Pervasive Computing in the New Era of AI

Pervasive computing aims at creating a smart environment with ubiquitous interconnected devices that provides unobtrusive services to the users, improving users' experience and quality of life without requiring them to know the underlying technologies. The recent development of IoT, which has largely evolved out of pervasive computing, add more to the list more features like data-driven and user participation and has wider areas of applications. The goal of pervasive computing is to make computer devices and systems "smart", being context-aware, responsive, and adaptive to the user's context and activity. The recent developments of AI bring us many pieces of innovation and technologies that make machines and people not only faster and more efficient but also smarter. This panel discusses whether AI development changes the way of R&D and creates new opportunities of pervasive computing, and how AI technologies can be leveraged to accelerate the impact and enhance the performance of pervasive computing systems and applications.

Moderator

Jiannong Cao
Dr. Cao is currently a chair professor and head of the Department of Computing at Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hung Hom, Hong Kong. His research interests include parallel and distributed computing, wireless networks and mobile computing, big data and cloud computing, pervasive computing, and fault tolerant computing.. He has co-authored 3 books, co-edited 9 books, and published over 300 papers in major international journals and conference proceedings. He is a fellow of IEEE, a senior member of China Computer Federation, and a member of ACM. He was the Chair of the Technical Committee on Distributed Computing of IEEE Computer Society from 2012 - 2014. Dr. Cao has served as an associate editor and a member of the editorial boards of many international journals, including ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, IEEE Transacitons on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems, IEEE Networks, Pervasive and Mobile Computing Journal, and Peer-to-Peer Networking and Applications. He has also served as a chair and member of organizing / program committees for many international conferences, including PERCOM, INFOCOM, ICDCS, IPDPS, ICPP, RTSS, DSN, ICNP, SRDS, MASS, PRDC, ICC, GLOBECOM, and WCNC. Dr. Cao received the BSc degree in computer science from Nanjing University, Nanjing, China, and the MSc and the Ph.D degrees in computer science from Washington State University, Pullman, WA, USA.

Panelists

Sajal K. Das
Sajal K. Das is the Chair of Computer Science and Daniel St. Clair Endowed Chair at Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla. During 2008-2011, he served the NSF as a Program Director in the Computer Networks and Systems division. His research interests include wireless sensor networks, mobile and pervasive computing, cyber-physical systems, smart environments including smart healthcare and smart grid, big data analytics, IoT, distributed and cloud computing, security, and social networks. He has directed numerous funded projects and published extensively with more than 650 research articles in high quality journals and refereed conference proceedings. He holds 5 US patents, co-authored 52 book chapters and four books titled, Smart Environments: Technology, Protocols, and Applications (2005), Handbook on Securing Cyber-Physical Critical Infrastructure: Foundations and Challenges (2012), Mobile Agents in Distributed Computing and Networking (2012), and Principles of Cyber-Physical Systems: An Interdisciplinary Approach (2017). His h-index is 73 with more than 22,500 citations according to Google Scholar. He received 10 Best Paper Awards at prestigious conferences like IEEE PerCom and ACM MobiCom. He is a recipient of numerous awards for research, teaching and mentoring including the IEEE Computer Society's Technical Achievement Award for pioneering contributions to sensor networks and mobile computing. He serves as the founding Editor-in-Chief of Elsevier's Pervasive and Mobile Computing journal, and as Associate Editor several journals including IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks. A (co-) founder of IEEE PerCom, IEEE WoWMoM, and IEEE SMARTCOMP conferences, he has served on numerous conference committees as General Chair, Technical Program Chair, or Program Committee member. He is an IEEE Fellow.

Christian Becker
Christian Backer studied Computer Science (Informatik) at the Universities of Karlsruhe and Kaiserslautern. He received his Diploma in 1996. Following to this, he worked as a researcher at the distributed systems and operating systems group at the University of Frankfurt. He received his PhD in 2001 with a thesis about "Quality of Service Management in Distributed Object Systems". In 2001 he joined the distributed systems group at the University of Stuttgart. His research focussed on system support for Pervasive Computing and Context-Aware Computing. In 2004 he received the venia legendi (Habilitation) for Computer Science (Informatik) with a thesis about "System Support for Context-Aware Computing". In 2006 Christian was a visiting professor for Distributed Systems at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Since September 2006 he is a full professor at the University of Mannheim where he holds the chair for Information Systems II (Lehrstuhl für Wirtschaftsinformatik II). Christian's research interests are distributed systems and Context-Aware Computing. He is an associate editor of Springer's Electronic Commerce Research Journal. Furthermore, he is a member of the IEEE Intelligent Ubiquitous Computing Task Force and of the steering committee of the special interest group on distributed systems in Germany (erweitertes Leitungsgremium der Fachgruppe Kommunikation und Verteilte Systeme der Gesellschaft für Informatik e.V.). Christian is involved in a number of international conferences - e.g., IEEE PerCom, UbiComp, IEEE MDM, Pervasive - where he serves on the technical program committee or as conference officer. He published more than 130 papers in international journals and conferences.

George Roussos
George Roussos holds a B.Sc. in Mathematics from University of Athens, Greece, an M.Sc. in Numerical Analysis and Computing from University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, UK, and a Ph.D. from Imperial College of Science Technology and Medicine, University of London, UK. Before joining Birkbeck College in 2002 he worked as the Research and Development Manager for a multinational information technology corporation in Athens, Greece; as the Internet security officer for the Ministry of Defence, Athens; and as a research fellow for Imperial College, London. He is currently the Head of the Experimental Data Science group at Birkbeck and the Professor of Pervasive computing. His current research interests include the effects of social activity on system architectures, mobile health, and mechanisms to support navigation and findability. He is a member of the ACM and the IEEE Computer Society.

Yu Wang
Dr. Yu Wang is a Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (UNC Charlotte). He holds a Ph.D. from Illinois Institute of Technology, an MEng and a BEng from Tsinghua University, all in Computer Science. His research interest includes wireless networks, mobile social networks, smart sensing and mobile computing. His research has been continuously supported by federal agencies including US National Science Foundation, US Department of Transportation, and National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC). He has published over 150 papers in peer reviewed journals and conferences, with four best paper awards. He has served as general chair, program chair, program committee member, etc. for many international conferences (such as IEEE IPCCC, IEEE INFOCOM, ACM MobiHoc, IEEE ICDCS, IEEE GLOBECOM, IEEE ICC). He has served as Editorial Board Member of several international journals, including IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems. He is a recipient of Ralph E. Powe Junior Faculty Enhancement Awards from Oak Ridge Associated Universities (2006), Outstanding Faculty Research Award from College of Computing and Informatics at UNC Charlotte (2008), and Overseas Young Scholars Cooperation Research Fund from NSFC (2014). He is a senior member of the ACM, IEEE, and IEEE Communications Society.