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.

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.

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 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/

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.