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The NEEMO Special Panel discussion is on ‘Electric Mobility on Islands’, chaired by Dr Ponweiser Wolfgang partners of NEEMO project from The Austrian Institute of Technology.
Hybrid and electric mobility solutions for land and sea are imperative for Maltese Islands. With the EU-funded NEEMO project, Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST) will partner with two leading institutions namely CEA France, AIT Austria and another urban community member, ANEL Cyprus to investigate various attributes and challenges associates with e-mobility, such as energy and location management, especially for the Maltese geographical setting. Talented researchers have the chance to participate in a series of events including meetings, conferences, schools, workshops and exchange programmes. The project will enhance MCAST Energy profile, which in turn reflects the positive development of Malta knowledge economy including its ambition as a regional energy hub, solar country, AI state and maritime hub.
Welcome Address
Chair of the NEEMO Special Session Programme
Dr Wolfgang Ponweiser (AIT)
NEEMO Project
Project Overview
Dr Inġ. Brian Azzopardi
Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (Coordinator)
Address by the NEEMO Project EU Officer
Dr Vsevolod Samokhvalov
Panel Topic Presentations
Personal cars were getting bigger, larger, and heavier over the years. In the last 50 years, the weight of cars has doubled, so did the consumption and the power was sixfold. If the efforts were focused on efficiency, today’s cars would be smaller, slightly unsafer and require a quarter of the energy to run. Fortunately, while the industry missed all targets, and opportunistic black swans arose, the people made the right choice at the right place.
The electric car is doomed
Dr Oriol Gallemí Rovira, EURECAT
Mr Andy Bugeja, MCAST
Dr Eduardo Alejandro Martinez-Cesena
The University of Manchester
Dr Tom Zunder
Newcastle University
Prof. Sonia Leva
Politecnico di Milano
Open Discussion
Dr Wolfgang Ponweiser
Austrian Institute of Technology (Chair)
Dr Wolfgang Ponweiser graduated in Electrical Engineering and received his PhD from the TU-Vienna. Till 2010, Wolfgang worked at the Automation and Control Institute of the TU-Vienna in the field of mobile robotics and computer vision and published more than 30 scientific papers. From 2009 till 2017 he taught at the University of Applied Sciences Technikum Wien in the field of Mobile Robotics. In 2010, Wolfgang joins the AIT Austrian Institute of Technology, where he acquires and manages research projects (SHOW, Drive2theFuture, Levitate) in the domains of ITS (Intelligent Transportation Systems), CCAM (Connected, Cooperative and Automated Mobility) and travel behaviour. He is active in ECTRI, EARPA, ERTRAC and Delegate of the R&I Institutes at the European CCAM partnership.
Dr Inġ. Brian Azzopardi
Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (NEEMO Coordinator)
Dr Inġ. Brian Azzopardi is Senior Lecturer II at Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST), co-founder and chairman of The Foundation for Innovation and Research – Malta (FiR.mt) and Visiting Senior Lecturer at the University of Malta (UM). Since 2011, he has held senior academic and associate professorship positions in the UK, Lithuania, and Malta. He also served several businesses, the government, research centres and the Court of Malta. He is the Coordinator of the Horizon 2020 / Horizon Europe projects JUMP2Excel, NEEMO, TRANSIT, and PROMISE. He has contributed over €10M to associated institutions on projects with over €30M budgets. He is senior Member of IEEE, IET, EI, RSC, and Chamber of Engineers.
Dr Vsevolod Samokhvalov European Research Executive Agency of the European Commission
Dr Vsevolod Samokhvalov works as Project Officer in the Unit “Spreading Excellence and Widening Participation” of the European Research Executive Agency (REA). Before joining the EU, Vsevolod worked as researcher in Belgium, UK, France, Romania and Greece. He spent many years working on development aid in the Balkans, Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Vsevolod holds PhD degree in international relations from University of Cambridge (UK), MA in South-East European Studies University of Athens (Greece) and BA in International History from University of Odessa (Ukraine).
Dr Oriol Gallemí Rovira, EURECAT
Oriol Gallemí i Rovira holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the UPC BarcelonaTech. He holds a Master in Space Sciences from the International Space University, a Master in Communication from UOC and a Master’s in Industrial Engineering from the UPC. He is a specialist in Electric and Hybrid powertrains and has previously held the roles of head of the electrical lab at the Universitat Ramón Llull and Technical Director of the FIM electric series from 2010 to 2018. His research fields are within energy storage, complex energy Systems optimization (including hybrid devices and batteries) and mathematical modelling both empirical and theoretical.
Mr Andy Bugeja
Malta College of Arts, Science and Technology (MCAST)
Mr. Andy Bugeja has been lecturing at the Malta College of Art, Science, and Technology for the past 21 years in the fields of electrical and electronic engineering, programmable logic controllers, automation and control engineering, and electric vehicles (EV). He earned a degree in electronics and control engineering and is currently conducting research on six degrees of freedom pose estimation using computer vision to complete his engineering master’s degree. He has been operating a fully electric and a hybrid vehicle for the past decade and is an enthusiast for EVs and autonomous driving technology.
Dr Eduardo Alejandro Martinez Cesena
The University of Manchester
Alejandro Martínez (Alex) is a Lecturer (assistant professor) in multi-energy systems at The University of Manchester. His research interests include planning and design of resilient multi-energy systems and integrated electricity-heat-gas networks, power system economics, optimization techniques, and business case assessment. He has published over 60 papers in international journals and conferences, and has contributed to a wide variety of UK and international projects, e.g., NIC-C2C, EPSRC-MYSTORE, ESRC-FutureDAMS, BEIS-MEP, FP6-ADDRESS, FP7-DIMMER, and H2020-ATTEST among others. He is also a member of the Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research and Cigre’s working groups C6/C2.34 (Flexibility provision from DER) and C6/C1.33 (Multi-Energy Systems).
Dr Tom Zunder
Newcastle University
Dr Zunder has handled buying, production control, distribution, and the whole supply chain in the manufacturing business for the last 15 years. He is an accomplished academic and commercial manager and is currently a Principal Research Associate at Newcastle University. He oversees the Freight and Logistics research group, oversees deliverables and dissemination for EU research projects, and conducts both academic and practical research. The overall cost of the concepts that were conceived, coordinated, written, proposed, negotiated, and executed for Newcastle University and all other project partners is around £4.9 million. He develops and organizes consortiums, as well as prepares and submits applications for research in a variety of fields, with the help of my extensive worldwide network of connections in academia, industry, and government, including the European Commission.
Prof. Sonia Leva
Politecnico di Milano, Italy
Sonia Leva received the M.Sc. degree and the Ph.D. degree, both in Electrical Engineering, from the Faculty of Engineering, Politecnico di Milano, Italy. She is Full Professor in “Elettrotecnica” (Electrical Engineering-Circuit Theory) at the Department of Energy where she is deputy director. She is coordinator of a research group in the field of photovoltaic systems and microgrids, including PhD students and post-graduated grant holders, and head of the SolarTechLab and multi-good microgrid lab at the Department of Energy, Politecnico di Milano (www.solartech.polimi.it, www.mg2lab.polimi.it). Sonia Leva has obtained several prizes and awards for her research activity. She is also Editor and Associate Editor of several international journals.