Prof. Dr. Giancarlo Fortino

Giancarlo Fortino (IEEE Fellow 2022) is Full Professor of Computer Engineering at the Dept of Informatics, Modeling, Electronics, and Systems of the University of Calabria (Unical), Italy. He received a PhD in Computer Engineering from Unical in 2000. Since 2016, he is senior research fellow at the Italian ICAR-CNR Institute. Fortino is also distinguished professor and scientist of several chinese universities and research centers: Wuhan University of Technology (WUT), Huazhong Agricultural University (HZAU), Huazhong University of Science and Technology (HUST), Nanyang Institute of Technology (NYIST), East China Jiaotong University (ECJTU), Chengdu University of Information Technology (CUIT), and Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT). He was also visiting researcher at ICSI, Berkeley (USA), in 1997 and 1999 and visiting professor at Queensland University of technology in 2009. He is currently Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE SMC society, Sensors Council and IoT TC. At Unical, he is the Rector’s delegate to Int’l relations, the chair of the PhD School in ICT, the director of the Postgraduate Master course in INTER-IoT, and the director of the SPEME lab as well as co-chair of Joint labs on IoT established between Unical and WUT, SMU and HZAU Chinese universities, respectively. Fortino is currently the scientific responsible of the UNICAL Digital Health group of the Italian CINI National Laboratory and of IEEE at Unical initiative. He is Highly Cited Researcher 2020-2024 in Computer Science by Clarivate. He had 25+ highly cited papers in WoS, and h-index=86 with 30000+ citations in Google Scholar. His research interests include wearable computing systems, e-Health, Internet of Things, agent-based computing, and, more recently, generative AI in Education. He is author of 750+ papers in int’l journals, conferences and books. He is (founding) series editor of IEEE Press Book Series on Human-Machine Systems and EiC of Springer Internet of Things series and AE of premier int'l journals such as IEEE TASE (senior editor), IEEE TAFFC-CS, IEEE THMS, IEEE T-AI, IEEE SJ, IEEE JBHI, Information Fusion, EAAI, etc. He chaired many int’l workshops and conferences (about 150), was involved in a huge number of int’l conferences/workshops (about 1000) as IPC member, is/was guest-editor of many special issues (about 100). He is cofounder and CEO of SenSysCal S.r.l., a Unical spinoff focused on innovative IoT systems, and recently cofounder and vice-CEO of the spin-off Bigtech S.r.l, focused on big data, AI and IoT technologies. Fortino is currently Associate VP of the Cybernetics area of the IEEE SMCS and former member of the IEEE SMCS BoG and former chair of the IEEE SMCS Italian Chapter.

Prof. Dr. Zheng Yan
Xidian University, China

Dr. Zheng Yan is currently a Huashan distinguished professor at the Xidian University, China. She is a Foreign Member of Finnish Academy of Science and Letters, a Fellow of IEEE, IET, AAIA, and AIIA. She received the B. Eng in electrical engineering and M. Eng in computer science and engineering from Xi’an Jiaotong University in 1994 and 1997. She received a second M. Eng in information security from National University of Singapore in 2000. She earned the Licentiate of Science and the Doctor of Science in Technology in electrical engineering from Helsinki University of Technology in 2005 and 2007. She joined the Nokia Research Center, Helsinki in 2000, working as a senior researcher until 2011. She worked as a visiting professor and a Finnish Academy Fellow at the Aalto University, Finland for over seven years.

Her research interests are in cyber trust, security, privacy, and data analytics. She has led 30+ projects, sponsored by EU, Academy of Finland, NSFC, MOST, telecom industry, etc. At the helm of a research team with 60+ members, she has supervised 180+ post-doctoral researchers and graduates. She has authored 430+ publications, with 280+ first and corresponding authorships, featured prominently in top-tier venues. Fifteen of them are top 0.1% or 1% highly-cited ESI papers. She is the sole author of two books on trust management, utilized in teaching for a decade. 150+ patents (including 82 independent  international inventions) invented by her have been adopted by industry, a few of them have been incorporated into international standards and widely used in practice with billions of users. She has delivered 40+ invited keynote speeches and talks at international conferences and world-leading companies. Her Google Scholar citation is about 19,000 with an H-index of 68.

Zheng served and is serving as an EiC/area/associate/guest editor for 60+ reputable journals, e.g., co-EiC of Information Sciences, associate editor of ACM Computing Surveys, area editor of Information Fusion. She is a steering committee member of several conferences, a general/program chair for 50+ international conferences. She is a founding steering committee co-chair of IEEE International Conference on Blockchain, which becomes a leading venue in the field. She is currently serving as a Member of IEEE Fellow Committee.

Dr. Yan is recognized as a Stanford World Top 2% Scientist since 2019, an Elsevier Highly Cited Chinese Researcher since 2020, and a ScholarGPS World Top 0.05% Highly Ranked Scholar - Prior Five Years (2024). She has earned many accolades, including Distinguished Inventor of Nokia for significant technology contributions, N²Women Star in Computer Networking and Communications, IEEE TCSC Award for Excellence in Scalable Computing, IEEE TEMS Distinguished Leadership Award, ELEC Impact Award for patent contributions to Finnish society, the Best Journal Paper Award issued by IEEE ComSoc and several other Best Paper awards, 18 times other IEEE Distinguished/Outstanding Leadership/Service awards, three EU awards, Excellent PhD Dissertation Supervisor Award of Chinese Society of Electronic Education, Shaanxi Nature Science Prize, etc. Her students have been rewarded more than 50 national or international awards. Her excellence has been covered by the media on numerous occasions.