Keynote Speakers
Filia Makedon, Department of Computer Science and Engineering, The University of Texas at Arlington (UTA)
Title: "Emerging computational challenges in pervasive assistive environments"
Abstract:
Human-centered assistive technologies are becoming of increasing importance that touch different fields of computer science and beyond. In an assistive environment, a human is assisted by new technologies that may include non-invasive (sensor) or invasive (camera) monitoring. Such pervasive environments have brought opportunities for new approaches to computer science theory and applications. For example, there is the need for new computational and evaluation approaches to analyze human behavior and impact in the context of his/her physical environment (cyberphysical systems) in order to better understand how a human interacts with her/his environment and how one can improve his/her quality of life. The range of research possibilities is vast from data modeling and automation of data collection, to data fusion, mining, security and privacy. Applications may range from healthcare to aging, to energy consumption, or improving worker efficiency.
In this presentation, using as examples some projects at the Heracleia Human Centered Computing Laboratory at UTA, we motivate and explain some of the challenges and tools needed. We explain the challenge for secure collaboration and decision support tools that include recommendation systems, secure data sharing, facial/emotion recognition, body motion capture and risk detection in pervasive, secure sensor networked environments. Using machine learning and other methods, the aim is to identify important behavioral markers or events in order to predict or prevent cyber and physical risks.
Fillia Makedon is Name Professor and Department Head of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Texas at Arlington (UTA). She received her Ph.D. in Computer Science from Northwestern University in 1982. Between 1991-2006, she was professor of computer science at Dartmouth College where she founded and directed the Dartmouth Experimental Visualization Laboratory (DEVLAB). In 2005-2006, she was Program Director at the National Science Foundation. Prior to Dartmouth, Prof. Makedon was Assistant and Associate Professor at the Univ. of Texas at Dallas (UTD), where she founded and directed the Computer LEArning Research Center (CLEAR) that focused on algorithm and scientific visualization. She has supervised over 20 Ph.D. theses and numerous Masters Degree theses.
Makedon has received many NSF research awards in the areas of trust management, data mining, parallel computing, visualization, and knowledge management. She has been senior investigator and co-PI of NIH, DOJ and Foundation grants. She received the Dartmouth Senior Research Professor Award, three Fulbright awards, and is author of over 400 peer-reviewed research publications. She is faculty affiliate of the Dartmouth ISTS security institute. She currently directs the HERACLEIA Human Centered Laboratory, that develops pervasive technologies for human monitoring and privacy and security algorithms.
She is member of several journal editorial boards and chair of the PETRA conference (www.petrae.org). She has been invited and keynote speaker in numerous conferences, and is senior editor of EJETA.ORG, an electronic journal on emerging tools and applications in computing.
Professor George Metakides, University of Patras
Title: As the Web evolves
Abstract:
The integration of the Web, the largest human artefact, in our lives is transformational. It catalyses new forms of creativity, collaboration and innovation and deeply affects human communication and transactions, and the way we deal with information and knowledge globally. It is in this context that the Web Science Research Initiative (WSRI – www.webscience.org) initiated by Tim Berners-Lee in November 2006 comes to bridge and formalize the social and technical aspects of collaborative applications running on large-scale distributed networks like the Web. According to WSRI “In order to understand what the Web is, engineer its future, ensure its social benefit, we need a framework for a new interdisciplinary field that we call Web Science”. Questions that were raised at a recent FET (Future and Emerging Technologies, ICT program) included: “what is Web Science?” Is it a new discipline or a new name for an old discipline? Is it a genuine academic discipline at all? What is a Web Science methodology? What is the core knowledge set that Web Science practitioners share? What does a Web Science paper look like?
The challenge is understanding the Web and developing its capacity to move forward while, at the same time enabling social benefit. According to its pioneers, the framework for the development of Web Science calls for an enveloping discipline which could address some of the most challenging and intriguing questions of the 21st century.
Diagram: the interdisciplinary nature of Web Science
The first related book set out an agenda for creating a framework for Web Science through the systematic study of decentralised information systems. According to Tim Berners-Lee1 a fundamental research problem concerning the Web is considered to be “How should investigators and engineers approach the Web in order to understand it and its relation to wider society, and to innovate?”. The above enveloping question generates a series of questions about the Web construct which were debated at the First International Web Science conference last March. For example, in Web topology an interesting question is if “is there some kind of upper limit to the scalability of the Web?” If so, does that limit depend on the availability of feasible technology?”. Furthermore, if we want to analyze the Web by implementing mathematical tools and methods one of the questions arising is “How fruitful will it be to describe the Web in game theoretic/rational choice terms?”. In the course of the development of Mathematical Logic many different types of reasoning were developed, but, so far, only deductive linear reasoning and statistical models have been implemented in an automated way. In this context, “What alternative methods can the Web facilitate? Which are the logics that are appropriate for the Web, or the Semantic Web?”. The “dark side” of the deepening integration of the Web in our lives is that our increasing dependence on digital infrastructures and services has obscured the handling of our personal data and increased our exposure to new threats and mal-practices while creating risks of severe curtailment of our privacy at an alarming rate. The World of the Web is a vulnerable one. It needs the sort of understanding which will help strike the right balance between, on the one hand, preventing it from becoming a jungle or a wasteland and, on the other, overly restricting and thus suffocating its immense creative potential. It is to this end that the RISEPTIS (Research and Innovation for Security, Privacy and Trustworthiness in the Information Society) Board has been set up by the European Commission (www.think-trust.eu/riseptis.html).
Born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1945, Prof. Metakides received as a Fulbright scholar a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering and Doctor of Philosophy in Mathematical Logic from Cornell University in 1971. He pursued an academic career in the U.S.A. at MIT, Cornell University and Rochester University until 1978, when he returned to Greece to take the Chair of Logic at the University of Patras.
He has published numerous articles and books in the areas of Mathematical Logic, Computer Science and Science Policy and is a frequent invited speaker at major international conferences. He holds honorary doctorates from the University of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, the Technical University of Bucharest and the University of Thessaloniki and is an honorary professor of the University of Moscow. He is a foreign member of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences and an honorary member of the Romanian Academy of Science. He has received the Medal of Honour of the Bulgarian Academy of Science, the Polish Information Society Recognition Award, for his efforts to build co-operation between IT professionals in Poland and the EU, and the Telecom Europe Prize Salvà I Campillo for his contribution to the development and dissemination of new information and communication technologies in Europe.
Since 1984 he has held senior positions with responsibility for R&D policy, funding and international co-operation in European institutions, including president of the Research Group of the European Council and member of the ESPRIT (European Strategic Programme of Research in Information Technology) Management Committee and of the NATO Science Committee at different times between 1984 and 1987. He established and headed the department for Basic Research and International Scientific Relations in Information Technologies at the European Commission from 1988 to 1993. He was the director of the 2 billion Euro ESPRIT Programme in the European Commission’s Industry Directorate General from 1993 until its completion in 1998.
Until November 2002 he was director of Essential Technologies and Infrastructures in Europe’s 4 billion Euro Information Society Technologies (IST) Programme (1998-2002), in the Information Society Directorate General which - besides funding and co-ordinating R&D in information and communication technologies in the European Union - also covers information society and telecommunications policy and regulation.
He is an active contributor to the promotion of co-operation between the European Union and other regions. He has instigated the establishment of research agreements between the EU and the USA (including the launch of the World Wide Web Consortium, W3C, and a joint initiative on the dependability of critical infrastructures). In addition to collaborative activities with Japan, China, Russia and the countries of Latin America, he leads a number of joint actions in Central & Eastern Europe as well as the Balkan and Mediterranean regions.
Professor Vassilis Assimakopoulos, Special Secretariat for Digital Planning
Title: The Greek Information Society in Perspective
Abstract:
In Greece, since 2000 the concept of Information Society unfortunately, has been identified with the equivalent Operational Program and “has already been limited” to some information works. In this framework, electronic governance has been dealt as information work for the public sector. Only the few thousand people that deal with the technology sector have ended up discussing about the Information Society. But time has come for us to understand that Information Society is not only what, unfortunately, has been wrongly been established as a definition in Greece. Thus, now is the right moment in which we should search the real concept and the real possibilities of the Information Society and take advantage of them in a very practical way, not only verbally, but through a new digital strategy. In this effort, technology will only be a means and nothing more. This position causes naturally a plausible question: “What is, after all, The Information Society?” The Information Society is a state we can reach through technology, taking full advantage of knowledge and new skills. It’s a situation marked by two large strategic goals: The first one is taking full advantage of technologies in order to be able to improve the economy and productivity, aiming –mainly- at productivity. The second large strategic goal is the improvement of citizens’ level of life in a practical way i.e. using technology, and at this point I will stress the significance of practical solutions
Professor V. Asimakopoulos has been the Digital Planning Secretary Special since the 5th of April 2004.
M. Vasilios Asimakopoulos was born in Athens in 1956. He is a professor of Decision Support Systems at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineers of the National Technical University of Athens. As a member of the Teaching and Research personnel of the NTUA, he has studied the applications of the Decision Making Systems on modern problems of entrepreneurial planning. Moreover, in the context of a considerable number of projects financed by Greek or European partners he has made a detailed research of the modern support tools for the administration.
He is specialized in the wider areas of Strategic Administration, in the Planning and Implementation of Information Systems for the Management of IT Projects, in the Management of Operational Resources, in Statistics and in the Technical Forecasts based on Time Sequences. He has formed and is the director of the “Forecasting System Unit” of the NTUA. The unit develops a strong educational and research activity on the Forecasting Methods, which can be applied on real entrepreneurial problems.
He has written more than 60 original publications and announcements in internationally acclaimed scientific revues and in international conferences. His research work has been internationally acknowledged and he has been repeatedly invited to give lectures in top Universities. Moreover, he is the author of books on Forecasts and member of the reviewing boards of international scientific revues.
