Invited Speakers
Prof. Naresh Agarwal
Simmons University, USA
Naresh Agarwal is a Professor and Director of the
Information Science & Technology Concentration at
the School of Library & Information Science at
Simmons University, Boston, Massachusetts. Naresh’s
research area is information behavior and knowledge
management. His first book ‘Exploring Context in
Information Behavior: Seeker, situation,
surroundings, and shared identities’ was published
by Morgan & Claypool in 2018. His second book was
published in 2021 as 'Engineering to Ikigai: 25
Journeys towards Purpose' in South Asia and 'You
know the glory, not the story: 25 Journeys towards
Ikigai' internationally. He has been a
keynote/invited speaker at workshops and conferences
in Bangladesh, France, India, Iran, Japan, Pakistan,
South Africa, and the US. Naresh is the
Immediate-Past President of the Association for
Information Science & Technology (ASIS&T). At
ASIS&T, he has held various leadership positions,
including co-chairing its Annual Meeting in 2017 and
founding the South Asia Chapter. In 2012, he was
awarded the ASIS&T James M. Cretsos Leadership
Award. You can learn more about Naresh at
nareshagarwal.com and projectonenessworld.com.
Speech Title: Understanding the User's Context
Abstract: Information seekers, service
providers, and system designers often lack the full
context of a person's information need. The context
may vary based on several factors such as personal
characteristics, the task at hand or the situation,
source characteristics, etc. Yet researchers and
system designers have yet to agree on what context
really means. While there have been various research
studies incorporating context, as well as
conferences focused on the topic over the years,
there lacks a common definition of context, what its
boundaries are, and what elements and variables
comprise context. Does the context create the
situation in which the user interacts with
information or technology, or does the user
‘produce’ the context at the point of interaction?
Drawing from his 2018 book on Context, Professor
Agarwal will attempt to map the conceptual space of
context in the user's interaction with information.
He will discuss the differing conceptual
understandings of context, the contextual elements
identified in prior studies, and how the two can
relate to each other. Can the Contextual Identity
Framework provide some of the answers? The talk
should help the audience appreciate how by working
towards a shared understanding of context, we can
better support the end users of our systems.
Assoc. Prof. Hazura Zulzalil
Universiti Putra Malaysia, Malaysia
Hazura Zulzalil received Bachelor of Computer
Science in 1995, Master of Science in 1998 and PhD
in Software Engineering in 2011 from Universiti
Putra Malaysia (UPM). Hazura Zulzalil joined UPM as
a tutor in 1995 and was appointed as a lecturer in
1998. She was promoted to a senior lecturer in 2008
and currently she is an associate professor at the
Department of Software Engineering and Information
System. She has successfully supervised and
co-supervised 14 PhD students, 4 master by research
students and 24 master by coursework students. Her
research interests include software requirement
engineering, software measurement, software quality
and multi-criteria evaluation. To date she has
successfully secured 13 research grants as the
principal investigator and co-researcher and has
published 77 journal and 39 conference articles.
Currently, she is appointed as a committee member of
the Board of Studies and external examiners for
Software Engineering Program in a few higher
Malaysian institutions. She is also a committee
member of Malaysian Standard for NSC 07/TC 11,
member of Malaysian Software Engineering Interest
Group (MySEIG) and associate member of the National
Council of Professor.
Speech Title: An Integrated User Stories
Prioritization Approach in Agile-Scrum Software
Development to Produce High-Quality and Sustainable
Software
Abstract: Setting user story priorities is
crucial to the quality and profitability of an agile
scrum software development project. However, in
agile requirements, prioritising non-functional user
stories is frequently overlooked. Non-functional
user stories are typically only reminded towards the
end of the software development cycle, added to the
project rather late in the process, and usually done
in ad-hoc. Current study also demonstrates that
ignoring non-functional user stories might have a
negative impact on the software and increase the
cost of future fixes. Therefore, it is critical to
conduct user story prioritisation early in the
software development process by integrating both
functional and non-functional user stories. Hence,
this study proposes an approach to address both
functional and non-functional user stories during
the prioritisation process. This approach uses a
triangular fuzzy number to prioritize non-functional
user stories based on the importance degree of
existing functional user stories. The effectiveness
of the suggested approach is assessed empirically
and is also validated by Agile-Scrum expert to
confirm its applicability in the real world. The
findings of the study will assist Agile software
developers to develop high-quality, sustainable
software in the future.
Assoc. Prof.
Norjihan Abdul Ghani
Universiti Malaya, Malaysia
Norjihan is currently an Associate Professor in
Department of Information Systems, FCSIT, Universiti
Malaya. Her PhD in Computer Science from Universiti
Teknologi Malaysia (2013), and her Master in
Information Technology (2000) from Universiti
Kebangsaan Malaysia and she obtained her Bachelor
Degree in Information Technolgy from Universiti
Utara Malaysia (2000). Currently, she is the Head of
Department for Information Systems since 7 October
2019. Her research interest is in the areas of
information security which she focuses more on
information privacy, data security and data
protection where it has been applied in several
domains such as smart transportation, smart health
and many more soon. She has interest and welcome any
collaborations with other researchers from any
universities in the same field domains.
Speech Title: Enabling the Secured Data Sharing
in Intelligent Transportation Systems Environment
Abstract: The Internet of Things (IoT) is
fundamentally transforming the transportation
industry. Next generation Intelligent Transportation
Systems (ITS) will optimize the movement of people
and goods which then more personal data is being
collected, processed, and stored in the system. The
ITS has the ability to provide more efficient,
safer, and enjoyable experience for people. Data
transmission is important in ITS, however, ensuring
security and privacy is crucial to satisfy
Confidentiality, Integrity, and Availability (CIA).
Dealing with sensitive information in a
communication network, confidentiality is clearly
one of the necessary security services that require
consideration. Confidentiality enables devices and
parties in the ITS environment to communicate with
one another in a secure way without disclosing
information to uninvolved parties. This talk will
focus on the importance of security and privacy
specifically in ITS and what are the challenges so
far.
Assoc. Prof. Sabrina Ahmad
Universiti Teknikal Malaysia Melaka, Malaysia
Dr. Sabrina Ahmad is an Associate Professor in
Software Engineering at the Faculty of Information
and Communication Technology, Universiti Teknikal
Malaysia Melaka. She obtained her PhD in Computer
Science from The University of Western Australia in
2012 under the supervision of Professor Mark
Reynolds and Professor Terry Woodings. Throughout
her career, she has experiences as Head of Software
Engineering Department, Coordinator for Centre of
Excellence (Centre for Advanced Computing
Technology), and Deputy Dean (Research &
Postgraduate Studies). She endeavours to maintain
the bridge between academia and practitioners and
therefore, while being an academic, she also applies
the knowledge through consultation projects with
various industries. She is also a Certified
Professional Requirements Engineer, a Certified
Tester and a Certified Professional IT Architect.
Speech Title: How a Boilerplate Technique
improves Software Requirements Specification?
Abstract: The natural language (NL) is commonly
utilized and recognized as a valuable tool to
facilitate understanding among non-technical readers
of software requirements specifications (SRS),
despite its numerous weaknesses. Writing a
high-quality SRS that ensures effective
communication among stakeholders is a challenging
task due to the diverse knowledge, social
backgrounds, and experiences of the individuals
involved. Moreover, the effort, skills, and
experience required to write an SRS directly impact
the cost of software development. Therefore, an
emerging boilerplate technique is seen as a
practical solution to generate requirements
statements in a controlled environment, aiming to
minimize the occurrence of defects. This technique
aims to address the inherent flexibility of natural
language, which often leads to problems such as
ambiguity and inconsistency. This research
introduces a tool-based boilerplate technique to
assist in identifying essential requirements for a
generic information management system and
translating them into standardized requirements
statements within an SRS. The paper presents an
empirical investigation conducted to assess the
effectiveness of this technique in enhancing the
quality of SRS and the usability of the tool-based
boilerplate prototype. The results demonstrated that
the boilerplate technique significantly improves the
completeness, correctness, and consistency of
requirements in an SRS. Additionally, the empirical
investigation revealed that the tool-based
boilerplate technique exhibits high usability,
usefulness, and ease of use.
Asst. Prof. Stefan Nastic
TU Wien and IntelliEdge GmbH, Austria
Prof. Stefan Nastic is an Assistant Professor at TU
Wien, working in the Distributed Systems Group. He
is also a Founder and CEO of IntelliEdge GmbH – a
company that provides consulting and development
services for Cloud Computing, IoT/Industry 4.0, and
Artificial Intelligence worldwide. Stefan is also a
member of the Technical Steering Committee in Linux
Foundation’s Centaurus project. Stefan got his Ph.D.
in 2016 from TU Wien, with a thesis: "Programming,
Provisioning, and Governing IoT Cloud Applications".
His research interests include serverless computing,
edge-cloud continuum, AI /Edge AI, and Reliability
engineering.
Over the last decade, Stefan has been involved with
a number of large commercial and research projects
related to the Internet of Things, Edge Computing,
and Cloud Computing, such as a multi-million Pacific
Controls Cloud Computing Lab (PC3L) and Futurewei
Polaris Cloud. During this time, Stefan has gained
extensive experience acting as a researcher, product
owner, project manager, technical coordinator, and
advisor. Stefan also has a rich portfolio working as
an independent consultant, solution architect, and
expert software engineer, assisting companies from
various industries to develop and advance their
Cloud, IoT, and Edge solutions.
Speech Title: Serverless Compute Fabric for the
Next-generation Edge-Cloud-IoT Systems
Abstract: Serverless computing has been
establishing itself as a compelling paradigm for the
development of modern cloud-native applications.
Serverless represents the next step in the evolution
of cloud programming models, services, and
platforms, which is especially appealing due to its
low management overhead, easy deployment,
scale-to-zero, and promise of optimized costs. In
this talk, we take a closer look at the state of
serverless computing, particularly focusing on the
opportunities and challenges related to building
Serverless applications and next-generation
edge-cloud-IoT systems in the edge-cloud continuum.
Asst. Prof. Chao Wang
National Taiwan Normal University, Taiwan
Chao Wang is an assistant professor in the
Department of Computer Science and Information
Engineering at National Taiwan Normal University. He
is interested in studying cyber-physical systems
(CPS), an informed integration between computing
system and the environment within which the system
operates. Chao received his Ph.D. in Computer
Science at Washington University in St. Louis in
2019, and his M.S. in Computer and Communication
Engineering in 2010 and B.S. in Electrical
Engineering in 2009, both from National Cheng Kung
University in Taiwan. He is a member of ACM and
IEEE.
Speech Title: In Search Of Meeting Conflicting
Performance Demands: A Case From Real-Time
Fault-Tolerant Data Communication
Abstract: In computing systems and applications,
people are always looking for better performance of
various types: timeliness, reliability, energy
efficiency, to name a few. Often, it seems that
there is a trade-off between meeting these
performance metrics. For example, a system
engineered for fault tolerance may run slow, and a
system that computes fast may consumes high energy.
But is this always the case? If not, is there any
design principle that we may follow, to build a
system that meets seemingly conflicting performance
demands? This talk will give a case from real-time
fault-tolerant data communication, showing that one
may meet both real-time performance and
fault-tolerance performance, by having a unified
problem analysis from the timing perspective.
Dr. Chuadhry Mujeeb Ahmed
Newcastle University, UK
Chuadhry Mujeeb Ahmed is a Senior Lecturer in
computing at the Newcastle University, UK. His
research interests are in the security of
Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS), the Internet of Things
(IoT), Communication Systems, and Critical
Infrastructures. Earleir he served as a lecture in
the University of Strathclyde from 2020-2023. Before
joining the University of Strathclyde he was a
research fellow at the National Satellite of
Excellence for Secure Critical Infrastructure in
Singapore University of Technology and Design
(SUTD). He was a Presidential Graduate Fellow for
the Ph.D. program at the SUTD. Mujeeb has been a
visiting fellow at the EECS department at the
Georgia Institute of Technology. His work has been
awarded the best paper award at ACM CPSS 2020, and
the best research project SoilBuild award at FIRST
2020 and Kulicke and Soffa award 2018. Mujeeb has
been a delegate at the Heidelberg Laureate Forum
(HLF 2019). Mujeeb has been PC chair of the
CYBERSECURITY OF ELECTRIC VEHICLE CHARGING AND SMART
GRID RESOURCES (SECEVC2022) in conjunction with IEEE
SmartGridComm, PC chair of the 2nd and 3rd
International Workshop on Artificial Intelligence
and Industrial Internet-of-Things Security
(AIoTS2020/2021) in conjunction with ACNS. Mujeeb
has delivered invited talks at 7th International
Conference on Networks, Communications, Wireless and
Mobile Computing (NCWMC 2022) in London and at the
Workshop on Data Mining and Machine Learning Applied
to Cyber Physical Systems in Singapore.
Speech Title: Challenges in Machine Learning
based Approaches for Real-Time Anomaly Detection in
Industrial Control Systems
Abstract: Data-centric approaches are becoming
increasingly common in the creation of defense
mechanisms for critical infrastructure such as the
electric power grid and water treatment plants. Such
approaches often use well-known methods from machine
learning and system identification, i.e., the
Multi-Layer Perceptron, Convolutional Neural
Network, and Deep Auto Encoders to create process
anomaly detectors. Such detectors are then evaluated
using data generated from an operational plant or a
simulator; rarely is the assessment conducted in
real time on a live plant. Regardless of the method
to create an anomaly detector, and the data used for
performance evaluation, there remain significant
challenges that ought to be overcome before such
detectors can be deployed with confidence in
city-scale plants or large electric power grids.
This talk will enumerate such challenges that we
have faced when creating data-centric anomaly
detectors and using them in a live plant. Moreover,
a few recommendations will be made along with
potential solutions.
Dr. Lars Nagel
Loughborough University, UK
Lars Nagel received his Diploma in Computer Science
from the Technical University of Munich in Germany
in 2006 before he worked as a software developer for
Siemens and Trium Analysis Online in Munich. In 2011
he received his PhD from Durham University, UK,
where he studied randomised load balancing
processes. At Paderborn University and Mainz
University in Germany he continued these studies and
developed algorithms for distributed systems and
storage systems as a postdoctoral researcher. Since
2017 he is a lecturer at Loughborough University,
UK. His main research areas are the development and
analysis of algorithms for distributed systems,
networks and storage systems.
Speech Title: Load Balancing and Information
Abstract: Load balancers are essential
components in basically every computer systems.
Their aim is to evenly distribute items or jobs
(e.g. requests, computing jobs, data) over resources
(e.g. servers, CPU cores, data centres). Ideally a
load balancer would determine the resource of lowest
load and assign the next job to it. However, in many
scenarios it is costly to determine the least loaded
resource, which is why loads are often estimated, or
jobs are randomly distributed. In the presentation
we will look at different types of load balancing
algorithms and the trade-off between information and
load balance or overhead and load balance. In
particular, we will discuss randomised load
balancing schemes and the latest theoretical and
practical results in this area.
Dr. S. M. Emdad Hossain
University of Nizwa, Sultanate of Oman
Dr. S.M. Emdad Hossain, Assistant Professor and the
Head of the Department of Information Systems,
University of Nizwa, Oman. He has received his PhD
degree in Information Science and Engineering from
University of Canberra, Australia, followed by
Post-Doc from Embry Riddle Aeronautical University,
Florida, USA. He has diverse educational and
teaching experience from a number of countries
around the world. He is in the technical review
committees and regular reviewer for several IEEE,
Elsevier, ISI, and IET journals/conferences. His
research interest includes multi-modal systems,
computer vision, pattern recognition, data mining,
medical image computing and mobile banking. He is
holding a long-list of fully refereed
Journal/Conference/Book Chapter publications with
TWO (2) Intellectual PATENTS in pattern recognition
and mobile banking. He established one of largest
biometric gait-database named “UCMG-Database” which
is open for world research community. However, he is
highly interested in seeking wide and
interdisciplinary collaborations in teaching and
research.
Speech Title: Security of Biometric-based
Security Systems
Abstract: Biometric security systems are well
established and advanced-technological solutions.
Those solutions are; no-longer in question-mark in
terms of applicability and viability. Government to
private, small to medium, tech-based to non-tech
based; almost all organizations are noble clients of
biometric based security systems. Robustness in
authentication are in place. Similarly,
comfortability of both client and users are in an
excellent stage. Therefore, the systems are in
practice without hesitation. However, sensitivity of
input of these kind of systems are very high. It is
because of personal (physical or behavioral trait)
information which is the key of a distinct system.
In case of minimal data leakage; might cause huge
impact of an individual’s life, sometime it can be
life threatening too. Hence, security issues of
biometric based security systems will be presented
along with potential mitigation approaches.
Furthermore, experimental results and effectiveness
of a number of securing tools will be in focus.
Dr. Saminda Premaratne
University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka
Samidna Premaratne is currently a Senior Lecturer in
the Department of Information Technology, Faculty of
Information Technology, University of Moratuwa. He
obtained his PhD in Informatics from Malaysia
University of Science and Technology, Malaysia, and
achieved an M.Phil from University of Colombo, Sri
Lanka. He received his B.Sc. Degree in Computer
Science from American University of Asia. Throughout
his career, he has completed his tenure as the Head
of the Department of Information Technology,
Director of Undergraduate Studies, and a coordinator
for the postgraduate programs. He has successfully
supervised more than 55 postgraduate students till
2022. His research interests are Multimedia systems,
Data mining, and Multimedia Information Retrieval.
He has published several research papers in
international journals and conferences. Various
organizations awarded him several national and
international awards during the last five years.
Throughout the last twelve years, he was involved in
several consultancy projects by applying his
knowledge to practice. He is interested in
interdisciplinary collaborations with other
researchers and universities in similar research
areas and teaching.
Speech Title: Event Resolution in Sports Videos
Abstract: TBA