Speaker: Schahram Dustdar

Title: The New Convergence - Research challenges in the IoT/Edge/Fog/Cloud Continuum

Abstract: Edge Computing, IoT, AI and Human Augmentation are major technology trends, driven by recent advancements in edge computing, IoT, and AI accelerators. As humans, things and AI continue to grow closer together, systems engineers and researchers are faced with new and unique challenges. In this talk, we analyse the role of Edge computing and AI in the cyber-human evolution and identify challenges that Edge computing systems will consequently be faced with. We take a closer look at how a cyber-physical fabric will be complemented by AI operationalisation to enable seamless end-to-end Edge intelligence systems.

Short Bio: Schahram Dustdar is Full Professor of Computer Science heading the Research Division of Distributed Systems at the TU Wien, Austria. He holds several honorary positions: University of California (USC) Los Angeles; Monash University in Melbourne, Shanghai University, Macquarie University in Sydney, and University of Groningen (RuG), The Netherlands (2004-2010). From Dec 2016 until Jan 2017 he was a Visiting Professor at the University of Sevilla, Spain and from January until June 2017 he was a Visiting Professor at UC Berkeley, USA.

From 1999 - 2007 he worked as the co-founder and chief scientist of Caramba Labs Software AG in Vienna (acquired by Engineering NetWorld AG), a venture capital co-funded software company focused on software for collaborative processes in teams. Caramba Labs was nominated for several (international and national) awards: World Technology Award in the category of Software (2001); Top-Startup companies in Austria (Cap Gemini Ernst & Young) (2002); MERCUR Innovation award of the Austrian Chamber of Commerece (2002).

He is founding co-Editor-in-Chief of the new ACM Transactions on Internet of Things (ACM TIoT) as well as Editor-in-Chief of Computing (Springer). He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, ACM Transactions on the Web, ACM Computing Survey, and ACM Transactions on Internet Technology, as well as on the editorial board of IEEE Internet Computing and IEEE Computer. Dustdar is recipient of the ACM Distinguished Scientist award (2009), the IBM Faculty Award (2012), an elected member of the Academia Europaea: The Academy of Europe, where he is chairman of the Informatics Section, as well as an IEEE Fellow (2016).

Title: Building the European Cloud Service Federation for Business Needs

Abstract: The current state of cloud application development and deployment, today, is still very much a manual process requiring substantial software development teams to be engaged and maintained throughout the entire application life cycle. A technological innovation that emerged during the European Union's Horizon 2020 BASMATI project allows us to envisage a technological rupture from this recurrent theme in the form of fully automated cloud service federations not only in support of both specialized and generic application’s needs but also allowing fully automated cost and revenue sharing between the collaborating federation members. The SERENE H2020 Innovation Action project intends to demonstrate the viability of the approach with the realization of several use case specific service federations in conjunction with an underlying generic cloud service federation offer. The talk will give an overview of the technology and the processes that are needed to make this technology successful and sustainable.