Sustainable Design and Manufacturing 2025

Mark is Professor and Director of Manufacturing and Materials. He has over 40 years' experience in manufacturing. He spent 13 years working in industry in automotive and tier 1&2 suppliers into manufacturing both in the UK and abroad before moving into academia in 1995. In 2012 he joined Cranfield after 17 years at the University of Birmingham. He has managed over £17.5 M of research projects since 1999 and has over 350 publications, technical reports, articles and books. He is Director of the recently announced UKRI Transforming the Foundation Industries Research and Innovation Hub (TransFIRe), co-Director of the Circular Economy Network plus in Transport Systems (CENTS), and co-Director of the Engineering and Physical sciences Research Council (EPSRC) Centre for Doctoral Training in Sustainable Materials and Manufacturing which offers a triple degree with the Universities of Warwick and Exeter. Mark has sat on the EPSRC Peer Review College since 2003 and sits on the council of the Cast Metals Federation, is a reviewer for the European Space Agency (ESA) and Enterprise Ireland.

Steffen G. Scholz was head of the group "Process optimization, Information management and Applications", part of the Institute for Automation and Applied Informatics (IAI), Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. He was also the Principal Investigator in the Helmholtz funded long-term programs 'Digital System integration' and 'Printed Materials and Systems'. He has more than 15 year xperience in the field of system integration and automation, sustainable flexible production, polymer micro- & nano-replication, process optimisation and control, with a recent emphasis on additive manufacturing and Industry 4.0 applications. In addition to pursuing and leading research, he has been very active with knowledge transfer to industry. He has been involved in over 30 national and international projects, and he won in excess of 20M EUR research grants, in which he has acted as coordinator and/or principal investigator. Dr. Scholz academic output includes more than 170 technical papers and 7 books.


Robert Howlett is the Executive Chair of KES International, a non-profit organization that facilitates knowledge transfer and the dissemination of research results in areas including Intelligent Systems, Sustainability, and Knowledge Transfer. He is a Visiting Professor at Bournemouth University in the UK. His technical expertise is in the use of intelligent systems to solve industrial problems. He has been successful in applying artificial intelligence, machine learning and related technologies to sustainability and renewable energy systems; condition monitoring, diagnostic tools and systems; and automotive electronics and engine management systems. His current research work is focussed on the use of smart microgrids to achieve reduced energy costs and lower carbon emissions in areas such as housing and protected horticulture.

Rossi Setchi is a Professor in High-Value Manufacturing, Deputy Head of School, and a Director of Research at the School of Engineering of Cardiff University. She has a distinguished track record of research in a range of areas including AI, robotics, systems engineering, manufacturing, industrial sustainability, cyber-physical systems and Industry 4.0 and, in particular, has built an international reputation for excellence in knowledge-based systems, computational semantics and human-machine systems. She has published over 220 peer-reviewed papers. She is Fellow of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology, Fellow of the British Computer Society, and a senior member of IEEE. She is Associate Editor of the International Journal of Systems Science and IEEE Access, and a member of the Editorial Board of a number of international journals.