The 1st International Online Conference on Lubricants and Tribological Contacts

Division of Machine Elements, Luleå University of Technology, Luleå, Sweden;
Talk: Mixed lubrication between rough viscoelastic surfaces. Andreas Almqvist is Professor in Machine Elements at Luleå University of Technology, Sweden. His research focuses on computational tribology, with particular emphasis on multiphysics and multiscale modelling and simulation of continuum-mechanics problems in tribology and sports technology. His work includes elastohydrodynamic lubrication, mixed lubrication, leakage, friction, surface roughness, and contact mechanics. He has contributed to the development and application of numerical methods for understanding complex tribological interfaces, with applications ranging from industrial machine elements to snow- and ice-sports.

Soft Matter Science and Engineering Laboratory (SIMM), ESPCI Paris, PSL University, Paris, France; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS), Paris, France;
Talk: Friction of thin hydrogel films: Disentangling the contributions of poroelastic flow and interface molecular interactions. Antoine Chateauminois is a CNRS Research Director and Deputy Director of the SIMM (Sciences et Ingénierie de la Matière Molle) laboratory at ESPCI Paris. He earned his PhD in Materials Science from the University of Lyon in 1991. He joined the Materials Department of Ecole Centrale de Lyon in 1992, where he conducted research on the durability, mechanical behaviour, and tribology of polymers and polymer-matrix composites. In 2000, he spent a one-year sabbatical in the group of Professor B. J. Briscoe at Imperial College London, where he investigated the micromechanisms of polymer wear. Since joining ESPCI Paris in 2001, his research has focused on the contact mechanics and tribology of soft matter. His work addresses the friction and adhesion of polymer films, elastomers, and hydrogels, with particular emphasis on rubber and gel friction. He has pioneered innovative experimental approaches based on full-field measurement techniques to reveal the local mechanisms governing friction, deformation, and interfacial dissipation in soft matter systems. Antoine Chateauminois has authored more than 80 peer-reviewed scientific articles and five book chapters. He serves on the Editorial Board of Tribology International. He has coordinated several national and international collaborative research projects involving both academic and industrial partners.

Tribonex AB, Uppsala, Sweden;
Over his 25-years professional career, Prof. Dr. Boris Zhmud occupied a number of senior research, consulting, and management positions at various institutions and companies, including AB Nynas Petroleum (Sweden), E-ION s.a. (Belgium), BIZOL (Germany), and Tribonex (Sweden). His specific competence areas include engineering tribology, lubricants and lubrication engineering, and surface engineering. Dr Zhmud has authored or coauthored over 90 peer-reviewed publications and has several international patents. He is a member of the British Royal Society of Chemistry (RSC), the Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE), and the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE).

School of Engineering and Computing, University of Lancashire, Preston, UK;
Talk: Practical Approaches to Mixed Friction Modelling. Prof Sherrington’s research activities address many theoretical and experimental aspects of tribology across lubrication, friction, wear and surface contact. He is also a pioneer in the ground-breaking topic of “tribotronics”, the development of autonomous, actively controlled tribological components. He is a Professor of Tribotechnology at the University of Lancashire in the UK, and Affiliate Professor of Tribotronics at KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden. He also serves as the Executive Director for the International Tribology Council (ITC).

The Tribology Group, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Imperial College London, UK;

Materials Science and Technology Division, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, TN, USA;
Talk: Does combination of a lubricant anti-wear additive and a hard coating double the surface protection? Dr. Jun Qu is currently a Corporate Fellow and the Group Leader of Surface Engineering & Tribology at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. His research interests include: advanced lubrication, surface engineering, materials tribology, nanostructured materials, and manufacturing. He has developed 2 ASTM standards, published 150+ journal papers, and received 11 U.S. patents. Dr. Qu has received multiple national awards, including three R&D 100 Awards or Finalist. He is a Fellow of both the Society of Tribologists and Lubrication Engineers (STLE) and the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Dr. Qu also serves as the co-Editor-in-Chief for the Encyclopedia of Tribology and Lubrication by Elsevier.

IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Lucca, Italy;
Talk: High-Fidelity Contact Mechanics: AFM-Informed Simulations and Contact-Induced Fracture. Marco Paggi is a Full Professor of Structural Mechanics at the IMT School for Advanced Studies Lucca, Italy. He serves as the Deputy Rector and directs both the Multi-scale Analysis of Materials (MUSAM) research unit and the MUSAM-Lab. His research focuses on contact mechanics, fracture mechanics, and multiphysics simulations, with applications to a wide range of structural and material systems.

Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken, Germany;
Martin Müser is Professor of Computational Materials Science at Saarland University. He obtained a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Mainz and held postdoctoral positions at Columbia University and Johns Hopkins University. He was a visiting professor at IBM TJ Watson, held the John von Neumann Professorship at FZ Jülich, was a fellow of the Leibniz Institute for New Materials, and received a Distinguished Faculty Award from the University of Western Ontario. His research focuses on materials simulations from the electronic to the continuum scale, including the development of interatomic potentials, stress-induced phase transitions, and tribology from atomic-scale dissipation to contact mechanics.

Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, PA, USA;

Gear Research Center (FZG), Technical University of Munich, Garching near Munich, Germany;
Thomas Lohner is Head of Division EHL-Tribological-Contact and Efficiency at the Gear Research Center (FZG) of Technical University of Munich (TUM). His research focuses on the tribology of gears and the efficiency and heat balance of geared transmissions, using multi-scale modeling and experimental methods. He deals with gearbox fluid and heat flow, elastohydrodynamics of gear contacts, superlubricity with aqueous lubricants, oil-lubricated thermoplastics, minimum quantity lubrication, tribological coatings, loss of lubrication, and superefficiency.

State Key Laboratory of Tribology in Advanced Equipment, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China;
Talk: Ion Adsorption and Hydration Superlubricity. Tianyi Han received his B.S. degree in mechanical engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University, China, in 2016, and his Ph.D. degree in mechanical engineering from Tsinghua University, China, in 2021. He was a joint Ph.D. student at the University of Montreal, Canada, from November 2019 to August 2020. From March 2022 to March 2024, he was a post-doctor in the State Key Laboratory of Tribology at Tsinghua University. He is currently an assistant professor at Tsinghua University, China. His research interests include liquid superlubricity, hydration lubrication, intermolecular and surface forces.

School of Mechanical Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, China;
Zhongmin JIN is a Professor of the School of Mechanical Engineering at Southwest Jiaotong University. His current research interests are mainly in the area of Biotribology and Biomechanics of natural and artificial joints, including multibody dynamics analysis of musculoskeletal systems, finite element modelling and experimental testing of the contact mechanics, lubrication and wear of the hip, the knee, the ankle, etc.