Plenary Speakers

Eduard GRÖLLER	Austria
Ioana BANICESCU	USA
Marc GATTI	France
Maria PRANDINI	Italy
Robain DE KEYSER	Belgium

Eduard Gröller is Professor at the Institute of Visual Computing & Human-Centered Technology (VC&HCT), TU Wien. In 1993 he received his PhD from the same university. His research interests include computer graphics, visualization, and visual computing. He is heading the Research Unit of Computer Graphics and the visualization group at VC&HCT. The group performs basic and applied research projects in all areas of visualization. Dr. Gröller has given lecture series on visualization at various other universities (Tübingen, Graz, Praha, Bahia Blanca, Magdeburg, Bergen). He is a scientific proponent and key researcher of the VRVis research center. The center performs applied research in visualization, rendering, and visual analysis. Dr. Gröller is adjunct professor of computer science at the University of Bergen, Norway (since 2005). He co-authored more than 300 scientific publications and acted as a reviewer for numerous conferences and journals in the field. He also has served and serves on various program and paper committees. Examples include Computers&Graphics, IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Graphics, EuroVis Conference, IEEE Visualization Conference, Eurographics Conference. He has been paper co-chair of Volume Graphics 2005, IEEE Visualization 2005 and 2006, and Eurographics 2006. He has been co-chair of the VisSym 1999 Symposium, the Eurographics 2011 Conference, and the EuroVis 2012 Conference. Dr. Gröller has been Chief Editor of the Journal Computer Graphics Forum (http://wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/cgf) in the period 2008-2011. He became a fellow of the Eurographics Association in 2009. He is the recipient of the Eurographics 2015 Outstanding Technical Contributions Award and of the IEEE VGTC 2019 Technical Achievement Award. Dr. Gröller is head of the working group on computer graphics of the Austrian Computer Society and member of IEEE Computer Society, ACM (Association of Computing Machinery), GI (Gesellschaft für Informatik), OCG (Austrian Computer Society).

Title: Interactive Visual Data Analysis
Abstract: Visualization and visual computing use computer-supported, interactive, visual representations of (abstract) data to amplify cognition. In recent years data complexity concerning volume, veracity, velocity, and variety has increased considerably. This is due to new data sources as well as the availability of uncertainty, error, and tolerance information. Instead of individual objects entire sets, collections, and ensembles are visually investigated. There is a need for visual analyses, comparative visualization, quantitative visualizations, scalable visualizations, and linked/integrated views. The concepts will be especially exemplified with a geospatial decision support system for flood management. Given the amplified data variability, interactive visual data analyses are likely to gain in importance in the future. Research challenges and directions are sketched at the end of the talk.

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Ioana Banicescu is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at Mississippi State University (MSU). Between 2009 and 2017, Prof. Banicescu was also Director of the Center for Cloud and Autonomic Computing at MSU, and Co-Director of the National Science Foundation Center for Cloud and Autonomic Computing. She received the Diploma in Engineering (Electronics and Telecommunications) from Polytechnic University of Bucharest, and the M.S. and the Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from New York University – Polytechnic Institute. Prof. Banicescu’s research interests include parallel algorithms, scientific computing, scheduling theory, load balancing algorithms, performance modeling, analysis, and prediction. Currently, her research focus is on autonomic computing, performance optimization for problems in computational science, and graph analytics. Prof. Banicescu is the author and co-author of over 130 articles published in journals, conference proceedings and book chapters. She has given many invited talks at universities, government laboratories, and at various national and international forums in the United States and overseas. Prof. Banicescu is the recipient of a number of awards for research and scholarship from the National Science Foundation (NSF), including the prestigious NSF CAREER award. She served in the past and continues to serve on numerous research review panels for advanced research grants in the US and Europe. Prof. Banicescu has chaired and co-chaired international conferences and has been member of the steering and program committees on numerous international ACM and IEEE conferences, symposia, and workshops. She served as Associate Editor of the Cluster Computing journal and the International Journal on Computational Science and Engineering. Prof. Banicescu has been a member of the Executive Board of the IEEE Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (TCPP) for several years, and presently, she is a member of its Advisory Board. Over the years, she was recognized with many academic and research distinctions for her scholarly contributions.

Title: Control and Decision in the Era of HPC, Big Data and AI

Abstract: Control and Decision in the Era of HPC, Big Data and AI

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Marc Gatti is Scientific Director & Academics Relationship at Thales Avionics SAS. An Engineer by background, he joined Thales in 1980 after graduating from Ecole Nationale Supérieure d’Electronique, Electrotechnique, Informatique et Hydraulique de Toulouse, France, with a Master in Computing & Signal processing. He has obtained a PhD degree in Computing from University Pierre and Marie Curie (UPMC) and Associate Professor Degree (Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches) in Electronics from Université de Bordeaux.
A French national, he has worked in multiple locations and areas for Thales spanning 40 years career covering computing domain first in the naval domain for submarines, torpedoes and surface ships then in the aircraft military area for fighters and transport, and now covering both commercial and military areas.
Marc has spent five years as a Computing Technical Director then 5 years as Director for managing the R&T at the Avionics Global Business Unit Level and now he is the Scientific Director and manage all the relation with academics; he is involved in advanced researches in this domain and has more than 40 publications and 25 patents in the area of sensors management, processing, modeling and recently in the analysis of ageing phenomena for components using Deep Sub Micronic (DSM) technologies.
For certified commercial & military aircraft he has participated to the introduction of Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) as the Avionics Computing Reference and now he is working on the preparation on the next generation of these systems.
He is also the pilot for the Strategic Activity Domain (DAS) named Embedded System, Autonomous Systems, Internet of Things, Software and Hardware (Systèmes embarqués, systèmes autonOmes, objets Connectés, Logiciel et Électronique) within the Aerospace Valley cluster and the co-pilot for the DAS Photonics and Microwave for Aeronautic and Space (PHAROS) within the Alplha Route Des Lasers et des Hyperfréquences Cluster.

Title: Enhanced dialog for Human-Autonomy Teaming – A breakthrough approach

Abstract: Enhanced dialog for Human-Autonomy Teaming – A breakthrough approach

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Maria Prandini is a Professor in Dipartimento di Elettronica, Informazione e Bioingegneria of Politecnico di Milano, Italy. She received her Ph.D. degree in Information Technology in 1998. She was a postdoctoral researcher at UC Berkeley (1998-2000). She also held visiting positions at Delft University of Technology (1998), Cambridge University (2000), UC Berkeley (2005), and ETH Zurich (2006). In 2002, she became an assistant professor of automatic control at Politecnico di Milano, where she is currently a full professor and Chair of the Automation and Control Engineering Program. She is and has been active in the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) and International Federation on Automatic Control (IFAC). She was editor for the IEEE Control Systems Society (CSS) Electronic Publications (2013-15), elected member of the IEEE CSS Board of Governors (2015-17), and IEEE CSS Vice-President for Conference Activities (2016-17). She is currently IFAC Vice-President Conferences for the triennium 2020-23. She is program chair of IEEE Conference on Decision and Control 2021, and an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Network Systems and Automatica. In 2018, she received the IEEE CSS Distinguished Member Award for contributions to stochastic, hybrid, and distributed control systems and outstanding service to the Control Systems Society related to electronic publications and conference activities. In 2019 she has been elevated to IEEE Fellow, effective 1 January 2020, for contributions to stochastic, hybrid and distributed control systems theory. Her research interests include stochastic hybrid systems, randomized algorithms, distributed and data-based optimization, multi-agent systems, and the application of control theory to transportation and energy systems.

Title: Optimization-based control of multi-agent systems with application to smart grid services
Abstract: Motivated by the increasing penetration of distributed energy resources and the structuring of the electrical grid into multiple microgrids that enable the provision of new smart grid services, the goal of this talk is to present recent results on distributed and data-driven approaches to optimization-based control for multi-agent cooperative systems that are possibly affected by uncertainty known from local data and subject to privacy constraints, in presence of integer decision variables. 
Application of these results to the provision of ancillary services to the grid by the aggregation of multiple prosumers or by multiple electrical vehicles acting as a storage system through the vehicle-to-grid technology will be illustrated.

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Robin De Keyser graduated with a MSc degree in Electro-Mechanical Engineering and obtained a PhD degree in Control Engineering. He is currently Emeritus Professor of Control Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering and Architecture, Ghent University, Belgium. His research activities are in model predictive control, autotuning and adaptive control, modeling and simulation, system identification, computer aided control systems design, signal processing, neuro-fuzzy and self-learning control. The research is application-driven, with many pilot implementations in technical and non-technical systems, amongst others mechatronic, energy, semiconductor, power electronics, chemical, food, steel, marine, logistics and biomedical engineering. He is author/co-author of about 600 publications in journals, books and conference proceedings. Being one of the pioneers who produced the original concepts of predictive control during the 1980’s, he developed and implemented the EPSAC predictive control strategy and is mentioned as inventor in patents concerning industrial applications of this method. He was awarded with 2 Doctor Honoris Causa titles.

Title: Back to Basic: the Impulse Response revisited.
Application to Automatic PID Tuning and to Automatic MPC Modeling.
Abstract: “To Bridge the Gap between Theory and Practice”, that was the theme of the 1981 IFAC World Congress. Today – 40 years later – this gap is wider than ever; it refers to the ambiguous relationship between systems theory and control practice.The scientific discipline of systems theory lies indeed at the basis of multiple control engineering methods and algorithms. However, systems theory has gradually moved to ‘applied’ mathematics, producing nice but abstract results which are rarely ‘applied’ (in industrial control).About 100 years after its introduction, PID is still ruling the industrial control world. Next to it, only MPC is acknowledged to have some impact, but a real breakthrough has not yet been achieved. A common little secret shared among industrial control practitioners is indeed: “Our feedback control loops are up and running … although running suboptimal: PID parameters are not well tuned, MPC models are not well maintained”.To solve these problems, industrial control practice could indeed benefit from sound but pragmatic algorithms derived from broad theoretical concepts; useful practical methods based on accessible theory.This presentation is about revisiting such basic theoretical concept – the Impulse Response – with potential for solving such everyday industrial control issues: potential to tackle real-life problems such as poorly tuned PID parameters, poorly maintained MPC models. The theoretical backbone will be illustrated on simulated benchmark models, on laboratory pilot plants and on challenging industrial applications.In summary: yet another attempt to bridge the gap will be presented; just one more try indeed…

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