Keynote Speakers
SW engineering and ICT challenges in practice
Darko Huljenić, PhD,
Adjunct Associate Professor, Ericsson Nikola Tesla, Zagreb, Croatia
The software is essential part of our technology development. Almost any device in the near future will be connected and in the operation will depend on the quality of installed software. The software engineering is main driver for broad products usage in different domains of ICT applications from an entertainment to the mission critical applications. For many years researchers discover new methods how to manage and make engineering of software products. It is always some discrepancy between practical usage and software engineering potential. This talk will focus on some software engineering methods overview and their applicability in the practice. Emphasize will be on the sources of practitioner ignorance of some research achieved results especially in the today's agile way of working. Additional focus will be on the role of software architecture and future ICT challenges in the era of cloud and virtual infrastructure where software is basic driving element.
Dr. Darko Huljenić is manager for technology and scientific activities at Ericsson Nikola Tesla in Zagreb, Croatia. At the same time he is working as Adjunct Associate Professor at University of Zagreb, Faculty of electrical engineering and computing, teaching at undergraduate and doctoral study. He is working for more than 25 years in the industry dealing with software and network architecture research, and products creating and delivery. He participates in EU FP7 projects. His main research interests are software engineering, software architecture, and new telecom network architecture. He has more than sixty Journal and conference papers, and holds two patents. He is member of technical committees at different international conferences and workshops. He is member of IEEE Communications and Computer society, and member of ACM. He has PhD and MS degree from University of Zagreb, Faculty of electrical engineering and computing.
Learning through Creativity
P.A.M. Kommers, Dr., Piet
Associate Professor, University of Twente, the Netherlands
The many efforts to make higher education more effective for to-morrow's economy and society seem to fail as there is an ever-growing urgency to measure its short-term "effectiveness". As the clarity of measuring "objectively" and the need to convince skeptic policy makers dominate didactic evolutions it is not likely that higher education will transform itself into new vital scenarios for problem. MOOCs (massive open online courses) work out as a complication as it articulates the need for perfect lecturing modes like movie recordings rather than teacher-student dialogues. Finally I will present communication paradigms that allow educationalists to blend both the lecturing with the learning in discursive ateliers. Essentially the message is that creative learning needs the design of creative teaching from the beginning.
Wisdom of the cloud: The financial crisis not only urges the economic sector to reflect and reorient; Also education, care and the institutions for social cohesion are in serious reconsideration on how to let communities survive and target a new ideology. This keynote presentation starts from the initial notions of the current interconnected communities as a networked society. Authors like Castells and Van Dijk mention the vulnerability and fragmentation of social networks and its threats for a self-regulated society. Much more important is the value of networked instead of hierarchic relationships for creating innovative ideas. The compact summary is that instead of regarding knowledge to be as an interpersonal rather than intrapersonal asset. If we look to the recent type of large projects, they are interdisciplinary and the result of a massive "wisdom of the cloud": Already in its conceptual stage there is a large cross-over among idea dimensions like the economical-, sustainable- and political considerations, so that less unexpected negative side effects can emerge during the stage of implementation and dissemination. This keynote presentation brings recent models in the domain of creative problem solving like the Triz model and the best possible examples in the medical and societal domain. Its goal is to inflict the conference participants with new frameworks to generate more optimal future scenarios.
Massive open online courses. So far we have seen that the potential of web-based communities entail both to solutions and to complications of new innovations like the arrival of MOOCs: Massive Open Online Courses. The first symptom of MOOCs as a solution is its widespread dissemination; any online learner may access the best available video lectures from top teachers at top institutes around the world. The first complication is that countries that rely heavily on international students may fear less online students or maybe a shorter residence as they already master parts of the prerequisite courses via MOOC-based certificates. Feel welcome to visit our monitoring of recent reflections on MOOCs by Ronald Voorn and Piet Kommers: http://www.scoop.it/t/disruptive-innovation-and-moocs. A second potential positive effect of MOOCs is its stimuli to increase quality awareness by the traditional f2f universities; lectures currently show a great deal of improvisation and rest upon pseudo-interaction between the teacher and the students in the best case. In the scope of this special issue, it is the challenge to see how students' perception of "joining an online community can mitigate the negative connotation of "feeling a remote guest" rather than a "participant" etc. The overall reactions to MOOCs is that it is essentially not a new phenomenon and MOOCs are massively overhyped. Its unique selling point that it may attract several hundred of thousand students at the same time already shows to be a disadvantage; systems get overloaded and the size of responses to broadcasted course schedules can hardly be handled in back- and mid-offices. An even more pervasive problem is that research on instructional design so far migrated from pure delivery to interactive and cooperative learning modes. So we barely lack appropriate models for optimizing broadcasted learning modules. Even more: the majority of academicians doubts about the essential premise that distance learning can be achieved without tutorials and process diagnostics by a human teacher. In other words: MOOCs need to be complemented by collaborative learning anyway. Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) offered by the best universities and entities are entering our world. Business models are yet to be developed. How these how does the interactions work in online education. How can web based communities support this new developments? Important aspects are :
The conclusion from current MOOC disputes is likely to stress that "perfect lectures via video" is not sufficient to create active and loyal student attitudes. Once we find ways to promote collaborative learning at a distance, a more successful stage of MOOCs can be expected.
From delivery into demand-driven education: The larger underlying question of innovation in higher education is if and how we can bring students in the responsible position of being the owner of one's learning process. It might already look like conquered innovation step, however as long as fixed curricula and assignment criteria are there, students will refrain from accepting full autonomy and responsibility. If the teacher already knows the test items, it does not look smart to undertake problem-based and authentic learning; In this case the teacher is kindly requested to tell as much as possible from his/her priorities in the topic domain, hence helping the students to prepare for a higher grade.
The examples in this keynote lecture target the audience to think about more options for active ("committed") co-learning and how a new generation of social media can trigger such process.
Dr. Piet Kommers is an early pioneer in media for cognitive- and social support. His doctoral research explored methods for hypertext and concept mapping in learning. Since 1982 he developed educational technology as an engineering approach for learning and teaching. His main thesis is that technology is catalytic for human ambition and awareness. His main function is associate professor in the University in Twente, The Netherlands and adjunct/visiting professor in various countries. He taught more than fifteen bachelor-, master- and PhD courses and supervised more than 30 PhD students. He instigated and coordinated the NATO Advanced Research Workshop on Cognitive Technologies in 1990 and a large series of Joint European Research Projects in: authoring multimedia, web-based learning, teacher education, virtual 3d worlds, constructivist learning, social media, web-based communities and international student exchange. UNESCO awarded his work in ICT for Education in Eastern Europe with the title of Honorary Professor. The Capital Normal University in Beijing awarded his work with the title of Honorary Doctor. He is member of advisory boards in ministries of education and academia of sciences in Singapore, Finland and Russia. Piet Kommers is the initiator of the "International journal for web-based communities" and overall chair of the "IADIS conferences on societal applications of ICT". Since the late nineties he gave more than 40 invited and keynote lectures at main conferences in the fields of education, media and communication. His books and journal articles address the social and intellectual transformations at each transition from "traditional" into the "new" media. Instead of regarding media as extrapolating, supplanting, vicarious or even disruptive, Piet's view is that new media elicit and seduce both individuals and organizations to reconsider the essence of human nature and challenge existential awareness at that very moment.
Pervasive sensing and IoT cooking recipe: just add people and applications
Dr. Milan Milenković, Principal Engineer
Intel Labs, Intel Corporation, Santa Clara, CA, USA
Recent emergence of pervasive real-world sensing, culminating with Internet of Things (IoT), is an inflection point and a tremendous opportunity for ICT to bridge the gap between physical and cyber worlds and to enable a plethora of new applications and services to benefit both. To date, much of the academia and industry focus has been on deploying sensors and connecting "dumb" devices. In this talk we focus on the importance of creating end-to-end solutions that harvest sensor data in ways that create value and tangible benefits for end users. This requires design of scalable streaming real-time data acquisition and storage systems, with interoperable sensor data formats, protocols, naming, and meta-data to enable big-data processing and visualization across domains and users. We highlight the potential of dynamic personalized sensing by integrating data from all sensors of interest that may surround a user in a given setting. We also introduce the benefits of ICT platform-attached sensors that complement the spectrum in versatile and cost-effective ways. Our specific use case and value proof is the use of PC-attached sensors (energy, and ambient – temperature, humidity, light) to improve energy efficiency and user comfort in office buildings. The resulting personal data are visualized using POEM UI that also allows users to provide direct feedback to buildings. One of our insights is that people are great sensors too, endowed with analytic capabilities that need no programming.
Milan Milenković is a Principal Engineer in Intel Labs, Santa Clara, CA. He has worked in industry and academia, doing research on distributed computing, operating systems, real-time embedded systems, and a variety of emerging technologies. He is currently the principal investigator of the POEM project that explores uses of dynamic personal sensing. Prior to Intel he worked at IBM and taught at several universities. Milan earned M.Sc. degree in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology and a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. He has published a number of papers, several books, including Operating Systems: Concepts and Design published by McGraw-Hill in two US and several international editions, and holds 4 patents with several more in submission. He is an ACM Distinguished Engineer.
Emulator
Dr. Shie-Yuan Wang, Professor
National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
In this talk, I will introduce the EstiNet OpenFlow network simulator and emulator and present its supports for testing the functions and evaluating the performances of SDN (software-defined networks) OpenFlow controller's application programs. EstiNet uses a unique kernel reentering simulation methodology to enable unmodified real applications to run on nodes in its simulated network. As a result, without any modification, the real NOX, POX, or Floodlight OpenFlow controllers can readily run on a host in an EstiNet simulated network to control thousands of simulated OpenFlow switches. EstiNet has the characteristics of a simulator and an emulator at the same time. It combines the advantages of the simulation approach and the emulation approach without their respective shortcomings. EstiNet uses real OpenFlow controller programs, real network application programs, and real TCP/IP protocol stack in the Linux kernel to generate correct, accurate, and repeatable SDN application performance results. In this talk, I will compare EstiNet with other tools such as ns-3 and Mininet regarding their capabilities, performance, and scalability.
Dr. Shie-Yuan Wang is a Professor of the Department of Computer Science at National Chiao Tung University (NCTU), Taiwan. He received his master and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Harvard University in 1997 and 1999, respectively. His research interests include wireless networks, operating systems, network simulation, and cloud computing. He received the "Outstanding Information Technology Elite Award" of Taiwan R.O.C. government in 2012, bestowed by the Vice President of Taiwan R.O.C. government. The NCTUns/EstiNet network simulator and emulator, which he has been developing with his lab students since 1999, also won the "Outstanding Information Technology Product/Application Award" of Taiwan R.O.C. government in 2012, which was bestowed by the Minister of Economic Affair of Taiwan R.O.C. government. At present, EstiNet OpenFlow network simulator and emulator is ranked #1 in the "OpenFlow network simulator" search results returned from the Google search engine.
Big data, big questions, some answers: discovery of the Higgs boson at the LHC
Ivica Puljak, Professor
University of Split, Croatia
Ivica Puljak is Professor of physics at University of Split, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Enginnering and Naval Arhitecture (FESB). He completed his BsC studies in electrical engineering at FESB and MsC studies in particle physics at University of Zagreb. He has been working for his PhD thesis at Laboratory Leprince Ringuet (LLR) at Ecole Polytechnique, Palaiseau, and got his PhD in particle physics from University Paris VI in 2000. He is a member of CMS collaboration since 1994 and MAGIC collaboration since 2009. His research interests are construction of the electromagnetic calorimeter of the CMS detector, search for the Higgs boson and astroparticle physics. In 2011/2012 he was research associate at CERN and was a convener of a search for the Higgs boson through the decay channel to four leptons, one of the main channels for the Higgs boson discovery.
Damir Lelas, Professor
University of Split, Croatia
Damir Lelas is assistant professor of physics at University of Split, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture (FESB). He graduated physics at University of Zagreb. He obtained his PhD at University of Hamburg in 2004 in high energy physics, analyzing data of the HERA accelerator. From 2004 till 2008, as a part of postdoctoral research at LAL Orsay, France and University of Victoria, Canada, he was member of the ATLAS collaboration at CERN working on the aspects of electron reconstruction and on preparation for data analysis at the LHC. Since 2009, Damir Lelas joined FESB and is now member of the CMS collaboration at CERN working on the aspects of the electron reconstruction and Higgs physics. He is also member of the MAGIC collaboration.
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