Speakers

Simon Iwnicki is Emeritus Professor of Railway Engineering and was the first Director of the Institute of railway Research at the University of Huddersfield in the UK. He has been carrying out research into various aspects of railway vehicle dynamics for more than 30 years. He is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Editor in Chief of Part F of the Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers. He is a former member of the Scientific Committee of Shift2Rail.

GuiYun Tian is Chair in Sensors Technologies and was the group head of Communications, Sensors, and Signal Processing at the Newcastle University in the UK. He is also director of National Sensor Research Lab (Chengdu) and International collaboration centre of NDT & E in the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, funded by Sichuan Provincial department of Science and Technology. He has been carrying out research into Sensors, NDT&E, structural health monitoring (SHM) and their applications for railways, pipelines, aerospace etc. He has published more than 500 papers, h-index 67 and book chapters and he is Editors-in-Chief of Non-destructive Testing and Evaluation (Taylor & Francis).

John Roberts entered his career in the Rail Industry with a background embedded in the regulatory system. Initially representing ADtranz and then Bombardier Transportation in the company’s membership of various European Committees for Standardisation (CEN) and European Committees for Electrotechnical Standardisation (CENELEC) in writing advisory standards for Rolling Stock (RST). This work was initially carried out in association with the Association Européenne pour l'Interopérabilité Ferroviaire (AEIF) beginning over twenty years ago. Latterly served in the role of Director of Product Safety and Authorisation at Bombardier Transportation. He is now Professor of Rail Vehicle Structures and Crashworthiness at Kasetsart University in Bangkok and Chairman KURail - Kasetsart University Rail Technology department. Formerly Chairman of NewRail at Newcastle University. He has research interests in the simulation of rail passengers in the crash environment. He is also UIC Ambassador for Education in Thailand, teaching in the specialism of Rail Technology and Engineering Management at KU and advising both the Department of Rail Transport and The State Railways of Thailand.

Thomas McDonald is a Data Visualisation Developer currently completing his PhD (Year 3) in Mechanical Engineering as part of the Newcastle University Centre of Excellence for Mobility and Transport (UK). Using his research background in Applied Mathematics, he is leading development of the first dedicated visualisation framework for novel Hybrid Rotational Ground Penetrating Radar uniquely pioneered for Rail Tunnel Subsurface Inspection (RTSSI) by Railview Ltd (UK). His international publication debut as part of the 10th International Conference on Mathematical Modelling in Physical Sciences has evolved, motivating his most recent study into the optimisation of HHPC-dataset interpolation for RTSSI.