BC Khoo graduated from the University of Cambridge with a BA (Honours, 1st Class with Distinction). In 1984, he obtained his MEng from the NUS and followed by PhD from MIT in 1989. He joined NUS in 1989. From 1998 to 1999, he was seconded to the Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC, Singapore) and served as the deputy Director and Director of Research. In 1999, BC returned to NUS and spent time at the SMA-I (Singapore MIT Alliance I) as the co-Chair of High Performance Computation for Engineered Systems Program till 2004. In the period 2005-2013, under the SMA-II, he was appointed as the co-Chair of Computational Engineering Program. In 2011-2012, BC was appointed the Director of Research, Temasek Laboratories, NUS. Since 2012, he has been the Director, Temasek Laboratories. BC Khoo serves on numerous organizing and advisory committees for International Conferences/Symposiums held in USA, China, India, Singapore, Taiwan, Malaysia, Indonesia and others. He is a member of the Steering Committee, HPC (High Performance Computing) Asia. He has received a Defence Technology Team Prize (1998, Singapore) and the prestigious Royal Aeronautical Prize (1980, UK). Among other numerous and academic and professional duties, he is on the Editorial Board of International Journal of Thermofluid Science and Technology, Ocean Systems Engineering (IJOSE), Advances in Aerodynamics (AIA), International Journal of Intelligent Unmanned Systems (IJIUS), The Open Mechanical Engineering Journal (OME) and The Open Ocean Engineering Journal. In research, BC's interests are in: (i) Fluid-structure interaction (ii) Underwater shock and bubble dynamics (iii) Compressible/Incompressible multi-medium flow He is the PI of numerous externally funded projects including those from the Defense agencies like ONR/ONR Global and MINDEF (Singapore) to simulate/study the dynamics of underwater explosion bubble(s), flow supercavitation and detonation physics. His work on water circulation and transport across the turbulent air-sea interface has received funding from the then BP International for predicting the effects of accidental chemical spills. Qatar NRF has funded study on internal sloshing coupled to external wave hydrodynamics of (large) LNG carrier. BC has published over 500 international journal papers, and over 450 papers at international conferences/symposiums. He has presented at over 140 plenary/keynote/invited talks at international conferences/symposiums/meetings. His H-index according to Web of Science stood at 58.

Speech Title: Effect of naturally oscillating axial secondary flow on wall shear stress in Taylor Couette flow (TCF)

Abstract: Present study investigates Taylor Couette flow (TCF) with helical corrugated surface for the three values of pitch to wavelength ratios (P*) (1, 2 and 3) and amplitude to wavelength ratio (A*) of 0.25. As reported in Razzak et al. (2020) for TCF with longitudinal corrugated surface, the emergence of an oscillating axial secondary flow with an increasing trend on its magnitude with Reynolds number (Re) results in the occurrence of torque reduction. This provides an idea about the possibility of enhancing torque reduction by maintaining a consistently increasing trend in the magnitude of axial secondary flow with Re. This has motivated us to study TCF with helical corrugated surface on the stationary outer cylinder and rotating smooth inner cylinder. From the variation of axial secondary flow with Re for all the three values of P*, it is found that axial secondary flow is observed for Re ranging between 60 to 650. Based on the behaviour of axial secondary flow, a total of three flow regimes are observed. In the first flow regime, a single stationary helical vortex (SHVF) is observed in the maximum gap region at Re = 60 for the three values of P*. As Re is increased to 100, the emergence of another single vortex at the inner wall results in the formation of periodic helical wavy vortex flow (PHWVF) for the three values of P*. Increasing Re beyond 145, 135 and 140 for P* =1, 2 and 3, respectively, a third single vortex at the inner wall of maximum gap region results in the occurrence of non-periodic helical wavy vortex flow (NPHWVF). It is found that the sudden increase in the magnitude of axial secondary flow in PHWVF results in the occurrence of torque reduction in TCF with helical corrugated surface than TCF with smooth surface. For NPHWVF, torque reduction is observed only when there is no axial secondary flow in TCF with smooth wall or magnitude of axial secondary flow increases with Re in TCF with the helical corrugated surface. The magnitude of axial secondary flow and torque reduction are found to be higher for TCF with helical corrugated surface than that of longitudinal corrugated surface.

Dr. Chung-Hsien Kuo received his Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from National Taiwan University, in 1999. Dr. Kuo is with the National Taiwan University, where he is currently a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering. He is hosting the Autonomous & Soft Robotics Laboratory (ASR Lab.), and his research interests include autonomous systems, novel soft robot design, advanced control systems, computer vision, machine learning, and autonomous manipulation. Dr. Kuo is active in academic societies. Dr. Kuo served as the Vice Director of the Technical Committee on Medical Mechatronics of the IEEE SMC Society from 2006; the board members of Chinese Institute of Automation Engineers (from 2016), Chinese Automatic Control Society (from 2017), Taiwan Association of Systems Science and Engineering (from 2021) and Robotics Society of Taiwan (from 2009). Dr. Kuo was the President of Robotics Society of Taiwan (RST) during 2020 January to 2023 November. Dr. Kuo's humanoid robot team (HuroEvolution) received 10 Awards of the Worldwide RoboCup Humanoid League during 2013-2017, including 1st Place of the Technical Challenge and 2nd Place of the Soccer Game of the AdultSize League in 2013 (Netherland); 1st Place of the Technical Challenge and 2nd Place of the Soccer Game of the AdultSize League in 2014 (Brazil); 1st Place of the Technical Challenge and 2nd Place of the Soccer Game of the TeenSize League and 2nd Place of the Technical Challenge of the AdultSize League as well as the 3rd Place of the Best Humanoid Competition in 2015 (China); 2nd Place of the Soccer Game of the TeenSize League in 2016 (Germany); 2nd Place of the Soccer Game of the TeenSize League in 2017 (Japan).

Speech Title: Soft Robotics and Applications

Abstract: Soft robotics is a subtopic of robotics that concerns the design, control, and fabrication of robots composed of compliant materials, instead of rigid links. The compliance of soft robots can improve their safety when working in close contact with humans. Soft robot applications are diverse with applications in many fields, including human-robot interaction, medical and surgical applications, wearable and rehabilitation, and space applications. The development of physical structures and behaviors that are more similar to those of living organisms can help robots to better negotiate real-world environments and accomplish real-world tasks. More specially, Soft robots come with dramatical flexibility and go to inaccessible spaces with human hands. In this talk, the developments of two types of soft robots, including continuum robots and a concentric tube robot are presented.