Executive Panels Program

All panels will be in Dafna room

 

Panel  1:   Global Research Funding Opportunities:  Models & Lessons Learnt

Panel Chair: Dr. Marwan Krunz, Professor, Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering,
The University of Arizona, Tucson, USA.
 
Panel Speakers:

• Dr. Abdul Sattar  Al-Taie, Executive Director, Qatar National Research Fund (QNRF), Qatar.
• Dr. Monique E. Beaudoin, Associate Director, US Office of Naval Research Global, London, UK.
• Dr. Chengshan Xiao, Program Director, ECCS division, NSF, USA.
• Dr.  Ajit K Chaturvedi, Deputy Director, IIT Kanpur, India.

Panel  2:   Increasing Academic and Industrial Competitiveness in a Changing ICT Value Place

Panel Chair: Dr. Milica Pejanovic, Professor, University of Montenegro, Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Podgorica, Montenegro.

Panel Speakers:

• Dr. Neeli Rashmi Prasad, Chief Technology Architect of SPA Solutions, San Francisco, USA.  Associate Professor and Director of CTIF-USA, Princeton, NJ, USA.
• Mr. Lars Kierkegaard, Head of Strategy & Business Development at Teracom A/S, Copenhagen, Denmark.
• Dr. Vladimir Poulkov, Professor, Technical University of Sofia and Head of Bulgarian Telecommunications Cluster, Bulgaria

 

Panel  3:   Roadmap to 5G and Beyond: Global Perspectives

Panel Chair: Dr. Lajos Hanso, Professor, University of Southampton, UK
 
Panel Speakers:

• Malik Gul, National Instruments, USA
• Dr. Halim Yanikomeroglu, Carleton University, Canada 
• Dr. Merouane Debbah, Huawei, Paris, France
• Dr. Reinaldo Valenzuela, Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent, USA 
• Dr Geoffrey Li, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, USA

Panel  4:   The Internet-of-Things (IoT): Challenges and Opportunities

Panel Chair: Dr. Hosein  Badran, Director of Special Projects, Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI), Qatar.
 
Panel Speakers:

• Dr. Emilio Strinati, Smart Devices & Telecommunications Strategy Program Director, CEA-LETI, France.
• Dr. Guillaume Chelius, Founder and CEO, HiKoB, France.
• Mr. Philippe Houtteman, Senior Manager IoT/M2M Service Delivery and Operations, Ooredoo, Qatar.
• Dr. Fadel Digham, Executive Director, Research & Development, National Telecom Regulatory Authority (NTRA), Egypt.

Panel  5:   Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: From Vision to Reality

Panel Chair: Dr. Hamid Menouar, Product Manager and R&D Expert, QMIC, Qatar

Panel Speakers:

• Dr. Dawn Tilbury, Professor at University of Michigan, USA
• Dr. Mehrdad  Dianati, Associate Professor, University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom.
• Dr. Fethi Filali, Head, Technology Development, Qatar Mobility Innovations Center (QMIC), Doha, Qatar.
• Mr. Malike Bouaoud, Head of Technology Trend and Smart Innovation Lab/Cyber Security expert, Ministry of Transport and Communications, Doha, Qatar.

 
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Panel  6:   Personalized Medicine and Mobile Health: Role of ICT

Panel Chair: Dr. Erchin Serpedin, Professor, Electrical & Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University at Qatar
 
Panel Speakers:

• Dr. Julio C. Silva, MD, MPH Chief Medical Informatics Officer, Sidra Medical and Research Center.
• Dr. Lakshman Tamil, Professor, The University of Texas at Dallas, USA.
• Dr. Waleed Qoronfleh, Director of Biotechnology Development, Qatar Biomedical Research Institute (QBRI), Qatar.
• Dr. Roozbeh Jafari, Associate Professor, Center for Remote Health Technologies and Systems, College of Engineering, Texas A&M Univ. College Station, USA

 

Panel  7:   Security Issues & Challenges

Panel Chair: Dr. Abderrahmen Mtibaa, Texas A&M University at Qatar
 
Panel Speakers:

• Dr. Zouheir Rezki, King Abdullah University for Science and Technology (KAUST), Saudi Arabia
• Dr. Marc Dacier, Qatar Computing Research Institute, Qatar
• Dr. Munir Tag, Director, ICT Program, Qatar National Research Fund, Qatar
• Mr. Malike Bouaoud, Head of Technology Trend and Smart Innovation Lab/Cyber Security expert, Ministry of Transport and Communications, Doha, Qatar.
• Dr. Gabriele Oligeri, Al Kindi Center, Qatar University

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Abstracts for Executive Panels

 

Panel 1: Global Research Funding Opportunities: Models & Lessons Learnt

Securing grants is essential for the career development of researchers in order to get the support for hiring talented personnel to conduct joint research activities, buying required equipment and software, attending international conferences, etc.  Research funding agencies have been for long time the main source of funding for both basic and applied research projects. With the recent economic crises, the later type of projects has been favored since it aims at providing tangible solutions for real challenges that societies are facing and can potentially lead to the creation of new startups and/or technology transfer.
The aim of this panel is to share with researchers the funding models and lessons learnt from global research funding agencies and to trigger discussions on how to enhance existing programs and address researchers’ concerns. The panel aims at some shed the light on some important questions such as (1) What is the process of setting up research priorities? (2) What are the existing funding programs and instruments? (3) How can a right balance between basic and applied research be achieved? (4) How can the collaboration between companies, R&D centers, and universities be more effective? (5) How to foster the collaboration between developing and developed nations?
Attendees will be encouraged to get involved in the discussions and express their concerns and suggestions for improving the research funding cycle and opportunities
 

Panel 2: Increasing Academic and Industrial Competitiveness in a Changing ICT Value Place

Today, the key aspects to wireless communications and networking are the smartness and intelligence of technologies, services, and applications that have been brought about from a need to collect, store and process more data about users, processes and the environments in order to deliver rich experiences [1]. This, in turn, has been strongly stimulated by the very competitive objective to evolve novel technological areas to serve the public, private and business needs (e.g., e-health, smart grid, intelligent transportation systems). Information and Communication Technology (ICT) has become a trigger for novel ways to conduct business, engaging new and more diverse players, and also, attracting the individual into the value loop. Most of the businesses have adopted ICT in one way or another, whether offering services or making products. There has been an unprecedented growth in the application sector based on advanced ICT. On the infrastructure side, existing and novel technologies are merging to offer the best experience to customers at lowest possible costs for the provider. The value place is changing, becoming more fragmented, while research faces multi-fold challenges.
This panel brings together academic and industrial experts to discuss on the topic of staying competitive and achieving excellence in a dynamic technological and value place. A particular focus will be given to small and medium sized industries as key role players in the future ICT landscape.
 

Panel 3: Roadmap to 5G and Beyond: Global Perspectives

5G systems are promising Gigabit per second wireless connectivity at a low latency and uniform quality-of-experience to users and machines anytime and almost anywhere. Although 5G is not expected to be commercially available before 2020, major operators and telecom equipment makers are already partnering to evaluate and test alternative deployment scenarios that realize the 5G vision. This WCNC panel will explore the 5G Vision as envisioned by researchers and system developers in this field.
 

Panel 4: The Internet-of-Things (IoT): Challenges and Opportunities

The Internet of Things (IoT) is considered as the main core element of the next Internet revolution in which uniquely identifiable and smart objects (or things) will be connected at anytime and anywhere to Internet, and will share data with little, or no human intervention. According to recent studies, there will be nearly 50 billion devices connected to the IoT by 2020, with a value of stake of $19 trillion. The envisioned IoT applications are still in their early stages, though several applications have already been deployed in various industries around the world, among them automotive, healthcare, home and industrial automation, security, and many others. Moreover, a large number of IoT platforms are currently available on the market enabling various services, from devices, connectivity and data management, to vertical application development and integration with enterprise infrastructures and processes.
However, several main challenges remain currently unresolved in order to unlock the tremendous potential of the Internet of Things, and to enable the wide scale deployment and adoption of IoT applications. These challenges include the lack of shared infrastructure or platform, the fragmentation of existing technologies and standards, the control, privacy and security of data, and finally the development of innovative underlying business models.
The main objective of this panel will be to bring experts from both the industry and academia to provide their perspectives on recent advances and developments of the Internet of Things, and to discuss the potential opportunities in light of the aforementioned challenges.
 

Panel 5:  Connected and Autonomous Vehicles: From Vision to Reality

Connected and Autonomous vehicle technologies have been considered as the future of Intelligent Transport System (ITS) and Road Safety. Some features of the two technologies are already deployed in nowadays vehicles, such as using the cellular network to bring Internet inside the car, or letting the car slow-down automatically when the distance to the car in front drops below a safety limit, and even some very new car models are coming with the autopilot feature. Those few deployed features are just a small fraction of the full functionalities that will be enabled by the connected and autonomous vehicle technologies. In the future, the car will be able to communicate with other vehicles around through a direct communication link, and will be able to park by itself, and will be even able to drive by itself while the passengers continue enjoying reading the newspapers and drinking coffee.
Connected and Autonomous vehicle technologies have been given considerable attention by the research community in the last decade, and now after heavy testing and validation efforts, these technologies are approaching the deployment stage quickly. The related political and regulation parties in the US and the EU have already started studding deployment plans targeting first equipped vehicles to head the roads in the near future.
This panel will discuss the two technologies and related applications, as well as their respective deployment challenges in each region of the world with a special highlight on Qatar and the GCC region.
 

Panel 6: Personalized Medicine and Mobile Health: Role of ICT

The healthcare industry is going through a paradigm shift especially in chronic disease care, rural health management and general well being. The impetus for this paradigm shift has been the skyrocketing cost and scarcity of manpower. The prevailing healthcare model is that the doctors are responsible for the well being of the patients and the patients simply have to follow the doctors’ orders. This model is becoming obsolete and the emerging new model is that both the patient and the doctor should share the responsibility. This new model is more ‘patient centric’ than ‘doctor centric’. Moreover, the healthcare model is moving towards more preventive care than disease treatment and management and the episodic physiological signal measurements are replaced by continuous physiological signal measurements. The successful implementation of the new model requires new tools such as robust and low-cost physiological signal sensors for collecting information on the patient’s health, tools for contextual presentation of information to both patients and doctors, optimized communication between patients and healthcare providers and personalized decision support. Information and communication technology (ICT) has the role to facilitate the implementation of these tools by providing the necessary infrastructure including high bandwidth and data processing centers. This panel consists of experts in the fields of personalized medicine, telemedicine platform, wearable sensors and health informatics that will discuss the challenges of providing mobile health to patients and how the ICT can help in addressing these challenges.
 

Panel 7: Security Issues & Challenges

 With the proliferation of security threats, researchers, experts and policy makers have been raising concerns about the lack of awareness  and a sense of urgency to cybersecurity.  The availability of data gathered by heterogeneous and connected devices coupled with advances and the accessibility of access ICT systems have opened the door to new threats ranging from negligent to malicious attackers, insider to outsider threats, monetary-motivated to activists, etc. Protecting ICT systems and data requires, but not limited to, monitoring data and network activity from the inside-out, preventing outside attackers from intruding into the network, and identifying suspicious insider and outsider activities. The risk associated with any attack depends on three factors: (1) threat (who is attacking), (2) vulnerabilities (how they are attacking), and (3) impact (what the attack does). While most cyberattacks have limited impact, few “successful” attacks on critical infrastructure could have significant effect on the economy, safety of individuals, and national security. Reducing such risk usually involves removing threat sources, addressing vulnerabilities, and lessening impact.
 
This panel aims at leveraging researchers, experts, and stakeholders' expertise on the multidisciplinary aspects of cybersecurity including the threats in wireless communication, cyber physical systems security, ICS/SCADA security, research initiatives on cybersecurity, lack of visibility and control, and the regulations and compliance.