Workshop on Emerging Technologies in ICT

Technology is becoming pervasive in our society. New emerging technologies are being introduced each year, bringing new applications, new opportunities and new challenges.  These technologies offer great benefits for early adaptors, allowing them capture market share and significantly contribute in national development. Recognizing the importance of these new technology areas, the workshop on emerging technologies was organized byIgnite (Formerly National ICT R&D Fund) in collaboration “Software Quality Engineering and Testing Laboratory”, Quest Lab at National University of Computer and Emerging Sciences, FAST NU, Islamabad Campus.

Dr. Muhammad Zohaib Iqbal, assistant professor FAST NU, President of Pakistan Software Testing Board (PSTB) and lead scientist at Quest Lab, presented the latest trends in mobile software engineering and highlighted the challenges faced by the mobile industry practitioners. In particular, he highlighted the problems posed by mobile application developers in supporting multiple mobile platforms and lack of software engineering approaches to overcome these problems.

Dr. Yair Ayaz, Head Of Department (Robotics & AI), Principle Investigator (Rise Research Center), NUST-SMME, presented latest work being carried out at Rise lab in the area of motion planning for mobile robots. Dr. Yasir, presented the state of the art in motion planning algorithms and demonstrated the various algorithms such as RTT, RTT* developed at his lab that produce better results.  Development of such algorithms is a critical step in development of autonomous mobile robots.

Mr. Atif Aftab Jilani, Assistant professor, FAST NU, presented the state of the art in Automated Software Testing.  His presentation covered the basics of automated software testing and highlighted the issues with existing manual software testing techniques. The existing manual software testing techniques are neither systematic nor scalable and therefore are not suited for modern software projects.  Automation greatly improves the quality of the testing process and is more scalable for large-scale projects.

Mr. Faisal Laghari presented the latest trends in STEM education for young children.  He presented his ongoing work and efforts in introducing young children to scientific disciplines and to enhance their interest in the emerging areas of robotics, computer based learning, computer-based design.  He presented their methodology that relies on conducting workshops, which bring students in contact with latest technological innovations.

Dr. Muhammad Uzair Khan, Assistant Professor, FAST NU, Head Quest Lab, Secretary/Treasurer of IEEE Islamabad Section presented the latest empirical and evidence based research and practices for ICT-centric domains. His talk emphasized importance of healthy skepticism and doing proper investigation instead of taking presented results at face value. In particular, the later part of the talks focused on how to conduct controlled experiments to evaluate emerging technologies in ICT disciplines.