Thursday, June 30^th, 2022 | 10:00 (CET) | Room: S.2.69

Dr. Dragi Kimovski, MSc

Abstract: The advent of fog and edge computing has prompted predictions that they will take over the traditional cloud for information processing and knowledge extraction in Internet of Things (IoT) systems. Notwithstanding the fact that fog and edge computing have undoubtedly large potential, these predictions are probably oversimplified and wrongly portray the relations between cloud, fog and edge computing. 

Concretely, fog and edge computing have been introduced as an extension of the cloud services towards the data sources, thus forming the computing continuum. The computing continuum enables the creation of a new type of services, spanning across distributed infrastructures, supporting various IoT applications. These applications have a large spectrum of requirements, burdensome to meet with „distant“ cloud data centers. However, the introduction of the computing continuum raises multiple challenges for management, deployment and orchestration of complex distributed applications, such as: increased network heterogeneity, limited resource capacity of edge devices, fragmented storage management, high mobility of edge devices and limited support of native monolithic applications. These challenges primarily concern the complexity and the large diversity of the devices, managed by different entities (cloud providers, universities, private institutions), which range from single-board computers such as Raspberry Pis to powerful multi-processor servers.

Therefore, in this talk, we will discuss novel algorithms for low latency, scalable, and sustainable computing over heterogeneous resources for information processing and reasoning, thus enabling transparent integration of IoT applications. We will tackle the heterogeneity challenge of dynamically changing topologies of the computing infrastructure and present a novel concept for sustainable processing at scale.

CV: Dragi Kimovski is a  postdoctoral researcher at the Institute of Information Technology (ITEC), University of Klagenfurt, Austria. He earned his doctoral degree in 2013 from the Technical University in Sofia, Bulgaria. He was an assistant professor at  Ohrid University, N. Macedonia, and a senior researcher at the University of Innsbruck, Austria.

He coauthored more than 50 articles in international conferences and journals. His research interests include parallel and distributed computing and multi-objective optimization. He is a work-package leader and scientific coordinator in dozen Horizon 2020 projects (DataCloud, ENTICE, and ASPIDE) and participated in multiple national projects. 

Thursday, June 23rd, 2022 | 14:00 (CET) | Room: Seminarraum Lakeside Labs B4.1.114

Priv.Doz. Tamer Khatib, MSc. PhD.

Abstract: East-west oriented photovoltaic power system is a new trend in orienting photovoltaic system. This lecture presents an evaluation of east–west oriented photovoltaic power system. A comparison between east–west oriented photovoltaic system and south oriented photovoltaic system in terms of cost of energy and technical requirement is conducted is presented in this lecture. In addition to that, the benefits of using east–west oriented photovoltaic system are discussed in this paper. By this lecture the following issues will be realized,

• East–west oriented photovoltaic system requires less land area.
• East–west oriented photovoltaic system requires less cost for mounting piles and steel structure, and less costs of the interfacing power substation
• South oriented photovoltaic system produces more energy than east–west oriented photovoltaic system.
• No significant difference between the costs of energy for both systems.
• Grid interfacing east–west oriented PV system can provide smoother power injection to the grid with fewer harmonic and less reverse power.
• South oriented photovoltaic system is preferred when high power injection is required.

Bio: Tamer is researcher in photovoltaic power systems. He holds a B.Sc. degree in electrical engineering from An-Najah National University (ANNU), as well as a M.Sc. degree and a Ph.D degree in electrical, electronic and systems engineering from National University of Malaysia (UKM). In addition he holds Habilitation degree in renewable and sustainable energy from Alpen Adria Universitat (AAU). Currently he is an Associate professor of renewable energy and Director of Scientific Centers at ANNU. In addition to that, he is the director of An-Najah Company for Consultancy and Technical Studies (sister research company of ANNU).

So far, he has 2 patents, 4 books and 140 research articles, while his current h-index is 40. He has supervised 4 Ph.D researches, 22 master researches and 60 bachelor researches.

Wednesday, June 8th, 2022 | 17:00 (CET) | Room: Z.1.09

Univ.-Prof. i. R. Dipl-Ing. Dr. techn. Hannes Werthner

Abstract: We live in a “digital” world, the separation between physical and virtual makes (almost) no sense anymore. Here, the Corona pandemic has also acted as an accelerator/magnifier demonstrating that the future of our digital society is here with all its possibilities, but also shortcomings.
In his talk, Hannes Werthner will briefly reflect on the history of computer science, and then discuss the need for an interdisciplinary response to these shortcomings. Such an answer is the Digital Humanism, which looks at this interplay of technology and humankind, it analyzes, and, most importantly, tries to influence the complex interplay of technology and humankind, for a better society and life. In the second part he will discuss this approach, and show what was achieved since its first workshop in 2019, and what lies ahead.

Bio: Hannes Werthner is a retired Professor for E-Commerce at the Faculty of Informatics, TU Wien. Prior to joining TU Wien, he had several professorships at Austrian and international Universities. His research is in fields such as Decision Support Systems, E-Commerce and E-Tourism, Recommender Systems, and lately in Network Analysis and Text Mining.

Besides research and teaching he is active in starting new initiatives, such as the Vienna PhD School of Informatics and the i2c (Informatics Innovation Center). In the area of E-Tourism, the International Federation for IT and Tourism (IFITT) grants the “Hannes Werthner Tourism and Technology Lifetime Achievement Award” to outstanding academics and/or professionals in the field. He is one of the key persons of the Digital Humanism Initiative and the Vienna Manifesto on Digital Humanism (dighum.ec.tuwien.ac.at).

Wednesday, June 1^st, 2022 | 10:00 am (CET) | Room: V.1.07

Univ.-Prof. DI Dr. Peter M. Roth | Prof. at Vetmeduni Wien

Abstract: When talking about new developments in Machine Learning, we typically think about new algorithms, better optimization techniques, or optimized hyperparameters. However, one important aspect is often neglected: the quality and the structure of training data: measurement noise, label noise, and correct but ambiguous labels. In this talk, we address the latter problem, trying to deal with high intra-class and small inter-class variability in the data, following two different strategies. First, we consider the problem of metric learning, showing that by selecting/learning a better metric for a specific problem, better results can be obtained: using the same learning method and the same data. Second, focusing on neural networks, we analyze the influence of specific hyperparameters, namely the activation functions. For both directions, we show that the quality of the finally learned model is highly dependent on the data. To illustrate these aspects, we will further discuss a visualization technique, namely information planes, providing better insights into the current state of the learning system.

Bio: He has been a professor at Vetmeduni Vienna since January 2022. Research interests include Data Science and Machine Learning.

Friday, June 10th 2022 | 10:00 am (CET) | Room: N.2.35 |

Josef Teichmann | Prof. at ETH Zürich

Abstract:

Randomized Signature or random feature selection are two instances of machine learning, where randomly chosen structures appear to be highly expressive. We analyze several aspects of the theory behind it, show that these structures have several theoretically attractive properties and introduce two classes of examples from finance (joint works with Christa Cuchiero, Lukas Gonon, Lyudmila Grigoryeva, Martin Larsson, and Juan-Pablo Ortega).

Bio:

Professor at ETH Zurich since 2009, Research Interests include Mathematical Finance, Machine Learning in Finance and Stochastic Analysis, Executive Secretary of the Bachelier Finance Society.

Thursday, May 12th 2022 | 2 pm (CET) | Room: HS 6 |

Leonardo Galteri, PhD | University of Florence

Abstract: In the latest years, we have witnessed a growing number of media transmitted and stored on computers and mobile devices. For this reason, there is an actual need to employ smart compression algorithms to reduce the size of our media files. However, such techniques are often responsible for severe reduction of user perceived quality. In this talk we present several approaches we have developed to restore degraded images and videos to match their original quality, making use of Generative Adversarial Networks. The aim of the talk is to highlight the main features of our research work, including the advantages of our solution, the current challenges and the possible directions for future improvements.

Bio: Leonardo Galteri is a Postdoctoral Researcher and Adjunct Professor at the University of Florence.

His research activity is focused on computer vision and pattern recognition techniques. Most of his work involves image and video reconstruction, compression artifact removal and noise removal.

In 2018 he obtained the title of PhD, presenting a thesis on the detection of objects in compressed images and videos using techniques based on deep learning. Throughout his research activity, he has participated in various European, national and technology transfer projects with different responsibilities. He is co-founder and Head of Engineering at Small Pixels s.r.l., a startup company that offers technological solutions for real-time video restoration and enhancement.