Keynote speakers from: 2020 | 2019 | 2018 | 2017 | 2016 | 2015 | 2014 | 2013 | 2012 | 2011
Prof. Dr. Roumiana Peytcheva-Forsyth
Director of the Bulgarian National Centre of Distance Education
Keynote on: The effect of the teachers' experience in online education during the pandemic on their views of strengths and weaknesses of e-learning
Biography: Rumyana Peycheva-Forsyth is a professor of educational technologies at the Faculty of Pedagogy, Sofia University, where she has been employed since 1995. She is a director of the Center for Distance Learning at Sofia University and the National Center for Distance Education. She holds a post-doctoral degree from the Institute of Education, University of London (2006-2007) in the field of digital pedagogy. For the last 12 years she has been the leader of international and national projects with importance for the modernization of higher education in the field of digitalization. Prof. Peytcheva-Forsyth was a member of the management team and pilot manager of a project (TeSLA)(2015-2019y)- An Adaptive Trust-based e-assessment System for Learning within the Horizon2020 programme - ICT 20 -Technologies for better human learning and teaching. Her publications consist of 6 author's monographs and 3 co-authored monographs, over 70 research papers which are in the field of digital technologies and education. She is a member of e-ASEM Research Network 1 Development of ICT skills, e-learning and the culture of e-learning in Lifelong Learning. She is a Head of the first master's program at Sofia University, accredited in 2016 in distance learning - ICT in education, which trains pedagogical specialists in the field of e-learning design and implementation.
Prof. Dr. Martin Vechev
Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich
Keynote on: Certified Deep Learning
Biography: Prof. Martin Vechev is a Professor of Computer Science at ETH Zurich where he leads the Secure, Reliable, and Intelligent Systems Lab.
His work spans the intersection of artificial intelligence and programming languages, including both theoretical and system aspects. Prof. Vechev has given a number of invited and keynote talks on these topics at various conferences and workshops. Together with his group, they have built a number of AI systems, now widely used in academia and industry. He has also co-founded two start-ups: DeepCode which aims to revolutionize programming using AI, and ChainSecurity, which brings security to decentralized systems using advanced automated reasoning.
His research has received numerous awards and recognitions including the ACM SIGPLAN Robin Milner Young Researcher Award for major contributions to the area of programming languages, Distinguished Paper Awards (RV, OOPSLA), SIGPLAN Research Highlight, CACM Research Highlight, ERC Starting Grant, Google and Facebook Faculty Research Awards, Outstanding Artifact Award (OOPSLA), IBM Research Division Award, IBM Extraordinary Accomplishment Award (awarded by John Kelly, IBM Senior Vice President and Director of IBM Research), IBM Research Outstanding Project Award, John Atanasoff Award, awarded by the President of Bulgaria (Photo, National TV: ), IBM Invention and Outstanding Technical Achievement Awards, University Scholarships (SFU, Cambridge), and others.
Prof. Vechev was the Program Chair for ACM PLDI'17, a top conference in programming languages and systems. He currently serves on the SIGPLAN steering committee, SIGPLAN research highlights committee and the SIGPLAN Doctoral Dissertaion Award committee.
He has also spoken on topics related to artificial intelligence and security as well as ERC grants and science at the European Parliament.
Prof. Dr. Yiorgos L. Chrysanthou
Professor of Computer Science at University of Cyprus
Keynote on: Data Driven Character Simulation
Biography: Yiorgos L. Chrysanthou is the Research Director of the Centre on Interactive Media, Smart Systems and emerging Technologies (CYENS CoE). He is also a Professor at the Computer Science Department of the University of Cyprus. Yiorgos was educated in the UK (Queen Mary College, University of London) and worked for several years as a research fellow and a lecturer at University College London. He has published over 85 papers in journals and international conferences on computer graphics and virtual reality and is a co-author of the book "Computer Graphics and Virtual Environments: From Realism to Real-Time", (Addison-Wesley 2001+ China Machine Press 2004). Yiorgos serves as an associate editor for the Journal Computer Graphics Forum, and review editor for Frontiers in Robotics and AI (Specialty Section Virtual Environments). He served as the local or overall coordinator of over 25 research projects, related to his research interests, that lie in the general area of 3D Computer Graphics, recently focusing more on the development of algorithms for crowd simulation and computer animation.
