Professor Kenneth Holmberg
Professor Kenneth Holmberg was educated at Helsinki University of Technology, taking a Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering in 1976, a Lic Tech in 1984 and Dr Tech in 1988. Since 2002 he has been working as full Research Professor at Technical Research Centre of Finland (VTT), where he established the Tribology Laboratory and remains professor in tribology, condition monitoring and operational reliability. He is Chief Engineer Councillor at the Supreme Administrative Court of Finland and a frequently used expert in the European Community and European Science Foundation research actions and programmes.
Professor Holmberg has made outstanding contributions in three main areas of the field. Firstly, he has been foremost in the development of coatings to structural materials to improve their tribological properties and hence economic performance. His book, "Coatings Tribology", with Allan Matthews, has become the classic in the field. Secondly, he has been a pioneer in the field of engineering maintenance, which contributes so much economic value in industry. He has been a leader in the new field of "E-maintenance", publishing a book with this title in 2010 and continuing to conceive and lead projects on dynamic maintenance. Thirdly, he has made major contribution to the field of energy conservation in passenger vehicles, publishing a seminal paper Global energy consumption due to friction in passenger cars in 2012. This work has stimulated research on cost savings in private and public transport in many countries.
Holmberg is the author and editor of several books. He has given 53 invited keynote lectures at international conferences, published 205 scientific papers mainly in areas of tribology, surface engineering, lubrication, computational material modelling and simulation, operational reliability, maintenance and diagnostics.
He is a vice president of the International Tribology Council. He was president of the OECD IRG Wear group 1992-2006 and is on the editorial board of 8 scientific journals. He has been responsible for organising major international conferences in tribology, monitoring and diagnostics e.g. EUROTRIB’89, COMADEM’97 and NORDTRIB´00. He is member of the Board of Directors at the Taiho Kogyo Tribology Research Foundation (Japan) and a member of the Programme Committee for Materials Research at the Foundation of Strategic Research (Sweden). He was a member of the Steering Committee of the Leonardo Centre of Tribology and Surface Technology at Sheffield University (UK) and a member of the Programme Committee for Strategic Materials Research at FIMECC (Finland). He is a frequently used consultant for industrial contracts and R&D projects. At VTT he is presently coordinating research into strategic computational materials modelling and simulation.
Professor Holmberg is a visionary scientist and a great engineer of our time. His scholarship, research and innovative applications have resulted in major economic advances for industrialised nations.