Keynote speech 1 Semiconductor Research: A Corner Stone for Building a Knowledge Based Economy
Prof. Mohammed Ismail Director of the Khalifa Semiconductor Research Center and Chair of the ECE Department, Khalifa University, Sharjah E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract: Dr. Ismail will present the Abu Dhabi 2030 vision towards diversifying the economy beyond oil and gas by investing in the strategic sectors of ICT, semiconductors, public health, nuclear technology and aerospace. We will introduce the newly established UAE Center of Excellence on Energy Efficient Electronic Systems (aka ACE4S http://www.src.org/program/grc/ace4s/ ) involving researchers from 5 UAE Universities looking at developing new technologies aiming at innovative self powered wireless sensing and monitoring techniques. The research will target applications in wearable self powered chip sets for use in public health, ambient intelligence, safety and security and water quality. The Center will cultivate human capital trained in cutting edge semiconductor and nanotechnology research with the ultimate goals of spinning off companies and attracting local and foreign direct investments. Brief Biography of the Speaker: Dr. Ismail Joined Khalifa University in March 2011. He spent over 25 years in academia and industry in the US and Europe and was the Founding Director of the Ohio State University’s Analog VLSI Lab , one of the foremost research entities in the field of analog and RF integrated circuits. He also had a Research Chair at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and Founded the RaMSiS (Radio and Mixed Signal Integrated Systems) Research Group there. He advised to completion over 50 doctoral and 100 master students. He is the Founding Editor of the Springer Journal of Analog Integrated Circuits and Signal Processing serves as the Journal Editor in Chief and has served the IEEE in many editorial and Administrative capacities. He is the Founder of the IEEE International Conference on Electronics, Circuits and Systems (ICECS), the flagship Region 8 Conference of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Society. He is a consulting Editor of the Springer Advanced Analog Book Series.
Keynote speech 2 Advanced control techniques for safe and accurate Unmanned Ground Vehicle (UGV)
Dr. Roland Lenain National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture, TSCF Unit – Clermont-Ferrand Division, France E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract: Classical control techniques now generally offer good performances for designing automatic systems in known and constant conditions. This is notably the case in the field of unmanned Ground Vehicle, as the autonomous motion may be achieve with a few centimeters accuracy, when moving at a limited speed on a terrain with good grip conditions. Providing an accurate localization information becomes in this case the main challenge. Nevertheless, when considering a motion at high speed on in complex environment lead to perturbations depreciating the level of accuracy and hazardous for vehicles integrity. As a result, advanced control techniques have to be investigated in order to account for uncertainty and variation in the robots dynamics with respect to its environment. In this talk, the investigation of adaptive and predictive control for preserving accuracy and stability of mobile robots path tracking is proposed. In particular, a mechatronic approach is shown to be efficient for solving complex problems such as moving on complex terrain. Gathering several compounds of mechatronics (such as mechanical modelling, estimation, automatics, and electronics) indeed permits to develop a global control strategy allowing to compensate for high and uncertain dynamics. The efficiency of such developments is investigated through full scale experiments using all-terrain robots moving on natural environment. The talk will be illustrated by several examples and situations. Above the theoretical aspects, the talk will also highlights some short term applications dealing with efficiency and safety of off-road vehicle, especially in the field of agriculture and forestry. Brief Biography of the Speaker: Roland Lenain is a research fellow in Irstea (National Research Institute of Science and Technology for Environment and Agriculture), TSCF Unit – Clermont-Ferrand Division, France, on the topic of off-road mobile robotics. His research interests include the modeling and the control of mobile robots, submitted to uncertain and dynamical effects. This covers the motion control as well as safety aspects (rollover, instability). These works are applied in various areas: agriculture and environment, driver assistance or military aspects. Currently in Irstea since 2006, Roland Lenain is in Charge of several National Project in the topic of mobile robot and vehicle control in hazardous context (such as FAST and ActiSurTT). He achieved a Post Doctoral Position in Lund University (dpt Automatic Control). He received is Ph.D. degree in Robotics from the Blaise Pascal University in 2005. He was graduated from IFMA (French Institute for Advanced Mechanics) in 2002.
Keynote speech 3 Biomedical engineering for optogenetic implants
Dr. Patrick Degenaar Reader in Neuroprosthesis, Newcastle University, UK E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract: Dr. Patrick Degenaar will give an introduction to the Neuroscience field, and the key issues and requirements of the powerful new optogenetics technique. I will then discuss the key engineering requirements required for the coming class of optoelectronic neural implants. In particular, I will discuss how the technique provides highly precise neural control and thus necessitates new types signal processing. Finally I will give examples of how the technique may make a huge difference to the lives of millions of people suffering neurological disorders. Brief Biography of the Speaker: Dr. Patrick Degenaar is a Reader in Neuroprosthesis at Newcastle University. He holds a BSc (1st class) in applied physics and MRes in surface science from Liverpool University, and a Ph.D. in bioelectronics from the Japan Advanced Institute for Science and Technology. After his PhD he worked briefly in the software industry before doing two post-doctoral positions in Imperial College, London from 2002-2005. In 2005 he was awarded a RCUK fellowship and lectureship at Imperial College. He then moved his team to Newcastle in 2010. He has over 70 published Journal and international conference papers, chapters in 3 books, and 5 patents granted and pending. Dr. Patrick key interests are in optogenetic neural prosthesis and in particular, visual prosthesis, where he has been pioneering the use of CMOS bonded LED microarrays for the stimulation of the human nervous system. Together with collaborators, he has received $25M in research funding since 2008. These include grants from the EPSRC, BBSRC, BRC, Thierri Latran foundation, European Commission and Welcome Trust. Of particular note is his coordination of the €2M FP7 project for retinal prosthesis and being a part of the £14M EPSRC/Wellcome trust project to develop human implants for epilepsy.
Keynote speech 4 Performance of Grids and Clouds – Advanced Challenges and Research Trends
Prof. Eleni Karatza Department of Informatics at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Greece E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract: Computational and data grids and clouds are large-scale distributed systems used for serving demanding jobs. Their popularity has been growing rapidly, so their performance became more important due to the tremendous increase of users and applications. Because of the nature of these systems, there are important issues that must be addressed, such as: resource allocation, efficient scheduling, energy conservation, reliability, security and trust, cost, availability, quality. Effective management of grid and cloud resources is crucial to use effectively the power of these systems and achieve high system performance. Furthermore, due to the cost of electrical power consumption and the environmental impact, energy efficiency in grid and cloud systems is a global IT concern. Grid resource allocation and scheduling manages the selection of resources for a job and the monitoring of jobs execution. In large-scale heterogeneous distributed systems, such as grids, energy conservation is an important issue and can take place at multiple levels; some examples are server level, cluster level, site level and grid broker level. Cloud computing is a concept that has emerged from grid computing; it provides users the ability to acquire computational resources on demand from its virtually infinite pool on a pay-as-you-go basis. The cloud computing paradigm can offer various types of services, such as computational resources for HPC applications, web services, social networking, etc. Resource allocation and scheduling is a difficult task in clouds where there are many alternative heterogeneous computers. If cloud computing is going to be used for HPC, appropriate methods must be considered for allocating resources to user requests efficiently, VM scalability, as well as effectively scheduling the tasks. The scheduling algorithms must seek a way to maintain a good response time to leasing cost ratio. Furthermore, adequate data security and availability are critical issues that have to be considered along with energy-efficient solutions that are required to minimize the impact of cloud computing on the environment. The performance evaluation of grids and clouds is often possible only by simulation rather than by analytical methodologies, due to the complexity of the systems. Advanced modeling and simulation techniques are a basic aspect of performance evaluation that is needed before the costly prototyping actions required for grid and cloud systems. Brief Biography of the Speaker: Dr. Karatza’s research interests include Computer Systems Modeling and Simulation, Performance Evaluation, Grid and Cloud Computing, Energy Efficiency in Large Scale Distributed Systems, Resource Allocation and Scheduling and Real-time Distributed Systems. Dr. Karatza has authored or co-authored over 175 technical papers and book chapters including four papers that earned best paper awards at international conferences. She is senior member of IEEE, ACM and SCS. She has served as Program Chair and Keynote Speaker in International Conferences, and she is Editor-in-Chief of the Elsevier Journal “Simulation Modeling Practice and Theory”.
Keynote speech 5 green.Amman@IT: Social Serious Game as a Citizen-centric Design and Innovation Platform Applied to Natural Resources Sustainable Management
Prof. Ahmed Seffah Professor of Human-Centric Software Engineering Visiting professor, department of Software Engineering, Hashemite University, Jordan E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract: green.Amman@IT is a community project that combines serious games, citizen and design science concepts into a social media platform to collecting data from citizens regarding their style of life, mainly their experiences in consuming natural resources such as water, electricity and gasoline, three critical resources in Jordan. While supporting fun and competition among citizens, the social serious game approach developed in this project aims to support long life learning and citizen awareness about the consequences of our daily actions on the environment. Citizens are encouraged to decrease their consumption of natural resources. If they are successful, they earn credits and other awards, which increase their motivation, active engagement and finally to be win the price “green citizen of Amman city”. The play, discover, connect, share and innovate metaphor we are experimenting via the social gaming approach has two fundamental objectives: (1) facilitating the immersion of strategies and patterns to developing and managing efficiently natural resources and (2) involving citizen as a key designer of sustainable development regulations that are derived from citizen daily experiences (solutions by citizens, with citizens and for citizens). The talk presents this metaphor and summarizes the key concepts of the underlying socio-technical citizen-centric design and innovation system we have developing during the last 10 years. Brief Biography of the Speaker: Dr Ahmed Seffah is an industry consultant and a full professor of human-centric software systems design, engineering and innovation. He is focusing on ICT-based services and systems engineering for public/homeland security, disasters, crisis and emergency management as well as sustainable development. Over a period 20 years, he has been lecturing and teaching in various Universities and Schools of Engineering in Canada, France, Switzerland and Middle East. He is the co-author of 5 books and more than 100 scientific publications. His research interests are the intersection of software engineering and human computer interaction including human factors in software/information systems engineering, man-machine interfaces design and evaluation as well as the gaps between human experiences/factors factors (how human people perceived, master and use a complex system) and digital artifacts (how it is actually engineered and it works). Human factors include usability, acceptability, accessibility as well as privacy, trust, societal accountability and the interplay between these factors and security.
Keynote speech 6 Spectrum Scarcity, Cognitive Radio, and Free Space Optical Communications
Prof. Mohamed-Slim Alouini King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST) Saudi Arabia E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract: The concept of cognitive networks has emerged as one of the efficient means for utilizing the scarce spectrum by allowing spectrum sharing between a licensed primary network and a secondary network. In this talk, we briefly present an overview of various recently proposed types of cognitive networks and then discuss some fundamental capacity results of these networks. The talk goes then over the potential offered by free space optical communications to relieve spectrum scarcity and then summarizes some of the challenges that need to be surpassed before such kind of systems can be massively deployed. Brief Biography of the Speaker: Mohamed-Slim Alouini was born in Tunis, Tunisia. He received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, CA, USA, in 1998. He served as a faculty member in the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA, then in the Texas A&M University at Qatar, Education City, Doha, Qatar before joining King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Makkah Province, Saudi Arabia as a Professor of Electrical Engineering in 2009. His current research interests include the modeling, design, and performance analysis of wireless communication systems.
