Mr. Michio Kaida

Chairman and VP, Nidec Advance Technology Corporation (NATC), Japan

Michio Kaida is a 67-year-old Japanese businessman and engineer, currently serving as Chairman and VP of Nidec Advance Technology Corporation (NATC) in Japan. He joined NATC (formerly known as Nidec-Read Corporation) in the early 1980s as a fresh engineering graduate from a leading Japanese university. He is a shining example of lifetime employment in a Japanese company, having served the company for over four decades. Under his leadership, NATC has expanded its business from 50 employees and $20 million in revenue to over 2,500 employees and $1 billion in revenue. The company specializes in semiconductor and printed circuit board inspection systems, optical vision inspection systems, flat panel display inspection systems, automatic measurement equipment, and specific application machines development/design, manufacturing, and sales of software/hardware. Mr. Kaida has also expanded the company's presence from the domestic market to international markets worldwide. Despite the Covid-19 situation, he made the bold decision to establish a Center of Excellence (CoE) in Nitte University and hire fresh engineering graduates from Nitte. The CoE is now developing the most advanced technology of AI and Motors. Mr. Kaida is married and has two daughters and five grandchildren.

Dr. Ganesh R. Naik

Senior Academic Researcher, Computer Science & IT, Torrens University, Adelaide, Australia.

Ganesh R. Naik ranked top 2% of researchers worldwide in Biomedical Engineering (Stanford University Research), is a leading expert in biomedical engineering and signal processing. He received his Ph.D. in Electronics Engineering, specializing in biomedical engineering and signal processing, from RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia, in December 2009. He is a senior academic and researcher in Computer Science and IT at Torrens University, Adelaide, Australia. Dr. Naik was a research theme co-lead and academic at Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health, Flinders University, for 3 years, from July 2020 to August 2023. He held a Postdoctoral Research Fellow position at MARCS Institute, Western Sydney University (WSU), between July 2017 and July 2020. Ganesh led the data analysis team on a multimillion-dollar CRC project for sleep and developed several novel algorithms (wearables) related to sleep projects. Before that, he held a Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellowship position in the Centre for Health Technologies, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), between February 2013 and June 2017. As a mid- career researcher, he has edited 14 books and authored around 150 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conferences. Ganesh is an associate editor for IEEE ACCESS, Frontiers in Neurorobotics, and two Springer journals (Circuits, Systems, and Signal Processing and Australasian Physical & Engineering Sciences in Medicine). He is a Baden–Württemberg Scholarship recipient from Berufsakademie, Stuttgart, Germany (2006–2007). In 2010, he was awarded an ISSI overseas fellowship from Skilled Institute Victoria, Australia. Recently (2023), he was awarded a BridgeTech industry fellowship from the Medical Research Future Fund, Govt of Australia.