IEEE International Conference on Advanced Networks and Telecommunications Systems
17-20 December 2017 – C. V. Raman College of Engineering, Bhubaneswar, Odisha, India

Keynotes, Invited Speakers & Panels

Keynote/Invited Speakers

Vincenzo PiuriVincenzo Piuri, Department of Computer Science, Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy

Title: Computational intelligence technologies for industrial and environmental applications

Abstract: Adaptability and advanced services for industrial manufacturing require an intelligent technological support for understanding the production process characteristics also in complex situations. Quality control is specifically one of the activities in manufacturing which is very critical for ensuring high-quality products and competitiveness on the market.
Computational intelligence can provide additional flexible techniques for designing and implementing monitoring and control systems, which can be configured from behavioral examples or by mimicking approximate reasoning processes to achieve adaptable systems.
This talk will analyze the opportunities offered by computational intelligence technologies to support the realization of adaptable operations and intelligent services in industrial applications, specifically focusing on manufacturing processes and quality control.

Bio: Professor Vincenzo Piuri has received his Ph.D. in computer engineering at Politecnico di Milano, Italy (1989). He has been Associate Professor at Politecnico di Milano, Italy and Visiting Professor at the University of Texas at Austin and at George Mason University, USA. He is Full Professor in computer engineering at the University of Milan, Italy (since 2000).
His main research interests are: signal and image processing, machine learning, pattern analysis and recognition, theory and industrial applications of neural networks, biometrics, intelligent measurement systems, industrial applications, fault tolerance, digital processing architectures, embedded systems, and arithmetic architectures. Original results have been published in more than 400 papers in international journals, proceedings of international conferences, books, and book chapters.
He is Fellow of the IEEE, Distinguished Scientist of ACM, and Senior Member of INNS.
He has been IEEE Past Vice President for Technical Activities (2016), IEEE Vice President for Technical Activities (2015), IEEE Director, President of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society, Vice President for Education of the IEEE Biometrics Council, Vice President for Publications of the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society and the IEEE Systems Council, and Vice President for Membership of the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society. He is Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Systems Journal (2013-17), and has been Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Neural Networks and the IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement.
He received the IEEE Instrumentation and Measurement Society Technical Award (2002) for the contributions to the advancement of theory and practice of computational intelligence in measurement systems and industrial applications. He is Honorary Professor at the Obuda University, Budapest, Hungary (since 2014), and Guest Professor at Guangdong University of Petrochemical Technology, China (since 2014) and at the Muroran Institute of Technology, Japan (since 2016).

More information are available at http://www.di.unimi.it/piuri


K.R. Murali MohanK.R. Murali Mohan, Scientist G, Dept. of Science & Technology, India

Title: Cyber Physical Systems in Smart City

Abstract: Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) has been identified as one of the major emerging technologies. With the increasing need for efficient utilization of scarce resources such as water and energy, increasing urbanization, and increasing consciousness of the impact on the climate due to human activities, there is going to be increasing emphasis on “smartening up” our socio-technical systems, thereby requiring us to deploy the technology of Cyber Physical Systems.

Cyber Physical Systems are inherently interdisciplinary. CPS requires the technologies of sensors and actuators for a variety of modalities (depending on the physical domain), low power electronics, energy harvesters, dense scale wireless communication, distributed in-network computing, cloud computing, resilience to a variety of physical and cyber attacks, and data privacy.

Although the practical Cyber Physical Systems of the near future will be built on standard digital electronics, digital computing, and digital communications, rapid advances are being made in the area of Quantum Computing technologies. In order to engage the expertise of our scientific community, generate manpower for the future, and develop our own expertise and technologies in the area, the Interdisciplinary CPS division, envisages support for a nationwide research mission in Quantum Computing technologies as well.

Three key areas of interest in CPS are large scale systems, data analytics and security. Tools such as optimization and control, stochastic analysis, queuing systems, and decision sciences still need to be fully developed in order to be able to drive large scale interconnected systems. Analysis of large and complex datasets consisting of information regarding hundreds of temporal and spatial variables also poses a challenge. These systems will empower National Critical Infrastructure (NCI) and have the potential to significantly impact daily lives as they form the basis for emerging and future smart services. the basis of NM-ICPS is a to develop an holistic and unified approach to address the challenges posed by CPS and also to convert the challenges into opportunity by taking advantage of demographic dividend that the country inherits.

The CPS and associated streams and on all aspects of ICPS research in India will be co-ordinated under the umbrella of NM-ICPS. The major activities of the mission will include

  1. R & D promotion
  2. Establishment of centre of excellence,
  3. Human Resource Development (HRD)
  4. international linkages & collaborations.

Thus, the ICPS program would institute research through academic collaborations and foster in depth investigations to understand the processes and phenomena that are in operation leading to development of CPS technologies and applications.

Bio: Dr. Murali Mohan is serving the Department of Science and Technology (DST) from 1998 onwards and presently, Dr Mohan is Adviser/Scientist-G and Heading the Big Data initiatives Division. Prior to the current position, He was associated with Natural Resources Data Management System (NRDMS) & National Spatial Data Infrastructure ( NSDI) Divisions of DST. He has developed a number of new R&D network based cluster initiatives. His multidisciplinary academic background coupled with multi-institutional scientific exposure spanning over 20 years provides.

His multidisciplinary academic background coupled with multi-institutional scientific exposure spanning over 20 years provides him an edge in identifying and in conceptualizing niche scientific areas of research. The programs he developed/ under development, synergizes the core concepts of Big Data, Geo-Sciences, Information & Communication Technologies (GeoICT) and brings in the fundamental and applied aspect of this emerging spectrum of Science. Identification of a burning national issues and scientific challenges which requires SxT interventions, development of scientific framework, institutional network/ arrangements, expertise driven holistic experimentation and core capacity building/ Critical mass creation, is the generic model followed in all his endeavors.


Venkata N. PadmanabhanVenkata N. Padmanabhan, Principal Researcher, Microsoft Research India

Title: HAMS: Harnessing Auto-Mobiles for Safety

Abstract: Road safety is a major public health issue, with road accidents accounting for an estimated 1.25 million fatalities, and many more injuries, the world over, each year. The problem is particularly acute in India, with nearly a quarter of a million fatalities every year, i.e., 20% of the world’s total. Besides the heavy human cost, road accidents also impose a significant economic cost. The crux of the problem is that the major factors impacting safety — vehicles, roads, and people — have virtually no ongoing monitoring today. It doesn’t have to be so, especially in a world buzzing with sensors and promising to usher in IoT. Smartphones have already revolutionized access to road transportation. Can these do likewise for road transportation safety?

In the HAMS project at Microsoft Research India, we employ low-cost sensors, many of which are packaged with smartphones, to monitor drivers and their driving. The sensors include the front camera of the smartphone (which faces the driver), the back camera (which looks out to the front of the vehicle), inertial sensors (accelerometer, gyroscope, magnetometer), and the OBD sensor that plugs into the vehicle. Raw data gathered using sensors is processed to detect events of interest, such as the driver being distracted or driving aggressively. I will discuss the research challenges involved in efficiently processing the sensor data locally at the smartphone edge and touch on applications we are building for driver training and fleet management.

Bio: Venkat Padmanabhan is a Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research India, where he founded the Mobility, Networks, and Systems group in 2007. He was previously with Microsoft Research Redmond, USA for nearly 9 years. Venkat’s research interests are broadly in networked and mobile systems, and his work over the years has led to highly-cited papers and paper awards, technology transfers within Microsoft, and also industry impact. He received the Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar Prize and the inaugural ACM SIGMOBILE Test-of-Time paper award, both in 2016. Venkat holds a B.Tech. from IIT Delhi and an M.S. and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley, all in Computer Science, and has been elected a Fellow of the INAE, the IEEE, and the ACM. He can be reached on-line at http://research.microsoft.com/~padmanab/.


Rajkumar Buyya, University of Melborne, Australia

Title: New Frontiers in Cloud Computing for Big Data and Internet-of-Things (IoT) Applications

Abstract: Computing is being transformed to a model consisting of services that are commoditised and delivered in a manner similar to utilities such as water, electricity, gas, and telephony. Several computing paradigms have promised to deliver this utility computing vision. Cloud computing has emerged as one of the buzzwords in the IT industry and turned the vision of “computing utilities” into a reality. Clouds deliver infrastructure, platform, and software (application) as services, which are made available as subscription-based services in a pay-as-you-go model to consumers. Cloud application platforms need to offer (1) APIs and tools for rapid creation of elastic applications and (2) a runtime system for deployment of applications on geographically distributed computing infrastructure in a seamless manner.

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm enables seamless integration of cyber-and-physical worlds and opening up opportunities for creating new class of applications for domains such as smart cities. The emerging Fog computing is extending Cloud computing paradigm to edge resources for latency sensitive IoT applications.

This keynote presentation will cover

  1. 21st century vision of computing and identifies various IT paradigms promising to deliver the vision of computing utilities;
  2. Opportunities and challenges for utility and market-oriented Cloud computing,
  3. Innovative architecture for creating market-oriented and elastic Clouds by harnessing virtualisation technologies;
  4. Aneka, a Cloud Application Platform, for rapid development of Cloud/Big Data applications and their deployment on private/public Clouds with resource provisioning driven by SLAs;
  5. Experimental results on deploying Cloud and Big Data/Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications in engineering, and health care, satellite image processing, and smart cities on elastic Clouds; and
  6. Directions for delivering our 21st century vision along with pathways for future research in Cloud and Fog computing.

Bio: Dr. Rajkumar Buyya is a Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor and Director of the Cloud Computing and Distributed Systems (CLOUDS) Laboratory at the University of Melbourne, Australia. He is also serving as the founding CEO of Manjrasoft, a spin-off company of the University, commercializing its innovations in Cloud Computing. He served as a Future Fellow of the Australian Research Council during 2012-2016. He has authored over 625 publications and seven text books including “Mastering Cloud Computing” published by McGraw Hill, China Machine Press, and Morgan Kaufmann for Indian, Chinese and international markets respectively. He also edited several books including “Cloud Computing: Principles and Paradigms” (Wiley Press, USA, Feb 2011). He is one of the highly cited authors in computer science and software engineering worldwide (h-index=112, g-index=235, 63,400+ citations).  Microsoft Academic Search Index ranked Dr. Buyya as #1 author in the world (2005-2016) for both field rating and citations evaluations in the area of Distributed and Parallel Computing.  “A Scientometric Analysis of Cloud Computing Literature” by German scientists ranked Dr. Buyya as the World’s Top-Cited (#1) Author and the World’s Most-Productive (#1) Author in Cloud Computing. Recently, Dr. Buyya is recognized as a “2016 Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher” by Thomson Reuters and a Fellow of IEEE for his outstanding contributions to Cloud computing.

Software technologies for Grid and Cloud computing developed under Dr. Buyya’s leadership have gained rapid acceptance and are in use at several academic institutions and commercial enterprises in 40 countries around the world. Dr.  Buyya has led the establishment and development of key community activities, including serving as foundation Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Scalable Computing and five IEEE/ACM conferences. These contributions and international research leadership of Dr. Buyya are recognized through the award of “2009 IEEE Medal for Excellence in Scalable Computing” from the IEEE Computer Society TCSC. Manjrasoft’s Aneka Cloud technology developed under his leadership has received “2010 Frost & Sullivan New Product Innovation Award”. Recently, Dr. Buyya received “Bharath Nirman Award” and “Mahatma Gandhi Award” along with Gold Medals for his outstanding and extraordinary achievements in Information Technology field and services rendered to promote greater friendship and India-International cooperation. He served as the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing. He is currently serving as Co-Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Software: Practice and Experience, which was established over 45 years ago. For further information on Dr.Buyya, please visit his cyberhome: http://www.buyya.com/


Prashant MohapatraPrasant Mohapatra, University of California, Davis

Title: Security in Internet of Things (IoT)

Abstract: Internet of Things (IoT) are gaining popularity and will be increasing ubiquitous in near future. They will find use i n a vast array of applications ranging from sensing, actuating, monitoring, and decision-making efforts. The expansive usage, while facilitating broad range of applications will bring in challenges related to security. The resource limitations of IoT will complexities to these challenges. In this talk, we will overview these challenges and discuss potential solutions that have in developed in our research efforts.

We will discuss about continual authentication approaches to ensure security in sensing elements of IoT system. Detection of threats or malicious behavior and protection of some obvious threats will be the topic of the next issue that we will explore. In addition, we will discuss about the vulnerabilities that can be exploited for various attack scenarios in IoTs. The talk will be concluded with a few remarks regarding the future research directions on IoT security.

Bio: Dr. Prasant Mohapatra is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and serves as the Dean and Vice-Provost of Graduate at the University of California, Davis. He is a former Endowed Chair of the Department of Computer Science. In the past, he has held Visiting Professor positions at AT & T, Intel Corporation, Panasonic Technologies, Institute of Infocomm Research (I2R), Singapore, and National ICT Australia (NICTA), University of Padova, Italy, Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), and Yonsei University, South Korea. He was the Editor-in- Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, and has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Transaction on Parallel and Distributed Systems, ACM WINET, and Ad Hoc Networks. He has been on the program/organizational committees of several international conferences.

Dr. Mohapatra is the recipient of an Outstanding Engineering Alumni Award from Penn State University, an Outstanding Research Faculty Award from the College of Engineering at the University of California, and the HP Labs Innovation Research Award winner for three years. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and AAAS. Dr. Mohapatra’s research interests are in the areas of wireless networks, mobile communications, sensor networks, and Internet protocols.


Vipin Tyagi, Executive Director, C-DOT, India

Keynote title: M2M Standardisation & Security in the context of Smart Cities

Abstract:  The industry has given a strong forecast of momentous growth in connected M2M devices. These would be in the order of billions in the next five years. Many sectors like healthcare, public safety, retail, facilities would be impacted by this.  Today’s telecom networks are designed predominantly for H2H (Human to Human) communications. In the present scenario, H2M (Human to Machine) and M2M communications are restricted to standalone systems which generally do not communicate over mobile networks. Thus, there is a need for standardization of these communications to enable the market to take off. In this direction, much has been done by SDOs like ETSI, TIA, TTA, TTC and others in developing end to end architecture for supporting multiple M2M applications.

The threat landscape in the Internet today is applicable for the M2M eco-system as well. The exponential increase in connected M2M devices which are basically weak embedded devices with their vulnerabilities is a cause of great concern. The implications of security breaches on sectors like critical infrastructure facilities, transportation, health & home are humongous. The security risks generally emanate from unprotected devices and design flaws in applications. Various tools and procedures that leverage already deployed security infrastructures are to be made use of to provide secure services. As security is a chain, ALL links of the chain must be made secure.

While this provides opportunity of USD Trillions and more, there are challenges of security, interoperability and semantic compatibility. Standardisation of interactions between multiple entities is crucial for sustainable development of M2M communications and networks.

 


Raghu Krishnapuram, Professor, Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore, India

Title: Deep Learning for Smart City Applications

Abstract: Deep learning has taken the IT industry by storm and is spreading fast into many application domains. This talk will provide an overview of the hype and reality behind recent advances in deep learning and its potential use in monitoring and controlling large scale cyberphysical systems such as smart cities. The talk will also describe potential smart city applications of deep learning in areas such as intelligent transportation, public safety, health services, and emergency response.

Bio: Raghu Krishnapuram is currently Head, R&D and IP Cell, as well as Professor, Computer Science and Engineering, at Ramaiah Institute of Technology, Bangalore. He was until recently Program Manager, Financial Services, Xerox Research Centre – India. Earlier, he worked at IBM T J Watson Center, Yorktown Heights, New York, where he was a technical leader for cognitive computing research. From 2000 to 2013, Raghu held various leadership positions at IBM Research India. During the last 4 years of his tenure at IBM Research India, he served as Associate Director, where he led projects in the area of “Knowledge, Information, and Smarter Planet Solutions”, with a particular focus on emerging markets. He also served as a relationship manager for IBM’s services divisions such as IBM Global Process Services and IBM Business Services.

Raghu is an alumnus of IIT-Bombay. After graduating with a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 1987, he worked in the academia in the US for 13 years, initially at the University of Missouri and later at Colorado School of Mines, where he was a full professor. Raghu has published about 170 papers in journals and conferences, many with a very high citation count. He has filed over 40 patent disclosures out of which 11 have been granted by the US Patent Office. Raghu has been recognized as a Master Inventor by IBM and has served on the Technology Council of the IBM Academy of Technology. He is also a Fellow of IEEE and the Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE).

Website: http://www.msrit.edu/department/faculty-detail.html?dept=cse&ID=2


Arpan PalArpan Pal, Principal Scientist and Head, Embedded Systems and Robotics, TCS Research and Innovation

Title: Software-Defined Robotics

Abstract: Research firm International Data Corp’s (IDC) Manufacturing Insights Worldwide Commercial Robotics program recently unveiled its top 10 predictions for worldwide robotics for 2017. One of the top 10 predictions is the “Rise of the Software-defined robots” (http://www.zdnet.com/article/the-future-of-robotics/). It states that by 2020, 60 percent of robots will depend on cloud-based software to define new skills, cognitive capabilities, and application programs, leading to the formation of a robotics cloud marketplace. Such robots will not only be used in Industrial settings but also in Smart Cities and Smart Homes.

The purpose if this talk is to first introduce Software-defined Robotics and outline its need in the market. It then elaborates how Software Defined Robotics architecture can be built from individual components of Software-defined Sensing and Analytics (popularly known as Internet-of-Things or IoT), Software-defined computing (also known as Cloud and Edge Computing) and Software-defined Networking (SDN) followed by robotics-specific components of Software-defined Planning and Actuation. Each of the above are discussed in the context of Software-defined Robotics with relevant application use cases and examples. Finally an integrated system to combine all the above components is presented as an approach towards Software-defined Robotics. It is shown how such a system can speed up design, development and deployment of robotics applications by domain experts with limited knowledge in IoT, Robotics, Networking, AI and Analytics.

Bio: Arpan Pal received both his B.Tech and M.Tech from Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India in Electronics and Telecommunications and PhD. from Aalborg University Denmark. He has more than 24 years of experience in the area of Signal Processing, Communication and Real-time Embedded Systems. Currently he is with Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), where, as Principal Scientist, he is heading the Embedded Systems and Robotics Research in TCS. His current research interests include Affordable Sensing and associated Signal Informatics for Healthcare and Machine Predictive Maintenance; Perception, Control and Navigation for Robots and Drones; and Distributed Platforms and Systems for IoT and Robotics. He had worked earlier in Missile Seeker Signal Processing at DRDO and also in Interactive TV and Set-top boxes at Macmet Interactive Technologies.

Arpan has around 95 publications till date in reputed Journals and Conferences. He has also authored a complete book on IoT which is published by Artech House, USA. He has filed for more than 80 patents and has 24 patents granted to him.  He is on the editorial board for reputed journals like ACM Transactions on Embedded Computing Systems, IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing and IT Professional Magazine from IEEE Computer Society. He is in the program committee of various eminent conferences and is a senior member of IEEE.

Home Page: http://research-innovation.tcs.com/research/Pages/Pal-Arpan.aspx

Linked In: http://in.linkedin.com/in/arpanpal

Google Scholar: http://scholar.google.co.in/citations?user=hkKS-xsAAAAJ&hl=en


Radhakant DasRadhakant Das, TCS, Network Solution Group

Title: Artificial Intelligence to ease the Telco transformation journey from legacy to a generation beyond 5G.

Abstract: AI platforms are differentiated from conventional RPA with its self learning ability. The AI engine need to learn from the ecosystem which is matured and still has not reached end of life. There are common layers of Technology and Network echo systems which continue along with evolution path. Early deployment of AI gets the benefit of overcoming the learning curve to perform in much efficient manner with the evolved networks. The human resources of TELCOs either get obsolete or do not get enough time from the regular schedule to acquire skill set for evolved networks. AI helps to keep the resources stay updated on new technology deployments. Network evolution journey has taken a shape on delivering services along with incumbent networks rather than getting away from previous generation technologies.5G architecture hugely compliments to AI framework of Automation on both planning and Engineering. Beyond 5G, AI has even a greater role to play, with use cases such as Satellite and Terrestrial networks constituting heterogeneous networks delivering homogeneous services, handling network outages in mission critical applications.

Bio: Radhakant Das is currently serving TCS, Network Solution Group on Telecommunication domain. He is telecom professional with more than 20 years of practice experience in various domains of Telecom and OTT. During his professional career, Radhakant has been instrumental in designing end to end Mobile networks and product innovations in India and Indonesia. In TCS Radhakant leads the practice of Cognitive Automation and application of Artificial Intelligence in Telecom Networks.


Punit RathodTitle: Network Architecture for Rural Broadband Connectivity

Bio: Dr. Punit Rathod is a Research Scientist with the Next Generation and Standards Group of Intel and works on prototyping and path finding activities. Prior to this, he has dabbled with entrepreneurship for a brief time in his start-up on emergency communications and a researcher in the IIT Bombay for LTE-WiFi inter working. He has represented IIT Bombay at the 3GPP RAN2 wireless standards meetings. He has done his PhD from IIT Bombay and has been working in the wireless networking domain specifically on resource scheduling, network protocols, testbeds and performance analysis for more than a decade .