By Richard Millham, Durban University of Technology DUT, South Africa, and Zoran Bojkovic, University of Belgrade, Engineering Academy of Serbia

 

The third ICTAS 2019 Conference took place on 6–8 March 2019 in Durban, South Africa, where more than 90 delegates, representing academia, research institutes, and industry attended the event.

Both international and national organizations participated in the conference, which provided a venue for electrical and electronic engineers to exchange ideas, share their latest research contributions, network with their peers, gain continuing education opportunities, and most importantly, learn about the innovations and solutions to issues affecting human well-being.

The theme of ICTAS 2019 was Information Communication Technology and Society with the emphasis on research, innovation and engagement, recognizing at the same time accelerated growth research outputs.

The overall conference was led by the Dean of the Faculty of Accounting and Informatics at DUT Prof. Oludayo Olugbara, Conference Chair Prof. Richard Millham, Program Committee Chair and Editor Dr. Delene Heukelman, Conference Program Chair Dr. Alveen Singh, Conference, Publicity Chair Dr. Jeanette Wing, Conference Treasurer Dr. Progress Mtshali and the complete Organizing Team.  Forty-six international experts within the field and from 6 continents and 12 countries worldwide comprised the Technical Program Committee.

Keynote Speakers

ICTAS 2019 hosted three keynote speakers from academia and industry. Zoran Bojkovic, University of Belgrade and Engineering Academy of Serbia, gave a keynote presentation on “Fifth Generation (5G) mobile networks and beyond,” identifying challenges for technologies,  and paving the way for providing wireless communications with massive connectivity, tactile internet, quality of service (QoS), and network slicing. One of the activities beyond 5G will be expanding to end-to-end software defined/network function virtualization. Other trends will be end-user integration, security and energy efficiency, QoS maintenance, and fault tolerance of any kind.

Bill Dafnis, Associate Dean of Technology, School of Business and Technology, Capella University, USA, gave a keynote presentation on “Academic Program Innovation: Economic Factors on Cloud Computing and Blockchain Technology Talent Alignment.” Dafnis indicated that economic shifts enabled by cloud computing, coupled with the immutable and transparent constructs of blockchain technology, hold the promise of further disrupting and reshaping legacy industries and workforce talent.

Francois Mouton, Head of Incident Response Team, Cyanre, Centurion, South Africa gave the third keynote address: “Examining the Threat Landscape of Social Engineering in an Emerging Society.” Within this keynote, the particular discussion focused on the psyche of the individual and discussed the basic human instinct of trust.  The concept of trust differs based on environmental conditions and socio-economic upbringing.

About the Conference

The conference technical program committee accepted forty-two papers. Based on the themes of the accepted papers, the conference was divided into 10 technical sessions:  Computer Networks, Machine Learning and Computer Engineering, Mobile Computing and ICT for Society, Software Engineering, Cloud Computing and Social Media, Finance and accounting, Cyber Security, e-Learning, Image Processing, and IoT.

The ICTAS2019 conference proved to be academically challenging and inspirational. It constituted a dynamic and diverse community of dedicated professionals in the field of information communication technology and society.

IEEE South Africa Computer Society technically and financially sponsored the third ICTAS Conference. Partners included Oracle, Computer Mania, Faculty of Accounting and Informatics of Durban University of Technology, National Research Foundation of South Africa, and South African Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

ICTAS 2020 will be held on 11-12 March 2020. You can find more information at www.ictas2020.com.