College of Engineering News Room
USF Hosts International Internet of Things Conference
The International Federation of Information Processing (IFIP) hosted its second Internet of Things (IoT) conference for the first time at USF. The conference welcomed doctoral students, professors and researchers from Florida and from around the world and covered a range of IoT topics, from the technical specifics of new IoT devices to the environmental and ethical considerations surrounding IoT technologies.
Thais Batista, a computer science professor at the Federal University of Rio in Brazil, presented two papers at the conference on IoT application architecture and IoT for saving energy. He said he received important feedback and suggestions from conference colleagues on how he should approach the next steps of his research.
“IoT is a buzzword today,” Batista said. “To make it a concrete solution to current problems, it’s necessary to conduct research, bring people together and work together to make real contributions to advance the state of the art.”
Doctoral candidates shared research projects during a poster session between the event’s main presentations. Motahareh Pourbehzadi, a visiting Ph.D. scholar from Shiraz University of Technology in Iran, presented a project comprising her final year of research at USF.
Her field of study is the optimized operation of power systems, implementing machine learning and addressing security challenges in power systems. She’s worked with USF electrical engineering professor Yasin Yilmaz and has collaborated with USF machine learning researchers as well. She plans to publish a paper based on her collaborations with engineering researchers at USF.
According to Pourbehzadi, the opportunity to present her research at this conference will help her internationally diversify her academic experiences and network with other researchers in her field.
“Attending conferences are always rewarding because you get to meet different people with different mindsets, especially at a conference just like this formed around IoT,” she said. “It’s very general and can be used in all different engineering fields from chemical engineering, to electrical, to medical engineering,” she said.
Professor Himansgu Thapliyal, Ph.D., a USF Computer Science and Engineering graduate and USF Electrical Engineering faculty member, said he expects the conference series’ attendance to grow significantly as new applications for IoT technologies are implemented.
“There are good opportunities provided to the future generation of researchers like the Ph.D. students here who will soon become independent researchers. It is important for them to network and listen to experts in this area,” he said.
He said the IoT field is growing quickly because it’s not only limited to computer science or electrical engineering but is applicable in most areas of engineering. Civil engineers may use IoT technologies to better maintain construction machinery and reduce infrastructure project times. Biomedical engineers are using IoT-enabled devices to improve assisted living services for the elderly, and many IoT devices are already part of “smart homes” across the country.
“This conference will have a big impact because the IoT field is emerging,” Thapliyal said. “There are a lot of reasons for interdisciplinary researchers to attend this conference, and that’s while you’ll see a growth of interested engineers in this area.”