Mohammadreza Aghaei is a distinguished senior researcher and Professorwith more than 18 years of experience and expertise spanning multidisciplinaryfields, including energy transition, energy systems integration, renewables,solar photovoltaics, smart buildings and grids, as well as smarttechnologies such as artificial intelligence, Internet of Things, digital twin,unmanned aerial vehicles, autonomous control systems, and intelligent monitoring.His extensive academic journey includes affiliations with prestigiousinstitutions such as Politecnico di Milano, Fraunhofer ISE, Helmholtz-Zentrum Berlin, Eindhoven University of Technology, University ofFreiburg, and Norwegian University of Science and Technology.Throughout his career, Professor Aghaei has been actively engaged innumerous national and EU-funded research projects, showcasing his commitmentto advancing knowledge and innovation in the field. Presently, heserves as the Coordinator of the EU Horizon 2020 project “COLLECTiEF -Collective Intelligence for Energy Flexibility, demonstrating his leadershipand expertise in spearheading large-scale initiatives. A senior member ofIEEE, he has authored more than 150 publications in internationally refereedjournals, book chapters, and conference proceedings. His contributions havesignificantly impacted the academic community and the broader field ofenergy research, cementing his reputation as a leading authority in thedomain. Amin Moazami is a pioneering researcher in smart buildings and energyflexibility and application of distributed intelligence (swarm intelligence, collective intelligence, and multiagent systems) for energy management. Heis a Research Manager in Sintef. He was also appointed as an AssociateProfessor in the Department of Ocean Operations and Civil Engineering atNTNU and as the Head of the Energy Management and Efficiency ResearchGroup (EMERGE). He has strong experience in building performance simulation,energy flexibility, climate robustness and resilience in buildings,occupant behavior, and so on. He was the Coordinator of COLLECTiEFproject and was actively involved in several national and international projects.In 2019, he has been awarded an innovation grant (innovasjonsstipend,2019) for the proposal “A simulation-based tool for development ofCollective Intelligence (CI) at urban scale to mitigate the impacts of extremeclimate conditions, focusing on developing a new solution for increasingthe energy demand flexibility of urban areas. Gabriele is an emerging researcher in renewable energy, with a focus on thedigitalization of solar energy in the built environment. His background isgrounded on building engineer and architecture knowledge and his expertiseconvers solar energy systems integration at building and district level, urbanenergy planning, smart cities, climate-based solutions, mitigation, and adaptationstrategies, and environmental, microclimate, and energy analyses.He is contributing to advance the state-of-the-art of solar energy explorationand integration through the definition of solar neighborhoods’ archetypes,approaches, methods, and tools to accelerate the use of solar energy inbuilt environments. Gabriele coordinated the Subtask C “Case studies andaction research in the IEA Task 51 Solar Energy in Urban Planning andnow he is coordinating the Subtask D “Case studies in the IEA Task 63Solar Neighbourhood Planning and the activity A3 - BIPV in our societywithin IEA PVPS Task 15 - Enabling Framework for the Development ofBIPV. Gabriele has experienced in several national (REINVENT andHELIOS), European (Exploit4InnoMat, RAMSES, and CoSSMic), and internationalresearch projects (SEniC, SiNoPSE, and iSTAR). Gabriele has co-/author of more than 65 publications, including research and review articlesin international high-impact peer-reviewed journals, national and internationalconference proceedings, book chapters, and books. Professor Umit Cali is a distinguished technology researcher with more than 20 years of global experience in IT law, energy systems, blockchain, and data science. His career includes impactful roles such as Network Engineer at IBM International, Senior Researcher at the Fraunhofer Institute, and CTO for KREEN Renewables GmbH. Currently, he is a Professor and Chair in digital engineering at the University of York and a Part-Time Professor of energy informatics at NTNU. Umit pioneered merging technology with social systems, notably in artificial intelligence, digital privacy, cyber law, and blockchain. He led IEEE groups on these fronts and founded startups in the United States and Switzerland focusing on digital solutions for the energy sector. He holds three patents, has authored books on digital energy sector transformation, and is enhancing his expertise with an LLM in digital law at the University of Go¨ttingen, expected by May 2024. His journey began with an Electrical Engineering degree from Yildiz Technical University and a PhD from the University of Kassel in Germany.
