Prof. João Manuel R. S. Tavares
Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto, Portugal
Email: tavares@fe.up.pt
url: www.fe.up.pt/~tavares
ORCID: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-7603-6526


Biography: João Manuel R. S. Tavares graduated in Mechanical Engineering at the Universidade do Porto, Portugal in 1992. He also earned his M.Sc. degree and Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Universidade do Porto in 1995 and 2001, and attained his Habilitation in Mechanical Engineering in 2015 from the same University. He is a senior researcher at the Instituto de Ciência e Inovação em Engenharia Mecânica e Engenharia Industrial (INEGI) and a Full Professor at the Department of Mechanical Engineering (DEMec) of the Faculdade de Engenharia da Universidade do Porto (FEUP). He has been the Head of DEMec since June 2023.
João Tavares is co-editor of more than 80 books, co-author of more than 50 book chapters, 650 articles in international and national journals and conferences, and 3 international and 3 national patents. He has been a committee member of several international and national journals and conferences, is co-founder and co-editor of the book series “Lecture Notes in Computational Vision and Biomechanics” published by Springer, founder and Editor-in-Chief of the journal “Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering: Imaging & Visualization” published by Taylor & Francis, Editor-in-Chief of the journal “Computer Methods in Biomechanics and Biomedical Engineering” published by Taylor & Francis, and co-founder and co-chair of the international conference series: International Symposium on Computational Modeling of Objects Presented in Images, ECCOMAS Thematic Conference on Computational Vision and Medical Image Processing, International Conference on Computational and Experimental Biomedical Sciences and International Conference on Biodental Engineering. Additionally, he has been (co-)supervisor of several MSc and PhD theses and supervisor of several post-doc projects and has participated in many scientific projects both as a researcher and as scientific coordinator.
His main research areas include computational vision, medical imaging, biomechanics, biomedical engineering, and new product development.
(More information can be found at www.fe.up.pt/~tavares)
 

 

Prof. Nashwa El-Bendary
Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport (AASTMT), Egypt

Biography: Prof. Nashwa El-Bendary received her Ph.D. in information technology from the Faculty of Computers and Artificial Intelligence, Cairo University - Egypt in 2008. Since October 2020, Prof. El-Bendary has served as the Dean of the College of Computing and Information Technology (South Valley – Aswan) at the Arab Academy for Science, Technology, and Maritime Transport (AASTMT) in Egypt. In addition, she holds the position of Director of the China-Arab States Technology Transfer Center (CASTTC) at AASTMT since 2016, a testament to her leadership and expertise in fostering technology transfer and collaborations between China and Arab countries. Prof. El-Bendary actively contributes to the academic community as a committee member of various international journals and conferences. She has been a member of the Organization for Women in Science for the Developing World (OWSD) since 2016, showcasing her dedication to promoting gender equality and empowering women in the scientific domain. Additionally, she serves as an associate editor for the Elsevier Applied Soft Computing Journal since 2017, further establishing her expertise and reputation in the field. Also, Prof. El-Bendary's accomplishments extend beyond her academic and research roles as she is a member of the ICT committee of the Egyptian Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT) since October 2019 and an IEEE Senior membership since in June 2019.
Acknowledging her exceptional contributions, Prof. El-Bendary has received several notable accolades. In 2014, she was honored with the UNESCO-ALECSO Award for creativity and technical innovation, recognizing her groundbreaking work as a young researcher. In 2015, she was awarded the L'Oréal-UNESCO for Women in Science Fellowship, a prestigious distinction that highlights her significant contributions to scientific research.
Prof. El-Bendary is the author of more than 100 scientific articles published in prestigious indexed and highly ranked international journals and conferences, with main research interests include Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Pattern Recognition, Image and Signal Processing, and Data Analytics. Moreover, she has served as a co-supervisor for several MSc and PhD theses, guiding and inspiring students in their academic pursuits. Additionally, she has actively participated in both internationally and locally funded scientific research projects, as well as mobility projects, further enhancing her collaborative efforts and expanding her global network.

 

 

Associate Professor Ts. Dr. Aslina Baharum
Sunway University, Malaysia
 

Biography: Associate Professor Ts. Dr. Aslina Baharum (Dr. Ask) holds the esteemed position of Associate Professor at the School of Engineering and Technology within Sunway Universi-ty. Previously, she has served as a Senior Lecture at the Faculty of Computer and Mathe-matical Sciences in Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), and as a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Computing and Informatics in Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS), where she led the User Experience (UX) research group. Completing her academic journey, she also brings valuable industry experiences as a former IT Officer at the Forest Research Institute of Malaysia (FRIM). She had experienced more than 20 years in the IT field.

She earned her PhD in Visual Informatics from UKM, a Master Science degree in IT from UiTM, and Bachelor of Science (Hons.) in E-Commerce from UMS. Dr. Ask is an active member of the Young Scientists Network - Academy of Science Malaysia, a Senior Mem-ber IEEE, and a certified Professional Technologist recognized by MBOT. She has further contributed to the field by serving as an auditor for MBOT/MQA.

She has received medals at research and innovation showcases and has been honored with awards for her teaching, excellence in service, and outstanding contributions as a re-searcher. Her bibliography showcases her prolific output, including co-authored and co-edited books, over 20 book chapters, technical papers presented at conferences, and more than 60 peer-reviewed and indexed journals publications. She has also taken on editorial roles for several journals and actively participated as a committee member, session chair, and part of editorial teams while actively participating as a reviewer. Dr. Ask has graced numerous conferences with her wisdom, delivering keynote, invited and plenary talks.

Her research interests span a wide spectrum, encompassing UX/UI, HCI/Interaction De-sign, Product & Service Design, Software Engineering & Mobile Development, Information Visualization & Analytics, Multimedia, ICT, IS and Entre/Technopreneurship. Dr. Ask’s ex-pertise extends beyond the academic realm; she imparts her knowledge through workshops and talks on various subjects, including UI/UX, Entrepreneurship, Video/Image Editing, E-Commerce/Digital Marketing, STEM, Design Thinking and etc.

Furthermore, she is certified as a Professional Entrepreneurial Educator, Executive Entre-preneurial Leader, and HRDF Professional Trainer, which highlights her strong commitment to education and entrepreneurship. Dr. Ask is highly regard in her field, dedicated and con-sistently pushing the boundaries of knowledge and sharing her wealth of expertise with others.

 

 

Prof. Wenfeng Feng
Professor, Vice dean of Computer Science and Technology School
Henan Polytechnic University, Henan, China

Biography: Wenfeng Feng is Professor of Computer Science; a Vice Dean of Computer Science and Technology School at the Henan Polytechnic University. Prior to October 2016, he held positions including Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the University of Oxford between 2015-2016, Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Kyushu Institute of Technology between 2013-2014, and Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at the Tsinghua University between 2006-2008. Wenfeng Feng got his Ph.D. and M.S. in Computer Science at the Beijing Institute of Technology between 2000-2006.

Wenfeng's current research interests are in the deep neural network architectures applying into computer vision and natural language processing. He developed a lightweight isotropic convolution neural network model, FoldNet, and applied it to plant disease identification. He and his group is now working hard on training an iterative transformer model that perform much better than traditional transformer models.

Wenfeng got fundings from the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University of China (no. NCET-11-0942) and the Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (no. 60703053). Wenfeng also have a solid background in software development. He has more than ten years of experience as a software engineer. He is proficient in Python, Python based deep learning frameworks such as Pytorch and Jax, Python based data analysis tools such as NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib and Python based Web frameworks such as Django and Fastapi.


 

 

Prof. Hui-Wen Huang
Shaoguan University, Guangdong, China

Biography: Dr. Hui-Wen Huang is a professor in the College of Education at Shaoguan University, Guangdong, China. She completed her Ph.D. degree in curriculum and instruction with a focus on online education from the University of Idaho, U.S.A. Prior to her current position, she had worked in various universities, including Taiwan, the U.S., and Mainland China, as a faculty member in teaching and research over the past two decades. Her recent work involves immersive learning using 360 VR videos across disciplines and artificial intelligence (AI) in education.

Dr. Huang has published more than 20 SSCI-indexed journal articles and international conference proceedings indexed by EI Compendex on educational technology and foreign language learning. She has actively served the academic communities, either as an invited speaker or technical committee member, in different international conferences over the past five years. She has been working with different scholars in Japan, Turkey, and the U.S. to help EFL learners develop cross-cultural competence since Spring 2020. Recently, she is working on applying AI chatbots in education and mental health.

 

 

Assist. Prof. Bin Zhang
Kanagawa University, Japan

Biography: In 2011 graduated from Harbin Engineering University (Dept. of Automation), 2017 completed doctorate at University of Electro-Communications (Grad. School of Informatics and Eng.). Ph.D. of Engineering. Now assistant professor at Kanagawa University (Fac. of Eng., Dept. of Mech. Eng.). Research in intelligent robotics, signal processing, artificial intelligence and human interaction. Published more than 90 papers in these fields. Memberships: RSJ, JSME, IEEJ, IEICE, IEEE.

 

 

Asst. Prof. Shilei Li
Naval University of Engineering, China

Biography: to be added