At 21:00 on May 21, Beijing time, the Worldwide Energy University Network (WEUN) Secretariat and the International Multiphase Flow Technology Forum (IMFTF) held an Academic Salon through Zoom. This academic salon was held for the first time by WEUN in the form of IMFTF Keynote Meeting, with Prof. Hideya Nakamura from Department of Chemical Engineering, Osaka Prefecture University as keynote speaker. Ten IMFTF committee members from 7 countries and more than 30 international experts, scholars and graduate students attended the meeting.

The keynote speech was hosted by IMFTF Committee Member Raffaella Ocone, Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering and Professor of chemical engineering at Heriot-Watt University. She first gave a brief introduction to WEUN and IMFTF. She introduced that this keynote meeting is the first meeting opened to public, and we are honored to invite Prof. Nakamura to give a speech. The purpose of the meeting is to continuously deepen the understanding of the application and scientific frontier of multiphase flow technology, share scientific research achievements, inspire research ideas, and expand the international influence of IMFTF.

Prof. Nakamura would like to thank IMFTF for the invitation. Subsequently, he gave a keynote speech entitled "Coarse-grained discrete element method for granular shear flow". He firstly introduced Osaka Prefectural University, and showed recent activities of his research group, including force model, physical motion, calculation accuracy and efficiency in modeling & simulation of powder handling processes. As the core of the keynote speech, Prof. Nakamura shared the latest research results on the coarse-grained discrete element method for granular shear flow. The report lasted for 45 minutes and 30 minutes of Q&A session.

Prof. Nakamura's keynote speech was highly concerned by the participants. Many questions were submitted during the process of the speech. After the speech, Prof. Nakamura answered all the questions one by one. Prof. Ocone also made wonderful analysis and comments, which made everyone get good enlightenment and unconsciously exceeded the expected end time of the meeting. Considering the time-difference, WEUN Secretariat, the organizer of this meeting, ended the meeting with all the questions answered in time. However, the wonderful discussion still reverberated in the minds of the participants. This academic salon is the first time held by WEUN. In the future, more academic activities will be held to help create a global platform for communication and collaboration among and between the WEUN member universities in research, innovation and education in the field of energy.

Prof. Hideya Nakamura was born in 1980 in Okinawa, Japan. He received his Ph.D. in 2008 under super vision of Prof. Satoru Watano from Department of Chemical Engineering, Osaka Prefecture University. Title of the Ph.D. thesis is "Fundamental Particle Fluidization Mechanism in High Centrifugal Force Field". He then moved to United States, and was working as a Post doc associate at Prof. Brij Moudgil's group in Particle Engineering Research Center (PERC), University of Florida (2008 to 2010). He was working on computer simulations of an interaction between carbon nanomaterials and model cell membrane. He then moved to Department of Chemical Engineering, Osaka Prefecture University, and started his career as a faculty in 2010. He is currently working as an associate professor in Department of Chemical Engineering, Osaka Prefecture University. His research interests include a variety of research topics related to particle science and powder technology His current projects are about numerical simulation, all-solid-state battery, and nano-bio interface.