Invited Speakers
Keynote Speakers
Douglas Herbert has more than 13 years of experience at Rolls-Royce within the Electrical and Electronics department, where he specializes in the development of advanced electrical machine designs for aerospace applications. He has played a key role in pioneering and testing novel low-technology-readiness-level (TRL) projects, leading programs that drive the electrification of aerospace technologies. Notably, Herbert served as the technical lead for the E-Fan X generator, which achieved several world firsts in aerospace electrical machine technology as part of an ambitious demonstration program. Following this success, he contributed to the integration of electrical technologies into both civil and defense gas turbine programs.
Currently, Herbert is the capability lead for electromagnetics at Rolls-Royce. In this role, he leads a large team of specialists dedicated to designing the next generation of aerospace electrical machines and is responsible for establishing the rules, tools, and methods needed to model these designs effectively, helping to ensure that they are safe, effective, and well optimized at the system level.
Raju Yalagada is an industrial composite engineer at Airbus in Toulouse, France, specializing in advanced nondestructive evaluation (NDE). His core expertise encompasses method and tool development and validation across electromagnetic NDE, ultrasound inspection, and radiography. He holds an M.Tech in nondestructive testing and a B.Tech in mechanical engineering. Prior to joining Airbus, Yalagada gained diverse experience in engineering and research through roles at HCL Technologies' Engineering and R&D Services (ERS), the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore, India, and TechCorr Middle East Oil Field Services LLC.
James Ellis is the innovation manager at Oxford Instruments Plasma Technology (OIPT), where he is responsible for core technology and collaborations. Holding a PhD in physics, he specializes in low-pressure plasma modeling, complex plasma chemistry, and advanced diagnostics within the semiconductor sector. His work uses simulation software, including COMSOL Multiphysics®, to bridge the gap between fundamental plasma research and industrial applications. Ellis also serves on the British Vacuum Council (BVC), acts as the UK representative for the International Union for Vacuum Science Technique and Applications (IUVSTA) Thin-Film Division, and is currently completing an executive MBA at Warwick Business School, England.
Robert Mathershaw is a principal mechanical engineer at the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Dstl), where he specializes in materials research in high-temperature environments. He graduated from the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, in 2019. He is also the senior user of COMSOL Multiphysics® in the organization, coordinating its use across the laboratory for a wide range of topics including materials science, acoustics, and RF modeling.
François Cornat is the director of R&D at CorWave, where he leads the design and testing of left ventricular assist device (LVAD) implants. He successfully completed the agrégation, a competitive civil service teaching exam, for mechanical engineering at the École normale supérieure de Cachan and received a master's degree in mechanics. Cornat also holds an MSc in fluid mechanics from the École polytechnique in Palaiseau, France.
Dr. Jonathan Horne-Jones is a senior engineering analyst at the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA) working in the Applied Simulation R&D Group. His career has centered around research on nuclear fusion. Horne-Jones has worked at UKAEA and the Culham Centre for Fusion Energy (the UK's national laboratory for fusion research), and he spent his academic career studying phenomena in inertial confinement fusion. His current focus is on collaborating with industry to evolve engineering simulation software so it can better tackle fusion component design problems. He is also developing methodologies for virtual qualification of fusion components and systems.
Dr. Christian Geitner is a research engineer at the Fraunhofer Institute for Environmental, Safety and Energy Technology (UMSICHT), Germany in the Department of Carbon Utilization of Synfuels and the Modelling and Simulation Group. His research focuses on modeling and simulation, statistics, and thermodynamics. He earned his PhD from Fraunhofer UMSICHT with a dissertation on multiscale modeling and holds a degree in mechanical engineering from the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany.
Panelists
Bjorn Sjodin is the Senior VP of product management at COMSOL. He has been with COMSOL since 1995 and started out as a member of the development team in Stockholm, Sweden. He joined the COMSOL office in Burlington in 2002.
Bixente Artola is a senior simulation engineer at GREEN14, where he develops and validates high-fidelity COMSOL models of the company's direct current (DC) plasma reactor, including a custom particle tracing model for the metal powder produced in the process. His work couples simulation with pilot-reactor experiments to provide the foundational data for GREEN14's physics AI surrogate. This digital twin supports the development and scale-up of a lower-impact way to refine waste metal into powders for additive manufacturing. Artola holds two master's degrees in aerospace engineering from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, and the Institut supérieur de l'aéronautique et de l'espace (ISAE-SUPAERO), Toulouse. Before joining GREEN14, he spent five years as an applications support engineer at COMSOL in Stockholm, helping users across a range of industries build and troubleshoot multiphysics simulations.
Jiabin Yang is a principal engineering analyst at the UK Atomic Energy Authority (UKAEA), where he works on the design and analysis of magnets for fusion energy applications. He received his PhD in engineering from the University of Cambridge and specializes in multiphysics modeling of superconducting systems. In his current role, he uses COMSOL Multiphysics® to address electromagnetic and thermal challenges in high-temperature superconducting magnets ranging from AC loss analysis to quench protection. He also develops computationally efficient approaches for large-scale engineering simulations.
Sanjit G. Shankar is a senior simulation engineer at Sonos Europe BV specializing in simulation and rapid prototyping for acoustics R&D. He develops and maintains COMSOL models and apps spanning structural mechanics, electromagnetics, and acoustics for loudspeaker transducer design. Alongside this work, he develops and maintains automations and integrations with other computational tools to accelerate the development process. He holds a postgraduate degree in mechanical engineering and joined Sonos in 2022 after the company acquired Mayht Holding BV. When he started in this role, he had no prior experience with transducers or acoustics, and he used modeling and simulation as the lens to understand the physics before applying them to consumer hardware design.
