Tutorials

Tutorial 1: Semantic Interoperability Challenges for Healthcare Big Data

Aug 12 (Day 1) 13:00-15:30
Prof. Rachid Benlamri - Lakehead University, Canada
https://flash.lakeheadu.ca/~rbenlamr/

Abstract: The present landscape of healthcare is one of escalating costs coupled with an aging population with increasing complexity in concurrent chronic medical illnesses. Care provisioned to these patients relies on data from different sources, such as archives of medical history records, laboratory test results, diagnostic images, prescribed medication, and data from monitoring equipment and wearables. This enormous amount of heterogeneous complex medical data is currently stored and treated by most healthcare organizations in isolation. However, Semantic Web technologies and big data tools have the potential to create significant value by improving outcomes of personalized, predictive and preventive medicine while lowering costs. This presents an urgent need for solving data semantic interoperability issues, which are crucial towards developing novel ways to expose, structure, and exchange healthcare information. Also, this will allow for developing new, scalable and expandable big data infrastructure and analytical methods that can enable healthcare providers access and exchange knowledge in a timely manner, thus providing better outcomes. This talk addresses the above-mentioned challenges by discussing the role of Semantic Web and data analysis for generating high quality actionable data that makes big data robust. Also, we will discuss some of the technical challenges in using big data and the need for a semantic data-driven infrastructure based on ontology design, EHR standards, clinical pathway automation, and machine learning to address them.

Biography: Rachid Benlamri is a Professor of Software Engineering at the Faculty of Engineering at Lakehead University, Canada. He obtained his Master and PhD from the University of Manchester - UK. Professor Benlamri is the head of the Semantic Web and Mobile Computing Lab at Lakehead University. His research interests are in the area of Semantic Web, Data Science, Ubiquitous Computing and Mobile Knowledge Management. His research is funded by many institutions, such as the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada, Ontario Center of Excellence, Academic Health Science Centers of Ontario, and the Ontario Partnership for Innovations and Commercialization. He supervised over 80 students and postdoctoral fellows. He served as keynote speaker, and general chair for many international conferences. Professor Benlamri is a member of the editorial board for many international journals, such as the International Journal of Mobile Communications, the International Journal of Emerging Technologies in Web Intelligence, and the International Journal of Business Data Communications and Networking. He has authored/co-authored six books and over 100 papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings.

Tutorial 2: Blockchain Encounter Security - The Security Aspects of Blockchain You Need to Know

Aug 12 (Day 1) 15:30-17:30
Dr. Kaitai Liang - University of Surrey, United Kingdom
https://www.surrey.ac.uk/people/kaitai-liang

Abstract: To date blockchain technology has been used in many real-world applications, e.g., finance, cloud-based storage. Everyone now talks about it. Although being a popular and attention attracted technique, blockchain yields security and privacy concerns, specially while it intakes personal information. In this talk, I will first introduce basic concepts, notions and mechanisms of blockchain. Standing at the view point of applied cryptography, I will further present some security and privacy requirements, concerns and solutions for the use of blockchain.

Biography: Dr Kaitai Liang is an Assistant Professor in Secure Systems at the University of Surrey, UK, and member of the Surrey Centre for Cyber Security, a GCHQ recognised UK Academic Centre of Excellence in Cyber Security Research. Kaitai received the PhD degree in computer science (applied cryptography direction) from City University of Hong Kong in 2014. Prior to SURREY, Kaitai was a Lecturer in School of Computing, Mathematics and Digital Technology, Manchester Metropolitan University; postdoctoral researcher at Department of Computer Science, Aalto University (Finalnd); visiting scholar at Department of Computer Science, UCL; visiting scholar at KU LEUVEN (Belgium), Sapienza University of Rome (Italy) and University of Wollongong (Australia); research intern in Institute for Infocomm Research (Singapore). Kaitai has been involved in several European funded projects. His main research interests are applied crypto, post-quantum crypto, data security, blockchain, smart contract and privacy-enhancing technology. Kaitai has published a series of research works, applying secure tools to tackle real-world problems, in many high tier international journals (e.g., IEEE TIFS, IEEE NETWORK, and IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics). Kaitai has served as TPC for many renown international security/privacy conferences, e.g., ACNS, TRUSTCOM, ASIACCS, ACISP, ProvSec, and he was the pc chair of International workshop on Security in Big Data. Kaitai is also an ISO member of UK ISO Crypto Sub Committee IST/33/2.