Plenary & Keynote Lectures 2027
Plenary – TBA
Prof. Achim Dittler
Karlsruhe Institute of Technology – Germany
16 November 2027 – 10:45-12:00 – Opening Session
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Achim Dittler is full Professor at the Institute of Mechanical Process Engineering and Mechanics, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He serves as Head of the Gas-Particle-Systems (GPS) group. The group does research in Chemical Engineering, Automotive Engineering, Environmental & Mechanical Engineering with the focus on gas-particle-systems. Gas-phase particle & droplet generation, characterization and separation represent the core competences of the research group.
Keynote – Design and Development of Advanced Air Filtration Media: Challenges, Innovations, and Future Directions
Prof. Arunangshu Mukhopadhyay
National Institute of Technology (NIT) – India
16 November 2027 – 14:45-16:00 – Room 1
Air filtration underpins environmental protection, industrial process efficiency, product purity, and human health. Filter media serve applications that range from respirators, surgical masks, automotive cabin filters, and room air purifiers to HVAC systems and high-temperature industrial baghouses. In every case, performance is shaped not only by material structure but by the interplay of particles, fibres, airflow, and operating conditions. Designing an ideal medium therefore means reconciling objectives that frequently conflict — high particle-removal efficiency, low and stable pressure drop, adequate dust-holding capacity and mechanical or thermal durability where the application demands them, together with acceptable cost and environmental sustainability — where a gain in one property usually forces a compromise in another.
A persistent obstacle is the gap between laboratory results and real field performance. Conventional descriptors such as porosity, pore size, permeability, and even the quality factor are often misread. Mass-based respirator testing under-represents the finest and most penetrating particles; fixed test flow rates rarely match the face velocity of actual breathing; and cabin-filter standards frequently ignore the ultrafine soot that matters most. For high-temperature filtration in industry, area weight, tensile strength, and permeability correlate poorly with service life, which is instead governed by fatigue, oxidation, and thermal resistance under real operating excursions. Reliable evaluation in all cases depends as much on sound statistics, control of variability, and application-specific emission limits as on the intrinsic material itself.
This lecture argues that dependable filter-media design calls for a holistic, interdisciplinary framework that integrates particle technology, textile materials science, airflow dynamics, filter design, and end-use requirements. Supported by advanced characterization and artificial-intelligence-driven analysis of large datasets, and by standards that capture material failure mechanisms and documented field behaviour rather than laboratory numbers alone, such an approach points the way toward more effective and reliable air filtration media for future atmospheric and industrial applications.
Prof. Arunangshu Mukhopadhyay is a Professor in the Department of Textile Technology at the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Jalandhar, India. With more than 35 years of academic, research, and industrial experience, he is recognized for his contributions to filtration science and technology, particularly the design, characterization, and performance evaluation of advanced filter media for industrial, environmental, automotive, and respiratory-protection applications. His research has clarified how fabric architecture, fibre composition, surface treatments, membranes, and operating conditions govern filtration efficiency, pressure drop, dust-holding capacity, and service life, extending in recent years to nanofibre media, respiratory filters, and automotive cabin air filtration. He holds three granted patents, including novel apparatus for evaluating cleanable filter media in flat and tubular configurations, has published more than 200 research papers and 14 monographs and book chapters, and has supervised over 60 postgraduate students, among them 12 Ph.D. scholars. His work has been supported by leading agencies including DST, CSIR, the Ministry of Education, TIFAC, NTTM, KVIC, and the World Bank, and he served as Principal Investigator of the India–Austria Bilateral Research Project (2018–2021) on advanced industrial filtration media. He reviews for more than 50 international journals, sits on the editorial boards of the Journal of Natural Fibers and the Journal of Industrial Textiles, and is Associate Editor of the Journal of The Institution of Engineers (India): Series E. He has delivered invited lectures across the United States, United Kingdom, Germany, Austria, and East Asia. At ITM Dresden, Germany, he was invited as a keynote speaker at an international conference and delivered lectures to doctoral students, and at the China Textile Academy, Beijing, he took part in a symposium and technical discussions with industry.
Keynote – TBA
Dr. Adil M. Dhalla
Managing Director of the START Centre, and the Deputy Director of NEWRI – Singapur
16 November 2027 – 14:45-16:00 – Room 1
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Dr. Adil Dhalla is the Managing Director of the START Centre, and the Deputy Director of NEWRI, since August 2015. Prior to these assignments, he was the Director of the GE Singapore Water Technology Centre from 2010 to 2015, where his role included liaising with regional government agencies and universities on collaborative efforts relating to technology development, while ensuring that GE’s technology efforts in Singapore were aligned with the company’s business focus.
Before moving to Singapore, he was the Technical Director of the Polymer Science and Technology team, and earlier the Chemistry and Characterisation team, at GE’s John F. Welch Technology Centre in Bangalore, India. Since joining GE in 2000, he established and led technical centres of excellence in chemistry, materials and process technologies.
After completing his five-year integrated master’s degree in chemistry from the Indian Institute of Technology (Mumbai), he earned a doctorate in chemistry from Cornell University. Following a post-doctoral stint at Pennsylvania State University, he was a research fellow at the Bristol-Myers Squibb PRI in Princeton, N.J., and a senior manager in the research and technology division of Ciba Specialty Chemicals in Mumbai, India.
With industrial experience spanning 23 years, including 20 years in management roles, his key areas of professional expertise include the leadership and operational management of large, multifunctional teams, strategic planning, R&D in product/process development and commercialisation. He has co-authored more than 20 issued patents (US and Europe), more than 30 GE internal reports and several publications in peer-reviewed international journals.
Keynote – Bridging liquid and gas particle filtration
Prof. Gernot Krammer
University of Technology (TUG) – Austria
16 November 2027 – 14:45-16:00 – Room 1
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Prof. Gernot Krammer is affiliated with the Institute of Process and Particle Engineering at Graz, University of Technology (TUG), Austria, where he supervises the Mechanical Process Engineering research group. For more than 25 years, he has been lecturing in the fields of process engineering, combustion, particle and environmental technology at bachelor, master and doctoral level at the TUG, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Trondheim, Norway, and Brown University, Providence, RI, US. Before rejoining TUG in 2016, he directed the global research and development activities of the Separation division of the company Andritz AG for almost 10 years. His research interests include the filtration of particles from fluids (liquid and gas) and heterogeneous/catalytic reaction systems with applications in gas cleaning and energy conversion. He has authored or co-authored approx. 200 peer reviewed articles, and he holds several commercially utilized patents. Dr. Krammer serves as a referee for numerous scientific journals, a panelist for different science and research foundations, and an appointed member of the Gas Cleaning Section of the German Chemical Society.
Keynote – TBA
Prof. Kwang-Ho Choo
Kyungpook National University (KNU) – South Korea
16 November 2027 – 14:45-16:00 – Room 1
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Keynote – TBA
Prof. Dietmar Lerche
LUM Gmbh – Germany
16 November 2027 – 14:45-16:00 – Room 1
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