Applications for the first International Conference on Data Intelligence and Security will be available today. The University of Texas Rio Grande Valley and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers will sponsor the conference April 8-10, 2018. “The IEEE is literally one of the big authorities in engineering,” said Mahmoud Quweider, a professor and associate chair for the Computer Science department. “When they sponsor a conference, it has weight. It means that the papers that will be presented are top quality.” MARIO GONZALEZ/THE RIDER FILE PHOTO
Applications for the first International Conference on Data Intelligence and Security will be available today at ICDIS.org. It is the first conference of its kind in the Rio Grande Valley and offers a new opportunity for students and faculty of UTRGV.
The ICDIS is co-sponsored by UTRGV and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The conference is set for April 8-10 of 2018 in the Hilton Garden Inn on South Padre Island.
“This conference is going to bring a lot of researchers worldwide,” said Hansheng Lei, an associate professor in the Computer Science department. “We have sent invitations to many top universities. This is going to be the first conference organized by the university, so it’s a big event. It’s not only very important for our Computer Science department but also for the university and the region.”
The conference aims to establish UTRGV as a top-tier research university. The ICDIS has national and international names on its organizing committee. They include the University of Texas at Arlington, Ocean University of China and Google Inc.
The conference will focus on data intelligence, security and management. Data intelligence is similar to artificial intelligence or the branch of computer science dealing with the simulation of intelligent behavior in computers, but driven by data. Knowledge is extracted from the data. Data security is the method used to secure the data in a database, internet or any cyberspace. Data management is how it is all organized, stored and retrieved.
“The conference is multidisciplinary in nature,” said Mahmoud Quweider, a professor and associate chair of the Computer Science department. “It doesn’t have to be only computer science. We can use physicists … mathematicians, computer scientists, engineers, so it’s multidisciplinary in nature. Our goal is to, of course, start collaborations and also to put our name on the map. We want to become one of the attractive places for researchers and collaborators.”
Students are encouraged to take part in this conference. Lei suggests that students working on senior projects or a graduate school thesis submit papers for this event. Students whose papers are chosen, will have their work published and cited on the IEEE website.
The ICDIS will last three days. Top scientists will present keynote speeches for the attendees and chosen papers will be presented by the authors.
“Once they publish it and it becomes part of the system, other researchers interested in the paper will be able to go to the website and download that paper,” Quweider said. “The citation of a paper is a very good thing. So that’s the way students can contribute and they can actually put it on their résumé and it will be good for their career [to say] ‘my paper was published on the IEEE.’”
At least 200 people have signed up to attend the conference. Interested students are encouraged to volunteer at the ICDIS.
“Don’t be shy to apply,” Quweider said. “We encourage everyone to apply. Hopefully, it will become an annual event.”
For more information, visit ICDIS.org.
