Conference

Speakers

Professor Thrishantha Nanayakkara leads the Morph Lab at Imperial College London's Dyson School of Design Engineering. His research delves into the synergy between brain, body, and environment, utilizing soft robotics to explore embodied intelligence. A prolific scholar with over 150 publications, he has held positions at esteemed institutions like Harvard, MIT, and Johns Hopkins. Notably, he established a bio-inspired robotics lab at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, contributing to humanitarian landmine detection efforts. His work has secured over £5 million in research funding, advancing our understanding of human-robot interactions and the role of mechanical intelligence in perception and action.

Dr. Grace Lewis is a Principal Researcher at the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute (SEI) where she conducts applied research on how software engineering and software architecture principles, practices, and tools need to evolve in the face of emerging technologies. She is the principal investigator for the Automating Mismatch Detection and Testing in Machine Learning Systems project that is developing toolsets to support these two activities, in addition to other projects that are advancing the state of the practice in software engineering for machine learning (SE4ML). She is also the lead for the Tactical and AI-Enabled Systems (TAS) applied research and development team at the SEI that is creating and transitioning innovative solutions, principles, and best practices for (1) architecting and developing systems to support teams operating at the tactical edge in resource-constrained environments, (2) engineering AI software systems, and (3) using AI/ML at the edge for improved capabilities and mission support. She is currently the First Vice President of the IEEE Computer Society and the Society Representative on the Future Direction Committee on AI Coalition. Dr. Lewis holds a BSc in Software Systems Engineering and a Post-Graduate Specialization in Business Administration from Icesi University in Cali, Colombia; a Master in Software Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University; and a PhD in Computer Science from Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam.

Madhusanka Liyanage, IEEE Senior Member (2020), is an Assistant Professor/Ad Astra Fellow and Director of Graduate Research at the School of Computer Science, University College Dublin, Ireland. He is also acting as a Docent/Adjunct Professor at the Center for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu, Finland, and Honorary Adjunct Professor at the Department of Electrical and Information Engineering, University of Ruhuna, Sri Lanka. He received his Doctor of Technology degree in communication engineering from the University of Oulu, Oulu, Finland, in 2016. From 2011 to 2012, he worked as a Research Scientist at the I3S Laboratory and Inria, Sophia Antipolis, France. He was also a recipient of the prestigious Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Individual Fellowship and Government of Ireland Postdoctoral Fellowship during 2018-2020. During 2015-2018, he has been a Visiting Research Fellow at the CSIRO, Australia, the Infolabs21, Lancaster University, U.K., Computer Science and Engineering, The University of New South Wales, Australia, School of IT, University of Sydney, Australia, LIP6, Sorbonne University, France and Computer Science and Engineering, The University of Oxford, U.K. He is also a senior member of IEEE. In 2020, he received the "2020 IEEE ComSoc Outstanding Young Researcher" award by IEEE ComSoc EMEA. In 2021, he was ranked among the World's Top 2% Scientists (2020) in the List prepared by Elsevier BV, Stanford University, USA. Also, he was awarded an Irish Research Council (IRC) Research Ally Prize as part of the IRC Researcher of the Year 2021 awards for the positive impact he has made as a supervisor. He is also currently an expert consultant at European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA). In 2021, Liyanage was elevated as Funded Investigator of Science Foundation Ireland CONNECT Research Centre, Ireland. Moreover, he is an expert reviewer at different funding agencies in France, Qatar, UAE, Sri Lanka, and Kazakhstan. Dr. Liyanage's research interests are 5G/6G, SDN, IoT, Blockchain, MEC, mobile, and virtual network security. More info: www.madhusanka.com .

Professor Thrishantha Nanayakkara leads the Morph Lab at Imperial College London's Dyson School of Design Engineering. His research delves into the synergy between brain, body, and environment, utilizing soft robotics to explore embodied intelligence. A prolific scholar with over 150 publications, he has held positions at esteemed institutions like Harvard, MIT, and Johns Hopkins. Notably, he established a bio-inspired robotics lab at the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka, contributing to humanitarian landmine detection efforts. His work has secured over £5 million in research funding, advancing our understanding of human-robot interactions and the role of mechanical intelligence in perception and action.

Takako Hashimoto graduated from Ochanomizu University in Japan, and received a Ph.D. in computer science, specialization in multimedia information processing, from the Graduate School of Systems and Information Engineering of University of Tsukuba in 2005. She worked at the software R&D center of Ricoh Co. Ltd., in Japan, for 24 years, and participated in the development of many software products as a technical leader. From April of 2009, she joined Chiba University of Commerce. In 2015, she stayed at University of California, Los Angeles as a visiting researcher. She is currently serving as Director, Deputy to the President, Dean of Faculty of Commerce and Business Administration. She has focused on data mining research and social media analysis, especially topic extraction from millions of tweets related to disasters and topical problems like COVID-19. She is serving as Associate Member of the Science Council of Japan, and Chair of the National Council for Research and Development Committee, Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communications. She served as a Board Member of the Database Society of Japan, Chair of IEEE Japan Council (2021-22), and BoG of IEEE Computer Society (2021-23) and has served as the Past Chair of IEEE Women in Engineering (2015-16). She is now IEEE R10 Director (2025-26). In 2019, she received the IEEE 2019 MGA Larry K. Wilson Transnational Award, and Fellow of the Information Processing Society of Japan.