Panel 2A: Digital Transformation and Digital Society
Panel 2B: Trustworthy AI for Digital Engineering Transformation
Time：November 18, 2020, 9:30am – 1:00pm EST
Workshop Co-Chairs：Jingwei Huang and Patrick HangHui Then
Panelist： Adrian Gheorghe, Valliappan Raman, Reuben Wee, Patrick HangHui Then, Jingwei Huang
Brief description：
Digital transformation is an on-going profound global movement, which is the pervasive diffusion of digital technologies in business and other societal processes. On the one hand, digital transformation is driven by the confluence of technologies such as Internet of Things, Blockchains, Big Data, Artificial Intelligence including Machine Learning, and others; on the other hand, digital transformation provides fertile fields for the further development of those technologies, and most importantly, for the growth of new technologies and new digital business, such as digital archives, digital currencies, smart contracts, digital enterprise, digital manufacturing, digital twins, digital threads, and others. In the digital transformation, we will face many opportunities, challenges, and uncertainties.
Panel 2B: Trustworthy AI for Digital Engineering Transformation
Time：November 18, 2020, 10:45 – 11:45AM EST
Panelist： Stephen Adams, Laura Freeman, Robert K. Cameron, Jingwei Huang
Brief description：
Digital Engineering, the digital transformation of engineering, is emerging globally with different names and focuses. The US Department of Defense (DoD) launched their Digital Engineering Strategy in 2018. Digital engineering transformation is a deep societal scale process, which transforms engineering standards, engineering practice paradigms, engineering processes (from design to disposal), engineering knowledge, engineering workforce, and engineering environment, including culture. Digital Engineering will operate in a digital and connected environment with shared or standardized digital artifacts, including models and data, thus every process in the engineering lifecycle will operate significantly differently. In particular, engineering systems design will face unprecedented richness of information from various sources in the shared digital connected environment. The changing conditions and technologies will also change the way we design engineering systems. It is a crucial theme regarding how to achieve the digital engineering transformation.
AI (incl. ML, Knowledge Representation, and Semantic Web) is a fundamental enabling technology for Digital Engineering. In Digital Engineering transformation, an essential move is to “digitalize” a vast number of engineering artifacts and processes. AI can provide solutions for digitalizing engineering artifacts, including digital representation of the system of interest. AI can support automatic processing, understanding, and reasoning about the digital artifacts. AI can support digital systems formal verification. ML can be leveraged in every process in engineering lifecycle for knowledge discovery from the Big Data of digital engineering systems and their digitally connected environment. The fast growth and broad applications of AI systems (particularly ML) in recent years also raise concerns about the trustworthiness of AI systems. Generally, an AI system is expected to be reliable, explainable, safe, secure, bias-free, and privacy-preserving. In Digital Engineering, all those concerns apply.
AI (incl. ML, Knowledge Representation, and Semantic Web) is a fundamental enabling technology for Digital Engineering. In Digital Engineering transformation, an essential move is to “digitalize” a vast number of engineering artifacts and processes. AI can provide solutions for digitalizing engineering artifacts, including digital representation of the system of interest. AI can support automatic processing, understanding, and reasoning about the digital artifacts. AI can support digital systems formal verification. ML can be leveraged in every process in engineering lifecycle for knowledge discovery from the Big Data of digital engineering systems and their digitally connected environment. The fast growth and broad applications of AI systems (particularly ML) in recent years also raise concerns about the trustworthiness of AI systems. Generally, an AI system is expected to be reliable, explainable, safe, secure, bias-free, and privacy-preserving. In Digital Engineering, all those concerns apply.
Jingwei Huang
Dr. Jingwei Huang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering at Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, US. He is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Integrated Design and Process Science – Transactions of SDPS. Before joined ODU, he was a research scientist in the Information Trust Institute and the Assured Cloud Computing Center at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign from 2008 to 2014. He received his PhD in Information Engineering from University of Toronto in 2008. His research has been across the areas of AI, Big Data, Cybersecurity, and Systems Engineering. He and his colleagues proposed and developed Knowledge Provenance, a logical theory of trust, formal semantics-based trust calculus, trust models for Public Key Infrastructures (PKI), fine-grained formal model integrating attribute-based and role-based access control. In recent years, his research focuses on developing the emerging Digital Systems Engineering, targeting research questions, such as, what are critical transformations for digital engineering? what are digital mechanisms of trust and security that facilitate information sharing and collaboration to design, build, operate, and sustain digital systems? How can we leverage Big Data and Artificial Intelligence in Systems Engineering for building, operating, and sustaining digital systems effectively and efficiently?
Patrick HangHui Then
Professor Patrick Then the Director for the Centre for Digital Futures Swinburne Sarawak. Patrick is a strong advocate of R&D and commercialization of innovations in Big Data, Data Mining and Internet of Things. He has established industry collaboration at national and international levels. He has been leading multiple industry-funded projects in research and development in collaboration with prominent ICT partners such as Sarawak Information Systems Sdn Bhd (SAINS), IDS (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd in Sarawak, and organizations around the world. Patrick has established partnership between Swinburne and international commercial partners such as Fusionex International Ltd, UK, D&J Human Care, South Korea, and Easy Global Market, France. Patrick has won, and has been managing and leading projects worth millions funded by industry and government agencies at national and international level. He works closely with international researchers, which include Texas A&M University-Commerce (TAMUC), USA, University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), USA, University College of Southeast Norway (USN), Université de Pau et des Pays de l’Adour (UPPA), France, National University Hospital Singapore (NUHS), and Universitas Sanata Dharma University (USD), Indonesia. He is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers USA and the Australian Computer Society.
Adrian Gheorghe
Dr. Gheorghe is Senior Scientist with the European Institute for Risk and Communication Management (EURISC), and Vice President World Security Forum (WSF), Switzerland.Dr. Gheorghe currently is Professor of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, and Batten Endowed Chair on System of Systems Engineering with the Department of Engineering Management and Systems Engineering, Old Dominion University, Virginia, USA (starting March 2006).
Valliappan Raman
Valliappan Raman received his BEng in Computer Science and Engineering from the Department of Computer Science, Madurai Kamaraj University, India, in 2002. He received his Master of Science in Computer Science from the University Sains Malaysia in 2005. Valli joined the School of Computing, Swinburne University of Technology (Sarawak Campus) (SUTS) as a Lecturer in the year 2006.He was appointed a Coordinator for Computer Science and Software Engineering/ Telecommunication and Network Engineering degree programs in 2011. In 2015, He received his PhD. from University Sains Malaysia, Malaysia. In same year, Dr.Valli joined back in Swinburne University of Technology (Sarawak Campus) (SUTS) as a Lecturer and promoted to Senior Lecturer in 2017. He was appointed as coordinator for ICT programs in 2016. Currently he is the discipline leader for computer science program. He is the active researcher in Center for Digital Future Swinburne Sarawak. He is managing various external funded projects from industry and government agencies. He has initiated and established collaboration with industry partners to work on projects related to smart farming, digital health, waste management and smart manufacturing.
Reuben Wee
Reuben Wee has over twenty years of oilfield experience at the Independent Data Services Pty. Ltd company; where he was part of the company start-up as the Key Technical Developer, Chief Technology Officer, Director, and now remains as a Senior Technical Advisor. His experience in digitizing the oilfield industry; mainly in data management, reporting solutions, process monitoring and automation to upstream oil and gas globally, enable him to share his vast expertise with the clients, providing first-hand information. Beyond the oilfield, Reuben has extensive experience in working with industries from F&B logistics and operations telecommunication, cloud computing infrastructure companies and higher education institutions. He was the invited speaker for talks in Swinburne University, UNIMAS, and Monash University. He is also an active IR4.0 advocate. In the year 2017, Reuben Wee was a panellist of IDECS in Sarawak; embracing innovation not only in the digital oilfield but also in the digital economy and has been actively advising companies in digital transformation.
Reuben is now the Managing Director of Rajang Digital Solutions; a company that he founded to provide Technology 4.0 automation, data analysis consultation, software design and development. These solutions leverage on facilitating real time information reporting over mobile networks particularly in areas of automating centralised logistics management, centralised fleet management, centralised sales order management and
FMCG. As a Certified Scrum Master and HRDF trainer, Reuben is adept in agile management and software development. His skills combined with his excellent background in technology and science and his vast experience in the industry make him the ideal trainer for any technical and soft skills programme conducted. He identifies himself as a technologist and an advocate of lifelong learning.
Reuben is now the Managing Director of Rajang Digital Solutions; a company that he founded to provide Technology 4.0 automation, data analysis consultation, software design and development. These solutions leverage on facilitating real time information reporting over mobile networks particularly in areas of automating centralised logistics management, centralised fleet management, centralised sales order management and
FMCG. As a Certified Scrum Master and HRDF trainer, Reuben is adept in agile management and software development. His skills combined with his excellent background in technology and science and his vast experience in the industry make him the ideal trainer for any technical and soft skills programme conducted. He identifies himself as a technologist and an advocate of lifelong learning.
Stephen Adams
Stephen Adams is a Principal Scientist in the Engineering Systems and Environment department at the University of Virginia (UVA). He received a M.S. in Statistics from UVA in 2010 and a Ph.D. from UVA in Systems Engineering in December of 2015. He is a member of the Adaptive Decision Systems Laboratory, which focuses on applications of machine learning and artificial intelligence in real-world systems. He has experience developing and implementing numerous types of machine learning and artificial intelligence algorithms. His research interests include feature selection, machine learning with cost, transfer learning, reinforcement learning, and probabilistic modeling of systems. His research has been applied to several domains including activity recognition, prognostics and health management, psychology, cybersecurity, data trustworthiness, natural language processing, and predictive modeling of destination given user geo-information data. Dr. Adams is also the manager of the UVA site of the Center for Visual and Decision Informatics, a National Science Foundation Industry/University Cooperative Research Center.
Laura Freeman
Dr. Laura Freeman is a Research Associate Professor of Statistics and the Director of the Intelligent Systems Lab at the Virginia Tech Hume Center. Her research leverages experimental methods for conducting research that brings together cyber-physical systems, data science, artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning to address critical challenges in national security. Dr. Freeman is a hub faculty member in the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative and leads research in AI Assurance. She develops new methods for test and evaluation focusing on emerging system technology. She is also the Assistant Dean for Research in the National Capital Region, in that capacity she works to shape research directions and collaborations in across the College of Science in the Greater Washington D.C. Area. Previously, Dr. Freeman was the Assistant Director of the Operational Evaluation Division at the Institute for Defense Analyses In 2018, Dr. Freeman served as that acting Senior Technical Advisor for Director Operational Test and Evaluation (DOT&E). As the Senior Technical Advisor, Dr. Freeman provided leadership, advice, and counsel to all personnel on technical aspects of testing military systems. Dr. Freeman has a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering, a M.S. in Statistics and a Ph.D. in Statistics, all from Virginia Tech.
Robert K. Cameron
Dr. Bob Cameron teaches graduate students in the Johns Hopkins University Whiting School of Engineering. He developed and taught several graduate courses, with his most recent course being Agile Systems Engineering. Dr. Cameron is also on staff for the JHU Applied Physics Lab as a Program Manager, with a portfolio of air launched weapon programs. Currently he is also supporting the Air Force’s strong push into the world of digital engineering for weapons. Previously he served as a corporate Technical Fellow for TASC in Chantilly VA, supporting defense, homeland security, and transportation security. As a prior Division Director for Sentel in Alexandria VA, Dr. Cameron led a group of engineering professionals testing sensors, guidance and lethality aspects of air-to-ground weapons. Here he achieved a stellar reputation as a nationally-recognized industry expert in Live Fire Test and Evaluation (LFT&E) as a technical advisor to the Air Force for over a decade.