Topics & Speakers

1. Introduction: Sino­ Swiss Science and Technology Cooperation, Past and Future (10min),Dr. Claudio Boer, Director Sino Swiss S&T Cooperation swissnex China, Consul of Consulate General of Switzerland in Shanghai

2. Cutting-Edge Research in Information Technology in Switzerland (15min), Prof. Boi Faltings, Member of Executive Committee of Nano-Tera

3. MICS – Swiss Competence Center in Mobile Information and Communication System (25min), Dr. Guillermo Barrenetxea, Senior scientist and representative of the MICS program

4. Nano–Tera.ch – Swiss Research Program for Engineering Complex Systems at the Interface of Nano- and Information Technology (25min), Dr. Patrick Mayor, Scientific Coordinator of Nano–Tera

5. Q&A and Discussion (30 min – 1h)

About MICS www.mics.ch

Wireless communication is fundamentally changing the way we use information technology: information becomes embedded in our physical environment by means of personal devices and embedded computers, and the physical environment becomes increasingly intertwined with the Internet information space through sensor and actuator technology. In parallel with this qualitative change, the number of devices and the amount of information is growing exponentially.

Classical models of designing and controlling centralized IT systems will not be able to scale up. Decentralized approaches, based on self-organization principles, need to be studied and developed in order to master the complexity of the resulting systems.

The Swiss National Competence Center of Research MICS is tackling exactly these problems, combining the study of the fundamental principles (network structures, distributed algorithms, information and communication theory) that will underlie this next-generation systems, and an engineering and empirical approach by developing and deploying platforms (wireless sensor technology, ad-hoc networks, in-network information processing) and testing technologies in applications.

MICS has also remarkable achievements in applications and technology transfer, particularly in the area of wireless sensor networks for environmental monitoring. As a result, MICS is not only recognized as a world-wide leading and well-connected research center in mobile information and communication systems, but also as highly-reputed partner for conducting projects in the domain of wireless sensor networks.

Key areas in which we achieved these results are theory of wireless communications, wireless communication systems, security in wireless networks, embedded software systems and networked information management.

About Nano-Tera www.nano-tera.ch

The Nano-Tera.ch program supports research in the engineering of complex (tera-level) systems for health, security and environment using micro- and nanotechnologies. Following former and already running efforts in Switzerland aimed towards the internet of things, the overarching challenge of Nano-Tera.ch is the interface of small physical devices with information technology to engineer complex systems with applications in health, security and the environment. To this end, the Nano-Tera.ch program funds research projects involving a large portion of the leading scientists on Swiss Institutes of Technology, Universities and Engineering Schools.

The first phase of the program was started in 2008 and focuses on development of component technologies and some integrated systems. These projects are producing major new results in technologies of sensing, wearable computing, nanoscale devices, and communication and information processing in networks of sensors. They leverage the leading position of many of the research groups in basic research in their fields.

The Nano-Tera.ch program aims at bringing Switzerland to the forefront of a new technological revolution by driving engineering and information technology for health and security of humans and the environment in the 21st century.

About swissnex China www.swissnexchina.org

swissnex China – mandated by the Swiss State Secretariat for Education and Research SER – is a promotion agency, a networking platform, and a coordination institution.

Promote – create and improve the awareness of Swiss science, technology, innovation and culture in China and promote Switzerland as a first choice country for international research cooperation.

connect – establish a solid, long–lasting network of scholars of both countries serving as a base for bottom–up initiatives in the future, channel high potentials of Switzerland and China towards perfect research match

Facilitate – support Sino Swiss science and technology cooperation by coordinating with governmental agencies and academic partners, realize facilitation activities for all parties such as the organization of workshops and visits.

Biography of speakers

Boi Faltings is a full professor of computer science at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), where he heads the Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. His main research contributions are in the area of qualitative and case-based reasoning, constraint programming, distributed problem-solving, and recommender systems.

He has co-founded 6 companies in e-commerce and computer security and acted as advisor to several other companies world-wide. Prof. Faltings has published over 300 refereed papers and graduated over 25 Ph.D. students, several of which have won national and international awards. Boi Faltings is a fellow of the European Coordinating Committee for Artificial Intelligence. He has served as head of the computer science department from 1996-1998 and as head of the Institute of Core Computing Sciences from 2005-2008. He holds a Diploma from ETH Zurich and a Ph.D. from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He is a member of the executive committee of Nano-Tera since 2007.

Dr. Patrick Mayor holds a PhD degree in physics from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL). His research focused on the central concept of temperature in granular materials, introducing a method to probe these out-of-equilibrium systems that has become well-known in the field. This research yielded several publications in major journals (including the cover page of Nature), a lot of Swiss and international media coverage, and won the EPFL doctorate award for the best thesis of year 2005 as well as the Charles Haenny prize. As a post-doctoral fellow for 2 years at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, USA, Patrick Mayor worked on impact phenomena in granular materials, supported by an SNSF grant. Since 2009, he is the scientific coordinator of Nano-tera.

Dr. Guillermo Barrenetxea is a senior researcher at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL), where he is responsible for a wireless sensor network research group. He has participated in multiple sensor network application projects involving environmental research, precision agriculture, building monitoring, and pollution monitoring. As part of his activities in the MICS national competence center headquartered at EPFL, he is the head of the End-to-end Sensor Data Management group, a research team that studies the practical applications of wireless sensor networks and reliable data management infrastructures. He is also co-founder and CEO of the startup company Sensorscope that commercializes environmental sensing technology. He holds Master and Ph.D. degree in communication systems, both from EPFL.