Past Seminars


State of LoRaWAN and the IoT Ecosystem | Wienke Giezeman

June 01, 2023 | 4:00 PM CET

About Topic: Learn about the key trends and innovations that have driven the development of the LoRaWAN ecosystem and learn about the key pillars and challenges of a successful IoT project. In this webinar, we will look into the current state of the LoRaWAN network in 2023 and show real examples of how it is being utilized today across a variety of industries.

About Speaker: Wienke Giezeman is the initiator of The Things Network, the first crowdsourced free and open 'Internet of Things'. The network was set up in 6 weeks in Amsterdam, making it the first smart city in the world. Wienke also serves as a CEO at The Things Industries, a LoRaWAN solutions provider.

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Trust Management in Social Internet of Things | Barbora Buhnova

May 04, 2023 | 4:00 PM CET

About Topic: Digitalization is leading us towards a future where people, processes, data and things are not only interacting with each other, but might start forming societies on their own. In these dynamic systems, converging towards Social Internet of Things (SIoT), trust management on the level of human-to-thing as well as thing-to-thing interaction becomes an essential ingredient to supervise safe and secure progress of our digitalized future. In this talk, we will look into the essential elements of trust management in complex digital ecosystems and SIoT, including trust assessment and its influencing factors (e.g., feeling vulnerable), trust propagation (e.g., via reputation), and trust updates (e.g., via dynamic certification schemes). We will give an overview of the current open discussions about the trust management strategies and discuss their risks and related trust attacks (e.g, self-promotion or whitewashing).

About Speaker: Barbora Buhnova is an Associate Professor and Vice-Dean at Masaryk University (MU), Faculty of Informatics (FI MU) in Brno, Czech Republic. Following her research career in Germany and Australia, she now leads multiple research teams at Faculty of Informatics MU (software architecture) and Czech CyberCrime Centre of Excellence C4e (critical infrastructures), with special emphasis on trust management in autonomous ecosystems. She is a Steering Committee member of the International Conference on Software Architecture (ICSA) and has been involved in organization of numerous leading conferences (e.g. in OC of ICSE, ESEC-FSE, ASE). She acts as a reviewer and (guest) editor in multiple journals (e.g. IEEE TSE, Springer EMSE, Elsevier SCP, Elsevier JSS, Springer SoSyM, Wiley SME), and is member of the IEEE TSE Review Board. Next to her academic activities, she is the chair of the Association of Industrial Partners at FI MU (with 30+ companies), and is a Co-Founding and Governing Board member of Czechitas, a non-profit organisation aiming at making IT skills more accessible to youth and women (with 30,000+ graduates).

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Sunlight for wireless communication | Marco Zúñiga

Apr 06, 2023 | 4:00 PM CET

About Topic: We, humans, already use 50% more energy moving information than moving airplanes around the world. Communication is central to our societies but is taking a toll on the earth. We want to use a free, abundant, and natural resource for wireless communication: sunlight. Similar to the way you can use a mirror to communicate by reflecting light, our aim is to change the surfaces of objects to control their reflection properties to send information, but without noticing any flicker! In this manner, objects will be able to talk to each other using daylight, an eco-friendly solution. In this talk, we will present some of our recent work on this exciting area and its potential applications. A world that communicates through natural light. That’s the goal.

About Speaker: Dr. Marco Zúñiga is an Associate Professor in the Networked Systems Group at TU Delft. His research interests are in the areas of the Internet of Things, Mobile Computing, and Visible Light Communication. He obtained his Ph.D. and MSc in Electrical Engineering from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, and his BSc in Electronics Engineering from the Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú. Dr. Zúñiga has more than 60 scientific publications and has received three Best Paper Awards, five Best Paper Runner-ups, and an Accenture Innovation Award in 2017. Two of his publications are the 3rd and 16th most cited papers in the ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks. Dr. Zúñiga has also been invited to present his work on "Sunlight for wireless communication" at the Innovation Expo 2018, a flagship event organized by six Dutch Ministries to showcase Dutch innovation to the world.

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The IoT and the two sides of Sustainability | Carlo Boano

Mar 02, 2023 | 4:00 PM CET

About Topic: IoT systems are often portrayed as a key driver for sustainability and as an essential technology to achieve many of the seventeen United Nations’ sustainable development goals by 2030. Among others, IoT systems can help improving health and well-being, building smart cities, promoting a responsible production and consumption, increasing awareness and visibility into energy and resource usage, as well as facilitating access to clean energy. At the same time, sustainability is often not a concern during the design of an IoT system: several IoT gadgets are unnecessary, many IoT products become quickly obsolete, and poorly-performing IoT devices are quickly dismissed. As a result, IoT hardware often ends up as e-waste into landfill after a very short lifespan, which is worrying considering the magnitude of IoT devices expected in the next decade. In this talk, I will illustrate this paradox with concrete examples and highlight the need to maximize the usability and lifetime of IoT systems, presenting technical solutions that could help in this regard.

About Speaker: Carlo Alberto Boano is an associate professor at the Institute of Technical Informatics of Graz University of Technology (TU Graz), Austria. He received the Venia Docendi in “Embedded Systems” from TU Graz with an Habilitation thesis entitled “Technologies and Tools for the Design of Dependable Networked Embedded Systems” in 2020. He also received from TU Graz a doctoral degree under the auspices of the President of the Austrian Republic in 2016 with a thesis entitled “Dependable Wireless Sensor Networks” and completed under the supervision of Kay Römer. Before joining TU Graz, Carlo Alberto Boano was researcher at the University of Lübeck, Germany (2009-2013) and at the Swedish Institute of Computer Science, Sweden (2008-2009). During his post-doctoral time at TU Graz, he has visited Thiemo Voigt’s group at Uppsala University, Mun Choon Chan’s group at the National University of Singapore, and Yuan He’s group at Tsinghua University. Carlo Alberto’s research interests encompass the design of dependable networked embedded systems, with emphasis on the efficiency and reliability of low-power wireless communications, as well as on the robustness of IoT networking protocols against environmental influences. Within this area, he has published over 100 peer-reviewed contributions – including papers at prestigious venues ranked CORE A/A*, such as SenSys, IPSN, NDSS, INFOCOM, RTSS, ICNP, ICDCS – and received several awards.

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AIoT for environmental Intelligence | Pietro Manzoni

Feb 02, 2023 | 4:00 PM CET

About Topic: Environmental Intelligence refers to using digital technologies to gain insight into our impact on the environment and develop strategies to mitigate or reverse the effects of climate change. The talk will provide insights related to the applications of AIoT for environmental intelligence, focusing on data collection. It will show the approach and some of the results from research activities related to monitoring a natural lagoon in the southern part of Spain, namely the Mar Menor lagoon (Murcia, Spain). This ecosystem supports many human activities encompassing tourism, agriculture, fishing, and mining, leading to its deterioration. The project’s overall objective was to develop cross-cutting and green technology for modeling and predicting socio-environmental processes across different temporal and spatial scales. We wanted to achieve this through a digital twin strategy that allows researchers, stakeholders, and policy-makers to collect data cost-effectively and create more precise models and predictions to support better decision-making.

About Speaker: He received the master degree in Computer Science from the “Università degli Studi” of Milan, Italy, in 1989, and the PhD degree in Computer Science from the “Politecnico di Milano”, Italy, in 1995. From November 1992 to February 1993 he did an internship at the Bellcore Labs, Red Bank, New Jersey, USA, and from February 1994 to November 1994 he was a visiting researcher at the ICSI (International Computer Science Institute) Berkeley, California, USA. He is full professor of computer engineering at the “Universitat Politècnica de València”, Spain. He is the coordinator of the Computer Networks Research Group (GRC) and a senior member of the IEEE. His research activity is related to the use of Mobile Wireless Networks to the design of dynamic systems. He is currently working on solutions for the Internet of Things focusing on LPWAN-based networks, and Pub/Sub systems. He published more than 200 scientific papers in conferences and more than 90 papers in international journals.; his Google scholar H index is 49. He is part or has been part of various editorial boards and organizing committees of International journals and conferences.

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Low Power Wide-Area Wireless Internet of Things with LoRaWAN | Dirk Pesch

Jan 05, 2023 | 4:00 PM CET

About Topic: Connectivity, particularly wireless connectivity, is a key enabling technology for the Internet of Things. A plethora of technologies exist, ranging from short-range to long-range and low to medium power options. Recently, long-range, low-power wireless communication technologies have been introduced for both licensed and unlicensed radio spectrum. Unlicensed spectrum technologies such as LoRa/LoRaWAN have become very popular because of their low cost, open standard and open-source software support. However, the current standard has many weaknesses in supporting a vision of dense, wireless IoT device deployment. In this talk, we will briefly review long-range, low-power wireless technologies, review some of the weaknesses of LoRaWAN and present a range of advances that address these weaknesses; in particular, we will focus on medium access fairness, power efficiency and delay performance for both terrestrial and satellite-based smart city and industrial IoT applications.

About Speaker: Dirk Pesch is a Professor in the School of Computer Science and Information Technology at University College Cork, where he leads research initiatives in the area of future networks, the Internet of Things and Cyber-Physical Systems with applications in smart and connected communities and smart manufacturing. Dirk’s research interests focus on the study, design and performance evaluation of the Internet of Things (IoT) and Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) and associated communication protocols and system architectures and their applications to smart, energy-efficient and sustainable cities and connected communities as well as smart manufacturing. He is also interested in addressing the interoperability problem of IoT/CPS, which limits the widespread adoption of the technology to many real-world problems and situations. Dirk is the Director of a national doctoral training initiative, the Science Foundation Ireland funded Centre for Research Training in Advanced Networks for Sustainable Societies. He is also a Principal Investigator of the SFI-funded CONNECT Centre for Future Networks and the CONFIRM Centre for Smart Manufacturing. He is an editorial board member of a number of journals and contributes to ACM/IEEE/IFIP conference organization in his area of expertise. Prior to joining academia, Dirk was a design engineer with Nokia in Germany and the UK, developing and implementing communication protocols for a range of cordless telecommunication products. Dirk received a Dipl.Ing. degree from RWTH Aachen University, Germany, and a PhD from the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, Scotland.

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LoRa-DTN: Tailor-made IoT platform for extreme Arctic conditions | Samo Grasic

Dec 01, 2022 | 4:00 PM CET

About Topic: This seminar will engage in the lessons learned from designing, developing and deploying the LoRa-DTN IoT platform. This platform was tailor-made by and for the Sami reindeer herding population in the north of Sweden. Due to the harsh Arctic winter conditions, lack of power and internet infrastructure, remoteness and inaccessible terrains, conventional off-the-shelf IoT solutions were not applicable. Hence, the LoRa-DTN platform was developed in order to provide reindeer herders ability to track their reindeer herds, exchange short messages, use drones as a data relay and monitor the ice thickness on lakes during winter time. The platform is built on a custom hardware and employs LoRa radios and custom-built network protocol based on the Delay Tolerant Network architecture (using Store-And-Forward principle).

About Speaker: Since 2016, Samo Grasic has worked at Dálvvadis economical association, Jokkmokk, where he designs and develops the Nomatrack LoRa-DTN (Delay Tolerant Network) platform. This platform is tailor-made for reindeer herding purposes in remote Arctic environments. Samo is the member of the The Inter Planetary Networking Special Interest Group and the co-author of the PRoPHET routing protocol (RFC 6693). Samo received his PhD from Luleå University of Technology, in the subject of of Human Work Science, in 2014. Here, focus ison development and deployment of the ICT infrastructure DTN for sparsely populated Arctic regions. Samo’s interests include routing in computer networks, energy harvesting, low power systems, soft, and hardware development as well as embedded systems. Samo is also interested in the social, and economical aspects of ICT deployments. Prior to his academic career, Samo worked for more than six years in the industry, developing hardware and software components for meteorological and radiological systems.

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Toit, a modern framework for IoT | Florian Loitsch

Nov 03, 2022

About Topic: Modern microcontrollers, like the ESP32, are more powerful than the first Unix machines. Despite their speed, they are still treated like 8-bit microcontrollers from the 90s: by flashing monolithic applications on them. Individual components have no protections from each other, and the development process is brittle, since a change or bug in one part of the firmware could adversely affect the rest. This doesn’t need to be. In this presentation we will present Toit. A modern framework for IoT devices. A new language, virtual machine, and lots of libraries, work together to provide a great development experience with properties we generally expect from operating systems: memory separation, individual applications, ease of use with a high-level garbage-collected language, and fast development iterations.

About Speaker: Florian Loitsch did his PhD in compiler technologies, compiling Scheme to JavaScript. He was then hired by Google to work on V8 (Chrome’s JavaScript engine). He was part of the team that developed the Dart programming language, for which he was the technical lead for the Dart-to-Javascript compiler and later for the Dart libraries. Almost 5 years ago, he co-founded Toitware, where he has been developing and improving Toit since.

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