Keynote Speakers
Jean-Pierre Bourguignon is president of the European Research Council (ERC), a position that he holds since January 2014. A fellow of the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique during his whole career (1968-2013), he has also held a professor position at École Polytechnique near Paris (1986-2012). For the period 1994-2013, he was director of the Institut des Hautes Études Scientifiques in Bures-sur-Yvette. As a mathematician, Prof. Bourguignon has contributed to the field of differential geometry and global analysis, in particular to the study of the Ricci curvature, spinor fields and the Dirac operator. His work has won him several awards. Leading up to his current position, Prof. Bourguignon has had extensive involvement in science policy in Europe and has taken part in a number of scientific evaluations in several countries in the world, in particular in Asia.
ECSS 2015 Keynote Speech:
The European Research Council and Informatics: Situation and Perspectives
The European Research Council (ERC) is still a young instrument of the European Commission to support ambitious projects in any area of research, including of course Informatics. After a brief presentation of the positioning of Informatics in the ERC programme, four different issues which are big challenges to ERC will be approached, with the possible future contributions of computer scientists in mind: how to better deal with interdisciplinarity? how to enhance the impact of academia on innovative companies? what does it take to extend data management and sharing to areas where these practices are not yet properly established? in the European debate on personal data protection, how can scientists make the needs of research better taken into consideration?
Dirk Brockmann is professor at the Institute for Theoretical Biology at Humboldt Universität zu Berlin. He also leads the research group at the Robert Koch-Institut Berlin, Germany’s federal Public health institute. Dirk is also affiliated with the Northwestern Institute on Complex Systems, Northwestern University where he was professor from 2007 until 2013. He studied theoretical physics and mathematics at the University of Göttingen and Duke University where he received his PhD in theoretical physics in 2003. Dirk works on various interdisciplinary topics at the boundary of statistical physics, nonlinear dynamics and complex network theory with applications in the social and life sciences. He earned worldwide recognition with his discovery of scaling laws that govern human mobility using the geographic circulation of millions of marked bank notes.
ECSS 2015 Keynote Speech:
Ebola, Pandemic Influenza, MERS & SARS – How Computational Models Reveal the Hidden Geometry of Global Contagion Phenomena
The last decade has witnessed the emergence and global spread of new, often highly contagious and virulent pathogens that spread across the globe in a matter of weeks or months. Emergent infectious diseases have not only become a key threat to global public health, but carry the potential of yielding major economic crises. Understanding and predicting the geographic spread of emergent infectious diseases has become a major challenge to epidemiologists, public health organizations and policy makers. Large-scale computer simulations that harbor methods from statistical physics, complex network theory and dynamical systems theory have become a key tool in this context. I will report on state-of-the art research in this area and will focus on a recent theoretic approach that reveals hidden geometries in global contagion phenomena of today. I will discuss how these methods have been employed to assess the import risk of cases during the 2013/14 Ebola crisis.
Stefano Ceri is Professor at Politecnico di Milano. His research work has been generally concerned with extending database technology to incorporate new features: distribution, object orientation, rules, streaming data, web-based and crowd-based systems, search computing. He is currently leading the PRIN project GenData 2020 on genomic computing. He is the recipient of the ACM-SIGMOD "Edward T. Codd Innovation Award" (2013), an ACM Fellow and member of the Academia Europaea.
ECSS 2015 Keynote Speech:
On the Big Impact of Big Computer Science
Big science is bringing unprecedented progress in many fundamental fields, such as biology and medicine. While progress cannot be questioned, when looking at the foundations and models of big science one wonders if such new approach is in contrast with critical thinking and model-driven scientific methods - which has shaped for decades higher education in science, including computer science. In my talk, after a brief journey on my recent big science work in biology, I argue that CS education is changing due to the impact of big science, in some cases for better, in other cases for worse, and question if Academia is a good fit for data scientists. I conclude calling for new models for interdisciplinary education and reviewing some international experiences.
Jeroen van den Hoven is full professor of Ethics and Technology at Delft University of Technology, he is Founding Editor in Chief of Ethics and Information Technology (Springer). He was the founding scientific director of 3TU.Ethics (2007-2013). He won the World Technology Award for Ethics in 2009 and the IFIP prize for ICT and Society also in 2009 for his work in Ethics and ICT. He is Programme Chair of the Dutch Research Council on Responsible Innovation.
ECSS 2015 Keynote Speech:
Ethics and ICT: Learning to Design for Moral Values
ICT is a formidable shaping force in society. We need to treat it as such. This implies among other things that we need to shape it to express and accommodate our shared moral values and ethical considerations (e.g. regarding Privacy, autonomy, responsibility, transparency, democracy, equality, social justice, safety, etc.). The more central Big Data, Internet (of everything), Mobile and Cloud computing, Social Media are becoming in our society, the more urgent the need is to educate the next generation of computer scientists to appreciate this and to help ourselves to the methodologies, tools and conceptual frameworks that support us in shaping our future and destiny by means of responsible innovations in ICT. I will discuss the importance of Value Sensitive Design and Responsible Innovation in ICT.
Maarja Kruusmaa is a professor of Biorobotics and the head of Centre for Biorobotics in Tallinn University of Technology. Her research interest are focused towards biologically inspired underwater robotics where she seeks inspiration from nature to design more efficient, versatile, reliable and autonomous manmade machines. She is also a cofounder of a company Fits.me using robotics technology in a novel way and involved in policy making in ICT though several advisory bodies, such as EU DG Connect Advisory Board.
ECSS 2015 Keynote Speech:
Interdisciplinarity in Robotics and ICT
Robots are cyber physical systems interacting with the physical world through their sensors and actuators. Robotics is an inherently interdisciplinary area comprising engineering fields, such as mechanical and control engineering, as well as computer engineering and computer science but possibly also other disciplines, such as biology or cognitive science. This keynote discusses challenges in education, research and development of robots in the context of current technology trends that predict further emergence of virtual and physical worlds, the drive towards large autonomy and the rise of consumer robotics.
Bertrand Meyer is an entrepreneur, author and academic specializing in software engineering.
ECSS 2015 Keynote Speech:
Ethics of Computing
Recommending ethical principles is risky business: the basis for the recommendation should be universal, yet people differ in their assumptions; and the recommended should be credible, but no one is beyond question. For prudence, the general ideas justifying the ethical advice that I will propose are minimal; I will explain the specifics of computing and how general ethical guidelines can help progress in computing.
Dunja Mladenić works as a researcher and project manager at J. Stefan Institute, leading Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and teaching at J. Stefan International Postgraduate School, University of Ljubljana and University of Primorska. She is an expert on study and development of Machine Learning, Data/Text Mining, Semantic Technology techniques and their application on real-world problems. She is associated with the J. Stefan Institute since 1987. She was a visiting researcher at School of Computer Science, Carnegie Mellon University, USA in 1996-1997 and in 2000-2001. Dunja Mladenic serves on the Institute's Scientific Council (2013-2017) as a vice president (2015-2017). She has experience in coordinating EU projects and acting on management board of several European research and development projects. She is the Slovenian representative in EC Enwise STRATA ETAN Expert Group, serves as an evaluator of project proposals for European Commission and USA National Science Foundation. She has published papers in refereed journals and conferences, co-edited several books, served on program committees of international conferences and organized international events.
ECSS 2015 Keynote Speech:
Leadership and Balance in Research
Leadership of a large research group (approx. 50 people) towards success requires clear philosophical alignment fundamentals shared between all the members of the team. This includes maintaining a common vision and high enthusiasm towards achieving results (no nonsense rule). In order be sustainable on the longer run, we have to maintain the flow of: (a) knowledge/experience, (b) social network of partners, and (c) constant funding. Organization of the team should be preferably flat (but not too flat) with well defined roles, but also as fluid as possible (no rigidness rule) facilitating personal and group progress. One of the fundamentals is to develop trust between people and maintain good human relationships within the team (no fighting rule).
Reinhard Posch is full professor at Graz University of technology since 1984. As of 1999 he is also Scientific Director of the eSignature confirmation body „Austrian Secure Information Technology Center“ (A-SIT) and Federal Chief Information Officer for the Austrian Government since 2001. 2007 to 2011 Reinhard Posch chaired the management board of ENISA, participated as Member of the „IT Rat der Weisen“ 2011-2012, and is member of a series of professional organizations. Reinhard Posch got the “IFIP Outstanding Service Award”, the „IFIP SilverCore Award“, the ID Peoples Award 2006 and the Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver for Services to the Republic of Austria.
ECSS 2015 Keynote Speech:
ICT - Innovation – How Digital Sovereignty and IT-Security Can Help Pushing Europe Forward
With the Digital Single Market and the supporting programs H2020, CEF, ISA2 and others Europe is making a big effort to shape up its ICT. This is also supported by legislation where it-security plays an excelling role. Not only is the eIDaS regulation as an example offering a seamless legal framework for all 28 member states also it is a unique chance for Europe to show its ICT-strength. The open and innovative approach needs to attract European industry as a provider and businesses as major enablers. IT-security and data protection need to enable digital sovereignty and at the same time are fields where Europe has developed renown expertise in the past and could develop further strength in the future.
Britta Schinzel studied mathematics, physics, and made her phil. Dr. in mathematics in Austria. Thereafter she worked in the German computer-industry, later she made her habilitation at the Technical University of Darmstadt. As a professor at the RWTH Aachen in theoretical computer science, she worked within several areas of Artificial Intelligence, in interdisciplinary cooperation with medicine, biology, sociology etc. Here she also started to take interest in “computers and society” and gender studies in computing, and finally landed at the institute for computer science and social research at the university of Freiburg.
Her main activities are places within the frame of “computers and society” and gender studies in technology and science. More specifically she worked in interdisciplinary research in technology assessment, empirical studies concerning the software developmental process, e-learning and gender studies, especially in computer science, and there again in foundations of IT, of visualization and medical imaging.
ECSS 2015 Keynote Speech:
Ada Countess of Lovelace, a One-Person Opera, and The Role of Women in Computing
The first “programmer” of a mechanical computer, Charles Babbage's “Analytical Engine” comparable to today's programming procedures, was Ada, Countess of Lovelace. She was the daughter of Lord Byron and Lady Milbanke, and like her mother and her mentor Mary Somerville she was very interested in science and mathematics. She welcomed all technical innovations of her age, the first railways and telegraphs and the detection of the role of electromagnetism. When she got to know Babbage's inventions she was eager to participate in this development. She translated a French publication of a lecture held by Charles Babbage and there she extended his ideas to compute the Bernoulli numbers with a specification of the elementary operations of punched cards and the program structure of their ordering which is already the one of our today's flow diagrams.
I have written a libretto for a one person opera “Ada” and here I will present some of its ideas and an example of the composition by the composer Viola Kramer.
In the second part of this lecture the role of women in the history of computing, programming and computer science will be demonstrated. Outstanding women in the field will be presented. Moreover it turns out that the number of women participating in the studies of computer science gradually decreased in western countries. Also there are considerable differences in this participation within the world. Reasons for these differences will be discussed.
Matti Tedre is the author of "The Science of Computing: Shaping a Discipline" (Taylor & Francis, 2014). He works as an associate professor at Stockholm University, Department of Computer and Systems Sciences.
His research interests include computer science education, methodology of computer science, the philosophy of computer science, and ICT4D.
Tedre is a past professor and head of IT program at Tumaini University, Tanzania, an adjunct professor of computer science at University of Eastern Finland, and adjunct professor of informatics and design at Cape Peninsula University of Technology, South Africa.
ECSS 2015 Keynote Speech:
A Computational Paradigm of Science and its Discontents
A number of theoretical and technical innovations in the 1930s and 1940s led to a new era of computing, and computing started to develop as an independent academic discipline. Some pioneers of computing emphasized the theoretical elements of science, advocating a mathematical view of computing as a discipline. Others distanced computing from natural sciences and championed for academic legitimacy of sciences of the artificial. At the time when experimental computer science debates emerged, many meta-studies compared research in computing with natural sciences and engineering, condemning computing as methodologically deficient. But in the new century, the success of computing in many scientific applications made computing, in the minds of many, a "paradigm" for other sciences: Computing can learn from nature, or it might be the best tool for studying natural phenomena, or it might actually be what nature does. This talk describes the journey of computing from a nascent young field struggling for legitimacy to the views that computing might not be only "a" science but "the" science.
Moshe Vardi is the George Distinguished Service Professor in Computational Engineering and Director of the Ken Kennedy Institute for Information Technology Institute at Rice University. He is the co-recipient of three IBM Outstanding Innovation Awards, the ACM SIGACT Goedel Prize, the ACM Kanellakis Award, the ACM SIGMOD Codd Award, the Blaise Pascal Medal, the IEEE Computer Society Goode Award, the EATCS Distinguished Achievements Award, and the Southeastern Universities Research Association's Distinguished Scientist Award. He is the author and co-author of over 500 papers, as well as two books: Reasoning about Knowledge and Finite Model Theory and Its Applications. He is a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery, the American Association for Artificial Intelligence, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science, the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics. He is a member of the US National Academy of Engineering and National Academy of Science, the American Academy of Arts and Science, the European Academy of Science, and Academia Europaea. He holds honorary doctorates from the Saarland University in Germany and Orleans University in France. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the Communications of the ACM.
ECSS 2015 Keynote Speech:
From Model-Driven Computer Science to Data-Driven Computer Science and Back
Computer science seems to be undergoing a paradigm shift. Much of earlier research was conducted in the framework of well-understood formal models. In contrast, some of the hottest trends today shun formal models and rely on massive data sets and machine learning. A canonical example of this change is the shift in AI from logic programming to deep learning.
I will illustrate this trend in my own research with two examples -- from relational to graph databases and from formal to dynamic verification. I will show, however, that in each case the data-driven approach does not replace the formal-model approach; rather it the data-driven approach stands on the shoulders of the formal-model approach.