Talk Title & Abstract

Neoteric Frontiers in Cloud and Edge Computing
Computing is being transformed to a model consisting of services that are delivered in a manner similar to utilities such as water, electricity, gas, and telephony. In such a model, users access services based on their requirements without regard to where the services are hosted or how they are delivered. Cloud computing paradigm has turned this vision of "computing utilities" into a reality. It offers infrastructure, platform, and software as services, which are made available to consumers as subscription-oriented services. Cloud application platforms need to offer (1) APIs and tools for rapid creation of elastic applications and (2) a runtime system for deployment of applications on geographically distributed computing infrastructure in a seamless manner.
The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm enables seamless integration of cyber-and-physical worlds and opening up opportunities for creating new class of applications for domains such as smart cities and smart healthcare. The emerging Fog/Edge computing paradigm is extends Cloud computing model to edge resources for latency sensitive IoT applications with a seamless integration of network-wide resources all the way from edge to the Cloud.
This keynote presentation will cover (a) 21st century vision of computing and identifies various IT paradigms promising to deliver the vision of computing utilities; (b) innovative architecture for creating elastic Clouds integrating edge resources and managed Clouds, (c) Aneka 5G, a Cloud Application Platform, for rapid development of Cloud/Big Data applications and their deployment on private/public Clouds with resource provisioning driven by SLAs, (d) a novel FogBus software framework with Blockchain-based data-integrity management for facilitating end-to-end IoT-Fog/Edge-Cloud integration for execution of sensitive IoT applications, (e) experimental results on deploying Cloud and Big Data/ IoT applications in engineering, and health care (e.g., COVID-19), deep learning/Artificial intelligence (AI), satellite image processing, natural language processing (mining COVID-19 research literature for new insights) and smart cities on elastic Clouds; and (f) directions for delivering our 21st century vision along with pathways for future research in Cloud and Edge/Fog computing.

Biography

Dr. Rajkumar Buyya is a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Director of the Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems (CLOUDS) Laboratory at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is also serving as the founding CEO of Manjrasoft, a spin-off company of the University, commercializing its innovations in Cloud Computing. He has authored over 850 publications and seven text books including "Mastering Cloud Computing" published by McGraw Hill, China Machine Press, and Morgan Kaufmann for Indian, Chinese and international markets respectively. Dr. Buyya is one of the highly cited authors in computer science and software engineering worldwide (h-index=138, g-index=307, 104,200+ citations). "A Scientometric Analysis of Cloud Computing Literature" by German scientists ranked Dr. Buyya as the World's Top-Cited (#1) Author and the World's Most-Productive (#1) Author in Cloud Computing. Dr. Buyya is recognised as Web of Science “Highly Cited Researcher” for five consecutive years since 2016, IEEE Fellow, Scopus Researcher of the Year 2017 with Excellence in Innovative Research Award by Elsevier, and the “Best of the World”, in Computing Systems field, by The Australian 2019 Research Review.

Software technologies for Grid, Cloud, and Fog computing developed under Dr.Buyya's leadership have gained rapid acceptance and are in use at several academic institutions and commercial enterprises in 50 countries around the world. Dr. Buyya has led the establishment and development of key community activities, including serving as foundation Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Scalable Computing and five IEEE/ACM conferences. These contributions and international research leadership of Dr. Buyya are recognized through the award of "2009 IEEE Medal for Excellence in Scalable Computing" from the IEEE Computer Society TCSC. Manjrasoft's Aneka Cloud technology developed under his leadership has received "Frost & Sullivan New Product Innovation Award". He served as founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing. He is currently serving as Editor-in-Chief of Software: Practice and Experience, a long standing journal in the field established ~50 years ago. For further information on Dr.Buyya, please visit his cyberhome: www.buyya.com

Talk Title & Abstract

Overview of Microgrids
Microgrids are not new to power systems, since these local and small grids have been widely deployed and utilized for electricity supply in remote and isolated communities such as islands and remote villages throughout the world. However, there is nowadays a rapid development and deployment of microgrids in the context of smart and resilient power networks, in good part motivated by the need to integrate distributed generation, especially if powered by renewable resources such as wind and solar, to reduce operational costs and the environmental impact of these grids, particularly for diesel-depended isolated microgrids.
The presentation will provide a general overview of microgrids and the research work being carried out by Prof. Canizares’ group at the University of Waterloo on the area, including a summary of a survey carried out by the group on remote microgrids in Canada, and a detailed description of the microgrid in one of these communities, namely, the Kasabonika Lake First Nation (KLFN) community microgrid in Northern Ontario, where a one-year measuring campaign was carried out to identify main technical issues associated with these kinds of microgrids. A general description of the group’s main research contributions and findings in the area of microgrids, with several practical examples, will be provided, focusing on dispatch, control, stability, and optimal planning. In particular, the following subjects will be discussed in some detail: Energy Management Systems (EMS) considering renewable power uncertainty; voltage and frequency control including electrical and thermal energy storage for microgrids with high penetration of variable renewable power; stability definitions, modeling, simulation, and analysis; optimal placement and sizing of renewable power equipment for minimization of costs and diesel use, considering secure system operation; and dc microgrid EMS and power flows.

Biography

Dr. Claudio Cañizares is a University Professor and the Hydro One Endowed Chair at the Electrical and Computer Engineering (E&CE) Department of the University of Waterloo, where he has held various academic and administrative positions since 1993. He received the Electrical Engineer degree from the Escuela Politécnica Nacional (EPN) in Quito-Ecuador in 1984, where he held different academic and administrative positions between 1983 and 1993, and his MSc (1988) and PhD (1991) degrees in Electrical Engineering are from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. His research activities focus on the study of stability, control, optimization, modeling, simulation, and computational issues in bulk power systems, microgrids, and energy systems in the context of competitive energy markets and smart grids. In these areas, he has led or been an integral part of many grants and contracts from government agencies and private companies worth millions of dollars, and has collaborated with multiple industry and university researchers in Canada and abroad, supervising/co-supervising dozens of research fellows and graduate students. He has authored/co-authored a numerous publications with large citation indices, including journal and conference papers, technical reports, book chapters, disclosures and patents, and has been invited to deliver keynote speeches, seminars, tutorials, and presentations at many institutions and conferences worldwide. He is the Editor-In-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, the 2021-2022 IEEE Division VII Delegate-Elect to the IEEE Board of Directors, and a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineering (IEEE), a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, where he is currently the Director of the Applied Science and Engineering Division of the Academy of Science, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. He is also the recipient of the 2017 IEEE Power & Energy Society (PES) Outstanding Power Engineering Educator Award, the 2016 IEEE Canada Electric Power Medal, and of multiple IEEE PES Technical Council and Committee awards and recognitions, holding leadership positions in several IEEE-PES Committees, Working Groups, and Task Forces.

Talk Title & Abstract

Throughput Optimization for Grant-Free Multiple Access with Multiagent Deep Reinforcement Learning
Grant-free multiple access (GFMA) is a promising paradigm to efficiently support uplink access of Internet of Things (IoT) devices. In this talk, we present a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based pilot sequence selection scheme for GFMA systems to mitigate potential pilot sequence collisions. We formulate a pilot sequence selection problem for aggregate throughput maximization in GFMA systems with specific throughput constraints as a Markov decision process (MDP). By exploiting multiagent DRL, we train deep neural networks (DNNs) to learn near-optimal pilot sequence selection policies from the transition history of the underlying MDP without requiring information exchange between the users. While the training process takes advantage of global information, we leverage the technique of factorization to ensure that the policies learned by the DNNs can be executed in a distributed manner. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can achieve an average aggregate throughput that is close to the optimum, and has a better performance than several heuristic algorithms.

Biography

Vincent Wong is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. His research areas include protocol design, optimization, and resource management of communication networks, with applications to the Internet, wireless networks, smart grid, fog computing, and Internet of Things. Currently, he is an executive editorial committee member of the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, an Area Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Communications and IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, and an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. Dr. Wong is a Fellow of the IEEE and an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer.

Talk Title & Abstract

Tenants of Trust and Transparency in Human-Swarm Teaming: Interpretability, Explainability, and Predictability
Human-Swarm Teaming (HST) is the most complex Industry 4.0 endeavour. A swarm could consist of ground, air, surface, underwater, space, and software vehicles relying on industry 4.0 infrastructure made of sensors, actuators, and the Internet. When the swarm interact with humans, they form a socio-technical system with an unprecedented level of complexity in integrating humans and machines. This level of complexity necessitates Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms to operate at the core and all the way to the edge of Industry 4.0. However, opaque AI algorithms will fail when they interface with each other and/or humans. In this talk, I will present on our two most recent publications to design trusted and transparent HST systems. In particular, I will bring together the following two publications:

• A. Hepworth, D. Baxter, A. Hussein, K. Yaxley, E. Debie, and H.A. Abbass (to appear) Human-Swarm-Teaming Transparency and Trust Architecture, IEEE/CAA Journal of Automatica Sinica
• H.A. Abbass and R. Hunjet (Eds) Shepherding UxVs for Human-Swarm Teaming: An Artificial Intelligence Approach to Unmanned X Vehicles, Springer International Publishing, Switzerland AG, ISBN 978-3-030-60897-2.

Biography

Hussein Abbass is a Professor at the University of New South Wales Canberra, Australia. Prof. Abbass is the Founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Artificial Intelligence. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and Learning Systems; IEEE Transactions on Evolutionary Computation; IEEE Transactions on Cognitive and Developmental Systems; IEEE Transactions on Cybernetics; ACM Computing Surveys and four other journals. He was the Vice-president for Technical Activities (2016-2019) for the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. Prof. Abbass is a Fellow of the IEEE (FIEEE), a Fellow of the Australian Computer Society (FACS), a Fellow of the Operational Research Society (FORS); and a Fellow of the Institute of Managers and Leaders Australia and New Zealand (FIML). He has published over 300 papers in journals and conferences, and four authored books. His current research contributes to trusted human-swarm teaming with an aim to design next generation trusted and distributed artificial intelligence systems that seamlessly integrate humans and machines.

Talk Title & Abstract

Intelligent Analysis of Brain Images
Medical imaging inherently entails imperfection, and is therefore an appropriate domain for involving computational intelligence. We introduce the concepts of quantitative imaging and radiomics, followed by radiogenomics and deep learning. Next we describe an automated and fast detection algorithm for brain tumor in MRI, and its efficient segmentation both in two- and three-dimensions. Visual saliency is utilized for a fast localization and detection of the tumor. Use of just a single user-provided seed for an efficient delineation of the GBM tumor is also elaborated. The second part of the talk focuses on the application of deep learning for the detection, segmentation and survival analysis in brain tumors. Comparative study with related machine learning algorithms demonstrates its effectiveness on medical image data, both quantitatively and qualitatively.

Biography

Sushmita Mitra is full Professor at the Machine Intelligence Unit (MIU), Indian Statistical Institute, Kolkata. From 1992 to 1994 she was in the RWTH, Aachen, Germany as a DAAD Fellow. She was a Visiting Professor in the Computer Science Departments of the University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada in 2004, 2007; Meiji University, Japan in 1999, 2004, 2005, 2007; and Aalborg University Esbjerg, Denmark in 2002, 2003. Dr Mitra received the National Talent Search Scholarship from NCERT, India, the University Gold Medal in 1988, the IEEE TNN Outstanding Paper Award in 1994 for her pioneering work in neuro-fuzzy computing, the CIMPA-INRIA-UNESCO Fellowship in 1996, and Fulbright-Nehru Senior Research Fellowship in 2018-2020. She is the author of the books "Neuro-Fuzzy Pattern Recognition: Methods in Soft Computing" and "Data Mining: Multimedia, Soft Computing, and Bioinformatics" published by John Wiley, and "Introduction to Machine Learning and Bioinformatics", Chapman & Hall/CRC Press, beside a host of other edited books. Dr Mitra has guest-edited special issues of several journals, is an Associate Editor of "IEEE/ACM Trans. on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics", "Information Sciences", "Fundamenta Informatica", and is a Founding Associate Editor of "Wiley Interdisciplinary Reviews: Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery (WIRE DMKD)". She has more than 150 research publications in refereed international journals. Dr Mitra is a Fellow of the IEEE, Indian National Science Academy (INSA), International Association for Pattern Recognition (IAPR), and Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) and The National Academy of Sciences, India (NASI). She is an IEEE CIS Distinguished Lecturer and the current Chair-Elect, IEEE Kolkata Section. She has visited more than 30 countries as a Plenary/Invited Speaker or an academic visitor, and served as General Chair and/or Program Chair of several international conferences. Her current research interests include data science, deep learning, soft computing, medical image processing, and Bioinformatics.

Talk Title & Abstract

Enhance your Perspective – IT-Security as an enabling factor for the production industry
Today IT-Security often appears as a limiting factor for user acceptance. However, in fact it is one of the most important enabling factors for the usage of I4.0 technologies. Nobody would ever question the necessity of verifying the stability of a building construction from an engineer’s perspective. This is true for IT-Security as well. Nearly every production system comes across with some kind of IT-based technology. Integrated and networked systems are state-of-the-art. Cloud-based user access becomes more and more important. Along this route, a wide scope of data will be generated. This data is the “new oil” of future business models. Data itself becomes a new value. Every business model that uses such data needs protection against a wide scope of threads. Assets have to be protected.
Thus, production systems have to provide IT-Security features as a new dimension of product quality. IT-Security has to be integrated right from the beginning of every engineering process – we call that “Security by design”. However, even secure systems may work insecure while being connected to other – insecure working – systems. At the end, “Security at Large” will be the only approach to achieve secure systems. This means everything has to fulfill at least a standard baseline oft IT-Security.
This representation will show you some of our latest machine-learning based approaches to achieve a real time IT-security evaluation of production environments.

Biography

Dr. Thorsten Henkel, born in 1966, studied architecture & urban planning after two years military service. In 1995, he achieved a diploma from the Technical University of Dortmund and obtained a degree as a civil engineer.
After two years working as an employed Architect, he became a research fellow at the chair of Computer Science and Civil Engineering at the Technical University of Dortmund. In 1999, he went to Dessau and became the head of the CAAD Labor of the University of Applied Science Dessau. In 2002, he achieved a doctorates degree from Bauhaus-University Weimar in the field of Computer Science and Architecture. Since 2002, he works as an employee at Fraunhofer-Institute for Secure Information Technology SIT. In 2005 promoted to a Director.
From 2001 until 2014 responsible for Secure Engineering and SIT-Test-Laboratory, since 2014 responsible for Industrial Security Test Laboratory. Today Division Director Industrial Security Solutions, Director Industrial Test-Laboratory, business area responsibility for Industrie 4.0.

Talk Title & Abstract

Electromagnetic Sensing in Healthcare Solutions with Planar Antenna
Researchers are trying to find alternatives to conventional diagnosis systems such as magnetic resonance imaging, computed tomography scan and other methods because they suffer from false-positive accuracy rate. Moreover, these processes are time-consuming and cannot facilitate portability and most importantly, health concerns due to ionized exposure. Thus, researchers are giving priorities to the microwave-based healthcare diagnosis tools. Microwave signal contrast between the electrical characteristics of human tissues can easily be distinguished by microwave antenna sensors. In microwave imaging, one or more antenna sensors receive the radiated and scattered power. Microwave-based portable medical diagnosis tools have the potential to save lives by utilizing microwave sensor antennas that perform well. The scope of this talk is to highlight the research work performed by the speaker on planar antenna technologies which is suitable for healthcare solution. The effect of ground plane in the designing of UWB planar antenna is discussed and a new technique for bandwidth enhancement is presented. Metamaterial can successfully miniature the antenna size which is a prime requisite of modern portable communication devices while the modified Vivaldi antenna aims to achieve higher gain and directionality suitable for imaging and remote sensing purposes. Microwave imaging (MI) is an ideal candidate for the breast and head tumour detection. The difference between the electrical properties is identified with the microwave sensors. In this MI system, the power is radiated over an antenna sensor, and another one or pair of sensor receives the scattered power. The scattered signals are further processed to detect the unwanted malignant tissues. The ultra-wideband has the advantage of deep penetration and higher resolution features. In this talk, I will discuss metamaterial loaded patch antenna focusing on imaging sensing capabilities and present exciting new ways of capturing backscattered signal from the breast phantom to see the breast imaging property. The presentation also introduces the basic principles of metamaterial loaded patch antennas prototype development and the integration to microwave imaging system to evaluate the unwanted tumor detection in the breast and head tissue.
In this keynote speech, we will cover the metamaterial antenna-based array type imaging system development technique, after defining the basic requirement for imaging through metamaterial loaded patch antenna design. The backscattered signal from different parts of the breast and head are collected and processed by our developed IC-CF-DAS (Iteratively Corrected Coherence Factor DAS) imaging algorithm to get a clear image. Because of the attractive features of non-ionizing, less expensive and no side effect, the mentioned imaging technique can frequently be used to identify anomaly in breast and head at any time which gives it an upper hand over presently used imaging systems. I will also address the potential application of microwave imaging using IOT for palms tress and pipeline Imaging for oil and gas industries.

Biography

MOHAMMAD TARIQUL ISLAM (Senior Member, IEEE) is currently a Professor with the Department of Electrical, Electronic and Systems Engineering, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia (UKM) and a Visiting Professor with the Kyushu Institute of Technology, Japan. He is the author and coauthor of about 500 research journal articles, nearly 175 conference articles, and a few book chapters on various topics related to antennas, metamaterials, and microwave imaging with 22 inventory patents filed. Thus far, his publications have been cited 6650 times and his H-index is 40 (Source: Scopus). His Google scholar citation is 9500 and H-index is 46. He was a recipient of more than 40 research grants from the Malaysian Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation, Ministry of Education, UKM research grant, international research grants from Japan and Saudi Arabia. His research interests include communication antenna design, metamaterial, satellite antennas, and microwave imaging for healthcare technology. Dr. Islam has been serving as an Executive Committee member for IEEE AP/MTT/EMC Malaysia Chapter, since 2018, the Chartered Professional Engineer (CEng), a fellow of IET, U.K., and a Senior Member of IEICE, Japan. He received several International Gold Medal awards, a Best Invention in Telecommunication Award for his research and innovation, and best researcher awards at UKM, in 2010 and 2011. He was a recipient of 2018 and 2019 IEEE AP/MTT/EMC Malaysia Chapter, Excellent Award. He also won the best innovation award, in 2011, and the Best Research Group in ICT niche by UKM, in 2014. He was a recipient of Publication Award from Malaysian Space Agency, in 2014, 2013, 2010, and 2009, and the Best Paper Presentation Award, in 2012, International Symposium on Antennas and Propagation (ISAP 2012) at Nagoya, Japan, and in 2015 in IconSpace. He has supervised about 30 Ph.D. theses, 20 M.Sc. theses, and has mentored more than 10 postdocs and Visiting scholars. He was an Associate Editor of IET Electronics Letter. He also serves as the Guest Editor, Sensors journal, and an Associate Editor for IEEE ACCESS. He is ranked among the top 2% World Scientist (in carrier) published by Stanford University (November 2020) in the field of Telecommunications.

Talk Title & Abstract

The role of bioimage informatics to study fundamental biological questions
Cells are thebasicbuilding blocks of life integratingall the molecular informationin a meaningful way and regulating how they work together to carry out the essential functions of life.Thus, studying cells is the key to understand the dynamics of molecular networks and their interactions required to construct different structures and machines inside more complex living systems. We perform state-of-the-art microscopy across scales to capture various events inside cells and living organismsin order to advance of our understanding of the fundamental processes of life. Microscopy produces huge volume of data and automated analysis of this data is the keyto quantify the structures and functions associated with the target study. Automated analysis involves substantial development of sophisticated computational frameworks to extract important information while dealing with complexity and heterogeneity of the data obtained from various imaging modalities. In this talk,I will discuss aboutfew important biological studies to demonstrate how bioimage informatics approaches, a sub-field in computational biology focusing on bioimage analysis, played key role to answer fundamental research questions. I will also discuss why bioimage informatics is so important now and how this sub-field is attracting increasing focus in multi-disciplinary research.

Biography

Dr. M. Julius Hossain is currently working as a Research Scientist in the Cell Biology and Biophysics Unit at the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL), Germany. Dr. Hossain was trained as a computational scientist and obtained his PhD degree in computer vision and image processing from Kyung Hee University, South Korea. He conducted his postdoctoral research in biomedical image analysis in Dublin City University, Ireland and then moved to EMBL where he has been very active in interdisciplinary research for many years. Dr. Hossain actively collaborates with scientists in several other disciplines including biology, physics, chemistry, and bioinformatics to develop computational methods for quantifying and modeling biological systems specially the dividing human cell and mouse embryo. His research outputs were published in a number of most prestigious journals including Nature(IF 42.778), Science(IF: 41.845), Nature Cell Biology(IF 20.042), Nature structural and Molecular Biology(IF: 13.33), Nature Communications(IF=12.353)and Nature Protocols,(IF:10.419) etc. Dr. Hossain had spent more than a year in the industry as a Software Engineer before he started his academic career at the University of Dhaka where he served as a full time Lecturer and then Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering. His current research focus includes bioimage informatics, modeling cellular and embryonic shapes, parameterization of dynamic protein distributions in the dividing human cell.

Talk Title & Abstract

Important research areas in mobile systems security and privacy to protect billions of users around the world
Billions of people around the world now use smart mobile devices as part of their daily lives for reasons spanning personal, financial, work, entertainment, productivity, news, etc. The mobile platforms have become an essential focus for the tech industry for providing services, selling goods and reaching users through apps, advertisement and knowledge. As users put their trust on the platforms with their personal and financial data, it provides opportunities for hackers and shady app developers to build exploits, abusive apps, and content that can deceive users, collect private data, steal credentials and even take control of devices to be used for their own purposes. Together these form billions of dollars worth of financial incentives for organized adversaries and hackers. This talk will highlight the various areas of research that the industry and academia are focused on for identifying threats, securing operating systems and protecting user privacy. At the same time, we will cover how adversaries constantly improve their approaches to evade defenses.

Biography

Monirul Islam Sharif has been working at Google for the last 10 years, and is currently a senior Engineering Manager, leading the Mobile Threat Analysis Platform (MTAP) group. This group researches and builds large scale automated threat analysis and detection systems that are used by Google’s various products and internal organizations to protect Android users’ security and privacy. Prior to joining Google, Monirul finished his PhD in computer science at Georgia Institute of Technology, USA, specializing research on computer systems security. He has written numerous research papers published in top international security conferences, including IEEE Symposium on Security & Privacy, ACM CCS, NDSS, RAID, USENIX Security, etc. One of his papers received the best student paper award in IEEE S&P 2009. He has also received the ACM SIGSAC Test-of-Time award in 2018 for a paper published in 2008. He acquired his Masters degree in Princeton University in 2003, specializing in advanced operating systems. Monirul also got his MSc and Bsc from the computer science department from the University of Dhaka, Bangladesh.

Talk Title & Abstract

Smart Solid State Transformer for Future Power Grids
Conventional transformer possesses many undesirable properties including power quality susceptibility, heavy weight, large size, and environmental concerns due to the use of liquid as a coolant and insulator. Moreover, power quality issues, such as elevated voltage, voltage unbalance, voltage sags (dip), voltage swells, flicker, power factor, harmonics, and faults related to high penetration of renewable generation can-not be controlled by a traditional transformer. Therefore, a number of additional devices, such as on-load tap changer, capacitor banks, distribution static compensator (DSTATCOM), dynamic voltage restorer (DVR), and unified power quality conditioner (UPQC) are used to mitigate the power quality problems. These additional power conditioning devices are heavy, large in size and makes the power network complex, which in turn limits the maximum level of renewable power penetration to the major grids. Moreover, the traditional transformer can be used in an ac network only, but future grid will have both ac and dc networks. Therefore, a new type of smart transformer with advanced power electronic converter and intelligent control is required to stand for all of the above listed power devices, i.e. single device with multi operations, which will make the network more smart, simple and will ensure the resilience and sustainability of the future power grids.

Biography

Md. Rabiul Islam received the Ph.D. degree from University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, Australia, in 2014 in electrical engineering. He was appointed a lecturer at RUET in 2005 and promoted to full professor in 2017. In early 2018, he joined at the School of Electrical, Computer, and Telecommunications Engineering (SECTE), University of Wollongong (UOW), Wollongong, Australia. He is a Senior Member of IEEE. His research interests are in the fields of power electronic converters, renewable energy technologies, power quality, electrical machines, electric vehicles, and smart grid. He has authored or co-authored more than 200 papers including 50 IEEE Transactions/IEEE Journal papers. He has written or edited 5 technical books published by Springer and Taylor & Francis. He has received more than 20 awards for his outstanding publications including 2 Best Paper Awards from IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion in 2020. He was also awarded several prestigious fellowships/scholarships including Australian Government Endeavour Research Fellowship, University of Queensland Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (Chancellor Fellow), Japanese Government Monbukagakusho scholarship, Australian Government International Postgraduate Research Scholarship, University of Technology Sydney President Scholarship, and Asian Development Bank Scholarship. He has received several funding from Government and Industries including the Australian Research Council Discovery Project 2020 (AUD 487,629.00) entitled “A Next Generation Smart Solid-State Transformer for Power Grid Applications”. He was also involved with many innovative projects such as Australian Research Council discovery project entitled “An Optimal Electrical Drive System for Plug-in Hybrid Electric Vehicles” and the Australian Renewable Energy Agency project (AUD10.5 million) entitled “Smart Sodium Storage Solution”. He is serving as an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion and IEEE Power Engineering Letters, and Associate Editor for IEEE Access. He has also served as a Guest Editor for IEEE Transactions on Energy Conversion, IEEE Transactions on Applied superconductivity and IET Electric Power Applications.

Talk Title & Abstract

ICT, the 21st Century Skills and 4IR – the Learning Challenges
It is necessary to ask how the buzzwords such as the "21st century skills" and the "Fourth Industrial Revolution" are understood by the education and other stake holders in the context of building the digital Bangladesh and what is happening on the ground in the thousands of institutions at all levels across the country.
At the same time, what are called the 21st century skills are not necessarily all novel, nor do they mark a clean break from what were important in the 20th century or the 19th century. There are common and timeless elements of quality and relevance for learners and the whole of society in any system of education. Education systems have always struggled to achieve and maintain these essential elements, and they have not become invalid in the 21st century.
Klaus Schwab, the founder of the World Education Forum, has warned that we face the danger of a job market that is increasingly segregated into "low-skill/low-pay" and "high-skill/high-pay" segments, giving rise to growing social tensions. Coping with the implications of this danger for education and skill development is a continuing concern. Numerous structural and operational obstacles to necessary reforms in education and skills formation and how to deal with these have to be addressed.
Understanding better the demands and opportunities of changing technologies, the Fourth Industrial Revolution, how the learning system changes, and how the ICT and learning responses are reconciled are the major challenges. Experience at home and abroad offers clues for the future direction.

Biography

Dr. Manzoor Ahmed is Professor Emeritus at BRAC University in Dhaka, Chair of Bangladesh Early Childhood Development Network (BEN), Vice-Chair of Campaign for Popular Education (CAMPE), and Executive Board member of the Comparative Education Society of Asia.
He was the founding-director of BRAC University Institute of Educational Development. Dr. Ahmed has served for over two decades in senior positions in UNICEF including Senior Education Adviser, and country director in China, Ethiopia and Japan. Dr. Ahmed went to the American University of Beirut for his undergraduate degree, and later attended Dhaka University, University of Northern Colorado and Woodrow Wilson School at Princeton University.
Ahmed is author and co-author of internationally published books, book chapters and journal articles. His research and writing involvement continues in educational policy and planning aiming for quality with equity in the national learning systems.

Talk Title & Abstract

4IR Transformation for Telecom Industry Ecosystem
The telecom industry is going through a rapid mode of transformation. It is not the first time this industry is experiencing changes, but it has never been so disruptive and uncertain as it is now. The rise and fall of a telecom operator is being determined by its ability of built-to-adapt and built-to-scale, not built-to-last. While many telecom players are struggling to cope up with the tsunami of changes bottom-up, there are quite a few who have been able to adapt to the changing business needs, cost structures, and skillsets to see growth. Among these successful industry operators, adoption of 4IR technology enablers is growing at a considerable rate with large-scale deployments all over the world.
The 4^th Industrial Revolution is a fusion of logical, biological, physical and digital worlds. It creates a symbiotic relationship between bare-metal technology and artificial intelligence led innovations to create value of unimaginable scale. In the space of last six years, globally, around 700 billion USD have been invested in Cloud & quantum computing, Automation, IoT, AI, 3D printing, Blockchain & Mixed reality. Mobile telecom operators and their partners around the globe, boosted by the potential of 5G ecosystem and massive Cloud-ML, are in driving seats to ride on this 4IR journey and monetize the huge investments made in 4IR.

Biography

Dr. Asif Naimur Rashid is the CIO of Robi Axiata, the second largest Mobile Operator in Bangladesh and a subsidiary of Axiata Group, Malaysia. He also has an additional role being the Managing Director of the Startup RedDot Digital Limited, a 100% owned subsidiary of Robi. Dr. Asif has been working in the industry for 20 years now. He is successfully leading the key digital transformation initiatives of Robi and Axiata group. Prior to joining Robi Axiata, he has worked in Telenor Myanmar, Telenor HQ, Grameenphone, Siemens AG and Mentors’ Technologies. Dr. Asif has a bachelor’s degree with hon’s in Applied Physics & Electronics from the University of Dhaka, a master’s degree in Telecommunication Engineering from University of Technology, Sydney, an MBA in Executive Management from Royal Roads University, Vancouver, British Columbia, and a Doctoral degree on Artificial Intelligence from California Southern University, California. Aside, he has attended NUS, INSEAD Business School & MIT Sloan School of Management for advanced technology, digital strategy, and leadership programs and regularly speaks at national and international technology events. In his personal life, Dr. Asif is married and blessed with three children.