Prof. Shojiro Nishio

Humanware: The Third Ware Which Creates Innovation in Information Technology

Information technology has been developing remarkably in both hardware and software. People are now closely interconnected through information networks which together form a complex and dynamic supranetwork. One urgent challenge in this rapidly changing information society is the development of an entirely new concept: "humanware," which is considered the third ware complementing hardware and software technologies. It addresses the flows of information linking humans and the resulting transformation of human relationships. To acquire skills related to humanware, it is essential to understand the "information dynamics" required to construct an information society attuned to both humans and the environment. It is also necessary to understand "cognitive dynamics," the dynamics of higher brain functions for receiving, understanding, and generating information, as well as "biological dynamics," the dynamics of biological systems to adapt to people and the environment. In this talk, I first discuss the importance of humanware for creating innovation in information technology, and then introduce our ongoing Humanware Innovation Program supported by the Program for Leading Graduate Schools of the MEXT (the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan). This program aims at fostering leaders to construct flexible, robust, and sustainable systems that support an ever-changing social environment based on the concept of humanware.

Biography of Shojiro Nishio

Dr. Shojiro Nishio received his B.E., M.E., and Ph.D. degrees from Kyoto University in Japan, in 1975, 1977, and 1980, respectively. He has been a full professor at Osaka University since August 1992, and was bestowed the prestigious title "Distinguished Professor of Osaka University" in July 2013. He served as a Vice President and Trustee of Osaka University from August 2007 to August 2011. Dr. Nishio has authored or co-authored more than 600 refereed journal and conference papers. He served as the Program Committee Co-Chairs for several international conferences including DOOD 1989, VLDB 1995, and IEEE ICDE 2005. He has also served as an editor of several renowned journals including IEEE Trans. on Knowledge and Data Engineering, VLDB Journal, ACM Trans. on Internet Technology, and Data & Knowledge Engineering. Dr. Nishio has received numerous awards for his research contributions, including the Medal with Purple Ribbon from the Japanese Emperor in 2011. He is also a Fellow of IEEE, IEICE and IPSJ, and is a member of four learned societies, including ACM.

Prof. Victor C.M. Leung

Video Game as a Service - Cloud Computing Enabled Video Gaming Anywhere on Any Device

There is a growing demand by consumers to access their digital entertainments, which are increasingly cloud-based, whenever and wherever they have access to networks of diverse characteristics, and using whatever devices they have in their hands. To address this diversity, we have embarked on a project is to develop design methodologies and enabling technologies to support “play anywhere on any device, pause and resume on any device” capabilities in next-generation cloud-based video games. In particular, scalable and ubiquitous computing resources in the cloud can enable sophisticated video games to be played on mobile devices that have limited processing and storage capacities. In this talk, we start with an overview of the general characteristics of mobile cloud computing and related research issues. We propose a cloud-based video game system with cooperative video sharing over a secondary ad hoc wireless network. Experimental results show that the expected server transmission rate can be significantly reduced compared to the conventional video encoding schemes for cloud games. We conclude with a discussion on our ongoing research to develop a cognitive framework that will provide “video game as a service” to players using a variety of devices to access computer games in the cloud over different wireless and wireline networks with diverse quality of service characteristics.

Biography of Victor C.M. Leung

Dr. Victor Leung is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and holder of the TELUS Mobility Research Chair at the University of British Columbia. He has contributed some 700 technical papers and book chapters in the areas of wireless networks and mobile systems. He was a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society. He has been serving on the editorial boards of the IEEE Wireless Communications Letters and several other journals. Previously, he has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Computers, Vehicular Technology and Wireless Communications, and the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications. He has contributed to the organizing and technical program committees of numerous conferences, in a leadership role in many cases. Dr. Leung was a winner of the 2012 UBC Killam Research Prize, and the IEEE Vancouver Section Centennial Award. He is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada.