Speakers

Prof. Tao Chen, University of Surrey, UK (Vice-President)(IET Fellow) 

Professor Tao Chen is currently the Associate Vice-President (International) at the University of Surrey, UK, where he is responsible for advancing the university's global strategy and international cooperation, while also serving as a professor in the School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering.

Professor Chen graduated from the Department of Automation at Tsinghua University, earning his Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Engineering, and later received his Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from Newcastle University, UK. Following his doctoral studies, Professor Chen worked as a postdoctoral researcher at Newcastle University, and held faculty positions at Chongqing University in China and Nanyang Technological University in Singapore. He joined the University of Surrey in 2011, was promoted to professor in 2021, and has since held multiple leadership roles within the institution.

Professor Chen is an expert at the intersection of chemical engineering and artificial intelligence. His research spans computational modelling of chemical processes, model-based product design, process control and optimisation, and biomedical applications. He is also actively engaged in interdisciplinary research, collaborating with numerous industrial partners (including Unilever and Syngenta) to drive innovation in pharmaceuticals, agriculture, and bioenergy. He has supervised over 30 Ph.D. students and postdoctoral researchers, published more than 200 high-impact papers in international journals, and secured over £9 million in research funding. Professor Chen was elected a Fellow of the IET (Institution of Engineering and Technology) in 2025 and has served as the Vice-Chairman of the Association of Chinese Professors in the UK since 2023.

Title: Towards AI-enabled Autonomous Formulation Design for Skin Products

Prof. Jixin Ma, University of Greenwich, UK (IEEE Senior Member)

Jixin Ma is a Professor of Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) and Director of PhD/MPhil Programme at the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences, Faculty of Engineering and Science, University of Greenwich. He has also been the Director of the Centre for Computer and Computational Science (2011-18) and Leader of Artificial Intelligence Research Group (2008–2018). His main research areas include Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Information Systems, with special interests in Temporal Representation and Reasoning, Information Security, Machine Learning and Case-Based Reasoning. He has published 200+ research papers in top-tier journals including Information Fusion, Information Sciences, IEEE IoT, IEEE Trans on Cloud Computing, IEEE Access, Neural Computing and Applications, Information Systems, Neurocomputing, Engineering Applications of Artificial Intelligence, the Computer Journal, Applied Ontology, Artificial Intelligence Review, etc., and at esteemed international conferences such as AAAI, IJCAI and ECAI, etc.

Title: A Framework for Representing Temporal Patterns in Artificial Intelligence