papers and journal articles over the last half century. Major books include: Energy Performance of Buildings; Building Evaluation Techniques; Architectural Expression of Environmental Control Systems; and most recently Sustainable Buildings in Practice, a worldwide survey of sustainable buildings. Still active in his field, he was an invited speaker at the recent World Sustainable Building Conference in Hong Kong and the Passive and Low Energy Architecture Conference in Edinburgh, and is a member of the editorial boards of several journals in the field of architectural science, including Architectural Science Review, Journal of Building Engineering, Intelligent Buildings International, and Buildings.

Speech Title: The Case for Determining the Occupants’ Viewpoint on Their Building’s Performance
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Prof. Tan Kiang Hwee National University of Singapore, Singapore

Biography: Professor TAN KIANG HWEE is a faculty member of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the National University of Singapore (NUS) since July 1981. He obtained his doctorate degree from the University of Tokyo, Japan in 1985. He specialises in the area of structural concrete and composites and has carried out extensive research on external prestressing, fibre-reinforced polymer (FRP) reinforcement, fibre-reinforced concrete, and sustainable concrete and construction. Professor Tan is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers, Singapore (IES), Japan Concrete Institute (JCI) and Japan Society of Civil Engineers (JSCE). He is a member of editorial boards for more than ten international journals, including ASCE Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, ASCE Journal of Composites for Construction, Cement and Concrete Composites, JCI Journal of Advanced Concrete Technology, and others. He is a registered professional engineer and has also been a consultant in structural engineering to several agencies in Singapore.

Prof. Kyoung Sun Moon Yale University, USA

Biography: Kyoung Sun Moon is Associate Professor at Yale University School of Architecture. He received a B.S. from Seoul National University and an M.Arch. and an M.S.C.E. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a Ph.D. from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Prior to joining the Yale faculty, Dr. Moon taught at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and worked at Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill in Chicago and the Republic of Korea Navy. Educated as both an architect and engineer, Dr. Moon’s primary research area is the integration between the art and science/technology of architecture, with a focus on tall and other structurally challenging buildings. His articles on this area have appeared in many scholarly journals including The Structural Design of Tall and Special Buildings, Engineering Structures, Journal of Architectural Engineering, Architectural Science Review, Journal of Urban Technology, and International Journal of Sustainable Building Technology and Urban Development to name a few. He is also the author of the book “Cantilever Architecture.” Dr. Moon is a licensed architect in the U.S., and a member of the American Institute of Architects, American Society of Civil Engineers Committee on Tall Buildings, and Council on Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat Expert Peer Review Committee. He is an editor in chief of the International Journal of High-Rise Buildings and an editorial board member of other research journals.

Prof. Minehiro Nishiyama Kyoto University, Japan

Biography: Minehiro Nishiyama is a professor of the Architecture and Architectural Engineering Department, Graduate School of Engineering, Kyoto University, Japan. He obtained PhD for a thesis entitled "Seismic Response and Seismic Design of Prestressed Concrete Buildings" from Kyoto University. He received the 1992 Otto Glogau Award from New Zealand National Society of Earthquake Engineering for a paper written based on his PhD thesis. He worked as President of Japan Prestressed Concrete Institute (2015-2017) and Vice-president of Japan Concrete Institute (2018-2020). His research interest is in the field of seismic performance of reinforced and prestressed concrete buildings, fire resistance of concrete material and buildings, and development of high-performance materials and structural systems. He, as a member of the reconnaissance teams dispatched by institutes and Japanese government, has investigated many regions devastated by severe earthquakes such as Northridge earthquake (USA) 1994, Hyogoken Nanbu earthquake 1995, Kocaeli earthquake (Turkey) 1999, Chi-Chi earthquake (Taiwan) 1999, earthquake off the Pacific Coast of Tohoku 2011, Kumamoto earthquake (Japan) 2016 and Puebla earthquake (Mexico) 2017. Reports on the investigation results have been published in international journals.