Title: MulSemedia Sensor Networks: A New Frontier in Research
Speaker: Prof. Ian F. Akyildiz
Abstract: Although the past several decades have seen significant progress in the development of multimedia sensor networks, the multimedia only stimulates sight and hearing, neglecting three other fundamental human senses, namely, touch, smell, and taste. In recent years, the emergence of extended reality (XR), digital twins, digital currency, holographic-type communication systems, and Metaverse, requires all five human senses must be addressed and stimulated to create a fully immersive experience for users. Thus, MultiSensory media (MulSemedia) capturing all five senses will play a critical role for next generation sensor networks research in the next decade. This talk provides an overview of the history, background, use cases, existing research, devices, and standards of mulsemedia. Additionally, the challenges in mulsemedia research from the perspective of wireless sensor networking are discussed. In particular, the research challenges, such as, integrated communication/sensing, mulsemedia streaming, scheduling, intra- and inter mulsimedia synchronization, AI/ML algorithms with LLM (Large Language Models), semantic communication, are presented which will facilitate the design and commercialization of next generation mulsemedia sensor networks. The potential of 6G wireless systems to address these challenges is highlighted, and several research directions that can advance mulsemedia communications are identified.
Bio: I.F. Akyildiz (Life Fellow, IEEE and Fellow of ACM) received the B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Erlangen–Nürnberg, Germany, in 1978, 1981, and 1984, respectively. He served as the Ken Byers Chair Professor in Telecommunications, the Past Chair of the Telecom Group at the ECE, and the Director of the Broadband Wireless Networking Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology, from 1985 to 2020. He serves on the Advisory Board of the Technology Innovation Institute (TII) Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, since June 2020. He is the Founder and President of the Truva Inc, a consulting company based in Atlanta, GA, USA) since 1989. He is the Founder and the Editor-in-Chief of the newly established of International Telecommunication Union Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies (ITU J-FET) since August 2020. Currently he is an Adjunct Professor with the University of Helsinki, Finland and University of Iceland since 2020. He had many other international affiliations during his career and established research centers in Spain, South Africa, Finland, Saudi Arabia, Russia and India. Dr. Akyildiz is an IEEE Fellow since 1996, and ACM Fellow since 1997. He received numerous awards from IEEE, ACM, and other professional organizations, including ACM Sigmobile Award (2003), Humboldt Award (2014-2016 and 2023) from Germany and Tubitak Award (2011) from Turkey. In September 2023, according to Google Scholar his h-index is 137 and the total number of citations to his articles is more than 143+K. His current research interests include Mulsemedia Communication, Networking 2030, Metaverse, Hologram and Extended Reality Communication, 6G/7G wireless systems, TeraHertz Communication, Underwater Communication.
Title: The Price of Intelligence in Internet-of-Everything Systems
Speaker: Prof. Carla Fabiana Chiasserini
Abstract: Many of today’s applications designed for Internet of Everything (IoE) systems include as one of their essential components one or more machine learning models. Often, such models are deep neural networks (DNN), with a large and complex structure. A relevant challenge is thus how to make such DNNs suitable for the resources offered by the IoE, and how to tailor the DNNs to the heterogeneity exhibited by the devices composing the IoE. An effective approach to address this challenge consists in leveraging the emerging concept of dynamic DNNs with early exits combined with the split computing paradigm. This talk will discuss the potentiality, as well as the hurdles, of both dynamic DNN structures and split computing in a network and computing system where resources may be limited or heavily skewed, and most of the system nodes communicate wirelessly.
Bio: Carla Fabiana Chiasserini is Full Professor at Politecnico di Torino, Italy, and a Research Associate with the CNR-IEIIT and CNIT. She was a Visiting Researcher at UC San Diego (1998-2003), and a Visiting Professor at Monash University (2012, 2016), the Berlin Technische Universität (2021, 2022), and the HPI, Potsdam University (Germany). She is currently a WASP Guest Professor with Chalmers University, Sweden. She is an IEEE Fellow. She is the director of the Advanced Wireless Experience Lab at Politecnico di Torino. Her research interests include NextG Networks, Edge Computing, Machine Learning, and Mobile Autonomous Systems. She has published over 350 journal and conference papers and has received several awards for her scientific work. She serves as Associate Editor-in-Chief of Computer Communications and as Editor-at-Large of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking.
Title: Cryptographic Frameworks for IoT devices in light of AI and Post Quantum technologies
Speaker: Dr. Najwa Aaraj
Abstract: IoT devices are increasingly being deployed for a multitude of functionalities, mainly covering critical infrastructure. Such devices are inherently insecure, with security being thought through in the aftermaths of mass deployments. Furthermore, the diverse range of such embedded devices, coupled with their energy constrained nature and the lack of cryptographic and security standards makes IoT vulnerabilities even more pronounced. In this talk, we cover at a high level embedded cryptographic technologies and lightweight primitives and protocols applied to embedded systems. We also explore the role of cryptographic agility frameworks and machine learning to address security concerns in IoT devices.
Bio: Dr Najwa Aaraj is the Chief Researcher at the Cryptography Research Centre and Autonomous Robotics Research Centre at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII). Dr Aaraj leads the research and development of cryptographic technologies, including post-quantum cryptography software libraries and hardware implementations, cryptanalysis, and applied machine learning for cryptographic technologies. She also leads the development of advanced autonomy stacks for autonomous platforms across multiple domains. Dr Aaraj earned a PhD with Highest Distinction focused on Applied Cryptography and Embedded Systems Security from Princeton University (USA). She has extensive expertise in applied cryptography, trusted platforms, security architecture for embedded systems, software exploit detection and prevention systems, and biometrics. She has over 15 years of experience with global firms, working in multiple geographies from Australia to the United States. Before TII, Dr Aaraj was Senior Vice President at DarkMatter, a cyber-security leader based in the UAE. She was formerly at Booz & Company, where she worked with clients globally. She also held a Research Fellow position with the Embedded Systems Security Group at IBM T.J. Watson Security Research in NY, and with the Intel Security Research Group in Portland, Oregon, where she worked on Trusted Platform Modules. Dr Aaraj is on the Strategic Advisory Group at Paladin Capital Group (Cyber Venture Capital) and Adjunct Professor at the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence (Machine Learning Research Group) and Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology Graduate University, Japan. In addition, she is an Adviser to multiple security and Machine Learning startups. She received a Special Recognition award at the Arab Woman Awards 2021, held in partnership with the United Nations to recognise the notable achievements of the region’s women, and the Princeton Wu Research Award.