Keynotes

Martin Llamas-Nistal

Martin Llamas-Nistal.    Higher Technical School of Telecommunication Engineers, University of Vigo (Spain)
Keynote title: From the Personal Smart Cities to the Smart Education, a Journey for Academy
Abstract: The concept of Smart is gaining new areas and new topics as is spreading around all actions in our daily life. Smart Cities are one of the "oldest" terms but the new vision of the Personal Smart Cities are increasing the focus on the living aspects of the intelligence around us. Ubiquitous and smart intelligence are converging paradigms to feed machine and deep learning algorithms bringing support and exploiting big data and analytics to improve the efficiency of our technological systems and to have a better quality on our lives. Ambient Intelligence is one of the sources of the Smart Learning and Smart Education, where methodology goes hand-to-hand with technology, sensors, equipments and new learning views where the open aspects (open learning, lo, ocw, moocs, etc.) are having a more important role as well as are increasing the connection on our social networks and the life-long learning paradigm that is converging with our future.
Bio: Martin Llamas-Nistal received the Eng. and Ph.D. degrees in telecommunication from the Polytechnic University of Madrid, Spain. He is a faculty member in the Higher Technical School of Telecommunication Engineers, University of Vigo, Spain, since March 1987. He is author or coauthor of more than 300 papers in peer-reviewed international refereed journals and conference proceedings. He has directed several national and international research projects in telematics and technology enhanced learning fields. He has received several awards from the W3C (Highlight Paper in the WWW 2001, and Education Track Best Paper and Conference Best Paper Finalist in the WWW 2002) and from the IEEE (the 2007 Chapter Achievement Award for the Spanish Chapter as an outstanding model of technical activities, membership services, and professional development in Spain and Latin America, the 2010 Distinguished Chapter Leadership Award, the 2011 IEEE Education Society Chapter Achievement Award, and the IEEE EDUCON 2015 and 2018 Meritorious Service Awards). He was General co-chair of IEEE EDUCON 2012, 2013, 2014 and 2018. He was co-founder in 2006 of the IEEE Latin American Learning Technologies Journal (IEEE-RITA), and is the Editor-in-Chief since its founding. He is member of the Steering Committee of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON LEARNING TECHNOLOGIES since its founding 2008 to 2013, and Associate Editor since 2014. He is senior member of the IEEE, serving in different positions in the Education Society of the IEEE: member of the Board of Governors (since 2008) and of the Strategic Planning Committee (since 2009), Chair of the Publications Committee (2010 – 2018), Vicepresident for Publications (2011-2018) and Vicepresident for Member and Geographic Activity (since 2019).

Manuel Castro

Manuel Castro.    Spanish University for Distance Education (Spain)
Keynote title: From the Personal Smart Cities to the Smart Education, a Journey for Academy
Abstract: The concept of Smart is gaining new areas and new topics as is spreading around all actions in our daily life. Smart Cities are one of the "oldest" terms but the new vision of the Personal Smart Cities are increasing the focus on the living aspects of the intelligence around us. Ubiquitous and smart intelligence are converging paradigms to feed machine and deep learning algorithms bringing support and exploiting big data and analytics to improve the efficiency of our technological systems and to have a better quality on our lives. Ambient Intelligence is one of the sources of the Smart Learning and Smart Education, where methodology goes hand-to-hand with technology, sensors, equipments and new learning views where the open aspects (open learning, lo, ocw, moocs, etc.) are having a more important role as well as are increasing the connection on our social networks and the life-long learning paradigm that is converging with our future.
Bio: Manuel Castro, Electrical and Computer Engineering educator in the Spanish University for Distance Education (UNED) has a doctoral industrial engineering degree from the ETSII/UPM. Professor of Electronics Technology inside the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department. He published more than 100 articles in Journals and more than 300 papers in Conferences inside the areas of Renewable Energies, Electronics and Computer Architectures and Engineering Education. Co-chaired several conferences like FIE 2014, REV 2016, LWMOOCS 2018 and COMPSAC 2020, in Madrid, Spain. He is Fellow member of IEEE (for contributions to distance learning in electrical and computer engineering education) and IEEE Division VI Director, member of the Board of Directors (BoD) of IEEE, member of the Board of Governors (BoG) of the IEEE Education Society as well as President Emeritus; Founder and Past-Chairman of the Spanish Chapter of the IEEE Education Society, and Past-Chair of the IEEE Spain Section. He has been awarded with the IEEE EDUNINE 2017 Meritorious Service Award; 2012 TAEE (Technologies Applied to Electronic Education) Professional Career Award, IEEE EDUCON 2011 Meritorious Service Award; 2010 Distinguished Member Award and 2009 Edwin C. Jones, Jr. Meritorious Service Award of the IEEE Education Society. He is Member of the Board of the Spanish International Solar Energy Society (ISES).

Sergio F. Ochoa

Sergio F. Ochoa.    Computer Science Department, University of Chile (Chile)
Keynote title: Designing Social Ubiquitous Systems: Challenges and Opportunities for the Next Decade
Abstract: Designing ubiquitous systems, particularly those that involve social interaction, has shown to be a complex task, with unpredictable results and almost impossible to complete following an engineering approach. Most design approaches focus their effort on conceiving the features of the product being developed, but they do not pay much attention on the social environment that is going to be intervened by the new solution, or envision the changes affecting the social ecosystem after the deployment of the new application. This talk explores these side design considerations and illustrates with examples the different trade-offs that become present when designing ubiquitous solutions that modify the status-quo of the social ecosystems. Addressing these design aspects opens several challenges, but also research opportunities for the next decade.
Bio: Dr. Sergio Ochoa received a degree in Engineering (Computer Science, 1996) from the UNICEN, Argentina, and a PhD degree (Computer Science, 2002) from the Catholic University of Chile. He performed postdoctoral studies (2003) in the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, USA. Dr. Ochoa worked for more than ten years in the software industry as designer and developer of products for the Argentinean government. In 2001 joined to the Computer Science Department of the University of Chile, where he has an academic position until today. There, he has served on different executive positions, for instance, head and deputy director of the Department, and head of the Education Area of that Unit. Their main research lines include Collaborative Systems, Ubiquitous Systems and Software Engineering. The results of his research have been published in more than 50 journal articles and over 100 papers in International conferences. His research projects have been supported through funds mainly from the Chilean Government, the Chile-Korea Cooperation Program, and Inter-American Development Bank. Dr. Ochoa has been involved in several Latin American initiatives to support cooperation in the region, like the Latin American Center for Computer Science Studies (CLEI in Spanish), and also the Latin America and Caribbean Collaborative ICT Research Federation (LACCIR) where he was co-founder. Currently, he works with a Chilean IT Association that brings together small and medium-sized software companies, in order to help improve their product development practices.