ICTP at TriesteNext

This weekend, Trieste celebrates science in a big way with its TriesteNext event. From 25 to 27 September, the city will host numerous exhibits and talks related to this year's theme, "BIOlogos: The Future of Life".  Most activities will be held on or near Piazza Unita and are open to all.

ICTP is participating by hosting one of TriesteNext's main speakers: Steve Chan, a technology expert from MIT and a director of IBM's Network Science Research Center. Chan will be the keynote speaker at ICTP's roundtable on Digital Technology for Development: How the Internet of Things and Big Data can Contribute to Development. He will be joined by panelists including:

• Maurizio Fermeglia, rector, University of Trieste
• Simone Sala, expert in ICT applied to development, environment, climate change and security, FAO
• Marco Zennaro, research officer, ICTP Wireless Lab
• Massimo Sideri, journalist and commentator, Corriere della Sera

The roundtable takes place on Saturday 26 September at 18:00 in the Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia Salone di Rappresentanza (entrance from Piazza Unita 1).

In addition, on Friday and Saturday, ICTP is welcoming groups of students from scientific and technical universities throughout Italy and beyond who are participating in TriesteNext's "Borse di Soggiorno" programme. The students will tour the Centre's SciFabLab as well as meet with ICTP scientists and mathematicians.

While he is at ICTP, Steve Chan has agreed to give a colloquium on the Internet of Things. The talk will be held Friday 25 September at 16:30 in the Budinich Lecture Hall.

About Steve Chan:

Professor Steve Chan, PhD is a Big Data Scientist, investigating key issues of interoperability, resiliency, and those methodologies and tools that will facilitate transforming Big Data into Big Insights. At Swansea University, he is the Professorial Chair for Cyber Analytics and Network/Relationship Science Analytics. At the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland’s CyberPsychology Research Centre, he is a Professor of Network/Relationship Science. At Hawaii Pacific University, he is a Research Professor of Sensemaking and Visualization Analytics. Other academic appointments include having served as Senior Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School and at MIT. He has also served as a Senior Fellow and Special Advisor to the President of the University of Wales, whose Chancellor is His Royal Highness, the Prince of Wales. As a Prince of Wales Innovation Fellow, his research focused upon the convergence of the Internet of Things (IOT), Smarter Cities, critical/strategic infrastructure, high performance computing, and analytics on analytics for more robust decision engineering.

Dr. Chan is the Chief Strategist for IBM Smarter Cities and Safer Planet. He is the Director of the IBM Center for Resiliency and Sustainability and the IBM Network Science Research Center.  He is an Advisor to the European Cyber Crime Centre (EC3) at Europol as well as elements of the U.S. Army Reserve Command Cyber Operations Group, such the Northeast Cyber Protection Center. He is also the Director of the Sensemaking-U.S. Pacific Command Fellowship as well as the Director of the Pacific-Asia Institute for Resilience and Sustainability (AIRS) (legislated by the State of Hawaii).

Dr. Chan serves on the Program Committee for peer-reviewed venues, such as Taylor and Francis’ Journal of Information Technology for Development as well as the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)-North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Cooperative Cyber Defence Centre of Excellence’s Cyber Conflict Conference. Other Program Committees include Cyber Endeavour/Cyber X-Games for the Naval Postgraduate School (NPS). His talks have been featured at Norwich University’s Todd Lecture Series, Aspen Security Forum, the National Research Council of the National Academies, and the White House.