The 22nd IEEE Symposium on Computers and Communications
03 - 06 July 2017, Heraklion, Crete, Greece
Keynote Speakers

Prof. Sanjay Ranka, University of Florida, USA

TITLE: "Performance, Energy and Thermal Aware Algorithms for Hybrid Multicore Processors"

Abstract: Multi-core processors are poised to dominate the landscape of next generation computing for both desktops and exascale machines. Allocating tasks to cores remains a key challenge on these processors that is increasingly compounding for several reasons. First, with an escalating number of cores, these processors are becoming progressively complex and heterogeneous in nature. Second, the aggressive scalability of these designs can lead to significant power and heat dissipation, making the adjustment of the voltage and frequency of cores as essential considerations in scheduling. Third, efficient and effective chip-level power and performance optimization requires management of the memory usage, multi-level caches in conjunction with utilizing the cores. In this talk, I will present my research on simultaneously optimizing the goals of energy minimization and performance maximization while taking into account constraints due to thermal constraints and/or targeting multiple architectural elements such as cores and caches. Experimental results on actual machines for a variety of data parallel and task parallel applications will be presented.

Biography: Sanjay Ranka is a Professor in the Department of Computer Information Science and Engineering at University of Florida. His current research interests are high performance and parallel computing with a focus on energy efficiency; and big data science with a focus on data mining/machine learning algorithms for spatiotemporal applications. His work is driven by applications in CFD, remote sensing, health care and transportation. He teaches courses on data science (three course curriculum), data mining and parallel computing. From 1999-2002, he was the Chief Technology Officer at Paramark (Sunnyvale, CA). At Paramark, he developed a real-time optimization service called PILOT for marketing campaigns. PILOT served more than 10 million optimized decisions a day in 2002 with a 99.99% uptime. Paramark was recognized by VentureWire/Technologic Partners as a top 100 Internet technology company in 2001 and 2002 and was acquired in 2002. He has also held positions as a tenured faculty positions at Syracuse University and as a researcher/visitor at IBM T.J. Watson Research Labs and Hitachi America Limited. Sanjay earned his Ph.D. (Computer Science) from the University of Minnesota and a B. Tech. in Computer Science from IIT, Kanpur, India. He has coauthored four books, 250+ journal and refereed conference articles. His recent co-authored work has received a best student paper runner up award at IGARSS 2015, best paper award at BICOB 2014, best student paper award at ACM-BCB 2010, best paper runner up award at KDD-2009, a nomination for the Robbins Prize for the best paper in journal of Physics in Medicine and Biology for 2008, and a best paper award at ICN 2007. He is a fellow of the IEEE and AAAS, and a past member of IFIP Committee on System Modeling and Optimization. He is an associate Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing and an associate editor for ACM Computing Surveys, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, Sustainable Computing: Systems and Informatics, Knowledge and Information Systems, and International Journal of Computing. Additionally, he is a book series editor for CRC Press for Bigdata. In the past, he has been an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems and IEEE Transactions on Computers. He was a past member of the IFIP Committee on System Modeling and Optimization, Parallel Compiler Runtime Consortium, the Message Passing Initiative Standards Committee and Technical Committee on Parallel Processing. He is the program chair for 2015 High Performance Computing, 2013 International Parallel and Distributed Processing Symposium, 2010 International Conference on Contemporary Computing and co-general chair for 2009 International Conference on Data Mining and 2010 International Conference on Green Computing.


Prof. Zhiguo Ding, Lancaster University, UK

TITLE: "NOMA – A Paradigm Shift in Multiple Access for Next Generation Wireless Networks"

Abstract: Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is an essential enabling technology for the fifth generation (5G) wireless networks to meet the heterogeneous demands on low latency, high reliability, massive connectivity, improved fairness, and high throughput. The key idea behind NOMA is to serve multiple users in the same resource block, such as a time slot, subcarrier, or spreading code. The NOMA principle is a general framework, where several recently proposed 5G multiple access techniques can be viewed as special cases. Recent demonstrations by industry show that the use of NOMA can significantly improve the spectral efficiency of mobile networks. Because of its superior performance, NOMA has been also recently proposed for downlink transmission in 3rd generation partnership project long-term evolution (3GPP-LTE) systems, where the considered technique was termed multiuser superposition transmission (MUST). In addition, NOMA has been included into the next generation digital TV standard, e.g. ATSC (Advanced Television Systems Committee) 3.0, where it was termed Layered Division Multiplexing (LDM). This keynote talk is to provide an overview of the latest research results and innovations in NOMA technologies as well as their applications. Future research challenges regarding NOMA in 5G and beyond are also presented.

Biography: Zhiguo Ding received his B.Eng in Electrical Engineering from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 2000, and the Ph.D degree in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College London in 2005. From Jul. 2005 to Aug. 2014, he was working in Queen’s University Belfast, Imperial College and Newcastle University. Since Sept. 2014, he has been with Lancaster University as a Chair Professor in Signal Processing. From Sept. 2012 to Sept. 2016, he has also been an academic visitor in Princeton University.  Dr Ding’ research interests are 5G networks, game theory, cooperative and energy harvesting networks and statistical signal processing. He has been serving as an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Networks, IEEE Wireless Communication Letters, IEEE Communication Letters, and Journal of Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing. He was the TPC Co-Chair for the 6th IET International Conference on Wireless, Mobile & Multimedia Networks (ICWMMN2015), Symposium Chair for International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications. (ICNC 2016), and the 25th Wireless and Optical Communication Conference (WOCC), and Co-Chair of WCNC-2013 Workshop on New Advances for Physical Layer Network Coding. He received the best paper award in IET Comm. Conf. on Wireless, Mobile and Computing, 2009 and the 2015 International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP 2015), IEEE Communication Letters Exemplary Reviewer 2012, and the EU Marie Curie Fellowship 2012-2014.


Prof. Sanguthevar Rajasekaran, University of Connecticut, USA

TITLE: "Big Data: Challenges and Algorithms"

Abstract: We live in an era of big data. Voluminous datasets are generated and have to be processed in every area of science and engineering. Efficient techniques are needed to process these data. In particular, we need tools to extract useful information from massive data sets. Society at large can benefit immensely from advances in this arena. For example, information extracted from biological data can result in gene identification, diagnosis for diseases, drug design, etc. Market-data information can be used for custom-designed catalogues for customers, supermarket shelving, and so on. Weather prediction and protecting the environment from pollution are possible with the analysis of atmospheric data.  In this talk we present some challenges existing in processing big data in various disciplines. We also provide an overview of some basic techniques. In particular, we will summarize various data processing and reduction techniques.

Biography: Sanguthevar Rajasekaran received his M.E. degree in Automation from the Indian Institute of Science (Bangalore) in 1983, and his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Harvard University in 1988. Currently he is the Board of Trustees Distinguished Professor, UTC Chair Professor of Computer Science and Engineering, and the Director of Booth Engineering Center for Advanced Technologies (BECAT) at the University of Connecticut. Before joining UConn, he has served as a faculty member in the CISE Department of the University of Florida and in the CIS Department of the University of Pennsylvania. During 2000-2002 he was the Chief Scientist for Arcot Systems. His research interests include Big Data, Bioinformatics, Algorithms, Data Mining, Randomized Computing, and HPC. He has published over 350 research articles in journals and conferences. He has co-authored two texts on algorithms and co-edited six books on algorithms and related topics. He has been awarded numerous research grants from such agencies as NSF, NIH, DARPA, and DHS (totaling $8M as the PI and an additional $9M as a co-PI). He is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). He is also an elected member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering.


Dr. R Venkatesha Prasad, Delft University of Technology

TITLE: Murphy Loves Constructive Interferenc

Abstract: The power of the Constructive Interference (CI) phenomenon was exploited for the first time by Ferrari et al. through their Glossy paper in IPSN 2011. Instead of avoiding interference by neighboring nodes, the Glossy protocol deliberately orchestrates simultaneous transmissions to achieve fast and efficient network-wide flooding. That insight of "embracing interference" prompted many researchers to go back to the drawing board. However, from the previous studies, there appears to be an inconsistent and often contradicting picture about the working of CI. In this keynote I will sketch the main developments around Constructive Interference over the last 5 years.  Further, I will present not only the understanding of CI with theory and rigorous experimentation, but also question its actual existence.

Biography: R Venkatesha Prasad completed PhD from IISc, Bangalore, India. During PhD research, a scalable VoIP conferencing platform was designed. Many new ideas including a conjecture, were formulated and tested by developing an application suite based on the research findings. The work involved understanding of network protocols, application design and human computer interface. Part of the thesis lead to a startup venture, Esqube Communication Solutions, headed by professors from IISc. He was leading a team of up to ten engineers, developing many real-time applications including bridging anonymous VoIP calls called Click-to-Talk for portlas. While at Esqube, eight patent applications and three PCT applications were filed along with his colleagues. Esqube was selected as top 100 IT innovators in India in 2006 by NASSCOM and top 100 in promising companies in Asia by RedHerring in 2008. He worked for Esqube from 2006 to 2009 on a part-time basis as a senior design consultant. In 2005, he joined TUDelft as a PostDoc to work on the EU FP7 Magnet Project and the Dutch project PNP-2008 on Personal Networks (PNs). His work involved evolving PN network architecture and foreign communication. The work resulted in an ECMA report. He also started working on Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) and 60GHz networks for future homes. He is contributing to IEEE standards on CRNs. Now, his work involves the Internet of Things (IoT), Cyber Physical systems (CPS) and energy harvesting networks. He is working on EU funded iCore project on IoT. The work at TUDelft resulted in around 200 publications. Currently, he is working on IoT/CPS, Tactile Internet, LoRa and has started working on Space Applications with a leading space research organization.
He holds a “University Teaching Qualification” for all the four Technical universities in the Netherlands with excellence for his innovative use of Facebook to teach a course. He has delivered many keynotes and lectures. He has supervised 16 PhDs on IoT, Personal Networks, 60GHz and Cognitive radios. He is also contributing to the academic community by leading many IEEE activities, such as memberships of standards boards, leading technical committees, etc., apart from reviewing and organizing conferences and workshops. He was co-founder and one of main organizers of successful International Workshop on Energy Efficiency in Wireless Networks in conjunction with IEEE ICC 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, and 2014. He is General Co-Chair, IEEE ICC 2015 Workshop on Next Generation Green ICT. He was Track Chair of Cognitive Radio and Spectrum Sensing of IEEE VTC2013-Spring in Dresden, is Symposium Co-Chair for IEEE Globecom-2015. He was Technical Program Chair of IEEE Symposium on Communications and Vehicular Technology in the Benelux (SCVT) 2014. He is also a member of IEEE TCCN, AHSNTC, TCGCC and TCCC. He has been founding member of TCGCC. He also served as the symposium chair of  Track on Green Communications and Computing Networks in GC 2016. He is a senior member of IEEE and ACM