Tuesday 2 July 2019

Zhong Fan

Zhong Fan is a Professor and Academic Director of SEND (Smart Energy Network Demonstrator) at Keele University. He is leading a team of PhD students and postdocs working on various aspects of smart energy, IoT, and data analytics.

Sustainability is a key priority at Keele. Through the actions that it is taking, the University aims to become a national research and development facility that undertakes world-leading research into environmental sustainability. In order to achieve this, the University is working with businesses, graduates and academics to create Europe’s first ‘at scale’ Smart Energy Network Demonstrator* – a living laboratory where new energy-efficient technologies can be researched, developed and tested in a real-world environment.

Prior to joining Keele, Professor Fan was Chief Research Fellow at Toshiba Research Europe and led multiple projects on IoT, smart grid, and 5G communications. He is an Advisory Board Member of the IEEE Industry Community on IoT. He has worked extensively with academia and industry in many collaborative projects funded by Innovate UK, EPSRC, and EU, recent examples being Island Hydrogen, EnergyRev and SUNSEED.

He has BS and MS degrees in Electronic Engineering from Tsinghua University in China and PhD from Durham University. He held academic positions in Cambridge and Birmingham Universities and industrial research positions at Marconi Labs Cambridge and BT Labs. His current research interests are IoT and applications of AI to smart energy systems. He has published over 160 journal and conference articles and filed 35 patents.

*The SEND project (ref. 32R16P00706) is part-funded through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) as part of the England 2014 to 2020 European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIF) Growth Programme, and is available to ERDF eligible companies. The project is also receiving funds from the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS).