Keynote Speakers
Keynote Speakers
TBA
Professor Zoran Obradovic
Professor and a Center director at Temple University, Philadelphia, USA
Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA
Short Bio: Zoran Obradovic is a Distinguished Professor and a Center director at Temple University, an Academician at the Academia Europaea (the Academy of Europe) and a Foreign Academician at the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts. He mentored about 50 postdoctoral fellows and Ph.D. students, many of whom have independent research careers at academic institutions (e.g. Northeastern Univ., Ohio State Univ,) and industrial research labs (e.g. Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Hitachi Big Data, IBM T.J.Watson, Microsoft, Yahoo Labs, Uber, Verizon Big Data, Spotify). Zoran is the editor-in-chief of the Big Data journal and the steering committee chair for the SIAM Data Mining conference. He is also an editorial board member of 13 journals and was the general chair, program chair, or track chair for 11 international conferences. His research interests include data science and complex networks in decision support systems addressing challenges related to big, heterogeneous, spatial, and temporal data analytics motivated by applications in healthcare management, power systems, earth, and social sciences. His studies were funded by AFRL, DARPA, DOE, KAUST, NIH, NSF, ONR, PA Department of Health, US Army ERDC, US Army Research Labs, and industry. He published about 470 articles and is cited more than 36,000 times (H-index 70).
Professor Antonis Argyros
Professor at the Computer Science Department, University of Crete,
Researcher at the Computational Vision and Robotics Lab (CVRL) of ICS-FORTH
Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA
Short Bio: Antonis A. Argyros is a Professor at the Computer Science Department, University of Crete and a Researcher at the Computational Vision and Robotics Lab (CVRL) of ICS-FORTH. He received a B.Sc. degree in Computer Science (1989) and a M.Sc. degree in Computer Science (1992), both from the Computer Science Department, University of Crete. On July 1996, he completed his PhD on visual motion analysis at the same Department. He has been a postdoctoral fellow at the Computational Vision and Active Perception Laboratory (CVAP) at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden.
The research interests of Antonis Argyros fall in the areas of computational vision with emphasis on tracking, human gesture and posture recognition, 3D reconstruction and omnidirectional vision. He is also interested in applications of computational vision in the fields of robotics and smart environments.
Since 1999, as a member of CVRL, he has been involved in many RTD projects in computer vision, robotics and cognitive systems, including EU-funded FP6/FP7 projects TOURBOT, INDIGO, ActIPret, MUSCLE and GRASP. Antonis Argyros was assistant scientific coordinator of the FET coordination action “InterLink”. Currently, he is a project investigator of the FP7 EU-funded Integrated Project GRASP and the technical coordinator of the ICS-FORTH internal Programme on Ambient Intelligence and Smart Environments.
Antonis Argyros is an area editor for the Computer Vision and Image Understanding Journal (CVIU), member of the Editorial Board of the IET Image Processing Journal and one of the general chairs of the 11th European Conference in Computer Vision (ECCV’2010, Heraklion, Crete). He has also acted as a reviewer in several top vision and robotics conferences (CVPR, ICCV, ECCV, IROS, ICRA, RSS) and journals (IEEE Trans. on PAMI, IEEE Trans. on Image Processing, CVIU, IMAVIS, IEEE Trans. on Robotics, IEEE Trans. on CSVT). He is also a faculty member of the “Brain and Mind” interdisciplinary graduate program and a member of the Executive Committee of the European Consortium for Informatics and Mathematics (ERCIM).
Professor Hojjat Adeli
Ohio State University, Columbus, USA
Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Honorary Professor, Southeast University, Nanjing, China
Member, Polish and Lithuanian Academy of Sciences
Elected corresponding member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering.
Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA
Short Bio: Hojjat Adeli received his Ph.D. from Stanford University in 1976 at the age of 26. He is currently an Academy Professor at The Ohio State University where he held the Abba G. Lichtenstein Professorship for ten years. He is the Editor-in-Chief of the international journals COMPUTER-AIDED CIVIL AND INFRASTRUCTURE ENGINEERING which he founded in 1986 and INTEGRATED COMPUTER-AIDED ENGINEERING which he founded in 1993. He has also served as the Editor-in-Chief of the INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF NEURAL SYSTEMS since 2005. He has been an Honorary Editor, Advisory Editor, or member of the Editorial Board of 144 research journals. He has authored over 600 research and scientific publications in various fields of computer science, engineering, applied mathematics, and medicine, including 16 ground-breaking high-technology books. He is the recipient of over sixty awards and honors including three Honorary Doctorates from Lithuania, Spain, and Italy, and Honorary Professorship at several Asian and European Universities. He is a member of Academia Europaea, a corresponding member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Engineering, a foreign member of Lithuanian Academy of Sciences and Polish Academy of Science, a Distinguished Member of American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE), and a Fellow of AAAS, IEEE, AIMBE, and American Neurological Association. He was profiled as an /Engineering Legend/ in the journal /Leadership and Management in Engineering/, ASCE, April 2010, by a noted biographer of legendary engineers.
Professor John Soldatos
Honorary Research Fellow, The University of Glasgow, UK
Title: From Language Models to Autonomous Agents: Evolutionary Trajectories and Industrial Transformations in AI-Driven Systems
Abstract: The rapid evolution of Large Language Models (LLMs) and AI agents is currently redefining the boundaries of AI: It enables unprecedented automation and decision-making capabilities in complex domains. This talk examines the architectural and algorithmic milestones in LLM development, from transformer-based foundations to today’s multi-agent frameworks which are capable of collaborative reasoning.
Drawing on case studies in finance (e.g., real-time risk assessment, stock selection) and industrial automation (e.g., asset maintenance, industrial training, and human-robot collaboration), the talk highlights how LLMs transition from passive tools to proactive, context-aware agents. The practical contributions of the talk include novel architectures for solving complex problems with LLMs and AI agents, while considering the need for ethical governance frameworks to address bias, transparency, and accountability.
The presentation concludes with a presentation of emerging challenges—such as energy efficiency, domain adaptability, and trust calibration—while proposing interdisciplinary pathways to bridge theoretical AI advancements with industrial scalability.Overall, this keynote will synthesize empirical results from EU-funded projects (e.g., XR5.0, HumAIne, MOSAICO) and industry partnerships in order to introduce ideas for engineering robust, ethically grounded AI systems for the next decade.
Short Bio: John Soldatos holds a PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens (2000) and is Senior R&D Consultant and Innovation Delivery Specialist with INTRASOFT International (2020-present) and Honorary Research Fellow at the University of Glasgow, UK (2014-present). He was a Professor and Head of the Internet of Things (IoT) Group at the Athens Information Technology (AIT), Greece (2006–2019), and Adjunct Professor at the Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA (2007–2010). He has experience in working closely with various large multi-national industries as R&D consultant, while being partner and scientific advisor to high-tech startups. He has played a leading role in the delivery of more than 70 (industrial, R&D, consulting) projects, for both private & public sector organizations.