Keynote&Plenary Speakers

Prof. Tarlochan S. Sidhu (IEEE Fellow), Ontario Tech Universit, Canada

• Prof. Tarlochan S. Sidhu received a B.E (Hons.) degree from Thapar Institute of Engineering and Technology, India and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Saskatchewan, Canada. He has worked for the Regional Computer Center, Chandigarh, India, Punjab State Electricity Board, India and Bell-Northern Research Ltd., Ottawa, ON, Canada. From July 1990 to June 2002, he was with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of Saskatchewan, where he served as Professor and Graduate Chairman of the Department. From 2002-2011, he was Professor and Chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario, Canada. He also held the NSERC/Hydro One Networks Senior Industrial Research Chair in Power Systems Engineering. Effective January 2012, Dr. Sidhu joined the University of Ontario Institute of Technology (now known as Ontario Tech University), Canada and served as the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Applied Science till Feb 2020 where he currently holds the rank of Professor. He has published more than 300 papers in refereed journals and conferences, has delivered many invited talks, short courses, tutorials around the world and has regularly provided consulting to power industries in Canada and abroad. Dr. Sidhu is a well-known international expert in the area of smart grid, substation automation and protection, and microgrids. He has supervised the work to completion of 27 Ph.D., 30 Master’s and 14 post-doctoral fellows. Dr. Sidhu has provided technical leadership as Chair or Member of working groups or sub-committees for international professional organizations such as IEEE Power System Relaying Committee (PSRC) and CIGRE (France). He has been involved in development of international standards and guides in the general area of smart grid and specifically in substation automation. A number of these works have won awards from these organizations and he was given the Distinguished Service Award of IEEE PSRC in 2011. Dr. Sidhu is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Emerging Electric Power Systems published by De Gruyter(Germany) and founding Specialty Chief Editor of Frontiers in Smart Grids published from Switzerland. He has served as Editor, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery (2001-2012), Member of Editorial Board, Electric Power Components and Systems (published by Taylor and Francis), Member of Editorial Board, Electric Power Systems Research (published by Elsevier) and as Member of Editorial Board, IEEE Power Engineering Letters. Dr. Sidhu is a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers (India), a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering & Technology (U.K), a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (USA) and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. He is also a Registered Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario and a Chartered Engineer in the U.K.

 

Prof. Masafumi Yamaguchi, Toyota Tachnological Institute, Japan

 

Dr. Masafumi Yamaguchi is now Professor Emeritus and Invited Research Fellow at the Toyota Technological Institute, Nagoya, Japan. He is the Chairman, PV R&D Review Committee under the NEDO (New Energy and Industrial Technology Development Organization): since 2008. He was the Research Supervisor of the “Creative Clean Energy Generation using Solar Energy” under the JST (Japan Science and Technology Agency): 2009-2017. Prof. Yamaguchi has contributed to R&D for high-efficiency multi-junction, Si tandem and Si solar cells, space solar cells, defects in semiconductors, PV-powered vehicle applications. He has received numerous awards such as The Becquerel Prize from the European Commission in 2004, The William Cherry Award from the IEEE in 2008, The PVSEC Award in 2011, The WCPEC Award in 2014, The Science and Technology Award by the Minister of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in 2015, the Outstanding Achievement Award from the Japan Society of Applied Physics in 2025 and the Purple Ribbon Medal from the Emperor in 2025 for his outstanding contributions to the development of science and technology of photovoltaics such as high-efficiency multi-junction solar cells, space solar cells, concentrator solar cells and as one of the world leaders of the development of photovoltaics and as one of the driving forces for international co-operation.

 

Prof. Hiroyuki Mori, Meiji University, Japan

 

Tentative Speech Title: An Efficient Technique for Selecting Pilot Buses with Hybrid Quantum-Inspired Evolutionary Computation

 

Hiroyuki Mori earned his B.Sc., M.Sc., and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan, in 1979, 1981, and 1985, respectively. From 1984 to 1985, he was a research associate at Waseda University. In 1985, he joined the Department of Electrical Engineering at Meiji University (MU) in Japan. He became a professor in the department in 1995 and served in MU’s Department of Network Design from 2013 to 2025. Since April 2025, he has been a visiting researcher at the MU Research Institute of Smart City Innovations. In July 2025, he founded Polaris Grid, Inc., in Tokyo. At Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, USA, he was a visiting associate professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering from March 1994 to May 1995, a visiting professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering from April 2017 to March 2018, and a visiting researcher from June to October 2022. From April 1997 to March 2002, Dr. Mori served as Head of the Evolutionary Learning Systems Division at the MU High Technology Research Center for Artificial Life, which was supported by Japan’s Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology (MEXT). From April 2005 to March 2010, he served as Director of the MEXT-supported MU High Technology Research Center for Sustainable Energy and Materials. From April 2007 to March 2012, he participated in MU’s MEXT-supported Global COE Program, “Formation and Development of Mathematical Sciences Based on Modeling and Analysis.” Dr. Mori has held numerous leadership positions in international research organizations. He served as Technical Committee Chair for IEEE ANNPS 1993 in Yokohama, Japan, and chaired the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society Technical Committee on Power Systems and Power Electronics from 1993 to 1994. He also served as General Chair of IEEE PES ISAP 2013 and the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) CPES 2018, both held in Tokyo. From January 2020 to December 2022, he chaired the Intelligent Systems Subcommittee (ISS) of the IEEE PES Analytic Methods for Power Systems Committee (AMPS). He also served as Secretary of IFAC Technical Committee 6.3 on Power and Energy from 2020 to 2026. Dr. Mori was named an IEEJ Fellow in 2019 and elevated to IEEJ Professional in 2021. He received Working Group Recognition Awards for New Technologies and Practical Applications in 2006 and Modern Heuristics Optimization in 2022. His other honors include the IEEE PES AMPS Subcommittee Chair Recognition Award in 2023, the IEEJ Outstanding Achievement Award in 2024, and the IEEJ Distinguished Paper Award in 2026. His research interests include power system analysis, operation, and planning; active distribution automation; and artificial intelligence applications. He is a member of the IEEJ, JSAI, IEEE, and ACM.