Speech Title: Autonomous Driving: Challenges and Opportunities

Dr. Cheng-Zhong Xu, IEEE Fellow, is the Dean of the Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Macau, Macao SAR, China and a Chair Professor of Computer Science of UM. He was a Chief Scientist of Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology (SIAT) of Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Director of Institute of Advanced Computing and Digital Engineering.  He was also in the faculty of Wayne State University, USA for 18 years. Dr. Xu's research interest is mainly in the areas of parallel and distributed systems, cloud and edge computing, and data-driven intelligent applications in smart city and self-driving vehicles. He has published over 300 peer-reviewed papers on these topics, with over 14K citations and H-index of 59. Dr. Xu served in the editorial boards of leading journals in his areas, including IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems and Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing. He is the current Chair of IEEE Technical Committee of Distributed Processing. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from Nanjing University and his Ph.D. from the University of Hong Kong in 1993. He is leading several key research projects under China’s Ministry of Science and Technology, Department of Science and Technology of Guangdong Province and Macao SAR Science and Technology Development Fund.

Speech Title: Air Travel Changes Caused by the COVID-19 Pandemic

Dr. Xiaowen Fu is a Professor in Engineering Management in the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. His main research area is transport economics and management, which cover issues such as competition policy and government regulation, international aviation liberalization, efficiency benchmarking, transport demand modelling and industrial organization. He has been the principal investigator of close to 20 research grants, the guest editor of 6 journal special issues, and the author of more than 70 journal articles. He is an editor of the journal of Transport Policy, associate editor of the book series “Advances in Airlines Economics”. Dr. Fu has provided advisory and economic modeling services to organizations such as the Boeing Commercial Aircraft, New Zealand Commerce Commission, Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Government of British Columbia in Canada, Australian Competition Tribunal, Hong Kong Civil Aviation Department, Hong Kong Transport and Housing Bureau, Japan Rail (East), and OECD. He is the director of the Knowledge Management and Innovation Research Center, Vice President (Research) of the Air Transport Research Society (ATRS), Vice President (Research) of the Institute for Aviation (UK), founding chair of the Maritime Economy and Policy stream of the World Transport Convention, and an honorary professor of the University of Sydney Business School.

Speech Title: Drones in Logistics – Challenges and Opportunitie

Professor Tsourdos obtained a MEng in Electronic, Control and Systems Engineering from the University of Sheffield (1995), an MSc in Systems Engineering from Cardiff University (1996) and a PhD in Nonlinear Robust Autopilot Design and Analysis from Cranfield University (1999). He joined Cranfield University in 1999 as a lecturer and was appointed Head of the Centre for Autonomous and Cyber-Physical Systems in 2007, Professor of Autonomous Systems and Control in 2009, and Director of Research – Aerospace, Transport and Manufacturing in 2015. Professor Tsourdos was a member of Team Stellar, the winning team for the UK Ministry of Defence Grand Challenge in 2008, and an IET Innovation Award in 2009 (Team category).

Professor Tsourdos is an editorial board member of: Proceedings of the IMechE Part G Journal of Aerospace Engineering; IEEE Transactions of Aerospace and Electronic Systems; Aerospace Science & Technology; International Journal of Systems Science; Systems Science & Control Engineering; International Journal of Aeronautical and Space Sciences.

Professor Tsourdos is Chair of the International Federation of Automatic Control (IFAC) Technical Committee on Aerospace Control, and a member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) Unmanned Systems Integration and Outreach Committee; the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Control System Society Technical Committee on Aerospace Control (TCAC) and the IMechE Mechatronics, Informatics and Control Group board.