Invited Speakers
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In this talk we will investigate machine learning assisted wireless communications based on various cost functions, including transmission content and transmission delay. More specifically, Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) such as drones can be employed as remote radio head (RRH) to provide better connection links to users near the cell-edge. Furthermore, each UAV can also be invoked for caching relevant media contents for users that it is serving, in order to minimize delay related to media request. Machine learning algorithms such as K-means clustering can be used for the user assignment to each UAV, while the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm can be used to predict future media request from the users. Practical wireless channel fading model and coding-modulation schemes are also considered to minimize transmission delay while maintaining reliable transmissions. We will show with a demo that the machine learning assisted UAV based wireless communication system is capable of minimizing the overall transmission delay while maintaining good transmission links.
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Dr Soon Xin Ng (Michael) received the B.Eng. degree (First class) in electronic engineering and the Ph.D. degree in telecommunications from the University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K., in 1999 and 2002, respectively. From 2003 to 2006, he was a postdoctoral research fellow working on collaborative European research projects known as SCOUT, NEWCOM and PHOENIX. Since August 2006, he has been a member of academic staff in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton. He was involved in the OPTIMIX and CONCERTO European projects as well as the IU-ATC and UC4G projects. He was the principal investigator of an EPSRC project on "Cooperative Classical and Quantum Communications Systems". He is currently an Associate Professor in telecommunications at the University of Southampton. His research interests include adaptive coded modulation, coded modulation, channel coding, space-time coding, joint source and channel coding, iterative detection, OFDM, MIMO, cooperative communications, distributed coding, quantum communications, quantum error correction codes, joint wireless-and-optical-fibre communications, game theory, artificial intelligence and machine learning. He has published over 240 papers and co-authored two John Wiley/IEEE Press books in this field. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy in the UK, a Chartered Engineer and a Fellow of IET.
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IoT or IoE (Internet of Everything, as Cisco calls it) connects the unconnected people, processes, data and things. However, the challenge we see with IoT/IoE, when it comes to Smart cities, is that cities’ departments improve their infrastructure and data in silos. There’s no unified approach to how a Smart City is designed, from infrastructure and data analytics view point.This talk discusses a unified approach to Smart Cities. The talk will highlight the importance of a common Data Analytics and Infrastructure fabric for smart cities, touching on concepts of Logical Data Warehouse, Fog Computing and a common Wireless Infrastructure. A high-level network architecture of smart city will also be discussed, backed up with a couple of references / use cases.
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Abubakar Shoaib comes with over 16 years of market experience in the field of Network Architectures, Collaboration, IoT and Data Centers. He has been with Cisco for the past 10 years, involved in some major Enterprise and IoT related projects. He holds a Masters degree in Network Communication and is a Cisco Certified Internet Expert (CCIE). He’s married and is currently based out of Dubai, with a wife and four beautiful kids
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The ongoing trend of urbanization in the world is predicted to put burden on the existing cities. The promise of a better life and more opportunities is luring people from rural areas to cities by the millions so much so that WHO reports that 60% of the global population will live in cities by 2030. To put it in to context, cities worldwide will account for 90% of global population growth, 80% of total wealth creation, and 60% of total energy consumption as predicted by MIT’s City Science. With sensor technologies developing in leaps and bounds and communication system infrastructure becoming more dynamic, an IT based solution to the current population migration is the introduction of Smart cities. The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) puts the Smart City concept as: “A smart city brings together technology, government and society to enable the following characteristics: smart cities, a smart economy, smart mobility, a smart environment, smart people, smart living, smart governance”. Therefore a Smart City encompasses technologies across all domains of society to enable a coherent and effective system of living. The components which make a city “Smart” are not fixed, in fact, the technological solutions that make a city smart are very much requirement dependent and a solution that works in one case may not be suitable for another. This presentation touches the basic idea of smart cities, detailing the technologies that serve as the enabler of the Smart City phenomenon while putting in to focus the resulting job opportunities for IT graduates. Furthermore, it also presents current initiatives that are ongoing across the world to highlight the diversified approaches to tackle the problems that modern cities face. Lastly, we point out the challenges that communities, councils and academics are facing in the implementation of the Smart City concept.
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PROFESSOR DR BS CHOWDHRY is the Dean Faculty of Electrical Electronics and Computer Engineering and former Director IICT at Mehran University of Engineering & Technology, Jamshoro, Pakistan. He has the honour of being one of the editor of several books “Wireless Networks, Information Processing and Systems”, CCIS 20, “Emerging Trends and Applications in Information Communication Technologies”, CCIS 281, “Wireless Sensor Networks for Developing Countries”, CCIS 366, “Communication Technologies, Information Security and Sustainable Development”, CCIS 414, published by Springer Verlag, Germany. He has also been serving as a Guest Editor for “Wireless Personal Communications” which is Springer International Journal. He has produced more than 13 PhDs and supervised more than 50 MPhil/Masters Thesis in the area of ICT. His list of research publication crosses to over 60 in national and international journals, IEEE and ACM proceedings. Also, he has Chaired Technical Sessions in USA, UK, China, UAE, Italy, Sweden, Finland, Switzerland, Pakistan, Denmark, and Belgium. He is member of various professional bodies including: Chairman IEEE Karachi Section, Region10 Asia/Pacific, Fellow IEP, Fellow IEEEP, Senior Member, IEEE Inc. (USA), SM ACM Inc. (USA). He is lead person at MUET of several EU funded Erasmus Mundus Program including “Mobility for Life”, “StrongTies”, “INTACT”, and “LEADERS”. He has organized several International Conferences including “IMTIC08”, “IMTIC12”, “IMTIC13”, “IMTIC15”, “WSN4DC13”, “IEEE SCONEST”, “IEEE PSGWC13”, and track chair in “Global Wireless Summit (GWS 2014).
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We start by demonstrating that a number of problems facing our world can be only solved by producing much more energy than is currently available. However, such increase of production usually means that still more carbon dioxide is produced, a gas considered to contribute to a dangerous change of climate. We will discuss techniques to produce energy efficiently without creating more emissions but will also mention rather different methods to handle carbon dioxide that are becoming more and more realistic. We will point out the influence of information technology (IT) on the processes involved. We discuss both beneficial, doubtful and dangerous effects of IT, including the internet. We will argue that a new approach to economy is essential, including new ways to distribute work and wealth, or else a major worldwide crisis is unavoidable. We conclude out talk by pointing out some intriguing results in material science, how to handle resources that are getting scarce, and how space technology may well provide ways to solve problems we are confronted with on earth.
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Study of Mathematics at the Universities of Vienna (Austria) and Calgary (Canada) starting in 1959. System Analyst with the Government of Saskatchewan in 1963. Mathematician-programmer with IBM Research in Vienna 1964-1966. Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of Vienna 1965. Assistant and Associate Professor for Computer Science at The University of Calgary 1966-1971. Full Professor for Applied Computer Science at the University of Karlsruhe, West Germany, 1971-1977, Visiting Professor at SMU (Dallas), University of Brasilia (Brazil), and at the University of Waterloo, during the same period, for three months, each. Full Professor at the Graz University of Technology since 1978, Dean of Studies 2000-2004, Dean of the new school of computer science 2004-2007. Director of the Research Institute for Applied Information Processing of the Austrian Computer Society 1983-1998. Chair or vice-chair of the Institute for Information Systems and Computer Media 1988 2001. Director of the Institute for Hypermedia Systems of JOANNEUM RESEARCH 1987-2006. Director of the AWAC (Austrian Web Application Center) 1997-2000. Member of the board of the Austrian Computer Society 1979-2003 and of Academia Europaea till December 2015. Co-founder and chairman of the board of the Hyperwave AG Munich 1997-2005, vice-chairman of same company till 2009: Founder, and later scientific advisor of the first research center on Knowledge Management in Austria. Director of the Austria-Forum effort since 1994, member of the advisory board of CHIS (Culturla Heritage Information System) since March 2016. Adjunct Professor at Denver University 1984-1988. Professor for Computer Science at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, in 1993 (on leave from Graz), and Honorary Research Fellow of that University till end of 2012. Advisor to the University of Malaysia at Kuching (UNIMAS) since 1998. Campus Captain of the University of Applied Sciences Business Studies 2002-2006, honorary title 'Visiting Professor' at the Danube University (Krems, Austria); Visiting Researcher for half a year at Edith Cowan University (Perth, Australia) in 2003. Maurer received a number of awards, among them the Prize for Merits for Information Processing in Austria, the "Enter-Price" (a play of words with Enterprise) of the Styrian Chamber of Commerce in 1999, the German Integrata-Prize (for Human Software) in 2000, the 'AACE Fellowship Award' of the Association for the Advancement of Computing in Education in 2003. He became Foreign Member of the Finnish Academy of Sciences in 1996 and a member of the Academia Europaea in 2000, where he was elected chairman of the section Informatics in April 2009. He was also elected as member of the Board (Trustee) September 2012. In 2001 he was awarded the "Austrian Cross of Honours for Arts and Science Class I", and later, also in 2001, the "Large Medal of Honour of the Province of Styria". He received the Honorary Doctorate of the Polytechnical University of St. Petersburg in 1991, of the University Karlsruhe, Germany, in 2002, and of the University of Calgary in 2007. He was appointed member of the advisory board of the US Web-History Society in May 2007. Maurer is author of twenty books, over 750 papers in various publications, founder and Editor-in-Chief of 'Journal of Universal Computer Science' till end of 2011, Co-Editor of 'Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching' and member of over a dozen Editorial Boards including the new Journal of Research in Innovative Teaching and Learning. He was and is chairperson of steering committees and member of program committees of numerous international conferences. Founder of the Conference series ED-MEDIA and WebNet/eLearn and of the conference I-KNOW; he was European Representative at ICCE till 2000. He was project manager of a number of multimillion-dollar undertakings including a patent for optical storage device, the development of a colour-graphic microcomputer (MUPID), an electronic teaching experiment COSTOC, multi-media projects such as "Images of Austria" (Expo'92 and Expo'93), various electronic publishing projects such as "PC Library", "Geothek", founder of the open access journal J.UCS and "Brockhaus Multimedial". He was responsible for the development of the first second generation Web Based Information System Hyperwave, and an e-Learning Suite, a modern net based teaching platform, and a large electronic encyclopaedia Austria-Forum that in its current version has over 700.000 entries and is trying to break the quasi monopoly of Google and Wikipedia. Involved in the multimedia part of a number of museum projects including Ars Electronica Center (Linz, Austria) the Papa Tongarewa (Wellington, New Zealand) and the Odyseeum (Cologene, Germany). He participated in or headed a number of national and EU projects. Successful supervision of more than 400 M.Sc. theses and more than 50 Ph.D. thesis'. He was chair of the Informatics Section of Academia Europaea 2007-2012, and then was promoted to the board of trustees of this Academy. Maurer has travelled extensively to other universities and research institutes, and has given over 1000 talks on those occasions or as invited or keynote speaker at international conferences. He has been an outspoken critic of some data-mining activities in the WWW. His original research was in compiler design, formal languages, automata, algorithms and data-structures. He then worked in a variety of areas including applications of computers to exhibitions and museums, Web based learning environments, languages and their applications, data structures and their efficient use, telematic services, computer networks, computer supported new media, dynamic symbolic language and techniques to fight plagiarism. His current main research and project areas are networked multimedia/hypermedia systems; electronic publishing and applications thereof, information integration, future implications of computers, and computers in Science Fiction. His Hobbies include: Writing Science Fiction, hiking and SCUBA diving. He was or is member of the ACM, GI, OMG, OCG, Fellow of AACE, and the WG 3.6 of IFIP. He is life long honorary member of MCCA.and OCG Vienna, and of the Computer Engineering Society, Graz. Since 1980 he has been member and official of Kiwanis. His last but one book deals with a "hollowed out" asteroid as a huge generation spaceship. His last SF Book "Ende des Traumes" ("End of the dream") appeared November 2014 deals among other things with using technologies and emerging technologies in a reasonable way, with more decentralization and seasonality and less gobalisation and throw-away attitudes.
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Neural engineering represents a rapidly evolving research area that lies at the confluence of neuroscience, biomedical engineering, and computer and information sciences. Neural engineering aims to develop technologies that link brain signals with man-made devices. Brain-Machine interfaces (BMI) help restore communication with the central nervous system that may have been severed due to traumatic brain injury (TBI), spinal cord injury (SCI), or neurodegenerative disease. The brain signals are tapped via EEG, ECoG, or EMG techniques, and processed and used in building BMIs. The signal processing part emulates the associative abilities and decision making in the human mind. The BMI output is used for restoring communications using a computer, or to generate command signals for wheel chair and other prosthetic devices. Neural motor prosthetics provides a new assistive technology aimed at restoring mobility in severely paralyzed patients. Recent BMI-based gait neurorehabilitation studies have shown significant promise of improving voluntary motor control and restoring locomotion ability in SCI patients. This talk is meant to provide an overview of the rapidly evolving neural engineering discipline. Besides recent advances in neural engineering and brain-machine interfaces, this talk will cover the acquisition and processing of brain signals for designing and building BMIs.
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Professor Kamran Iqbal obtained his BE (Avionics) degree from NUST College of Aeronautical Engineering and his Masters and Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the Ohio State University. He has held academic appointments at College of Aeronautical Engineering, GIK Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology, the Ohio State University, Northwestern University, University of California, Riverside, University and California, Irvine, California State University at Fullerton, and University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where he is currently employed as Professor of Systems Engineering. Dr. Iqbal’s research interests include neuro-mechanics of human movement, myoelectric control of prostheses, and biomedical engineering and signal processing. Dr. Iqbal is a senior member of IEEE, member of IET (UK), IASTED, ASEE, and Sigma Xi. More information on him is available at http://ualr.edu/systemsengineering/personnel/faculty/kamran-iqbal/.
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Most of the software development is being done using agile approaches. Agile approaches to software development Welcome changing requirements. However, requirements issues remain one of the major cause of troubles in software development. Researchers have attempted to bring agility to the requirements engineering either focusing on requirements practices within agile approaches or making requirements engineering agile. In this talk, I will be discussing what we have achieved, what are the problematic areas, and what is the ways forward?
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Naveed Ikram is a chartered IT professional, holding a Ph.D. from the University of Salford, UK. He has 25 years of experience in academia as well as industry. He is currently Associate Dean, Faculty of Computing, Riphah International University. He is leading the Empirical Software Engineering Research Group in the Faculty. He has more than 50 research papers to his credit. He is also one of the Directors of a private limited consulting company providing ICT-based solutions. He is Senior Member of IEEE and ACM.
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Over the last couple of decades, the use of Internet has changed its course from people-oriented to business-oriented and from connection-oriented to content-oriented. A latest projection of Internet usage suggests that video content will claim about 80% of the total Internet traffic by 2019. It goes without saying that content is not only video, but there is plethora of different content types used in various domains such as healthcare, entertainment, business, sports, education, press, shopping, and so on. The surge in content over Internet has created a disparity between the current internet architecture and the unique requirements for handling content over the Internet in the future. Furthermore, the current TCP/IP-based Internet architecture does not, in its entirety, suit the diversified applications available today. The historical and traditional issues (such as mobility, link failure, congestion, scalability, routing overhead, and security, to name a few) with TCP/IP architecture are still lingering around and unfortunately the same traditional ‘after-thought’ and ‘patch-based’ solutions in current TCP/IP-based networking will not work for content-oriented networks. Therefore, there is a strong tendency towards content-driven network architecture for future Internet. To this end, content-centric network (CCN) has the answers to, at least in part, the afore-mentioned problems where data is treated as a first-class citizen rather than the source of the data and the path taken by the data while traveling through the network. Named Data Networking (NDN) is one of the implementations of CCN and has got ample attention from both research and academia. To date, many applications have been designed and developed through NDN in different domains. In this talk, the rationale for, and transition from traditional TCP/IP to NDN will be discussed. From application domain standpoint, this talk will focus on wireless ad hoc networks and more precisely on vehicular networks and its different breeds. After establishing the bridge between content-centric networking and current Internet, we will also consider some technical solutions that are currently available. Precisely, content caching and cache management will be discussed in detail. The last part of the talk will focus on the current issues that need immediate attention and the future research prospects.
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Dr. Rasheed Hussain received his B.S. in Computer Software Engineering from University of Engineering and Technology, Peshawar, Pakistan in 2007, MS degree in Computer Engineering from Hanyang University, South Korea in 2010, and Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering from South Korea in February 2015. He also worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Hanyang University, South Korea from March 2015 till August 2015. Furthermore, he worked as a Guest Professor in University of Amsterdam (UvA), Netherlands and consultant for Innopolis University, Russia from September 2015 till June 2016. Currently he is working as Assistant Professor and coordinator for masters program in Secure System and Network Engineering (SNE) at Innopolis University, Russia (the first IT university in Russia). Dr. Hussain’s main research interests include information security and privacy, applied cryptography, cybersecurity, Vehicular Networks security, Vehicular clouds security, (VANET), Cloud Computing (CC), Vehicular Social Networks, smart grid security, Internet of Things (IoT), Big data security, named data networking, and blockchain technology. He serves on the editorial board of IEEE Access, IEEE Internet Policy Newsletter, IEEE Future Directions Newsletter, Wiley Internet Technology Letters (ITL), and Ad Hoc Sensors and Wireless Networks (AHSWN) journal. Furthermore, he also serves as reviewer for many journals from IEEE, Springer, Elsevier, and IET that include IEEE Sensors Journal, IEEE TVT, IEEE T-ITS, IEEE TIE, IEEE T-IFS, IEEE Comm. Magazine, Elsevier ADHOC, Elsevier JPDC, Elsevier VehCom, Elsevier ComCom, Elsevier CSI, Springer WIRE, Springer JNSM, and many more. He served as reviewer and TPC for world renowned international conferences of repute including IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE GLOBECOM, IEEE VTC, IEEE VNC, IEEE ICC, IEEE PCCC, IEEE NoF, and many more. Further details can be found at: https://sites.google.com/site/rasheedinfosec/(Email: r.hussain@innopolis.ru)
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This talk would be mainly divided into three parts: the definition of Big Data with respect to 3Vs (Volume, Velocity, and Variety), the technical Enablers of Big Data Analytics, and the Applications of Big Data analytics specifically for the government as well as private sector of Pakistan. The technical part of the talk will focus on the following four areas: Data preparation, i.e. the software tools that ease the burden of sourcing, shaping, cleansing, and sharing diverse and messy data sets to accelerate data’s usefulness for analytics. Data quality, i.e. the software/hardware tools that conduct data filtering, cleansing, aggregation, and enrichment on high volume, high-velocity data sets, using parallel operations. Information Extraction i.e. SQL databases tools and technologies to support information extraction and new insights from large repositories of unstructured and structured data that resides in multiple sources such as, databases, streams, APIs, and other platforms; and finally the Data virtualization, i.e. a technology that displays the useful information extracted from various data sources such as Hadoop, and displays it in user friendly and interactive interface. This section will also elaborate on the important technologies such as IoT, machine learning, and data mining. The strategic part will focus mainly on Big Data applications for Government, Smart Cities, Digital Health, and Businesses. In countries like USA, government security agencies will use Big Data analytics to foil terrorist plots, intelligence agencies to detect and prevent cyber-attacks; and Police forces to catch criminals, and even predict where the next crime will happen. The speaker will recommend developing tools that Government of Pakistan may leverage upon in improving security, predicting crimes and combating terrorist activities.
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Dr. Yaqub earned a Ph.D. in Wireless Communication from Keio University, Japan, and MBA in Marketing from Fairleigh Dickenson University, USA. He is one of the pioneers of LTE/4G, and an inventor of numerous technologies of 4th Generation Wireless Communication, and Smart Grid. He received “Inventor of the Year Award” from the Governor of the State of New Jersey, USA, through Inventors Hall of Fame. Dr. Yaqub remained an Executive Director of Toshiba America Research, Department head of NIKSUN University, headquartered in Princeton, New Jersey, where he lead educational efforts on Cybersecurity, and Big Data Analytics. He also remained Sr. Consultant to the State of New Jersey, a spokesperson in 3GPP on behalf of Department of Homeland Security”, an Associate Professor at University of Tennessee, and currently an Associate Professor at Alabama A&M University, Huntsville. He is also Managing Partner of Del Terri, a Big Data Analytics venture. Dr. Yaqub is skilled in teaching, conducting research, inventing technologies, developing solutions, and building industry academia collaboration. His academic efforts include developing from scratch, the new courses on “Smart Grid”, “4G Networks”, and “Advanced Metering Infrastructure and Cyber Security”. His research interest is in Big Data Analytics, 5G/4G/LTE, Smart Grid technologies (including Electric Vehicles, Renewable Energies, Smart Home Energy Management, etc.), and Cyber Security. He filed 34 patents (24 already issued), published numerous papers in international conferences, and submitted 150+ contributions in technical standards organizations. He remained a working group chairman in Mobile Wireless Internet Forum, Chairman IEEE Membership Development, Chairman IEEE for Award Committee, Rapporteur in 3GPP, keynote speaker, panelist, and guest speaker in numerous International conferences.
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It is a well-recognized fact that Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) face both known and unknown uncertainty during their operation. This demands the development of testing techniques that must take into account known uncertainty both in the CPS and its environment with the final goal of discovering unknown uncertainty against which the CPS can be tested. Eventually, the implementation of the CPS can be improved to shield it against the newly discovered uncertainty. In this presentation, I will present some of the results that have been achieved in an EU Horizon2020 project in this regard. First, modeling of test ready models of CPSs together with subjective uncertainty using the Uncertainty Modeling Framework will be presented. Second, two uncertainty-based test case generation and four test case minimization techniques relying on the test ready models founded on Uncertainty theory and multi-objective search will be presented. Third, the evaluation of the test case generation and minimization techniques that was conducted to select the best strategy to be used in the practice to test a real CPS will be presented. Finally, the results of testing a real CPS with the selected best strategy will be presented.
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Shaukat Ali is currently a senior research scientist in the Software Engineering Department, Simula Research Laboratory, Norway. He has been affiliated to Simula Research Lab since 2007. He has been involved in many industrial and research projects related to Model-based Testing (MBT) and Search-based Software Engineering since 2003. He has experience of working in several industries and academic research groups in many countries including UK, Canada, Norway, and Pakistan. Shaukat has been on the program or organisation committees of several international, IEEE and ACM conferences such as ACM/IEEE International Conference on Model Driven Engineering Languages and Systems, European Conference on Modeling Foundations and Applications and System Analysis and Modelling Conference. He is PI and CO-PI of several national and international research projects.
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Fourth generation (4G) communication technology was introduced to accommodate the rising demands of mobile user equipments in terms of data rate and network reliability. However, a sharp rise in the number of mobile users is expected in the years to come, which prompted the need for a futuristic standard. Fifth generation (5G) communication technology is labeled as a platform for providing higher data rates with efficient utilization of resources. The techniques which would undergo development under 5G communication standard include heterogeneous networks (HetNets), Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications, device-to-device (D2D) networks, massive multiple-input multiple-output networks, millimeter wave communications and internet of things (IoT) among others. This talk will highlight the new opportunities and challenges we are going to face with the advent of 5G systems. The talk is divided into two main parts. The first portion of the talk will be around the 5G vision and applications whereas the second part will highlight the emerging techniques which will be used in the upcoming 5G systems. The challenges in employing those techniques will be also be discussed.
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Syed Ali Hassan received Ph.D. Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech), Atlanta, USA, in 2011, M.S. mathematics from Georgia Tech in 2011, M.S. Electrical Engineering from University of Stuttgart, Germany, in 2007, and B.E. electrical engineering (highest honors) from the National University of Sciences and Technology (NUST), Pakistan, in 2004. His broader area of research is signal processing for communications. Currently, he is working as an Assistant Professor at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (SEECS), NUST, where he is the director of Information Processing and Transmission (IPT) research group, which focuses on various aspects of theoretical communications. Prior to joining SEECS, he worked as a research associate at Cisco Systems Inc., CA, USA. Dr. Hassan has (co)authored more than 80 publications in international conferences and journals and served as a TPC member for IEEE WCSP 2014, IEEE PIMRC 2013–2014, IEEE VTC Spring 2013-16, MILCOM 2014–2016, among others.
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In this talk, we discuss the telecom community efforts which led to recognition of telecommunication engineering (TE) as a distinct education discipline in the US. These efforts, concluded by the Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology, Inc., (ABET) approval of its new Criteria for Electrical, Computer, Communications, Telecommunication(s) and Similarly Named Engineering Programs on November 1, 2014. We reflect on the history of the Telecommunication Engineering Education (TEE) initiative and movement(2008-2014) which resulted in this development. We discuss the impact of progress in Network Science and Engineering on modern Telecommunications, and examine these developments in light of other changes in the arena of engineering education in the US, and the rest of the world. The talk will look into the work that needs to be done to capitalize on these development and the roles of numerous stake holders. For example, Telecom is an area of high standardization activities and the new discipline requires course(s) and innovative instruction methods to fill a knowledge gap in this arena. We shall discuss efforts excreted in this regards through joint efforts of the US Department of Commerce’s National Institute of Technology (NIST), IEEE, and US academia.
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Tarek S. El-Bawab led the Telecommunication Engineering Education (TEE) initiative and movement (2008-2014), which resulted in recognition of telecommunication engineering as a distinct ABET-accreditable education discipline on November 1, 2014. He is the first recipient of the IEEE Communications Society’s (ComSoc) Education Award, due to this work (2015). The citation of this award reads: “for outstanding contributions to the definition, and to the accreditation criteria, of modern communication/telecommunication engineering education; and for making changes to our education system that benefit our community, society, and the profession.” Dr. El-Bawab research interests include telecommunications, network architectures, optical networks, performance analysis, enabling electronic/photonic technologies, and engineering education. Currently, he is a professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Jackson State University, USA. Before this he was with Alcatel-Lucent as a Project Manager with the Network Strategy Group (CTO organization), USA. Earlier, he was involved in networking research with a number of organizations, including Alcatel-Lucent; the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Colorado State University (USA); and the Department of Electronic Systems Engineering, University of Essex (UK). Before this he led large-scale international telecommunication projects in the Middle East for 10 years. He has more than 70 scholarly journal/conference papers and patents. His book Optical Switching is one of the most comprehensive references in its subject. He is the Editor of Springer’s Series: Textbooks in Telecommunication Engineering, and the Associate Editor in Chief (AEiC) of the IEEE Communications Magazine. He is an IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer. Tarek has served IEEE and ComSoc in numerous capacities. He is a board member of the IEEE Educational Activities Board (EAB), and of the EAB’s Committee on Global Accreditation Activities (CGAA). He is also member of ComSoc’s Educational Services Board and Chair of its Working Group on Telecommunications Engineering Education in US. He served as member of the Board of Governors, Director of Conference Operations, and member of the Online Content Board (OCB) of ComSoc (2014-2015). He is a founding/active member of several ComSoc technical committees, and served as Chair of the Transmission, Access, and Optical Systems (TAOS) Technical Committee for two terms. He has served as a symposium chair, workshops Chair, and organizer in several ICC/Globecom Conferences, and organized/chaired the ICC/Globecom International Workshop on Optical Networking Technologies (IWONT) for 10 years. He is also member of the IEEE Computer, Electron Devices, and Photonics Societies. Dr. El-Bawab has a B.Sc. in electrical engineering, and a B.A. in history, both from Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt. He holds an M.Sc. in solid state science from the American University in Cairo, and an M.Sc. in telecommunications and information systems from the University of Essex, UK. He obtained his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Colorado State University.
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The Pakistan-U.S. Science and Technology Cooperation Program has provided unique opportunities for Pakistani and U.S. scientists to engage in collaborative research since 2005, demonstrating both countries’ commitment to partnership in science and technology investment. This bilateral program aims to enhance the ability of the science and technology community to spur human and economic development in Pakistan; improve the quality, relevance, and capacity of Pakistani institutions of higher education; and improve the capacity of Pakistani research institutions to support industry competitiveness. Previous research projects have focused on diverse topics, including food security, public health, disaster management, engineering, water, energy, and information technology. With U.S. sponsorship from USAID and the Department of State and Pakistani sponsorship from the Higher Education Commission and the Ministry of Science and Technology, the U.S. National Academy of Sciences serves as the U.S. implementing agency. This presentation will provide an overview of the program’s structure, history, and impacts in both the U.S. and in Pakistan. A brief introduction to other programs that support Pakistan – U.S. cooperative scientific research, such as the Partnerships for Enhanced Engagement (PEER) program, will also be provided.
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Dr. Teresa Stoepler is a Program Officer at the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine where she manages the Pakistan - U.S. Science & Technology (S&T) Cooperation Program and assists with the U.S. – Egypt S&T Joint Fund. Previously, she was an American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) Science & Technology Policy Fellow at U.S. Geological Survey where she helped the U.S. government build a standing capacity for strategic science following environmental disasters such as oil spills and hurricanes. In this role, Teresa led the formation of partnerships with more than 20 professional societies and academic centers in a wide range of disciplines to expedite the formation of “crisis science” teams. Teresa holds a B.S. in Biology and Botany from Humboldt State University and a Ph.D. in Biological Sciences from the George Washington University. Trained as an ecologist, Teresa’s previous research focused on plant-insect interactions, including pollination, parasitism, and disease ecology in both natural and agricultural systems.
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Although a number of cognitive artifacts have been published in the literature, which provides potential solutions for the construction of artificial consciousness (AC). Indeed, their designs are based on established theories and approaches. In addition to current practices, there are a number of other potential aspects which may have significance in the modeling of consciousness and are needed to be explored. This study addresses the significance of these issues and introduces NiHA (Nature-inspired Humanoid Cognitive Computing Platform for Self-aware and Conscious Agents) along with its reference cognitive architecture (QuBIC). NiHA is a work in progress, which was initiated to study various correlates of consciousness in-silico. Initially, we started with the ad-hoc implementation of NiHA, with the objective to assess the potential of the underlying design assumptions and to formulate a working theoretical framework (unified theory of artificial mind). We do realize that a number of correlates (quantum correlates, brain/mind dualism, substrate dualism), are not openly accepted by the established researchers in the field. Therefore, the objective of this study is not to provide arguments in support these fringe theories, rather it is to utilize their computational strength when it comes to the modeling of consciousness. In this regard, this study will share few results from some of the studies done using NiHA and QuBIC; whereas, details will be published elsewhere. These results were collected from following experimental/pilot studies which address various aspects of consciousness like imaginations, dreams, role of glucose and insulin interplay in the regulation of psycho-physical pathways.
Bio
Wajahat M. Qazi is working as Assistant Professor at COMSATS Institute of Information Technology, Lahore and heading “Intelligent Machines and Robotics” research group. His area of research are Quantum Cognitive Computing and Machine Consciousness. Currently, he is developing a quantum and bio-inspired software framework for the implementation of systems (agents/robots) which possess a certain level of consciousness. Within the area of machine consciousness and robotics he has contributed in the development of following artifacts: QuBIC (A cognitive architecture), quantum computing framework, quantum neural computing framework and unified theory of artificial mind.
