Qualcomm Distinguished Lectures

ICNC 2013 features 6 Distinguished Lectures, which are OPEN to ALL attendees of the conference and workshops. The Distinguished Lecture Program is supported by Qualcomm.

 

Abbas Jamalipour  (IEEE/IEICE Fellow)
Chair Professor of Ubiquitous Mobile Networking, University of Sydney, Australia

Title: Current and Future Research Challenges in Smart Grid Networks
Time: 10:00-12:00, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013


Abstract:
Integration of electrical power grid and data communication in a smart grid network introduces various advantages such its greenness, two-way communications between energy suppliers and customers, real-time pricing, load shedding and consumption management. It also creates a wide area of research for the telecommunications and distributed computing researchers. As a result, Smart Grid has very recently become a critical interdisciplinary research field among power, telecommunications and computer engineer communities. Despite its popular naming these days, Smart Grid seems to be defined differently among researchers and developers from different fields. Besides its environment and technical benefits, such integration will also introduce some new threats to the security of the smart grid, similar to any traditional distributed network. In this talk, the topic of Smart Grid Network will be explained in a completely new way and after that some of main challenging issues in such a network, including the security and privacy of grid customers will be described. Security and privacy are considered as the decision-making issues on whether nations will adopt the intelligent grid in near future or leave it open to a distant future.


Biography:
Abbas Jamalipour received the Ph.D. degree from Nagoya University, Nagoya, Japan. He is currently the Chair Professor of Ubiquitous Mobile Networking with the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, the Institute of Electrical, Information, and Communication Engineers (IEICE), and the Institute of Engineers Australia, an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer, and a Technical Editor of several scholarly journals. He was the Editor-in-Chief IEEE Wireless Communications. He has been an Organizer or the Chair of several international conferences, including IEEE International Conference on Communications, IEEE Global Communications Conference and IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference. He is the Vice President – Conferences and a member of Board of Governors of the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc). He is the recipient of several prestigious awards, including the 2010 IEEE ComSoc Harold Sobol Award for Exemplary Service to Meetings and Conferences, the 2006 IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Contribution to Satellite Communications Award, and the 2006 IEEE ComSoc Best Tutorial Paper Award.

 

Flavio Bonomi  (Cisco Fellow)
Vice President, Cisco, USA

Title: Fog Computing: Leveraging Computation, Communications, and Storage at the Intelligent Edge
Time: 13:30-15:30, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013


Abstract:
In this lecture, we present Cisco’s vision on fog computing, whereby strategic placement of edge servers can complement conventional cloud computing in many ways. We show how fog edge servers can bridge the gap between the wireless and wired networks for more efficient mobile media streaming,  how distributed storage can be leveraged for caching of popular media content, and how fog devices can help to coordinate resource management of pervasive wireless sensors in applications such as smart cities and smart vehicles. 


Biography:
Flavio Bonomi has worked at the boundary between networking research and development since 1985, when he joined AT&T Bell Laboratories, after he received his PhD in EE from Cornell University, and a EE Degree from Pavia University, Italy. He moved to the Silicon Valley in 1995, and, after two startup experiences, eventually joined Cisco in 1999. After four years as senior architect in the development for Cisco Core Routers (GSR 1200), for the past years he has been contributing to important innovations in the Data Center and Enterprise space. He is currently a Fellow at Cisco, and is leading the Advanced Architecture and Research (AAR) group.

 

Nei Kato  (IEEE Fellow/IEEE Distinguished Lecturer)
Professor, Tohoku University, Japan

Title: Recent Trends in Ad hoc, Sensor, and Mesh Networks: From Fundamental to Specialized Disaster-Resilient Applications
Time: 16:00-18:00, Monday, Jan. 28, 2013


Abstract:
This presentation addresses the recent trends and future directions of the wireless ad hoc, sensor, and mesh networking technologies. The presentation starts with a survey of the background and major principles of the key characteristics of the ad hoc, sensor, and mesh networks that include communication protocols, routing strategies, and security issues. The contemporary applications of ad hoc networking in mobile and vehicular communication, the relevant sensor network applications for surveillance, monitoring, and data collection, and the issues involving the use of multi-hop Internet access through mesh networks are also presented. Then, specific trends and challenges of ad hoc, sensor, and mesh networks are highlighted from both academic and commercial perspectives. Several interesting case studies are also used to briefly demonstrate the recent trends in addressing some of the challenges. We highlight how these trends may converge or diverge from the fundamental communication context to wider, more specialized scopes. In particular, through my experience as co-PI in the national project in Japan, in collaboration with telecom-giants such as NTT and Fujitsu, a unique disaster-resilient communication network architecture, facilitated by deploying resource unit vehicles and quickly setting up the networks using these diverse ad hoc and mesh technologies is presented, and the forthcoming challenges are also identified. In addition, the presentation offers future directions to set the stage for a successful development of ad hoc, sensor, and mesh networking technologies for facilitating next-generation communication.


Biography:
Nei Kato received his Bachelor Degree from Polytechnic University, Japan in 1986, M.S. and Ph.D. Degrees in information engineering from Tohoku University, Japan, in 1988 and 1991, respectively. He joined Computer Center of Tohoku University at 1991, and has been a full professor with the Graduate School of Information Sciences since 2003. He has been engaged in research on satellite communications, computer networking, wireless mobile communications, smart grid, image processing and neural networks. He has published more than 300 papers in peer-reviewed journals and conference proceedings. He currently serves as the Chair of IEEE Satellite and Space Communications Technical Committee, the Vice Chair of IEEE Ad Hoc & Sensor Networks Technical Committee, the Chair of IEEE ComSoc Sendai Chapter, a technical editor of IEEE Wireless Communications(2006~), an editor of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications(2008~), an associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology(2010~), an editor of IEEE Trans. on Parallel and Distributed Systems, a co-guest-editor of several Special Issues of IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine. He has served as a symposium co-chair of GLOBECOM’07, ICC’10, ICC’11, ICC’12, Vice Chair of IEEE WCNC’10, WCNC’11, ChinaCom’08, ChinaCom’09, Symposia co-chair of GLOBECOM’12, and workshop co-chair of VTC2010. His awards include Minoru Ishida Foundation Research Encouragement Prize(2003), Distinguished Contributions to Satellite Communications Award from the IEEE Communications Society, Satellite and Space Communications Technical Committee(2005), the FUNAI information Science Award(2007), the TELCOM System Technology Award from Foundation for Electrical Communications Diffusion(2008), the IEICE Network System Research Award(2009), the KDDI Foundation Excellent Research Award(2012), IEEE GLOBECOM Best Paper Award(twice), IEEE WCNC Best Paper Award, and IEICE Communications Society Best Paper Award(2012). Besides his academic activities, he also serves on the expert committee of Telecommunications Council, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications, and as the chairperson of ITU-R SG4 and SG7, Japan. Nei Kato is a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Communications Society(2012-213) and the co-PI of A3 Foresight Program(2011-2014) funded by Japan Society for the Promotion of Sciences(JSPS), NSFC of China, and NRF of Korea.

 

Charles Elkan 
Professor, University of California, San Diego, USA

Title: One New Algorithm for Ten New Applications
Time: 10:00-12:00, Tuesday, Jan. 29, 2013


Abstract:
Many phenomena are represented naturally as networks or as two-dimensional tables. Often some network edges or some table entries are unknown. In this talk I will describe ten different important applied problems of this nature. The applications come from e-commerce, political science, biology, education, and more. Then I will present a general method for learning from known nodes, edges, and labels in a graph, or from known table entries, to predict values for the unknown similar information. The new method induces latent features to represent implicit properties of entities, and combines the latent features with any available explicit features to make accurate predictions. The method is an extension and combination of matrix factorization and a log-linear model. For link prediction in networks, the new method achieves state of the art accuracy over a wider range of datasets than any previous method. (Joint work with Aditya Menon.) 


Biography:
Dr. Charles Elkan is a professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of California, San Diego. In 1998/99 he was a visiting associate professor at Harvard University. Dr. Elkan is known for his research in machine learning, data mining, and computational biology. In particular, the MEME algorithm he developed with his Ph.D. student Tim Bailey has been used in over 2000 published research projects in biology. Dr. Elkan has won several best paper awards and data mining contests, and some of his graduate students have become leaders at companies including Google, Yahoo, Zillow, and IBM, while others have held faculty positions at Columbia University, the University of Washington, and other universities inside and outside the U.S.

 

Yongbin Wei 
Director, Qualcomm, USA

Title: Emerging topics in LTE-Advanced Networks
Time: 10:00-12:00, Wednesday, Jan. 30, 2013


Abstract:

LTE is one of the leading global solutions for wireless broadband access that has been deployed rapidly across all continents. To evolve LTE technologies further on system capacity, data rate, user experience, and deployment flexibility, 3GPP has been developing many improvements of LTE under the framework of LTE-advanced, such as heterogeneous network (HetNets), carrier aggregation, advanced MIMO, improved local access, and so on. In this talk, we will provide an overview of these emerging technologies, associated benefits and technical challenges, and performance.


Biography:
Yongbin Wei is a Director of Engineering with Qualcomm Incorporated, where he has been working on LTE and LTE-advanced since 2006, including system design, standardization, and implementation. Prior to that, he was involved in the system design and international standardization of cdma2000 Rev. C and Rev. D. and the product development.  He received his Bachelor and Master degrees from Univ. of Science and Technology of China, and Ph.D. degree from Purdue University, all in Electrical Engineering. He holds 65 US issued patents.

 

Klara Nahrstedt  (IEEE Fellow)
Professor, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, USA

Title: Characterizing and Leveraging People Movement in Mobile Networks
Time: 10:00-12:00, Thursday, Jan. 31, 2013


Abstract:
We are witnessing an explosion of mobile devices such as mobile phones and their connectivity over diverse wireless networks.  Mobile phones became the ubiquitous “everyday, everywhere” devices allowing users to stay connected via voice, data, and video.  Current smart phones are also equipped with many sensors that allow researchers, corporations, and other organizations to determine contextual information such as the locations of people, to characterize the mobility patterns of groups of people, and to determine how long individuals stay in one place and with whom they are meeting with. One can ask: How is such information gathered? How can giving access to our movements to third parties be utilized for good and/or bad in mobile networks?

In this tutorial we will discuss characterization of people movement of certain user groups, what information smart phones allow us to collect, how sensory data, using participatory sensing, can be captured and analyzed to determine people’s movements, and discuss  the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ leverage this people movement knowledge can give rise to in mobile networks.


Biography:
Klara Nahrstedt is a professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,  Computer Science  Department.   Her research interests are directed towards pervasive multimedia applications, mobile systems and networks, and Quality of Service (QoS) management in wired and wireless networks. She is the recipient of the IEEE Communication Society Leonard Abraham Award, the University Scholar Award, the Humboldt Research Award, the Ralph and Catherine Fisher Professorship Chair, and the IEEE Technical Achievement Award. She has been a TPC member and the chair of many IEEE and ACM conferences, including the general chair of IEEE Pervasive Computing and Communications (Percom) 2009, and she is currently the elected chair of ACM Special Interest Group in Multimedia.

Klara Nahrstedt received her diploma degree in mathematics from Humboldt University, Berlin, in 1985. She was a research scientist in the Institute for Informatik in Berlin until 1989. In 1995 she received her PhD from the University of Pennsylvania in the Department of Computer and Information Science. She is the IEEE Fellow and ACM member.