UOB President Stresses the Importance of Keeping University Education in Line with Information and Artificial Intelligence

The President of the University of Bahrain (UOB), Prof. Riyad Yousif Hamzah, stressed the importance of keeping university education and study plans in line with the rapid developments in the field of modern technology, information, and artificial intelligence technologies, and instilling a spirit of innovation among students at various educational levels.

During a speech he delivered at the opening of the “Second International Conference on Innovation and Intelligence for Informatics, Computing, And Technologies”, on Sunday (22 September 2019), Prof. Hamzah commended the efforts of the academic body in providing technical knowledge diversity, which students transformed into projects and applications, some of which have the characteristics of creativity and innovation. The President welcomed the participants and supporters of the Second International Conference, expressing his pleasure with the findings of the participants in the first Conference.

The Conference aims to provide a forum for researchers and the industry practitioners to exchange everything new in the field of computing and information, discuss advanced technologies and innovative research, in addition to presenting the latest findings in this field and future aspirations. Researchers from 20 countries participated in the Conference sessions, and the participants discussed 56 scientific research papers, including 25 papers presented by professors and postgraduate students from UOB. It is worth noting that the Conference is supported and sponsored by Al Salam Bank and Benefit Bahrain.

The Conference was organized by the College of Information Technology at UOB, with technical support from both the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Institution of Engineering and Technology Bahrain Branch (IET). Also, it hosted the President of the University of Dubai, Dr. Issa Mohammed Bastaki, as a key speaker, who during his speech reviewed the creation of a sustainable ecosystem in the smart information and communication technology industry in the United Arab Emirates, through entrepreneurship, research and development projects.

Moreover, the Dean of the College of Computers and Information Technology at King Abdulaziz University, Prof. Abdulaziz bin Hilal Al-Talhi, in addition to a number of professors from the College participated in the Conference, by presenting a number of papers dealing with the College’s experiences in the issues raised by the Conference.

Also, the CEO of I9C Capital, Dr. Brent Hoover, participated and spoke about the communications, navigation, and surveillance infrastructure for multimodal mobility.

Prof. Bruno Crespo from the University of Toronto in Italy talked about the potential difficulties in the security of the Internet of Things (IoT) system.

Furthermore, Prof. Mohamed Al-Twaisi, from the University of Virginia, spoke about compassion, privacy, and ethics in the fields of information security, while Prof. Ramzi Harati from the Lebanese American University discussed Arabic word processing technology, and Prof. Ayman Abdulhameed from the Arab Academy for Science, Technology & Maritime Transport discussed the issue of demystifying the social IoT.

For her part, the Dean of the College of Information Technology at UOB, Dr. Lamya Mohamed Al-Jasmi stated that “The organization of the Conference comes within the framework of encouraging research and scientific publication among members of the academic body, and encouraging research cooperation with international universities and research centers to comply with the development plan of UOB 2016-2021, as well as supporting research that leads to the sustainability and economic growth of the Kingdom of Bahrain, which in turn contributes to achieving the strategy of the College of Information Technology by taking interest in scientific research that has a local and international impact, and directing its research efforts towards current issues related to local and global information and communication technology, especially information intelligence, smart cities, electronic security, and cloud computing. “

Dr. Al-Jasmi indicated that all of the accepted papers will be published in the IEEE xplore / Scopus database, and notable topics will be published in the scientific journals published by UOB.

Participants in the Conference will discuss the topics of financial technology, big data, interconnected chains (blockchain), electronic security, smart cities, cloud computing, IoT, communications and information networks, software engineering, robotics, computational vision, and human-computer interaction on Sunday and Monday.