Jen-Yao Chung (IBM) and Wei-Tek Tsai (ASU, USA)
Keynote: Future Trends and Directions for e-Business Engineering

Jinpeng Huai (Beihang University, China)
Keynote: E-Government and the CROWN project

Marcin Paprzycki (OSU, USA)
Keynote: Can Agent Systems Deliver?

Catherine Lasser (IBM)
Keynote: Solutions innovation, Solutions engineering for Industry Solutions

Future Trends and Directions for e-Business Engineering

Abstract

As service-oriented computing is getting acceptance by government agencies and major computer and software companies, we also witness several areas that need to address. One issue is that there is a lack of coherent curriculum and science behind the service-oriented computing. Service-oriented computing is related to a number of traditional areas such as business models, programming languages, model construction and verification, software architecture and design, software reusability, databases, ontology, autonomic computing, grid computing, and computer networks. While most of these topics are covered in universities, but they are often scattered into different colleges and departments such as business and engineering schools, we believe that there is a need to organize these topics into a coherent curriculum. Once a coherent program is available, we can have a systemic program for research and education. Regarding to research, there is a great need to perform service-oriented system engineering such as service-oriented requirement engineering, service-oriented design, service-oriented model and verification, dynamic service verification and validation, dynamic service maintenance and re-composition, dynamic service security analysis, dynamic service reliability analysis, and dynamic service profiling and collaboration. Regarding to the education, there is a shortage of both skilled people who are knowledge in developing and applying software services in a variety of domains such as e-commerce, bioengineering, process control, and computing and communication infrastructure, and there is a shortage of available instruction materials that can be readily used. The implication of service science has significant implications to current research and education program as it will change the current university education and research programs.

Biography

Dr. Jen-Yao Chung received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Currently, he is the Chief Technology Officer for IBM Global Electronics Industry, where he is responsible for identifying and growing new technologies into future businesses for IBM. Before that, he was senior manager of the electronic commerce and supply chain department, and program director for the IBM Institute for Advanced Commerce Technology office. Dr. Chung is the co-founder and co-chair of IEEE technical committee on e-Commerce (TCEC). He has served as general chair and program chair for many international conferences, most recently he served as the general co-chair of the IEEE International Conference on e-Commerce Technology (CEC05) and IEEE International Conference on e-Business Engineering (ICEBE05). He has authored or coauthored over 150 technical papers in published journals or conference proceedings. He is a senior member of the IEEE and a member of ACM.

Prof. W. T. Tsai received his Ph.D. (1986) and M.S. (1982) in Computer Science from University of California at Berkeley, CA, and SB (1979) in Computer Science and Engineering from MIT, Cambridge, MA. He is now a professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Arizona State University, Tempe, Arizona. He was on editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Knowledge and Data Engineering, and an IEEE Distinguished Visitor. He has published more than 300 papers in various journals and conferences. His work has been sponsored by NSF, Army Research Laboratory, Guidant, Hitachi Software Engineering, and Fujitsu.

E-Government and the CROWN project

Jinpeng Huai Executive Vice President of Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics)

Abstract

Wide deployment of e-government infrastructure is one of the major national projects in China. Significant progress has been made since the launch of this project in 2003. Three key issues have been extensively investigated. First, an efficient and reliable integrated e-government platform should be constructed to avoid isolated information and application islands. Second, this project aims to establish a national uniform technical standard to avoid unnecessary investments and repetitive constructions. Third, an efficient mechanism should be designed for the industrialization of e-government in order to maximize benefit and provide a productive business model and paradigm. In this talk, I will introduce current status of e-government in China and major problems we have encountered. I’ll also discuss the future directions of China e-government project. This talk will also address an experimental environment for e-government research in our lab, CROWN (China R&D Environment Over Wide-area Network) project. A new model, protocol computing, is used in our design. I will focus on efficient and trustworthy network resource sharing and collaboration of the CROWN project.

Biography

Dr. Jinpeng HUAI is Professor and Executive Vice President of Beihang University, Beijing, China. He serves on the Steering Committee for Advanced Computing Technology Subject, the National High-Tech Program (863) as Chief Scientist. He is a member of Consulting Committee of the Central Government’s Information Office, and Chairman of the Expert Committee in both the National e-Government Engineering Taskforce and the National e-Government Standard office. Dr. Huai and his colleagues are leading the key projects in e-Science of the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) and Sino-UK. He has published over 100 papers and received more than 20 patents. His research interests include middleware, peer-to-peer (P2P) and grid computing, trustworthiness and security.

Can Agent Systems Deliver?

Marcin Paprzycki Department of Computer Science, OSU, Tulsa, OK, USA and Computer Science, SWPS, Warsaw, Poland

Abstract

Since 1994 we are told to believe that software agents will become the next revolution in computer science. This change is to occur not only in the ways we construct software but it is also to have a much broader impact on the field of human-computer interaction. Unfortunately, as it is easy to see, the revolution prophesized in 1994 does not seem to materialize (regardless of the rapidly increasing number of conferences, workshops, special sessions, publications, etc). It is not the case that when we turn the computer on in the morning, we contact “our agent” to receive a personalized newscast, our day-plan and, on the basis of that plan as well as the weather forecast and knowledge of our dressing-preferences, an advice what to wear (agent ideal servant). Similarly, when creating software for an e-shop we do not utilize pre-existing agent-modules (e.g. advertising agents, seller agents, inventory managers etc.). To the contrary, it is rather difficult to point to a successful large-scale implementation of an agent system completed using one of the multitude of existing and constantly created agent environments. The aim of the talk will be three-fold. First, a brief introduction to software agents followed by the discussion of major points raised “for” and “against” software agent systems. Second, it will be shown that it is possible to implement large scale agent systems with a scalable platform, as state-of-the-art agent platforms (e.g. JADE) easily scale up to more than thousand agents and two hundred thousand messages. Finally, a positive research program will be presented and illustrated by a model agent based e-commerce system using negotiating agents with dynamically loadable modules.

Biography

Marcin Paprzycki is currently on leave of absence form Oklahoma State University and works as an Associate Professor at the SWPS University in Warsaw, Poland. He has received his M.S. Degree in 1986 from Adam Mickiewicz University in Poznan, Poland and his Ph.D. in 1990 from Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas. His initial research interests were in high performance computing and parallel computing, and over time they evolved toward distributed systems and Internet-based computing; in particular, agent systems. He has published more than 200 research papers and was invited to Program Committees of over 200 international conferences. In 2001 he was elected Chair of the IEEE Technical Committee on Supercomputing Applications that he lead through a merger that lead to the creation of the IEEE Technical Committee on Scalable Computing that he currently co-chairs. He is on editorial boards of 8 journals and book series.

Solutions innovation, Solutions engineering for Industry Solutions

Catherine Lasser Vice President, Industry Solutions and Emerging Business IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

Abstract

What is Innovation? It’s not always about inventing something entirely new. Innovation occurs at the intersection of invention and business insight. Creating industry solutions is not about doing something new for every client’s problem, it is about creatively solving business problems with reusable assets or building blocks. It is about using adaptive and systematic processes to solve clients’ business needs and infrastructure problems with speed and quality.
Creating a discipline, can we quickly and easily create and manage solutions? Changing business environments require quick and adaptive methodology, new business models and new solutions. In IBM, we are using a Solution engineering approach to change the way we work with the solutions lifecycle. Business drivers, process enablers and lessons learned will be presented.

Biography

Cathy was appointed Vice President, Industry Solutions and Emerging Business for the Research division in September 2004. She is responsible for connecting research with industries to focus innovation on the application of technology to real-world problems. Her mission is to create a tight linkage between the research community and our sales organization and to create and manage new emerging businesses. Prior to this position, Cathy was Vice President of Global productivity and Employee IT advocate in the CIO organization. Her focus was on, improving and expanding the IT services, support and function to our employees. She provided a single point of contact for managing contracts, operations and measurements with service providers such as those with the IBM Global Account, AT&T, and others around the world.

Cathy joined IBM in 1978 as a programmer supporting Test Engineering in Endicott, New York. Within a year, she moved to the New York tri-state area where she has held various programming and team lead positions. In 1982, Cathy joined the IBM Credit Corporation where she developed and managed the information center and advanced technology development departments. She then moved to the corporate common financial systems organization as a development manager. In 1993, Cathy joined the PC Company where her organization was responsible for executive information systems, decision support systems and manufacturing process support. She then went to IBM Research in 1996 as Executive Assistant to the Senior Vice President of Research. In 1997, Cathy was appointed as the CIO for the Research Division. Cathy joined the CIO organization in 2001 as Vice President of B2B Initiatives. Cathy had worldwide responsibility for enabling IBM as a world class participant in the B2B environment.

Cathy holds a BS in Mathematics/Computer Science from SUNY Binghamton and an MBA in Finance from Iona College. In addition to her IBM responsibilities, Cathy’s activities have included: Secretary, Board of Education, Brookfield, CT School District; Chair Curriculum Committee, Brookfield, CT School District; Member of National Science Foundation Business and Operations Committee; National Academy of Engineering committee on diversity in the technical work force; Smith College, Advisory Board for school of engineering; Justice of the Peace, State of Connecticut.