Dr. Lina Khaddour is a distinguished construction management and sustainable built environment specialist with over two decades of experience in consultancy, teaching, grants management, consultancy and international research. Her passion lies in user-focused research, delivering practical solutions benefiting the construction industry, higher education, and society.With extensive leadership roles including, Lead of Msc Environmental Sustainability and Lead of Research Integrity at Edinburgh Napier University, UK, Head of Engineering and Environmental Department at Middle East University, Jordan. She was Associate Professor and Research Lead at the International University of Science and Technology, Syria. Dr. Khaddour was a visiting lecturer at the American University of Beirut. Earlier she was a lecturer at Nottingham Trent University.

Beside to a career in academia, Dr. Khaddour is a consultant, auditor, and reviewer for several national and international bodies. Also, she was the head of Environment, Health & Safety Department at Sinopic in Damascus.

Dr. Khaddour research is generally interdisciplinary in nature. It emphasises the application of innovative technologies and data-driven techniques in sustainable buildings, policy decision-making, change management, supply chain management, life-cycle assessment, modular integrated construction, and energy efficiency.

Her contributions to post-disaster sustainable reconstruction have earned global recognition and prestigious awards. Dr. Khaddour has a robust publication record and has secured significant research grants and knowledge transfer partnership with China, Turkey, Jourdan, Syria, Lebanon, Malawi, Yamen. As a keynote speaker, Dr. Khaddour brings invaluable insights into sustainability, innovation, and collaborative partnerships.

Modeling, design and optimization of innovative materials and ultra-small structures is attracting considerable attention within the scientific community, driven by recent advances in Nanoscience and Nanotechnology. The development of increasingly compact and smart electromechanical devices, including nanoscale sensors, actuators, resonators and energy harvesters, represents rapidly evolving research fields with several applications ranging from Nanoengineering to Biomechanics. Innovative nanomaterials are emerging as effective tools for creating next-generation devices and enhancing composite structures.

It is widely recognized that modeling innovative nano-systems and advanced materials requires a thorough consideration of complex scale phenomena. Atomistic approaches that account for the discrete nature of matter are computationally expensive and thus, alternative strategies to address this task have turned to Nonlocal Continuum Mechanics. Nonlocal theories can effectively account for size effects although open questions remain about their mathematical consistency and the well-posedness of the relative structural problem. Addressing these challenges is one of the aims of this lecture. Further goals also include validating theoretical formulations with experimental data and assessing length scale parameters.

The objective of this discussion is to provide a comprehensive overview of nonlocal continuum methodologies, focusing on the challenges of theoretical formulations and their effectiveness in addressing nanophenomena. The lecture will cover significant achievements and recent contributions in nonlocal modeling of nanostructures, highlighting the ongoing progress and areas for further exploration.

Dr. Raimondo LUCIANO is Full Professor of Structural Mechanics at the Department of Engineering of the University of Naples “Parthenope” (Italy) and he is Vice President of the National Committee for Research Evaluation from 2021. Previously he was Full Professor at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio (Italy), Associate Professor at the University of Salerno (Italy) and Visiting Professor at the West Virginia University of Morgantown (USA) and at the University of Cambridge (UK). He served as a member of the National Committee of Guarantors for Research (CNGR) (https://cngr.miur.it/) from 2019 to 2021. He was member of the National Committee of the MIUR for PRIN 2015-2016: 1483 project proposals for a request of one billion euros. He was a member of the national biennial commission for eligibility for first and second-tier professors in Structural Engineering: around 500 candidates. He was the Coordinator of the Civil and Environmental Engineering Area at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio from 2012 to 2015. He was the President of the Self-Assessment Group for the Bachelor's and Master's Degree in Civil Engineering at the University of Cassino and Southern Lazio. He has successfully led research activities of several competitive national and international projects. His research activity has gained international recognition, evident through over 6000 citations on SCOPUS, 185 high-impact publications, and an h-index of 53. His main research topics are represented by innovative materials and nanostructures; nano-engineered materials and nanocomposites; nonlocal constitutive models; multiscale structures; functionally graded structures; smart composites and biomaterials for energy efficiency in construction and for energy systems from renewable sources.

The grid-connected solar inverters are the key devices interfacing solar power plant with utility and play crucial role in residential PV applications. Although three-phase inverters were industry standard in large photovoltaic (PV) power plant applications, the microgrid regulations increased the use of single-phase inverters in residential power plants and grid interconnection. This speech presents a detailed review on single-phase grid-connected solar inverters in terms of their improvements in circuit topologies and control methods. The content provides a differentiating approach by focusing on novel circuit topologies and control methods of string and micro inverters. The single and multi-stage solar inverters are reviewed in terms of emerging DC-DC converter and unfolding inverter topologies while the novel control methods of both stages will be presented in a comprehensive manner. The isolated and transformer less circuit topologies have been investigated by experimental and commercial devices. The soft computing, evolutionary and swarm intelligence-based algorithms will also be summarized in MPPT methods section while current injection and grid-connection control methods of unfolding inverters stage are presented with and without PLL architecture.