KEYNOTE TALK SERIES
Evangelos Simoudis
(Founder and Managing Director Synapse Partners)
Bio: Prof Dr. Evangelos Simoudis is a recognized expert on artificial intelligence and new mobility. He has worked in Silicon Valley for over 30 years as a venture investor, senior advisor to global corporations and governments, entrepreneur, corporate executive, and technologist. He is the co-founder and managing partner of Synapse Partners, a firm that advises global corporations on AI and mobility and invests in private companies developing AI applications. Before Synapse Partners, Evangelos was a managing director at Trident Capital and Apax Partners.
Evangelos is the author of three books: “The Big Data Opportunity in Our Driverless Future,” “Transportation Transformation,” and “The Flagship Experience.”
Evangelos is a member of Caltech’s advisory board, the advisory board of Brandeis International School of Business, the advisory board of the US Department of Transportation’s Connected Cities for Smart Mobility Center, and the advisory board of Securing America’s Future Energy. He has served on several commissions and task forces focusing on artificial intelligence, autonomous mobility, and corporate innovation.
He earned a Ph.D. in computer science (AI/ML) from Brandeis University and a B.S. in electrical engineering from Caltech.
Title: How AI and Software-Defined Vehicles Will Transform the Automotive Customer Experience
Abstract: Megatrends such as climate change, urbanization, new work practices, and aging populations influence our decisions about transportation and logistics. The talk presents how Software-Defined Vehicles and AI enable automakers, transportation providers, and transportation planners to reimagine the mobility customer experience, and presents a framework for implementing it. Software-defined vehicles (SDVs) will shift the focus from the vehicle to the customer, transforming the entire experience. Combining AI with vehicles’ big data generation, configurability, and updatability provides automakers with continuous customer understanding and recurring customer- and vehicle-monetization opportunities. It impacts how automakers design, make, sell, and service vehicles; how transportation and logistics providers maximize their vehicles’ utilization and improve the return on their investment; and how customers (both consumers and businesses) interact with the vehicle, the automaker, and numerous service providers. To succeed in making this shift, organizations will need to undertake important transformations. The talk presents an analysis of the approaches already taken and outlines additional ones that will be necessary.
Heather Renze
(CTO, The Difference Consulting)
Bio: Heather Renze is the Chief Technology Officer at the Difference Consulting, specializing in government and military advisory for AI ethics and strategy. She collaborates closely with the Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office (CDAO) to ensure AI initiatives align with ethical standards and strategic goals for public and defense sectors.
Title For Talk: AI and Responsible Innovation in Government
Abstract: Artificial intelligence (AI) transforms government services and introduces new ethical challenges. Public agencies face issues of data privacy, algorithmic bias, and transparency. This talk explores these critical concerns and the responsibilities of AI integration in government.
I will showcase effective methods for utilizing AI responsibly in public services, using practical examples. Additionally, I will describe governance models and best practices that ensure AI serves society while safeguarding individual rights. Participants will clearly understand how to ethically and responsibly apply AI in government settings.
Oussama Khatib
(Professor, Stanford University)
Bio: Prof Dr. Oussama Khatib received his PhD from Sup’Aero, Toulouse, France, in 1980. He is Professor of Computer Science and Director of the Robotics Laboratory at Stanford University. His research in robotics focuses on novel control architectures, algorithms, sensing, and human-friendly designs for advanced capabilities in complex environments. With an emphasis on enabling robots to interact cooperatively and safely with humans and the physical world, these studies bring understanding of human movement for therapy, athletic training, and performance enhancement. This work on understanding human cognitive task representation and physical skills is enabling transfer for increased robot autonomy. With these core capabilities, we are exploring applications in healthcare and wellness, industry and service, farms and smart cities, and dangerous and unreachable settings – deep in oceans, mines, and space. He is President of the International Foundation of Robotics Research (IFRR) and a Fellow of IEEE. He is Editor of the Springer Tracts in Advanced Robotics (STAR) series, and the Springer Handbook of Robotics, awarded the American Publishers Award for Excellence in Physical Sciences and Mathematics. He is recipient of the IEEE Robotics and Automation (IEEE/RAS) Pioneering Award (for his fundamental contributions in robotics research, visionary leadership, and life-long commitment to the field), the IEEE/RAS George Saridis Leadership Award, the Distinguished Service Award, the Japan Robot Association (JARA) Award, the Rudolf Kalman Award, the IEEE Technical Field Award, and the Engelberger Award. Professor Khatib is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.
Chunyi Peng
(Professor, Purdue University)
Bio: Dr. Peng is an Associate Professor in Dept. of Computer Science at Purdue University. Previously, she was an Assistant Professor in the Dept. of Computer Science and Engineering at the Ohio State University after she received herPh.D. in Computer Science at University of California, Los Angeles. Prior to UCLA, she worked as an Associate/Assistant Researcher at Wireless Networking Group at Microsoft Research Asia. She received a M.Eng and B.Eng in Automation from Tsinghua University, both with highest honors. In the past, she held internships at IBM TJ Watson Research Center, Microsoft Research Redmond and Microsoft Research Asia.
Her current research interests are in the broad areas of mobile networking, system and security, with a recent focus on renovating 5G access technologies, AI for networks, 5G/IoT security, mobile edge computing (mainly for autonomous drones, vehicles and robots).
Pascal hitzler
(Professor, Kansas State University)
Bio: Pascal Hitzler is Professor, endowed Lloyd T. Smith Creativity in Engineering Chair and Director of the Center for Artificial Intelligence and Data Science (CAIDS) at the Department of Computer Science at Kansas State University. Until July 2019 he was endowed NCR Distinguished Professor, Brage Golding Distinguished Professor of Research, and Director of Data Science at the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio, U.S.A. He is director of the Data Semantics (DaSe) Lab. From 2004 to 2009, he was Akademischer Rat at the Institute for Applied Informatics and Formal Description Methods (AIFB) at the University of Karlsruhe in Germany, and from 2001 to 2004 he was postdoctoral researcher at the Artificial Intelligence institute at TU Dresden in Germany. In 2001 he obtained a PhD in Mathematics from the National University of Ireland, University College Cork, and in 1998 a Diplom (Master equivalent) in Mathematics from the University of Tübingen in Germany. His research record lists over 400 publications in such diverse areas as semantic web, artificial intelligence, neural-symbolic integration, knowledge representation and reasoning, machine learning, denotational semantics, and set-theoretic topology. His research is highly cited. He is founding Editor-in-chief of the Semantic Web journal, the leading journal in the field, and of the IOS Press book series Studies on the Semantic Web. He is co-author of the W3C Recommendation OWL 2 Primer, and of the book Foundations of Semantic Web Technologies by CRC Press, 2010, which was named as one out of seven Outstanding Academic Titles 2010 in Information and Computer Science by the American Library Association’s Choice Magazine, and has translations into German and Chinese. He is on the editorial board of several journals and book series and a founding steering committee member of the Neural-Symbolic Learning and Reasoning Association and the Association for Ontology Design and Patterns, and he frequently acts as conference chair in various functions, including e.g. General Chair (ESWC2019, us2ts2019), Program Chair (FOIS 2018, AIMSA2014), Track Chair (ISWC2018, ESWC2018, ISWC2017, ISWC2016, AAAI-15), Workshop Chair (K-Cap2013), Sponsor Chair (ISWC2013, RR2009, ESWC2009), PhD Symposium Chair (ESWC 2017). For more information about him, see http://www.pascal-hitzler.de.
Dragutin Petkovic
(Professor, San Francisco State University)
Bio: Dragutin Petkovic (IEEE Life Fellow since 2018, IEEE Fellow since 1998) received Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from UC Irvine in 1983 in the area of biomedical image analysis, and B.S. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering and multidisciplinary studies respectively from University of Belgrade, Serbia with emphasis on image and signal analysis. He is currently a professor of computer science at San Francisco State University (SFSU) since 2003 where he was computer science department chair from 2003 to 2015. In 2019, he founded and co-leads the multidisciplinary SFSU Graduate Certificate in Ethical Artificial Intelligence together with SFSU Department of Philosophy and School of Business. He was a founder and Director of SFSU Center for Computing for Life Sciences from 2005 till 2018 and collaborated on multiple NIH grants with Stanford University in the areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI) for bioinformatics. He held positions at VMware as a Senior Director, Applications, and as senior manager and researcher at IBM Almaden Research center, San Jose (1983-2000). His research focus included content based retrieval (he was founder of trend-setting IBM Query by Image Content QBIC project). For last 10 years his work combines AI and ease of use and has a goal to bring technology closer to people and users. Due to his concerns about the state of the ethics and trustworthiness of AI systems and their possibly negative implications to society, his recent focus is on explainable and trustworthy AI to which he contributes by papers, books, workshops, talks and importantly by education of broader community via SFSU Certificate of Ethical AI.
Important Deadlines
| Full Paper Submission: | 19th November 2024 |
| Acceptance Notification: | 1st December 2024 |
| Final/Camera-ready Paper Submission: | 20th December 2024 |
| Early Bird Registration: | 11th December 2024 |
| Presentation Submission: | 26th December 2024 |
| Conference: | 6th - 8th January 2025 |
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