In early November, lead sponsor University of North Texas College of Engineering welcomed researchers from around the country and abroad to the sixth International Federation for Information Processing International Internet of Things (IFIP-IoT) Conference at the Denton Convention Center. 

A multidisciplinary conference, IFIP-IoT covered a wide range of topics from communication network protocols and embedded systems to data analytics and machine learning algorithms. The research discussed explored the possibility of enabling services in areas such as e-health, mobility, energy, manufacturing, smart cities, and agriculture. The IoT component takes into consideration the security, privacy, and social aspects of networking.

Over the two-day period, attendees enjoyed over 60 technical talks in addition to the four keynote speakers. The conference encouraged student participation through a Student Research Forum and Research Demo Session. Shining a spotlight on females in the field was a Women in Engineering Panel.

Each day included a keynote to start the morning and the afternoon. Srinivas Katkoori from the University of South Florida opened the conference with a talk entitled Optimization of Edge ML Hardware Based on Activation Function Approximation. After lunch the attendees were drawn back in by Beak-Young Choi of the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s address entitled IoT Technology Spectrum: From Sensor Connectivity to AI-enabled IoT.

The second day reengaged participants with Kamala Kanta Mahapatra of the National Institute of Technology in India’s address on the Hardware Security for IoT Devices. Our own Chair of Electrical Engineering Shengli Fu provided the final keynote entitled Design and Applications for open Aerial Computing Platform.

A primarily in-person experience, the conference leadership did offer a hybrid format for those unable to attend in Denton.

Led by department of computer science and engineering professor Saraju Mohanty, the UNT conference team members also included physics professor Bibhudutta Rout, Information Science Professor Sharad Sharma, and Fu. External contributors who were instrumental in supporting the conference were Katkoori, Choi, Dr. Prasanth Yanambaka of Texas Women’s University, Dr. Alakananda Mitra of the University of Nebraska and Dr. Laavanya Rachakonda from the University of North Carolina Wilmington.