Wireless connectivity will soon enable people to consume mixed reality content anywhere and cloud-connected mobile robots will perform complex tasks collaboratively. This connectivity will come to enterprises, factory floors and digital homes first, powered by indoor networks that offer much higher data rates, greater reliability and lower latency than today’s networks. In addition to providing traditional communication capabilities, the future indoor network will have a “sixth sense” that enables it to provide sensory information and insights to people and machines. It will serve as the core infrastructure for smart buildings and help enterprises operate more efficiently by further enabling capabilities such as immersive virtual workplaces, indoor navigation and asset tracking. In this talk I will examine the enabling technologies of the future indoor network and present our latest research results and our vision for implementing them in commercial and residential environments.

Dr. Klaus Doppler is the technical lead of the Mirror X project in Nokia Bell Labs. In his previous role, he has been heading the Indoor Networks Research focusing on ubiquitous Gigabit connectivity and platforms for smart buildings, enterprises and factories. He has been responsible for wireless research and standardization in Nokia Technologies, incubated a new business line and pioneered research on D2D Communications underlaying LTE networks. Klaus received inventor awards in Nokia for 100+ granted patent applications. He has published 40+ scientific publications, received his Ph.D. from Aalto University, Finland in 2010 and his M.Sc. from Graz University of Technology, Austria in 2003.

With the maturing of AI and multiagent systems research, we have a tremendous opportunity to direct these advances towards addressing complex societal problems. I focus on the problems of public health and conservation, and address one key cross-cutting challenge: how to effectively deploy our limited intervention resources in these problem domains. I will present results from work around the globe in using AI for HIV prevention, Maternal and Child care interventions, TB prevention and COVID modeling, as well as for wildlife conservation. Achieving social impact in these domains often requires methodological advances. To that end, I will highlight key research advances in multiagent reasoning and learning, in particular in, computational game theory, multi-armed bandits and influence maximization in social networks. In pushing this research agenda, our ultimate goal is to facilitate local communities and non-profits to directly benefit from advances in AI tools and techniques.

Dr. Milind Tambe is Gordon McKay Professor of Computer Science and Director of Center for Research in Computation and Society at Harvard University; concurrently, he is also Director "AI for Social Good" at Google Research India. He is a recipient of the IJCAI John McCarthy Award, ACM/SIGAI Autonomous Agents Research Award from AAMAS, AAAI Robert S Engelmore Memorial Lecture award, INFORMS Wagner prize, Rist Prize of the Military Operations Research Society, Columbus Fellowship Foundation Homeland security award, AAMAS influential paper award, best paper awards at conferences such as AAMAS, IJCAI, IVA, and meritorious commendations from agencies such as the US Coast Guard and the Los Angeles Airport.  Prof. Tambe is a fellow of AAAI and ACM.

The fourth industrial revolution (also known as Industry 4.0) is expected to change radically the industrial production system. The capillary introduction of sensors and actuators in production lines, their integration into existing information systems, the utilization of robotics and artificial intelligence, will enable the complete digitalization of production processes, thus improving the efficiency and safety of the entire industrial production system.

On the other hand, Industry 4.0 poses a number of challenges and requires a paradigm shift from all actors involved in the process. In this talk, I will analyze some of these challenges, including research and technology transfer. Then, I will focus on the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT), one of the key enablers of Industry 4.0. In this field, the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has defined the 6TiSCH architecture to enable low-power industrial-grade Internet communication. I will survey the main protocols and solutions proposed for it, with special emphasis on scheduling for (soft) real-time industrial applications. Available implementations and open issues will be mentioned as well.

Dr. Giuseppe Anastasi was the Head of the Department of Information Engineering at the University of Pisa, Italy, from 2016 to 2020. He is currently a Professor of computer engineering at the same department, where he directs the “CrossLab” program, funded by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research (MIUR), which aims at structuring six interdisciplinary and integrated laboratories (CrossLabs) for Industry 4.0. His scientific interests include Wireless Sensor Networks, Internet of Things, Cyber-physical Systems, Cybersecurity, and Smart Environments (Smart Cities, Smart Industries, and Smart Grid). He is a co-editor of two books: Advanced Lectures in Networking (LNCS 2497, Springer, 2002), and Methodologies and Technologies for Networked Enterprises (LNCS 7200, Springer, 2012). He has published more than 150 research papers in the area of computer networks and distributed systems. Dr. Anastasi is currently serving as Steering Committee member of the IEEE SMARTCOMP conference. Previously, he served as Area Editor of Pervasive and Mobile Computing (PMC, 2007-16); Associate Editor of Sustainable Computing (SUSCOM, 2010-15); Area Editor of Computer Communications (ComCom, 2008-10); General Chair of IEEE SMARTCOMP 2018, IEEE WoWMoM 2005; Program Chair of IEEE SMARTCOMP 2016, IEEE MSN 2015, IFIP/IEEE SustainIT 2012, IEEE PerCom 2010 and IEEE WoWMoM 2008. He has co-founded many successful international workshops and conferences. 

Additional info at: http://www.iet.unipi.it/g.anastasi/

Carlo Vallati is an Assistant Professor (tenured) at the Department of Information Engineering of the University of Pisa. He received a Master's Degree (magna cum laude) and a PhD in Computer Systems Engineering in 2008 and 2012, respectively, from the University of Pisa. In 2010, he visited the Computer Science department of the University of California at Davis, while in 2017 he visited the Computer Science Department of the Missouri Science and Technology University. He is co-author of +70 peer-reviewed papers in international journals and conference proceedings. He has been involved in many national and international projects also with leading roles. He is currently member of the editorial board of three international journals, “Ad Hoc Networks”, Elsevier, “Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments”, Springer and “Applied Sciences”, MDPI. He has served as guest editor for the Special Issue "Selected paper from IoT-SoS 2017", Journal of Reliable Intelligent Environments, Springer (in press July 2018) and he is serving as guest editor for the Special Issue “Smart computing: Research trends and perspectives” , Pervasive and Mobile Computing, Elsevier. He has served as Program Committee member in more than 30 international conferences and workshops, among them IEEE WoWMoM, IEEE SMARTCOMP, EWSN, IEEE ICNC, IEEE CCNC. He has served as TPC co-chair for the conference IEEE SMARTCOMP 2020 and as Track co-chair for the conference IEEE CCNC 2021. He has served as Workshop Chair for the 2017 edition of the IEEE IoT-SoS workshop and as Vice-Chair for the 2013 edition. He served as TPC Co-Chair for the 2019 and 2018 editions of the IEEE SmartSys 2018 workshop co-located with IEEE SMARTCOMP.
He is the coordinator of the laboratory 'Cloud Computing, Big Data and Cybersecurity Crosslab' founded in the framework of the 'Crosslab', funded by the Italian Ministry of Education and Research (MIUR), which aims at structuring six interdisciplinary and integrated laboratories (CrossLabs) for Industry 4.0.

Addditional info at: http://www.iet.unipi.it/c.vallati/ 

The increasing deployment of wireless systems poses security challenges in emerging dynamic and decentralized networks consisting of very large numbers of low-cost and low-complexity devices. Over the last two decades alternative/complementary means to secure data exchange in wireless settings have been investigated in the framework of physical layer security (PLS), addressing jointly the issues of reliability and secrecy. PLS takes advantage of the inherent randomness of wireless communication channels and/or the unclonability of hardware fabrication processes, to harvest entropy and deliver authentication, confidentiality, message integrity, and privacy in demanding scenarios. In this talk, we review these issues from an information theoretic security perspective. PLS relies on information theoretic proofs of (weak or strong) perfect secrecy, a notion first introduced by Shannon in 1949. As such, PLS systems cannot be “broken” irrespective of the adversarial computational power, i.e., the proofs do not rely on any assumptions regarding the hardness of particular families of algebraic problems. There are some fundamental differences between information theoretic security and classical cryptography, and we will also discuss some of the pros and cons of each.

H. Vincent Poor is the Michael Henry Strater University Professor of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University, where his interests include information theory, machine learning and network science, and their applications in wireless networks, energy systems and related fields.  He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, and a foreign member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Royal Society.  Recognition of his work includes the 2017 IEEE Alexander Graham Medal, and honorary doctorates from universities in Asia, Europe and North America.

The design of Western society, and virtually all of our debates about society, are based on the 18th century model of humans as rational individuals.  Modern science tells us that while this a decent first approximation, it is fundamentally wrong when it comes to understanding capitalism, education, and governance.  I will talk about how a better understanding of ourselves as social beings can address many of the challenges we face.

MIT Prof. Alex Pentland is co-creator of the MIT Media Lab and the field of Computational Social Science.  He was key in discussions that lead to the EU privacy regulations (GDPR) and shaping the UN Sustainable Development Goals.  He is a member of the US National Academies, discussion leader for the World Leadership Alliance, and a social entrepreneur who has helped create companies that today serve the needs of about one third of humanity.

Connectivity, in particular wireless connectivity, is a key enabling technology for the Internet of Things. A plethora of technologies exist ranging from short range to long range and low to medium power options. Recently, long range, low power wireless communication technologies have been introduced, for both licensed and unlicensed radio spectrum. Unlicensed spectrum technologies such as LoRa/LoRaWAN have become very popular because of their low cost, open standard and open source software support. However, the current standard has many weaknesses in supporting a vision of dense, wireless IoT device deployment. In this talk we will briefly review long range, low power wireless technologies, review some of the weaknesses of LoRa/LoRaWAN and present a range of advances that address these weaknesses, in particular we will focus on medium access fairness, power efficiency and delay performance for both terrestrial and satellite based IoT applications.

Dr. Dirk Pesch is a Professor of Computer Science in the School of Computer Science and IT at the University College Cork, Ireland where he leads research initiatives in the area of future networks, Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) with applications to smart and connected communities, energy efficient buildings and sustainable cities, and smart manufacturing. In these areas, his own research interests focus on the study, design and performance evaluation of IoT and CPS and associated communication protocols, system architectures, and their interoperability. Dr. Pesch is the Director of a national doctoral school, the Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) funded Centre for Research Training in Advanced Networks for Sustainable Societies. He is also a Principal Investigator of the SFI funded CONNECT Centre for Future Networks and the CONFIRM Centre for Smart Manufacturing, is an editorial board member of Springer Wireless Networks and MDPI Sensors. He also contributes to international conference organization in his area of expertise including the IEEE World Forum on the Internet of Things, IEEE VTC, IEEE Globecom, IEEE ICC, IEEE WCNC, IEEE WoWMoM, IFIP Networking and other conference and workshops. Prior to joining academia, Dr. Pesch was a design engineer with Nokia in Germany and the UK, developing and implementing communication protocols for a range of cordless telecommunication products. He received a Dipl.Ing. degree from RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and a PhD from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland, both in Electrical and Electronic Engineering.

Vehicle trajectory data captures detailed information about vehicular transportation. The increasing availability of such data holds the potential to transform vehicle routing profoundly, thus enabling smarter transportation. However, when trajectory data is used, the traditional routing paradigm is inadequate. Instead, new and data-intensive paradigms that thrive on massive trajectory data are called for. The talk covers three such paradigms, including so-called path-based routing, where costs are associated with paths and not just edges; on-the-fly routing, where all weights are not pre-computed, but are computed as needed during routing; and cost-oblivious routing, where no costs are associated with routes, but where historical trajectories are used for routing directly.

Christian S. Jensen is Professor of Computer Science at Aalborg University, Denmark. His research concerns analytics, data management, and data-intensive systems, and its focus is on temporal and spatio-temporal analytics, including machine learning, data mining, and query processing. Christian is an ACM and IEEE Fellow, and he is a member of Academia Europaea, the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters, and the Danish Academy of Technical Sciences. He has received several national and international awards for his research, most recently the 2019 IEEE TCDE Impact Award. He serves on the board of Villum Fonden, a major funder of technical and natural science research in Denmark; he is President of the steering committee of the Swiss National Research Program on Big Data; and in Germany, he serves on the scientific advisory board the Max Planck Institute for Informatics. He recently finished a 6-year term as Editor-in-Chief of ACM Transactions on Database Systems.

Users and applications are placing increasingly stringent demands on cellular networks. Operators for their part are addressing this by rolling out new technologies like 5G and edge computing. These technology investments also allow operators to use advanced analytics, including artificial intelligence, to more efficiently, manage the networks and in turn generate operational and capital savings, while supporting the needs of applications. In this talk, I will present a broad outline of the work going on in our lab in the general space of intelligence for cellular networks, right from planning and design all the way to application traffic management. I will outline some of the challenges with implementing advanced analytics, how we are trying to address them, and where we are in the journey.

Dr. Vijay Gopalakrishnan is a Director in the Network and Service Automation department in AT&T Labs. He leads a team of researchers that are focused broadly on the topics of networked systems, network management and content delivery. Vijay has published widely in top conferences and journals in computer science and has over 50 patents to his name. He earned his PhD and MS in computer science from University of Maryland, College Park in 2006 and 2003, respectively.

In this talk, Dr. Corman will provide a unique perspective on the Cyber Physical Systems and Smart and Connected Communities program. Cyber-physical systems (CPS) are engineered systems that are built from, and depend upon, the seamless integration of computation and physical components. Advances in CPS will enable capability, adaptability, scalability, resiliency, safety, security, and usability that will expand the horizons of these critical systems.    Dr. Corman has led the CPS program at NSF since 2013.  The CPS program includes the CISE (Computer and Information Science and Engineering) Directorate and the Engineering Directorate at NSF along with multiple Federal agency partners including National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration (DOT/FHWA), National Institutes of Health (NIH), and Department of Homeland Security Directorate of Science and Technology (DHS S&T).  Since its inception, the CPS program has funded nearly $500M of foundational research. 

The Smart and Connected Community Program was kicked off by NSF in 2015 with a series of visioning workshops and Dear Colleague Letters requesting EAGER projects.  The S&CC program supports integrative research that addresses fundamental technological and social science dimensions of smart and connected communities and pilots solutions together with communities.  Dr. Corman will discuss S&CC research technologies and present program highlights.  In addition, Dr. Corman will present insights from the CIVIC Innovation Challenge (CIVIC) program which is completing Stage 1.  CIVIC is a research and action competition in the Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) domain designed to build a more cohesive research-to-innovation pipeline and foster a collaborative spirit.  CIVIC flips the community-university dynamic encouraging communities to identify civic priorities ripe for innovation and then to partner with researchers to address those priorities.  Co-creation of research concepts is strongly encouraged as opposed to the traditional academic push of technology to communities.

Dr. David Corman is the Program Director leading Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) and Smart and Connected Communities (S&CC) Programs for the National Science Foundation.  The CPS program is a cross-disciplinary and inter-agency program and seeks to reveal cross-cutting, fundamental scientific and engineering principles that underpin the integration of cyber and physical elements across all application domains.

The Smart and Connected Communities program was started by NSF in 2016. The goal of this program is to support strongly interdisciplinary, integrative research and research capacity-building activities that will improve understanding of smart and connected communities and lead to discoveries that enable sustainable change to enhance community functioning.  The focus here is not simply on cities – but on cities, towns, and rural regions. 

Dr. Corman joined NSF 2013.  He previously worked for McDonnell Douglas / Boeing in a variety of research positions.   Dr. Corman was chief scientist in the Network Systems Technology for Boeing Research and Technology during the period from 2007 – 2013.  His responsibilities also included development and leadership of research projects in cybersecurity for airplane and avionics systems.  

Dr. Corman obtained a dual BS degree in System Science and Mathematics and Applied Mathematics and Computer Science from Washington University in St. Louis. He then obtained a dual MS degree in SSM and Mechanical Engineering from Washington University. He completed his graduate education at the University of Maryland – College Park and obtained a PhD in Electrical Engineering with a major in controls and minor in communications and applied mechanics.