Speaker Name Brief Biography CV
Georgios KANTERAKIS, Dr. Dr George Kanterakis is an Aeronautical Engineer, graduate of the Hellenic Air Force Academy. He subsequently joined the National Technical University of Athens, Greece, where he concluded his PhD thesis on “Bonded Composite Repair of Metallic Aircraft Structures”. Before joining GMI, he has been working at all aircraft maintenance levels and at various logistics activities, both for military and for civil type aircraft. In parallel, he has been actively involved in more than 30 European Union R&D projects in the area of repair of composites, as Coordinator or Researcher. He, thus, has a strong background in maintenance of composites, through the combination of R&D activities with actual professional experience in the very same scientific area, for more than 20 years. He participated in the preparation of 57 research papers, with more than 100 Citations and in authoring a book chapter concerning composite repairs.
Hamid SAEEDIPOUR, Dr. Hamid received his PhD and MSc degrees in Aerospace Engineering (Aircraft Design) from University of Manchester in UK. Hamid is the principal lecturer (Industry) at Republic Polytechnic since Feb 2011. He has 7-year industry work experience in two aircraft design & manufacturing companies & 15-year teaching and research work experience at nine universities & polytechnics on part-time and full-time basis. He has been associate dean, deputy director, aircraft designer, lecturer, manager & design engineer in UK, Iran, Malaysia & Singapore in the last 25 years. Hamid has over 90 publications. Hamid is leading several funded projects in Smart MRO and aircraft composite repair in cooperation with aircraft industries, NUS and Newcastle University in Singapore.
Mr Paul VAN IJSSELSTEIN BSc Mr Paul van IJsselstein BSc is CEO of STRATAGEM Group B.V. (2005) and STRATAGEM Innovation Singapore (2016). During his more than 35 years’ career in the aerospace sector he has provided industrial leadership to many small- and medium size businesses and he has been instrumental in developing new “MRO product-market combinations” through market and product research and innovation. He is specialized in using an “out of the box” approach to achieve real breakthrough and unique “best of industry” MRO solutions for a global market. During his career Paul has worked for companies such as Fokker, Airbus Space & Defence, Thales and Boeing at postings in the Netherlands, UK, USA and Australia.
Dr. Isakov Dmitry Dr. Isakov Dmitry has M.Sc. From Physics Department of Moscow State University and Ph.D. degree from Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of National University of Singapore (NUS). He has 12 years of R&D experience, with 4 granted patents and 6 pending. His research was published in multiple journal papers and conference proceedings and has received several international and local awards. His research interests are currently focused on vacuum assisted thermal management, aerospace composite inspection and repair, and food security applications.
Ethan Goh, Dr Dr Ethan Goh is the Program Manager for the LAIRD program and a Project Engineer at CCS. He has 10 years of composite experience which spans from engineering to manufacturing, inspection, repair and R&D with focus on aircraft structures. Prior to CCS, he spent time with Boeing Research and Technology Australia while completing his PhD in Aerospace Engineering with RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia.
Dr. S.E. Valavan Dr Valavan’s research focuses on fabrication and analyses of advanced functional materials for emerging applications. Dr Valavan graduated from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc, Bangalore, India) and did his PhD dissertation on Electro-ceramic Materials. Dr Valavan joined RP in April 2006 as Senior Conexus Manager, in the same year he initiated and setup RP’s one of the first Technology Centre, New Materials Technology Centre (NMTC) and he continued to lead the centre for more than 10 years. Along with the NMTC team, he is instrumental in equipping the Centre with many state-of-the-art equipment to process and analyse new materials. Now the Centre is fully equipped to provide service and solutions to various manufacturing industries, A*-Research Institutes and IHLs. Dr Valavan has helped RP to secure more than 25 research and consultancy projects in collaboration with SMEs, MNCs and IHLs and secured external grants of more than S$5Million S$. Dr Valavan was appointed, as RP’s the first Principal Lecturer (Industry) in 2012 and later in the year 2018, he was appointed as Assistant Director (Capability and Industry).
Associate Professor Kheng Lim Goh Associate Professor Kheng Lim Goh (FIMechE, CEng) is Director of Research at Newcastle Research and Innovation Institute Singapore. He has a long-standing interest in composite materials. His research aims to understand the physical properties of natural and synthetic composite materials and to use this understanding to engineer nanocomposite materials, as well as to repair damaged composite materials. He has authored over 70 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. He has authored the book entitled 'Discontinuous-fibre reinforced composites' (Springer, 2017), and edited a book entitled ‘Interfaces in particle and fibre reinforced composites’ (Elsevier,2019/2020). Since 2016, he has been invited to present (keynote and plenary) lectures at a number of materials-related international conferences, namely JEC, ICAMEM, ICEIM, ICNFM, CMMS, and IULTCS.
Mr. Rick van Opdorp Mr Rick van Opdorp is the Director of ACRATS Training Services. Rick started his career in the Royal Netherlands Airforce, after completing a four-year vocational training program at the Aircraft Maintenance & Training School as an aircraft engineer. As a specialist in structural repair, he received further training at Boeing Training Systems & Services, the Airbus Helicopter Training Academy and the Agusta Westland Training Academy. During his time within the Airforce, he had built up a significant knowledge of structural repair and inspection methods, particularly fors fixed wing aircraft and helicopters. After retiring from the Airforce, he started his own company and developed a unique, practical and training concept for metal and composite structural repair. Rick has been involved in composite repair masterclasses and workshops for the Singapore Institute of Manufacturing Technology (SIMTech), the Republic Polytechnic of Singapore, the Military Technological College in Oman, the Brazilian Air Force, the Light Weight Structure laboratory (IPT) and the Technical Faculty (FATEC) in Sao Jose dos Campos.
Mr Loh Chi Jie
  • Graduated from NUS Mechanical Engineering in 2017
  • Founded a 3D printing company in 2017 while I was an undergraduate in NUS – grew from 1 printer to over 50
  • Initiated a research project on computer vision
  • Was a guest speaker at several institutions including NUS and NYP on the topic of 3D printing and 3D design
  • Taught 3D design courses at several MOE schools
  • Mr Konstantinos Kitsianos Mr Konstantinos Kitsianos is an Applied Physicist with Master in Computational Mechanics while being a PhD candidate in the field of composite repair simulation at the National Technical University of Athens, Greece. Working as R&I Engineer with GMI for 8 years, he has studied and developed a big number of adapted composite repair solutions for aircraft manufacturers, airlines and MROs, including the one presented above. In parallel, he has been actively involved as Researcher in more than 20 European Union R&D projects in the area of repair of composites. He participated in the preparation of 4 research papers, with several Citations and in authoring a book chapter concerning composite repairs.
    Dr. Jiang Lijun Dr. Lijun Jiang is currently a senior lecturer at Republic Polytechnic (RP)’s School of Engineering. Prior to joining RP in 2006, he worked as research fellow in Centre for Signal Processing(CSP) from 2000 to 2002, research staff at A*Star of Singapore from 2002 to 2006. He has led and been involved in many research projects, in the areas of NDT, machine vision, biomedical imaging and signal processing, optoelectronic sensing, Infrared wireless communication, with over 80 publications in journals, books and conferences.
    Mr. Chia Thien Fook Mr. Chia Thien Fook obtained his BSc (HONS) in civil engineering in 1980 and MSc in 1991. He is a Charted Civil Engineer and member of ICE and IES. He has more than 20 years’ experience in the fabrication of composites partsstructures such as fast boats, prototype electric car, radome, UAV, satellite structure etc.
    Mr. Rameshkumar /Walter Sng RameshKumar have 10 years experience in composites industry. Sourcing and supplying of Material to Wind Energy/Marine and Automobile Industry, Walter Sng have 15 years’ experience in composite industry supplying of Material to Aerospace/Marine and general composites Industry
    Dennis Chai Tien Shung Dennis Chai, Olympus NDT Application Specialist, has over 16 years of NDT experience. This includes eight years working as an inspector in the Oil & Gas construction and maintenance industry, utilising UT, ECT, and MFL techniques and advanced methods such as PA and TOFD. For the last eight years, Dennis has been working on the development, deployment and support of cutting-edge NDT products and solutions in the Asia-Pacific region. Recently he has been heavily involved in the design of novel inspection solutions for austenitic welds, FMC/TFM applications, and corrosion inspections in components with complex geometry.