Prof. Hao Zhang, Michigan State University, USA
Fellow of American Statistical Association, Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute

Biography: Hao Zhang is Professor and Chair at the Department of Statistics and Probability at Michigan State University. He is Fellow of American Statistical Association and an Elected Member of the International Statistical Institute. He has served editorial boards of Journal of the American Statistical Association, Statistica Sinica, Environmetrics, and Statistics & Probability Letters. His research interests are primarily in spatial and spatio-temporal statistics. His work includes both theoretical investigation into asymptotic properties of machine learning methods for spatial data and development of algorithms for the analysis of big spatial data. He collaborates with researchers in ecology, environmental sciences, climatology, and natural resources.

Prof. Farid Meziane, University of Derby, UK
Head of the Data Science Research Centre

Biography: Farid Meziane is a professor of Data Science, Head of the Data Science Research Centre, and the University's lead for the Data Science academic research theme. He obtained a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Salford, UK on his work on producing formal specification from Natural Language requirements. The work was considered at that time as pioneering in the area and paved the way for a large interest in automating the production of software specifications from informal requirements.
He has authored over 200 scientific papers and participated in many national and international research projects. He is the co-chair of the international conference on application of Natural Language to information systems; co-chair of the international conference on Information Science and Systems. He is serving in the programme committee of over ten international conferences. He is an associate editor for the data and knowledge engineering (Elsevier) journal and the managing editor of the International Journal of Information Technology and Web Engineering (IDEA publishing). He was awarded the Highly Commended Award from the Literati Club, 2001 for his paper on Intelligent Systems in Manufacturing: Current Development and Future Prospects. His research expertise includes Natural Language processing, semantic computing, data mining and big data and knowledge Engineering.

Webpage: https://www.derby.ac.uk/staff/farid-meziane/

Prof. Domenico Talia, University of Calabria, Italy

Speech Title: Distributed Machine Learning: Bridging Cloud and Edge Systems

Abstract: Edge-cloud solutions are being used to collect and analyze large amounts of data generated by IoT devices in various application domains, such as urban mobility, smart cities, healthcare, and augmented reality. We must be able to combine techniques and algorithms of data analysis and machine learning with the scalable architectures of Cloud systems and Edge technologies. This approach can reduce latency and network congestion associated with traditional cloud-based machine learning techniques by processing data locally on edge devices before sending it to the cloud for further analysis. This keynote discusses distributed machine learning and proposes a reference architecture to adapt distributed machine learning algorithms at the edge-cloud continuum. Real applications are presented, and the main open research issues are discussed.

Biography: Domenico Talia is a full professor of computer engineering at the University of Calabria, Italy and an Honorary professor at Noida University, India. He is a co-founder of the start-up DtoK Lab. His research interests include Big Data analysis, high-performance computing, parallel and distributed data mining algorithms, Cloud computing, distributed machine learning, social data analysis, peer-to-peer systems, and parallel programming models and languages. Domenico Talia has published 10 books and more than 400 papers in archival journals such as Communications of the ACM, IEEE TPDS, IEEE Computer, IEEE TKDE, IEEE TSE, IEEE TSMC-A, IEEE TSMC-B, IEEE Micro, ACM Computing Surveys, FGCS, Parallel Computing, IEEE Internet Computing, and highly reputed conference proceedings. He is a member of the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE Computer, ACM Computing Surveys, the Future Generation Computer Systems journal, the International Journal of Web and Grid Services, the Journal of Cloud Computing-Advances, Systems and Applications, the Scalable Computing Practice and Experience journal, the International Journal of Next-Generation Computing. He was guest editor of special issues of IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, Parallel Computing, IEEE Transactions on Big Data, and Future Generation Computer Systems, and served as a program chair or program committee member of several international conferences. Talia is a senior member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) and IEEE Computer Society and has been a reviewer for several research agencies and public administrations.

Invited Speakers

Prof. Jixin Ma, University of Greenwich, UK

Biography: Dr Jixin Ma is a Full Professor of Computer Science (Artificial Intelligence) and the Director of PhD/Postgraduate Research Programme in the School of Computing and Mathematical Sciences at University of Greenwich, U.K. He has been the Director of the Centre for Computer and Computational Science and the Lead of Artificial Intelligence Research Group. Professor Ma is also a Visiting Professor of Beijing Normal University, Hainan University, Anhui University, Zhengzhou Light Industrial University and Macau City University. Professor Ma obtained his BSc and MSc of Mathematics in 1982 and 1988, respectively, and PhD of Computer Sciences in 1994. His main research areas include Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, and Information Systems, with special interests in Temporal Logic, Information Security, Machine Learning, Case-Based Reasoning and Pattern Recognition. Professor Ma has been a member British Computer Society, American Association of Artificial Intelligence, ACIS/IEEE, World Scientific and Engineering Society, and Special Group of Artificial Intelligence of BCS. He has also been the Editor of several international journals and international conference proceedings, Conference/Program Chair, and Invited Keynote Speakers of many international conferences. Professor Ma has published more than 200 research papers in peer-reviewed international journals and conferences.

Assoc. Prof. Xie Ming, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

Speech Title: Science of Mind as True Foundation of Artificial Intelligence

Abstract: Does intelligence arise from brain or mind? This is a dilemma of the 21th century. The wrong answer to this question will certainly lead the research efforts into the wrong direction. In this talk, I will share with the audience the astonishing fact which supports the claim that intelligence arises from mind, but not from brain. This truth helps us to open the door toward establishing the Science of Mind which will be the True Foundation of Artificial Intelligence. I will first go through the history of Artificial Intelligence, in which AI 1.0 was primarily focused on machine thinking while AI 2.0 was intensively focused on machine learning. Then, I will outline some extremely important findings about: 1) why AI 1.0 and AI 2.0 are not the foundation of AI, and 2) why AI 3.0, which is a framework toward achieving machine’s self-intelligence, should be the true foundation of AI. More details of our research findings could be found inside the published book: “Xie M., Chen H. and Hu Z. C., (2021), New Foundation of Artificial Intelligence, World Scientific Publishing Co., 404pp”.

Biography: Xie Ming received the B.Eng degree in control and automation engineering from East-China Institute of Textile Technology (now, under the name of Donghua University, Shanghai, China). Subsequently, as a recipient of the nation's prestigious overseas scholarship of Chinese government, he has completed the postgraduate studies and doctorate research works, and has received the Master degree from the University of Valenciennes (France) in 1986 as well as the PhD degree from the University of Rennes (France) in 1989. Since 1986, he has worked as Research Assistant at IRISA-INRIA Rennes, Expert Engineer at INRIA Sophia-Antipolis, Lecturer/Senior Lecturer/Associate Professor of Nanyang Technological University, Fellow of Singapore-MIT Alliance (SMA) (Affiliated with Innovation in Manufacturing Systems and Technology Program), Guest Professor of Huazhong University of Science and Technology (2002, 2006), Professor awarded by China's Jiangsu Provincial Government (2014), and Dean of College of Electrical Engineering and Control Science at Nanjing Tech University (2014-2016). He was the General Chair of 2007 International Conference on Climbing and Walking Robots (CLAWAR), the General Chair of 2009 International Conference on Intelligent Robotics and Applications (ICIRA), the Co-founder of the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics (SCI/SCIE indexed), Co-founder of Singapore-China Association for Advancement of Science and Technology, Co-founder of Robotics Society of Singapore. He has taught the courses such as Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, Applied Machine Vision, Measurement and Sensing Systems, Microprocessor Systems, and University Physics. In terms of scientific research, he has authored three books in English, two books in Chinese, and two edited books in English. He has published several book chapters, over 10 patents of invention, over 40 research papers in scientific journals and over 100 research papers in international conferences. He was the recipient of one best conference paper award from World Automation Congress, the recipient of one best conference paper award from CLAWAR, the recipient of one outstanding paper award from International Journal of Industrial Robot, the recipient of one Gold Prize (S$8K) from CrayQuest, the recipient of one Grand Champion Prize (S$15K) from CrayQuest, the recipient of one A-Star's Best Research Idea Prize (S$5K), the recipient of one Silver Medal from Dragon Design Foundation.