Keynote Title: Ubiquitous charging infrastructure
As the EV technology for the driving train entered the phase of maturity with many superior performances, significant progress in battery technologies ushed in the era of electrical vehicle proliferation. Battery-power electric vehicles (BEV) are now in price parity with internal combustion engine based (ICE) cars, even being more competitive. Many countries/regions now have aggressive mandates towards zero-emission to combat global climate change. A major remaining obstacle is the availability of ultra-fast charging required for long-haul driving and ubiquitous charging for everyday driving. We will discuss the challenges facing ultra-fast charging and available solutions coming on the horizon. We will provide a new thinking in achieving ubiquitous charging infrastructure by leveraging existing and readily-available technologies. For autonomous vehicles, wireless power charging provides a path forward. The newly-founded IEEE Transportation Electrification Council (TEC) is providing much-needed leadership in the technical space to help pushing for ubiquitous charging infrastructure on a global scale.
Dr. Tan has served as Distinguished Engineer, Fellow, Chief Engineer-Power
Conversion, Program Manager, Department Manager, and Center Director in a US Fortune
500 corporation. Don earned his PhD from Caltech and is an IEEE fellow. Unusually
prolific as a visionary technical leader in ultra-efficient power conversion
and electronic energy systems, he has pioneered breakthrough innovations with numerous
high-impact industry firsts and record performances that received commendations
from the highest level of US Government. He has developed hundreds of designs
and thousands of hardware units deployed for space applications without a
single on-orbit failure. His suite of world-class electronics performed
flawlessly on the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), located one million miles
away, achieving world-record-breaking performances
Dr. AshiteyTrebi-Ollennu is the Chief Engineer of
Mobility and Robotics Systems Section, Product Delivery Manager, for the
InSight Mars Mission Instrument Deployment System, Instrument Deployment System
operations Team Chief and Technical Group Supervisor of Robotics Systems Group
at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Caltech, where he has been since 1999. He
was born in Accra, Ghana. He received his Ph.D. degree in control systems from
Royal Military College of Science, Cranfield University, United Kingdom in 1996
and B.Eng. (Hons) from Queen Mary College, University of London, U.K. in 1991.
He was a research scholar at Institute of Complex Engineered Systems, Carnegie
Mellon University.
He received the 2008 NASA Exceptional Engineering
Achievement Medal for his contributions to the Mars Exploration Rover mission,
2007 Outstanding Engineer Award from IEEE Region 6, 2007 Sir Monty Finniston
Achievement Medal from Institution of Engineering and Technology, U.K., 2010
Specialist Silver Award from the Royal Aeronautical Society, U.K. and The 21st
Century Trailblazer Award in Systems Engineering from the U.S.A. National
Society of Black Engineers, at the 2012 NSBE Aerospace Systems Conference. Dr.
Trebi-Ollennu is a recipient of over a dozen NASA Group Achievement Awards.
Dr. Trebi-Ollennu is a Fellow of the Institution of
Engineering and Technology, U. K., and a Fellow of the Royal Aeronautical
Society, U.K. Senior Member IEEE RAS and IEEE SMC. Dr. Trebi-Ollennu is also a
fellow of the Ghana Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has served as a Guest
Editor of the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Magazine, Special Issue on
Mars Exploration Rovers (June 2006). Dr. Trebi-Ollennu has been on PhD
committees at the Robotic Institute of Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh.
Keynote Title: Role of Machine Learning in Enhancing the Security and Efficiency of Computer Communication Networks
With the increasing complexity and scale of modern networks, traditional methods of management, optimization, and security are becoming less effective. In this talk, we will explore the transformative role of machine learning (ML) in advancing research and applications within computer networks. ML offers powerful solutions by enabling dynamic resource allocation, improving network security through anomaly detection, optimizing traffic flow, and enhancing fault detection. We will particularly focus on critical areas such as channel estimation, node authentication, and data integrity, while exploring the use of powerful ML techniques including anomaly detection and self-supervised learning. As an example application, we will use Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) to highlight some of these research issues.
Dr. Ashfaq Khokhar has an illustrative academic and entrepreneurship career that spans over 30 years. Since 2017, he is serving as Professor and Palmer Department Chair of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Iowa State University. Dr. Khokhar was previously Chair of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology (2013-2016). Before that, he was a Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Dr. Khokhar was named as Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineer (IEEE) in 2009. He is also the recipient of NSF Career Award and numerous best paper awards. He has founded two startup companies: Cloud Health Solutions and Video Analytics, where he serves as the Founding Partner and Chief Technology Officer (CTO).
Dr. Khokhar’s current research is focused on health care and machine learning. He is also considered a leading expert in the area of high-performance solutions for multimedia applications, especially those that are data or communication intensive. He has published over 360 papers in peer reviewed journals and conferences. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the United States Army, the Department of Homeland Security and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
Dr. Khokhar earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Engineering and Technology in Lahore, Pakistan; his master’s degree in computer engineering from Syracuse University; and his Ph.D. in computer engineering from the University of Southern California.
Keynote Title: 5G/6G Security and AI/ML – Opportunities and Challenges
Next generation cellular networks such as 5G and 6G promise to support emerging applications such as enhanced mobile broadband, mission critical applications for the first responder, remote surgery, and industrial IOT among others. While Network Function Virtualization and Software Defined Networking open up the door for programmable networks and rapid service creation, these also offer both security opportunities, and introduces additional challenges and complexities. The talk focuses on various security challenges and opportunities introduced by 5G enablers such as Hypervisor, Virtual Network Functions (VNFs), SDN controller, orchestrator, network slicing, cloud RAN, edge cloud, and virtual security function. This talk introduces threat taxonomy for 5G security from an end-to-end system perspective including, interfaces, protocols, potential threats introduced by these enablers, and associated mitigation techniques. Additionally, this talk highlights how AI/ML can help enhance security features of these networks and elaborates some adverse effects of AI/ML. Finally, the talk introduces some of the ongoing activities within various standards communities including open source consortiums, large scale NSF testbeds, and illustrates a few deployment use case scenarios.
Ashutosh Dutta is Chief 5G Strategist and APL Fellow at Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Labs, USA. He serves as the director of Doctor of Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. In the past, he served as the chair of ECE department of Engineering for Professionals at JHU, Director of Technology Security at AT&T, CTO of Wireless at NIKSUN, Senior Scientist in Telcordia Research, Director of Central Research Facility at Columbia University, and Computer Engineer with TATA Motors. He has authored more than 110 technical papers, one book published by John and Wiley, and 5 book chapters, and has 31 issued patents. Ashutosh is recipient of IEEE MGA’s 2009 Leadership Award, IEEE-USA’s 2010 Professional Leadership Award, 2022 IEEE-USA George F. McClure Citation of Honor and 2022 IEEE North American Region Exceptional Service Award. Ashutosh served as Member-At-Large for IEEE Communications Society for 2020-2025 and Distinguished Lecturer from 2018-2021. Ashutosh was inducted into Internet IPV6 Hall of Famer in 2024. He co-founded the IEEE STEM conference (ISEC) in 2011 and has served its co-chair since then. Ashutosh currently serves as the Chair for IEEE Industry Connection’s O-RAN activities and 6G. As the Founding co-chair of IEEE Future Networks he led technology roadmap, publications, standardization, testbed, education, industry engagement, conferences and workshops in the area of 5G and 6G, while keeping a focus on humanitarian needs. Ashutosh is a Distinguished Alumnus of NIT Rourkela with a BS in Electrical Engineering, MS in Computer Science from NJIT, and a Ph.D. in EE from Columbia University. Ashutosh is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Distinguished member.
Talk Title: Digital Twins for Automotive Predictive Maintenance
Digital Twins are a novel construct to provide insights into the physical artifacts, such as computers, automobiles, planes, even bridges, and many other physical objects. By combining ground truth measured from physical objects with the simulation based on models, digital twins can conduct various functions, such as extensive analysis of past and present behaviors as well as what-if analysis of possible future scenarios. It enables physical object owners to evaluate risk of operations on physical twins before these operations are conducted. In this talk, I will present a landscape of failures in today’s computing systems, and then discuss how these could be integrated into a digital twin and how digital twins could be used to effectively uncover the failures and predict future ones. So, effectively, demonstrating how using these digital twins we can improve dependability of computer systems.
Jyotika is a Director,
Engineering Architecture at Synopsys, leading quality, reliability and automotive
functional safety research, pathfinding and architectures for in-field silicon
health use cases. Prior to Synopsys, she held Principal Engineer and Lead
Technologist roles at Intel Corporation and NVIDIA, leading corporate-wide
Functional Safety architectures and strategies for automotive and avionics
systems.
Jyotika also serves as the 2024 President of the global IEEE Computer Society,
overseeing overall IEEE-CS programs and operations. She leads and influences
several international standardization initiatives in the area of RAS/functional
safety across Standards Development Organizations, in collaboration with IEEE.
Jyotika led the development of the IEEE 2851-2023 standard on Functional Safety
Data Format for Interoperability. She now chairs the IEEE P2851.1
standardization initiative on Functional Safety interoperability with
reliability.
For her leadership in
international safety standardization, Jyotika was awarded the 2023 IEEE SA
Standards Medallion. And for her leadership in service, she was awarded the
IEEE Computer Society Golden Core Award in 2022. In 2024, Jyotika was awarded
the IEEE Women in Technology and Leadership Award for outstanding contributions
to engineering and technology, the empowerment of diverse populations and the
advancement of women in STEM.
Jyotika is an appointed member (Industrial Expert) of the Board of Studies for
the Department of Computer Engineering and Information Technology at VJTI,
Mumbai. She is also recognized as a Distinguished Alumna of her alma mater. She
has authored patents and many technical publications in various international
conferences and journals. Jyotika has also pioneered and founded international IEEE
conferences in the field of dependable technologies for automotive and data
centers.
Keynote Title: Impact of IEEE Computer Society in Advancing Software Engineering and Emerging Technologies
Dr. Hironori Washizaki is a Professor and the Associate Dean of the Research Promotion Division at Waseda University in Tokyo and a Visiting Professor at the National Institute of Informatics. He also works in the industry as Outside Director of eXmotion. He is advisor of University of Human Environments. Hironori currently serves as President-Elect 2024 (and President 2025) of the IEEE Computer Society to lead its activities and future directions. He has been on CS BoG since 2021. He has led professional and educational activities, including the evolution of the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) and organizing educational courses and certifications at the CS Professional and Educational Activities Board (PEAB). He was awarded Golden Core Member, Distinguished Contributor, and Spirit of the Computer Society Award from CS. He serves as Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing (TETC), Steering Committee Member of the IEEE Conference on Software Engineering Education and Training (CSEE&T), and Advisory Committee Member of the IEEE CS flagship conference COMPSAC. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and a Professional Member of IEEE-Eta Kappa Nu. He has been the general chair and program chair of multiple IEEE conferences, including ICST, CSEE&T, and SIoT/SISA of COMPSAC. Additionally, he has been the Chair of the CS Japan Chapter.
