Keynote Speakers
Prof. Mohammad S. Obaidat
University of Texas- Permian Basin, USA
Professor Mohammad S. Obaidat (Life Fellow of IEEE, Fellow of SCS and Fellow of AAIA) is an internationally known academic/researcher/scientist/ scholar. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Engineering with a minor in Computer Science from The Ohio State University, Columbus, USA. He has received extensive research funding and published To Date about One Thousand and Two Hundred (1,200) refereed technical articles-About half of them are journal articles, over 100 books, and about 70 Book Chapters. He is Editor-in-Chief of 3 scholarly journals and an editor of many other international journals. He is the founding Editor-in Chief of Wiley Security and Privacy Journal. Moreover, he is founder or co-founder of 5 International Conferences.
Among his previous positions are Advisor to the President of Philadelphia University for Research, Development and Information Technology, President and Chair of Board of Directors of the Society for Molding and Simulation International, SCS, Senior Vice President of SCS, Dean of the College of Engineering at Prince Sultan University, Chair and tenured Professor at the Department of Computer and Information Science and Director of the MS Graduate Program in Data Analytics at Fordham university, Chair and tenured Professor of the Department of Computer Science and Director of the Graduate Program at Monmouth University, Tenured Full Professor at King Abdullah II School of Information Technology, University of Jordan, Founding Dean and Professor, College of Computing and Informatics at The University of Sharjah, UAE and distinguished Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology-Dhanbad. He is also The PR of China Ministry of Education Distinguished Overseas Professor at the University of Science and Technology Beijing, China and an Honorary Distinguished Professor at the Amity University- A Global University and an Honorary Distinguished Professor at KASIT, University of Jordan.
He is now the Chair and Professor of Computer Science Department and Director of the Cybersecurity Center at the University of Texas- Permian Basin, USA. He has chaired numerous (Over 180) international conferences and has given numerous (Over 180) keynote speeches worldwide. He has served as ABET/CSAB evaluator and on IEEE CS Fellow Evaluation Committee. He has served as IEEE CS Distinguished Speaker/Lecturer and an ACM Distinguished Lecturer. Since 2004 has been serving as an SCS Distinguished Lecturer. He received many best paper awards for his papers including ones from IEEE ICC, IEEE Globecom, AICSA, CITS, SPECTS, DCNET International conferences. He also received Best Paper awards from IEEE Systems Journal in 2018 and in 2019 (2 Best Paper Awards). In 2020, he received 4 best paper awards from IEEE Systems Journal. In 2021, he also received the IEEE Systems best paper award. In 2021, he was ranked by Guide2Research as Number 1 Computer Scientist in UAE in terms of Number of Publications. He has received many best paper awards from IEEE International Conferences.
He also received many other worldwide awards for his technical contributions including: The 2018 IEEE ComSoc-Technical Committee on Communications Software Technical Achievement Award for contribution to Cybersecurity, Wireless Networks Computer Networks and Modeling and Simulation, SCS prestigious McLeod Founder's Award , Presidential Service Award, SCS Hall of Fame –Lifetime Achievement Award for his technical contribution to modeling and simulation and for his outstanding visionary leadership and dedication to increasing the effectiveness and broadening the applications of modeling and simulation worldwide. He also received the SCS Outstanding Service Award. He was awarded the IEEE CITS Hall of Fame Distinguished and Eminent Award. In recognition of his significant scientific contribution, Springer published in Feb 2022 a book honoring his contributions in Computing, Informatics, Networking and Cybersecurity. It is entitled: Advances in Computing, Informatics, Networking and Cybersecurity - A Book Honoring Professor Mohammad S. Obaidat’s Significant Scientific Contributions. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of SCS and a Fellow of AAIA.
Speech title: A New Learning Automata-Based Controller Placement Scheme for Software-Defined Network Systems
Abstract: Software-defined networking (SDN) basically moves the control plane of network devices like switches and routers to the controller. The latter is responsible for managing the whole network using application programming interfaces (APIs). Fault tolerance in these networks can be handled by providing multiple controllers. Insertion controllers in an SDN network can be seen as facility location problem which is an NP-hard problem. In this keynote, we devise a heuristic algorithm for controller placement in SDN networks using a learning automaton (LA) scheme. The proposed scheme can places the controllers based on a predefined propagation latency between the controllers and the switches while minimizing the overall propagation latency. We conduct several simulations experiments, from the available topologies of ToplogyZoo, and the results show the superiority of the proposed algorithm when compared to competing current recent algorithms in terms of propagation latency.
Prof. Dr. Witold Pedrycz
University of Alberta,Canada
Professor and Canada Research Chair (CRC) in Computational Intelligence in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Alberta, Edmonton, Canada. He is also with the Systems Research Institute of the Polish Academy of Sciences, Warsaw, Poland. Dr. Pedrycz is a foreign member of the Polish Academy of Sciences and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is a recipient of several awards including Norbert Wiener award from the IEEE Systems, Man, and Cybernetics Society, IEEE Canada Computer Engineering Medal, a Cajastur Prize for Soft Computing from the European Centre for Soft Computing, a Killam Prize, a Fuzzy Pioneer Award from the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, and 2019 Meritorious Service Award from the IEEE Systems Man and Cybernetics Society.
His main research directions involve Computational Intelligence, Granular Computing, knowledge discovery, data science, and knowledge-based neural networks among others.
Speech Title: Developments in Federated Learning and Knowledge Transfer: Pursuits in Green and Granular Machine Learning
Abstract: Green Machine Learning (also referred to as Green AI) has recently emerged as an interesting and application-oriented endeavour in the realm of intelligent systems. It stresses a genuine need for a holistic multicriteria assessment of the design practices of Machine Learning architectures and learning schemes by analyzing computing overhead (and associated carbon footprint), interpretability, and robustness, among others.
Quite often in real-world environment, data can be available only locally coming with strict constraints imposed on their usage beyond individual data islands. Such restrictions constitute genuine conceptual and algorithmic challenges when it comes to solving problems of global data analysis and the development of global models. A lot of pursuits located in this realm fall under the umbrella of federated learning. We discuss a way of realizing learning in this environment and advocate that the resulting model is built at a higher level of abstraction formalized with the aid of information granule.
Knowledge transfer is about a thoughtful and prudently arranged knowledge reuse to support energy-aware Machine Learning computing. Rather than starting from scratch, the existing experience (model) gathered in a source domain is transferred to the target domain. We discuss passive and active modes of knowledge transfer. In both modes, the essential role of information granularity is identified. The passive approach leads to the construction of a granular model in the target domain on a basis of the original model coming from the source domain where information granularity of the model serves as a vehicle to quantify the credibility of the transferred knowledge. In the active approach, a new model is constructed in the target domain whereas the design is guided by the loss function, which involves granular regularization produced by the granular model transferred from the source domain. A generalized scenario of multi-source domains is discussed.
We advocate that in order to conveniently address the quest of green machine learning, it becomes beneficial to engage the fundamental framework of Granular Computing. We demonstrate that various ways of conceptualization of information granules in terms of fuzzy sets, sets, rough sets, and others may lead to efficient solutions.
To proceed with a detailed discussion, a concise information granules-oriented design of rule-based architectures is outlined. An information granules-oriented design of rule-based architectures in transfer learning and knowledge distillation is used for illustrative purposes.
Prof. Claudio Cañizares
University of Waterloo, Canada
Dr. Claudio Cañizares is a University Professor and the Hydro One Endowed Chair at the Electrical and Computer Engineering (E&CE) Department, and the Executive Director of the Waterloo Institute for Sustainable Energy (WISE) at the University of Waterloo, where he has held various academic and administrative positions since 1993 and received the 2021-2022 Awards of Excellence in Graduate Supervision at both the University and Faculty of Engineering levels. He obtained 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 over 170 research fellows and graduate students. He has authored/co-authored more than 350 publications with over 24,000 citations and a 70+ H-index, 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 Institute of Electrical & Electronic Engineering (IEEE) Transactions on Smart Grid, the 2022-2023 IEEE Division VII Director of the IEEE and Power & Energy Society (PES) Boards, and a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, where he was the Director of the Applied Science and Engineering Division of the Academy of Science from 2017 to 2020, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. He is also the recipient of the 2017 IEEE 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.
Speech title: Energy Storage Systems
Abstract: As the penetration of variable renewable generation increases in power systems, issues such as grid stiffness, larger frequency deviations, and grid stability are becoming more relevant. In this context, Energy Storage Systems (ESSs) are proving to be effective in facilitating the integration of renewable resources, and thus are being widely deployed in both microgrids and large power grids. This talk will review several energy storage technologies, particularly Compress Air Energy Storage (CAES), flywheels, batteries, and thermal energy systems, and their modeling and applications for power systems. An overview will be provided of the work being carried out by Prof. Canizares’ group at the University of Waterloo on all these energy storage systems, focusing on novel models and applications in microgrids and distribution and transmission grids for system stability and control, in particular for frequency regulation.