More than 50 researchers share their creative forward-thinking research at CTIT Conference 2011

Under the patronage of His Excellency Sheikh Nahayan Mabarak Al Nahayan, UAE Minister of Higher Education and Scientific Research and Chancellor of the Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT), Dubai Women’s College (DWC) held the 2011 international conference on Current Trends in Information Technology (CTIT ‘11) at the DWC campus on October 26 and 27, in partnership with IBM, IEEE, Adobe, Arab Business Machines, ACM Chapter, and British Computer Society.

The aim of the conference was to foster IT research through leadership that provides pragmatic solutions to global and community needs. More than 50 researchers from across the globe shared their creative forward-thinking research in the areas such as Human Computer Interaction, Virtual Environment, Multimedia Applications, Information Systems and others.

CTIT ‘11 hosted 2 keynote speakers: Dr. Hamid Torabi, Director of IBM Research and Intellectual property in Middle East and Africa and Prof. Nadia Thalmann, Director of MIRALab, University of Geneva, Switzerland and Director of the Institute for Media Innovation (IMI), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore.

Dr. Torabi introduced the new technology “IBM’s Watson”, which was simply experimented for the first time in the famous American game “Jeopardy”. The unique “IBM’s Watson” technology simply reads every book in the world and is able to answer any question in only 3 seconds, and in any language.

Professor Nadia Magnenat-Thalmann presented a paper on “Virtual Human Model: design, animation and variations”. She mentioned the importance of animation’s role in health care and how it is being valuable to doctors who are learning about operating important surgeries to the human body.

One of the major highlights of the conference this year was the workshops that were offered throughout the 2 days tackling issues related to Creating better digital experiences, Trends in education, technology and mobility; effect on teaching and learning and Internet safety.

Dr. Amala Rajan, DWC IT faculty and member of CTIT’11 organizing committee said, “Due to globalization and digitalization, industries are increasingly depending on IT to bring them innovative ways of competing in the global market. Embedding IT with organizational business processes is no longer an option today but a necessity. To this effect, I see academic institutions, such as DWC, have a responsibility in taking a leading role in the sharing and dissemination of knowledge regarding new trends in IT.” 

She added “Statistics show that the number of women selecting IT related careers have been on the decline for a number of years. Efforts are being taken all around the world to attract women into the field of computer science. This conference gave us the opportunity to contribute to this effort by taking a leading role in inspiring our young women to take a lead, not only in Dubai but internationally.”

Dr. Nasser Nassiri, Supervisor of Computer and Information Science department at Dubai Women’s College said, “The conference availed a great opportunity to the participants to increase their knowledge and widen their horizon about the latest in Information Technology through presentations, discussion, and hands-on-sessions.”

He added, “The conference also offered this time many workshops to foster the interactivity and focus of the participants. The target audiences of these workshops were High School teachers, college and university professors and IT professionals. The workshops provided an optimum environment where participants had the opportunity to discuss specific technical topics in an atmosphere that fosters the active exchange of ideas”

DWC anticipates this conference will give rise to much collaboration between DWC and various regional and international research based institutions which will bring Dubai to the forefront of IT research.