Keynote Speakers
TBC SOON
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Invited Speaker
Prof. Zakaria Maamar
Zayed University, Dubai, UAE
zakaria.maamar@zu.ac.ae
Internet of Things: The Way Ahead
Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) is among the latest ICT developments that is making the boundaries between reality and fiction vanish. According to Mark Weiser, “…The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it''[i]. And according to Gartner[ii], 6.4 billion connected things were in use in 2016, up 3% from 2015, and will reach 20.8 billion by 2020. To sustain this growth, IoT should overcome different obstacles such as diversity of things' development technologies and communication standards, users' reluctance and sometimes rejection due to privacy invasion, lack of killer applications that would demonstrate their necessity, lack of an IoT-oriented software engineering discipline, and finally, the passive nature of things. In response to these obstacles, several solutions are put forward and would make things proactive and responsive to the surrounding environment. This means that things can for instance, reach out to peers that expose collaborative attitude, form dynamic communities when necessary things, avoid peers that expose malicious attitude, be accountable for their actions, etc. We already see some encouraging signs of thing empowerment through initiatives like semantic things, Internet of social things, Internet of agents, and agents of things. In this keynote talk, we present our ongoing research agenda revolving around 4 perspectives: Process-of-Things (PoT), thing mutation, thing cognition, and Everything-as-a-Thing (*aaT) abstraction model.
[i] W. Mark, The Computer for the 21st Century, ACM SIGMOBILE Mobile Computing and Communications Review, 3(3), July 1999.
[ii] www.gartner.com/newsroom/id/3165317.
Biography: Professor Zakaria Maamar is a Professor in the College of Technological Innovation at Zayed University, Dubai, United Arab Emirates. His research interests include Internet-of-Things, social computing, and business process management. Zakaria has extensively published in different peer reviewed journals and conferences, regularly serves on the program and organizing committees of several international conferences and workshops, and serves on the editorial boards of many international journals. He is the recipient of an IBM Faculty Award in 2009. Zakaria has a PhD in computer science from Laval University, Quebec City, Canada.
Invited Speaker
Dr. Hoshang Kolivand
Liverpool John Moores University, UK
h.kolivand@ljmu.ac.uk
A Glimpse of Future Immersive Technologies using Virtual and Augmented Reality
Abstract: There is no doubt that Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) have the potential to become a fascinating widespread technology not only in computer graphics but also in all other subjects. In about two decades, AR or in general, Mixed Reality (MR) has turned into one of the most attractive topics involved in variety of topics attempting to obtain satisfactory results. Immersive realistic AR systems are the open issue yet. In this speech, I am going to present what I have done so far in realism, robustness and interaction of AR/VR systems and discuss possibility directions toward this enhancement of immersive technologies taking much AR and VR into account. Moreover, interaction between real and virtual objects will be discussed in details. How to engage our current research with new technology to enhance our current research will be the next part of my speech. At the end, some points will be highlighted to go further with the future needs of wearable devices.
Biography: Dr. Hoshang Kolivand is a Senior lecturer in Computer Graphics. He received his MS degree in applied mathematics from Amirkabir University of Technology, Iran, in 1999, and his PhD from Media and Games Innovation Centre of Excellence (MaGIC-X) in Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in 2013. He has completed a Post-Doctoral in Augmented Reality in UTM. Previously he worked as a lecturer in Shahid Beheshti University, Iran and then as a Senior Lecturer in UTM. Currently he is a Senior Lecturer in Liverpool John Moores University. He has published numerous articles in international journals, conference proceedings and technical papers, including chapters in books. He is an active member of many international conferences and journals. He has also published many books in object-oriented programming and mathematics. His research interests include Human Computer Interaction, Virtual Reality and Augmented Reality. Recently he has chaired 5th International Conference on Interactive Digital Media in the UK. He is the general chair of Graphic Design, Animation and Virtual Reality in Japan, June 2019.
