2025 Spring OkIP Keynotes/Invited Talks
Industry & Academia Keynote/Invited Talk
"Building Chatbots for Learning and Training"
Dr. Maiga Chang
Full Professor
Associate Dean, Research & Innovation
Faculty of Science and Technology
Athabasca University, Canada
Abstract:
Online learning and teaching do not mean that putting course materials online and asking students to learn by themselves. It is important to provide students supports when they encounter questions about course content or materials. When students ask their question on a discussion forum in an online learning environment, sometimes there may have no one available at that time to help them due to time differences or study behaviors and needs – for instances some students may have family/children/baby and day job and they might not be able to do their study until late night or weekends. This leads to an obvious conclusion that if a system was in place to provide an automated summary, this could facilitate learning. Having an easily accessible system, which can quickly provide responses, allows students to get information that may have otherwise been difficult to find. In this talk, I will explain how chatbots can be developed and discuss three potential chatbot in education applications: (1) the Ask4Summary Moodle plugin (https://ask4summary.vipresearch.ca/#download) acts like an online tutor can automatically answers a student’s question with a summary assembled via matching and retrieving from the stored information; (2) a block-based, visual editing environment to alleviate the burden of knowledge imposed on users wishing to implement chatbots in their use of training and/or as an automated first-level of support; and (3) guardians living in MEGA World (https://megaworld.game-server.ca/), who provide individual students a way to get their questions explained and the information asked.
Short Biography:
Dr. Maiga Chang is Associate Dean, Research & Innovation, and Full Professor at Faculty of Science and Technology, Athabasca University, Canada. He is also Honorary Chair Professor at Multidisciplinary Academic Research Center, National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan. Dr. Chang is IEEE Senior Member and has been appointed as an IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visitor for 2023 to 2025. He is also received Distinguished Researcher Award from Asia Pacific Society on Computers in Education (APSCE) in 2022.
Dr. Chang is now Vice President (2022~) of International Association of Smart Learning Environments (IASLE) and editors-in-chief (2019~) of Journal of Educational Technology & Society (Open Access SSCI in Quartile Q1 with rank 22/756 in Education & Educational Research category by Journal Impact Factor 4.595), editor-in-chief (2014~) of International Journal of Distance Education Technologies (Open Access ESCI in Quartile Q1 with rank 64/756 in Education & Educational Research category by Journal Impact Factor 3.3, SCOPUS, EI), and editor-in-chief (2020~) of Bulletin of Technical Committee on Learning Technology (Open Access ESCI).
He is also an Executive Committee member of Asia-Pacific Society for Computers in Education (2017~2028, APSCE) and Global Chinese Society for Computing in Education (2016~2025, GCSCE), and Chair (2021~) of Educational Activities Committee, IEEE Northern Canada Section. Dr. Chang is helping as a Steering Committee member (2020~) for International Conference on Intelligent Tutoring Systems (ITS).
Dr. Chang has given more than 160 talks and lectures in different events; He also has (co-)authored more than 260 book chapters, journal and international conference papers. He is an IEEE member since 1996 and also a member of ACM (2001-2017), AAAI (since 2001-2017), INNS (2004-2018), and Phi Tau Phi Scholastic Honor Society.
His current research mainly focus on artificial intelligence; natural language processing; learning behaviour analysis; learning analytics and academic analytics; game-based learning, training and assessment; intelligent agent technology; educational data mining; computational intelligence; health informatics and healthcare technology, etc.
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2024 Fall OkIP Keynotes/Invited Talks
Industry & Academia Keynote/Invited Talk
The First Conscious Learning Algorithm Avoids “Deep Learning” Misconduct
Prof. Juyang Weng, PhD
IEEE Life Fellow
Founder & President
Brain-Mind Institute, Michigan, USA
GENISAMA LLC, Michigan, USA
From a fruit fly to a human, with many animal species in between, do they share a set of biological mechanisms to regulate the lifelong development of the brains? We have seen very impressive advances in understanding the principles of neuroscience. However, what is still missing is a holistic algorithm that is both broad and deep. By broad, we mean it approximates such mechanisms across a range of species. By deep, we mean that it specifies sufficient details so that the algorithm can be biologically and computationally verified and possibly corrected across a deep hierarchy of scales, from neurotransmitters, to cells, to brain patterns, to behaviors, to intelligence, to consciousness across the time span of a life. This talk outlines such a conscious learning algorithm, the first in the category as far as the presenter is aware of, called Developmental Network 3 (DN-3). All its predecessors, Cresceptron, IHDR, DN-1 and DN-2 were not capable of conscious learning till DN-3. A major extension from DN-2 to DN-3 is that the model starts from a single cell inside the skull so that brain patterning is fully automatic in a coarse to fine way. This biological model has been supported by computational experiments with real sensory data for vision, audition, natural languages, and planning, to be presented during the talk. This first ever algorithm for conscious learning is free from “deep learning” misconduct, including ChatGPT.
Short Biography:
Prof. Juyang Weng received the BS degree from Fudan University, in 1982, M. Sc. and PhD degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, in 1985 and 1989, respectively, all in computer science. He is a former faculty member of Department of Computer Science and Engineering, faculty member of the Cognitive Science Program, and faculty member of the Neuroscience Program at Michigan State University, East Lansing. He was a visiting professor at the Computer Science School of Fudan University, Nov. 2003 - March 2014, and did sabbatical research at MIT, at Media Lab Fall 1999 – Spring 2000; and at Department of Brain and Cognitive Science Fall 2006-Spring 2007 and taught BCS9.915/EECS6.887 Computational Cognitive and Neural Development during Spring 2007. Since the work of Cresceptron (ICCV 1993) the first deep learning neural networks for 3D world without post-selection misconduct, he expanded his research interests in biologically inspired systems to developmental learning, including perception, cognition, behaviors, motivation, machine thinking, and conscious learning models. He has published over 300 research articles on related subjects, including task muddiness, intelligence metrics, brain-mind architectures, emergent Turing machines, autonomous programing for general purposes (APFGP), Post-Selection flaws in “deep learning”, vision, audition, touch, attention, detection, recognition, autonomous navigation, and natural language understanding. He published with T. S. Huang and N. Ahuja a research monograph titled Motion and Structure from Image Sequences. He authored a book titled Natural and Artificial Intelligence: Computational Introduction to Computational Brain-Mind. Dr. Weng is an Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Humanoid Robotics, the Editor-in-Chief of the Brain-Mind Magazine, and an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development (now Cognitive and Developmental Systems). With others’ support, he initiated the series of International Conference on Development and Learning (ICDL), the IEEE Transactions on Autonomous Mental Development, the Brain-Mind Institute, and the startup GENISAMA LLC. He was an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Pattern Recognition and Machine Intelligence and the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.
2024 Spring OkIP Keynotes/Invited Talks (More Coming Soon)
Government Keynote/Invited Talk
"AI Revolution in the Healthcare Enterprise"
Ram D. Sriram, PhD
Chief Software and Systems Division
National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA
The healthcare enterprise involves many stakeholders: consumers, healthcare professionals and providers, researchers, and insurers. AI will play an important role in many tasks that these stakeholders undertake. These include image diagnostics, medical decision-making, prior authorization, drug design, nutrition advisor, patient scheduling, etc... The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is an agency of the United States Government. NIST’s mission is to strengthen the U.S. economy and improve the quality of life by working with industry to develop and apply technology, measurements, and standards. The U.S. President’s Executive Order on AI (see https://www.whitehouse.gov/articles/a...) calls for NIST to develop appropriate technical standards for reliable, robust, trustworthy, secure, portable, and interoperable AI systems. I will discuss relevant AI thrusts at NIST on healthcare informatics, focusing on machine learning, knowledge representation, and natural language processing. I will also discuss the need for explanations in AI systems (XAI) and the current state of the art in medical XAI.
Short Biography:
Ram D. Sriram (https://www.nist.gov/people/ram-d-sriram) is currently the chief of the Software and Systems Division, Information Technology Laboratory, at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He also serves as the manager of the NIST’s Health IT Program. Before joining the Software and Systems Division, Dr. Sriram led the Design and Process group in the Manufacturing Systems Integration Division, Manufacturing Engineering Laboratory, where he researched standards for interoperability of computer-aided design systems. Before joining NIST, he was on the engineering faculty (1986-1994) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and was instrumental in setting up the Intelligent Engineering Systems Laboratory. Dr. Sriram has co-authored or authored nearly 275 publications, including several books and videos. Dr. Sriram was a founding co-editor of the International Journal for AI in Engineering. Dr. Sriram received several awards including an NSF’s Presidential Young Investigator Award (1989); the ASME Design Automation Award (2011), the ASME CIE Distinguished Service Award (2014), the Washington Academy of Sciences’ Distinguished Career in Engineering Sciences Award (2015); ASME CIE division’s Lifetime Achievement Award (2016); CMU CEE’s Lt. Col. Christopher K. Raible Distinguished Public Service Award (2018). Dr. Sriram is a Fellow of ASME, AAAS, IEEE, and Washington Academy of Sciences, a Member (life) of ACM, and a Senior Member (life) of AAAI. Sriram has a B.Tech. from IIT, Madras, India, and an M.S. and a Ph.D. from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, USA.
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Academia Keynote/Invited Talk
"Embedded AI Applications"
Subramaniam Ganesan, PhD
Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA
Short Biography:
Dr. Subramaniam Ganesan is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Oakland University, Rochester, MI, USA. He is a senior member of IEEE, was IEEE Computer Society Distinguished Visiting Speaker, IEEE Region 4 technical activities member, and Fellow of ISPE. He received the Lifetime Achievement award from ISAM, Lloyd L. Withrow Distinguished Speaker Award from SAE, Best Paper award from ISAM, and the Best Teacher award from ASEE and Oakland University. More details are on his website. www.secs.oakland.edu/~ganesan
Academia Keynote/Invited Talk
"AI and Digital Transformation: Industry Driven Partnerships"
Adel S. Elmaghraby, PhD
University of Louisville, KY, USA
Short Biography:
Professor Adel S. Elmaghraby is the University of Louisville Director of Research and Innovation for the Digital Transformation Center, he is also Director of Industrial Research and Innovation and Winnia Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at the Speed School of Engineering – University of Louisville. He received both his MS and PhD degrees from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA) and his BS degree from Alexandria University (Egypt). He has also held appointments at the Software Engineering Institute – Carnegie-Mellon University, The American University in Cairo, and as A Fulbright Scholar at Qatar University. He advised over 60 master’s graduates and 36 doctoral graduates. Dr. Elmaghraby’s research and consulting spans the areas of Intelligent Multimedia Systems, Artificial Intelligence, HPC, Cybersecurity, Visualization, and Simulation. His research applications include Smart Cities, Data Analytics, Medical Imaging, Bioinformatics, and Computer-Aided Diagnostics. He is a well-published author, a public speaker, a member of editorial boards, and a technical reviewer. He was recognized for his achievements by several professional organizations including a Golden Core Charter Membership by the IEEE Computer Society at the 50TH-anniversary celebration. Professor Elmaghraby continued collaborations, mentoring, and scientific contributions have resulted in research funding, international collaboration, and published articles in many prestigious journals such as IEEE-TMI, Medical Physics, Journal of Neuroscience Methods, and Protein Engineering. He is a Life Senior Member of IEEE, the former President and a lifetime member of the Association of Egyptian American Scholars.
Industry Keynote/Invited Talk
“Functional safety and soft error rate modeling for deep learning applications”
Jyotika Athavale
Nvidia Corporation
Abstract
Autonomous vehicle architectures are becoming more integrated and increasingly complex to achieve leading-edge functionality. Mitigations to realize reliability performance for these multi-core System-on-a-chip (SoC)- based systems can be expensive and challenging. This is especially true when considering the stringent and evolving use-condition requirements for these applications, such as longer mission times and higher utilization rates. Compliance to transient reliability requirements is of paramount importance. Furthermore, when considering soft-error performance, we need to focus on accurately modeling vulnerability factors for transient error-rate modeling based on AI and deep learning workloads. Reliability of highly dense nodes and smaller geometries requires innovative methods and mitigations in process technology, architecture, design and software.
Short Biography:
Jyotika Athavale is a Senior Technical Leader and Functional Safety Architect at Nvidia Corporation. She is a recognized industry expert with in-depth technical knowledge of platform technologies and architectures for Automotive, Transportation and Avionics Safety Critical Systems, also with expertise in radiation effects modeling for soft errors performance. Based in the US, her 24 years of industry career experience in the semiconductor and EDA industry has spanned technical leadership positions as well as people management roles.
Jyotika is a board member of the IEEE Computer Society Board of Governors and a Distinguished Visitor with the IEEE Computer Society. She is also one of the IEEE Computer Society representatives to the IEEE Systems Council. Jyotika is currently leading and influencing international standards activities in the area of functional safety. A frequent conference speaker at international leading conferences, she actively contributes to these IEEE events via papers, invited talks and panel presentations. Jyotika has authored several IEEE publications and is a core team member of the IEEE Computer Society Special Technical Community for Reliable, Safe, Secure and Time Deterministic Intelligent Systems. She is an active mentor to IEEE Student Members in IEEE Region 6 and holds a master’s degree in electrical engineering from Iowa State University.
Academia Keynote/Invited Talk
Machine Learning for Critical Systems Security
Nancy R. Mead
Software Engineering Institute
Carnegie Mellon University, USA
Abstract
This talk will focus on recent threat modeling research as it relates to machine learning. After briefly revisiting our prior threat modeling research, newer results from a student project on machine learning will be discussed. Recently, we have been considering the use of machine learning to identify attacker types in specific domains. So, on the one hand, we examined whether machine learning models are vulnerable to attack, and on the other hand, whether machine learning can help to identify attacker types.
Short Biography
Dr. Nancy R. Mead is a Fellow of the Software Engineering Institute (SEI) and an Adjunct Professor of Software Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University. Her research areas are security requirements engineering and software assurance curricula. The Nancy Mead Award for Excellence in Software Engineering Education is named for her.
Before joining the SEI, Mead was a senior technical staff member at IBM Federal Systems, where she spent most of her career developing and managing large real-time systems. She also worked in IBM’s software engineering technology area and managed IBM Federal Systems’ software engineering education department. She has developed and taught numerous courses on software engineering topics, both at universities and in professional education courses.
Mead has more than 150 publications and invited presentations. She is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, a Distinguished Member of the ACM, and was named the 2015 Distinguished Educator by IEEE TCSE. Dr. Mead received her Ph.D. in mathematics from the Polytechnic Institute of New York.
Academia Keynote/Invited Talk
“Sustainable Energy Harvesting and Wireless Power Transfer Systems”
Manos Tentzeris
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Georgia Institute of Technology, USA
Abstract
In this talk, inkjet-/3D printed antennas, interconnects, “smart” encapsulation and packages, RF electronics, microfluidics and sensors fabricated on glass, PET, paper and other flexible substrates are introduced as a system-level solution for ultra- low-cost mass production of Millimeter-Wave Modules for Communication, Energy Harvesting and Sensing applications. Prof. Tentzeris will touch up the state-of-the-art area of fully-integrated printable broadband wireless modules covering characterization of 3D printed materials up to E-band, novel printable “ramp” interconnects and cavities for IC embedding as well as printable structures forself-diagnostic and anti-counterfeiting packages. The presented approach could potentially set the foundation for the truly convergent wireless sensor ad-hoc networks of the future with enhanced cognitive intelligence and "rugged" packaging. Prof. Tentzeris will discuss issues concerning the power sources of "near- perpetual" RF modules, including state-of-the-art flexible miniaturized enhanced-output and enhanced-range ambient energy harvesters up to above 5G mmW
frequencies. The final step of the presentation will involve examples from shape- changing 4D-printed (origami) packages, reflectarrays and mmW wearable (e.g.biomonitoring) antennas and RF modules. Special attention will be paid on the integration of ultrabroadband (Gb/sec) inkjet-printed nanotechnology-based backscattering communication modules as well as miniaturized printable wireless (e.g.CNT) sensors for Internet of Things (IoT), 5G and smart agriculture/biomonitoring applications. It has to be noted that the talk will review and present challenges for inkjet-printed organic active and nonlinear devices as well as future directions in the area of environmentally-friendly ("green") RF electronics and "smart-skin' conformal sensors.
Short Biography
Dr. Tentzeris is currently a Ken Byers Professor in flexible electronics and served as the Head of the Electromagnetics Technical Interest Group with the School of ECE, Georgia Tech. He is also the Head of the A.T.H.E.N.A. Research Group (20 students and researchers) and has established academic programs in 3D Printed RF electronics and modules, flexible electronics, origami and morphing electromagnetics, Highly Integrated/Multilayer Packaging for RF and Wireless Applications using ceramic and organic flexible materials, paper-based RFIDs and sensors, inkjet-printed electronics, nanostructures for RF, wireless sensors, power scavenging, and wireless power transfer, Microwave MEM's, SOP-integrated (UWB, multiband, conformal) antennas and Adaptive Numerical Electromagnetics (FDTD, MultiResolution Algorithms).
He has published more than 600 papers in refereed Journals and Conference Proceedings, 5 books, and 25 book chapters. He is a Fellow of IEEE, a member of MTT-15 Committee, an Associate Member of the European Microwave Association (EuMA), a Fellow of the Electromagnetics Academy, and a member of Commission D, URSI, and of the Technical Chamber of Greece. Professor Tentzeris received his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 1993 and 1998.
Academia Keynote/Invited Talk
“Blockchain Technology and its implications in Business Applications and Healthcare IT”
Akhil Kumar
Smeal College of Business
Penn State University, USA
Abstract
Blockchain technology has become popular in a variety of application areas. Some people assume that blockchain is a solution for every problem in the world. In this talk, I will first give an overview of blockchain technology. Next, I will discuss how blockchain can be used in business in the context of supply chains and the implications of doing so. Later, I will devote sometime to discuss how blockchains would fit in the context of healthcare applications. I hope by the end of the talk the audience will be able to gain a somewhat balanced perspective on the strengths and drawbacks of this new technology.
Short Biography
Dr. Akhil Kumar currently a Professor of Information Systems, joined the Smeal College of Business at Penn State University in June 2002. He has previously been on the faculties at Cornell University and the University of Colorado and has spent a sabbatical year as a scientist at Bell Labs, Murray Hill, NJ. He has published more than 100 papers in academic journals and international conferences.
Akhil currently serves as an associate editor for ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems. Previously, he was an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Services Computing, INFORMS Journal on Computing and Information Systems Research. He was a program co-chair of BPM 2017 Conference. He also served as a co-program chair of CoopIS'11 and co-chair of Workshop on Information Technologies and Systems (WITS'07). He has been a principal investigator for National Science Foundation and received support from IBM, Sun Microsystems, and other organizations. He is a senior member of IEEE and a member of ACM.
His current research interests are in Blockchain technology, Business analytics, Deep learning, Health IT and Healthcare forums, BPM and workflow systems, and process mining. He received his Ph.D. from Berkeley in 1988.
Industry Keynote/Invited Talk
"The Role of Biosensors in a Green Economy"
Tom Jobe
President
BioInSpire LLC, USA
Abstract
This presentation describes how the numerous forms of biosensors perform necessary functions in research, medicine and industrial uses. It describes recent developments that allow biosensors to be used to reduce resources in power, materials and costs while improving our quality of life.
Short Biography
Mr. Jobe spent 10 years in the energy business as an instrument developer before moving to Corazonix of OKC in 1987 to develop hi-res ECG equipment. In 1990, he began a 15-year career as developer and manager of medical diagnostic instruments with Organon Teknika & BioMerieux, where he led the development of microbiology, coagulation, and nucleic acid diagnostics instrumentation.
In 2005, he became the Business Manager for the SensiQ division of Nomadics, directing the development of biosensor-based Life Science equipment for pharma and biotechnology applications. After SensiQ spun out of Nomadics to become SensiQ Technologies, he directed the company’s R&D, manufacturing, and commercialization efforts as Chief Operating Officer. After SensiQ Technologies was acquired by Pall Life Sciences in 2017, Mr. Jobe co-founded startups BioInSpire of Oklahoma City and Essai Sciences of Stillwater.
BioInSpire provides consulting services to Life Sciences clients while Essai Sciences provided biomolecular interaction analysis services of pharmaceutical compounds. He has served on the Engineering Industry Advisory Boards at the University of Central Oklahoma, OSU-OKC, and the Stephenson School of Biomedical Engineering at OU-Norman. He served as a Distinguished Lecturer for the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society for 2016-2018, providing lectures related to the field of biosensors. Mr. Jobe holds BS and MS Engineering degrees from Oklahoma State University.
Academia Keynote/Invited Talk
"The Software Engineering Body of Knowledge Guide—More Than 20 Years Down the Road"
Pierre Bourque
Department of Software and IT Engineering
University of Quebec, Canada
Abstract
The proof-of-concept document of the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) was made available in 1998—now more than 20 years ago. The keynote speaker has played a key role in all published versions of the SWEBOK Guide. In this talk, the speaker will reflect on the impact of the SWEBOK Guide, make some observations about its current content after recently spending a year in industry, and provide some remarks on moving forward.
Short Biography
Pierre Bourque is a Full Professor in the Department of Software and IT Engineering at École de technologie supérieure of the Université du Québec. He is also the Director of the Master in Software Engineering program (2005 to 2013, 2021-). After having completed two terms as Dean of Studies of his school (2013-2016, 2016-2019), he completed in 2019-2020 an industrial assignment at CGI during his year on administrative (sabbatical) leave. He teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in software requirements. He is the 2020 recipient of the Nancy Mead Award for Excellence in Software Engineering Education.
Pierre Bourque is a member of the Canadian Engineering Accreditation Board (CEAB) (2020-2023). He is also lead coeditor of the Guide to the Software Engineering Body of Knowledge (SWEBOK) V3 published in 2014 and was coeditor of the 2001 and 2004 versions of the SWEBOK Guide. The SWEBOK Guide is also recognized as an ISO/IEC Technical Report. He was named to the Board of Governors of the IEEE Computer Society in 2010 and was an elected member for the periods of 2011-2013 and 2014-2016.
He received his Ph.D. from the University of Ulster (Northern Ireland). Prior to his appointment at ÉTS, he was involved in software engineering, data modeling, and database design at the National Bank of Canada and the Université du Québec à Montréal (UQAM).
