ICICT 2019 Conference Day 1

November 16, 2019: The first day for the Flagship Conference, the 8th International Conference on Information and Communication Technologies, organized by the Faculty of Computer Sciences at IBA started off with an inauguration ceremony. The ceremony started with the recitation of the verses from the Holy Quran, followed by an opening address by the Acting Executive Director, Dr. Sayeed Ghani. He spoke about how the conference over the past 15 years become well established internationally, and as a result has over the years received research papers from North America, Europe, the Middle East, the far East and China. Dr. Ghani highlighted the themes of the conference with focus on Artificial Intelligence, Data Science, Internet of Things, Blockchain and FinTech. The Chairperson of the Computer Science department, Dr. Shakeel Ahmed Khoja also addressed the students to explain more about the history and the structure of the conference. He further stated that 80% of paper submissions were based on applications development. While, 20% were based purely on research. The speakers from across the world were invited to share their perspective on Next Generation Technologies.

Dr. Murtaza Haider, Director, Urban Analytics Institute, Dr. Imran Muhammad from the University of Glasgow, and Dr. Adnan Noor Mian and Dr. Gus Gutoski conducted keynote sessions and spoke about how Machine Learning, IoT, BigData, and Artificial Intelligence can help solve real worlds problems and make this world a better place.

Tutorials were organized to provide a hands-on learning environment for the students. There were a total of two tutorials that were conducted on the first day. Technical papers sessions were organized for the researchers to present their findings in for the guests and students. The insightful discussions between industry specialists and young students were complemented by lunch and refreshments.