International Scientific Conference on Digitalization, Innovations & Sustainable Development Trends and Business Perspectives

Professor Isam Zabalawi is the President of the Australian University (AU). With a PhD in Electrical & Electronics Engineering from Leeds University, he is specialized in analog and digital signal processing and communication techniques.

His interests include the communication industry, information technology, technology transfer and higher education development and reform. Professor Zabalawi is a well-published research scholar and prior to joining AU in 2017, held senior positions including President of The Arab Academy for Banking & Financial Sciences, Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research in Jordan, Chancellor of the University of Sharjah (UAE), Chairman of the Higher Education Accreditation Council of Jordan, founding minister for establishing the German-Jordanian University and founding President of the International University for Science and Technology (IUST) in Syria 2005-2007. He is a Fellow of Engineers Australia and awarded the Engineering Executive credentials. Additionally, he is a fellow of The Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) – United Kingdom and he is a fellow with the European Federation of National Engineering Associations (FEANI). He served as a Higher Education Reform Expert (HERE’s) with the European Commission and Erasmus+ (Tempus) Office, Jordan.

Professor Tugrul U Daim is a Professor of Engineering and Technology Management and the Associate Director of Research National Academic Center of Excellence for Cybersecurity at Portland State University. He leads a research group on Technology Evaluations and Research Applications. His group has had 30 PhD graduates. A bibliometric review of 50 years of research published in Technological Forecasting and Social Change listed one of his papers as the fifth most influential paper and him as the third most influential author. A second paper identified his work at PSU as one of the roadmapping schools of thought next to Cambridge and others. His research group has been supported by National Science Foundation, National Cooperative Highway Research Program, Energy Trust of Oregon, US Dept of Energy, Bonneville Power Administration, Northwest Energy Efficiency Alliance, EPRI, Biotronik, Ford Motor Corporation, Intel Corporation, US Aid, Fulbright, Saudi Arabia Cultural Mission, Libyan Ministry of Education, CAPES Brazil, Maseeh Foundation, Oregon BEST, TUBITAK Turkey, Chinese Scholarship Council, FAPESP Brazil, Oregon Health and Science University, and University of Bremen.

Professor Daim has published over 200 refereed journal papers, more than 20 special issues and more than 20 books. He made more than 200 conference presentations. Professor Daim gave several keynote lectures at conferences, companies, universities and research centers around the world including Iamot, Euromot, Samsung, Helmut Schmidt University, Kuhne Logistics University, Seoul National University, Bogazici University, Koc University, University of Gaziantep, Izmir Institute of Technology, University of Pretoria, Tampere University of Technology, STEPI, EPIC at UNCC, Cambridge University, National Taiwan University, Higher School of Economics in Moscow, Friedrich Alexander University, Chinese Academy of Engineering and Office of Naval Research. He has been frequently invited to be an external examiner for promotions of many colleagues and for dissertations of doctoral students in universities around the world.

Professor Daim is the fifth Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management. Under his leadership, submissions to the journal more than doubled, the impact factor improved more than 50% and the journal was ranked among the top journals in leading citation indices. Prior to that Professor Daim had led the International Journal of Innovation and Technology Management for a decade and made it a well known journal in the field. In addition he had served as an Associate Editor for other journals including Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Technology in Society, Engineering Management Journal and Foresight. He has been on the editorial boards of many leading journals in our field. He also has been a part of the leadership team for conferences including PICMET and IEEE TEMSCON.

Prior to joining PSU, Professor Daim worked at Intel Corporation for over a decade in varying management roles including the management of product and technology development. During his tenure at PSU, he had worked very closely with Bonneville Power Administration to develop a research and technology management framework run by technology roadmaps. He is a member of the R&D Advisory Board for TUPRAS, the largest industrial firm in Turkey. He also consulted to many other international, national and regional organizations including Elsevier, ETRI, Koc Holding, Arcelik, Tofas, Kirlangic, Siemens, Mark and Spencer, and Castrol. Professor Daim has been teaching in summers at the Northern Institute of Technology at Technical University of Hamburg, Harburg for over a decade.

He was given the Research Publication Award by the International Association of Management of Technology (IAMOT) and Fellow Award by the Portland International Center for Management of Engineering and Technology (PICMET) both in 2014. He was awarded Leading Research Fellowship at National Research University Higher School of Economics in Moscow in 2018 and Honorary Chair Professor title by Chao Yang University of Technology in 2019. At PSU he was given David E Wedge Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2017, Outstanding Engineering Researcher Award given by the Columbia-Willamette Chapter of Sigma Xi Research Honorary in 2011 and Distinguished Alumni Award by PSU College of Eng’g and Comp Sci in 2003. Dr. Daim was the President of Omega Rho, International Honor Society in Operations Research and Management Science (of INFORMS) between the years of 2014 and 2016. He founded the PSU Chapter of Omega Rho as the founding President and has been the Faculty Adviser for 20 years.

Luis Rueda received his Bachelor’s degree in computer science from the National University of San Juan, Argentina, in 1993, and his Master’s and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from Carleton University, Canada, in 1998 and 2002, respectively. He is currently a Full Professor in the School of Computer Science at the University of Windsor. His current research interests are mainly focused on devising shallow and deep machine learning and representation learning algorithms at the fundamental level and applications in bioinformatics and cybersecurity to problems in biomedical imaging, transcriptomics, integrative genome-wide data analysis, identification of cancer biomarkers, user authentication, spam review detection and social engineering.

Luis Rueda holds four patents on machine learning and cybersecurity and has more than 200 publications and presentations in prestigious journals and conferences in machine learning, computational biology, and cybersecurity. He currently serves as Associate Editor of IEEE/ACM Transactions on Computational Biology and Bioinformatics, and Network Modeling Analysis in Health Informatics and Bioinformatics. He is also a member of the program committees of several conferences in the field. He is also a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a Member of the Association for Computing Machinery and the International Society for Computational Biology.

Thorhildur Sunna Aevarsdottir is a Member of Parliament for the Pirate Party in Iceland. Elected to the Icelandic Alþingi in 2016, Ms. Aevarsdottir holds an LL.M in International Law of Human Rights and Criminal Justice from Utrecht University. In parliament, Ms. Aevarsdottir serves as the Vice Chair of the Committee on Economy and Business Affairs as well as a full member on the Committee on Oversight and Constitutional Affairs. Ms. Aevarsdottir is the Vice-Chair of the Icelandic delegation of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE). In PACE, Ms. Aevarsdottir is the Chairperson of the Subcommittee on Artificial Intelligence and Human Rights as well as General Rapporteur on Political Prisoners.

Professor Dr. Erman Coşkun received his B.S. degree from Istanbul University, Faculty of Business Administration, in Turkey; his MBA from Pace University in New York; his M.S. degree in Management and Industrial Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute; and his Ph.D. degree in Engineering Sciences and Information Systems from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. In 1993, he won a government scholarship and continued his graduate education in the USA. After completing his doctoral degree, he taught in the US for more than six years and conducted research. He moved back to Turkey in 2008. He has worked at different universities in the USA, Turkey, Northern Cyprus, and Saudi Arabia. He has supervised 12 doctoral theses and nearly 20 master’s theses and has been a member of the jury for associate professorship written and oral exams and academic appointments. He was the founding department head of the Sakarya University MIS Department and the Izmir Bakircay University MIS Department. He also served as one of the founding professors of a business and entrepreneurship university established in Saudi Arabia between 2017 and 2021. He has worked on many public and private sector projects in information systems, large-scale safety-critical systems, digital transformation, ERP, IT risk assessment and management, traffic management, and credit score algorithm development areas as a project leader, coordinator, supervisor, advisor, and team member.

Erman Coşkun has taught and conducted research in the fields of management information systems, digital transformation, risk assessment and management, large-scale safety-critical systems, quantitative methods, mathematics, logistics, and supply chain management. He is an evaluator of information systems programs at ABET, an engineering accreditation body. Throughout his career, he held many administrative positions, such as department president, senate member, university board member, faculty board member, department head, institute director, and deputy director. Professor Coşkun has more than 50 articles published in international and national journals, one international book, many national books and book chapters, and more than 100 scientific conference papers in national and international conferences and scientific meetings. He was a key speaker at conferences and has served as an invited speaker at many events. He has worked as a field editor, referee, evaluator, and editorial board member for many national and international journals.