Report on IEEE Distinguished Speaker talk on “Nano-scale Communication Networks”

Region: AP Region

ComSoc Chapter: Australian Capital Territory (ACT) Chapter Chair: Xiangyun (Sean) Zhou <xiangyun.zhou@anu.edu.au>

Location: Australian National University 14 August 2014

Speaker: Mahbub Hassan <mahbub@cse.unsw.edu.au>

On the 14th of August 2014, I delivered a speech titled “Nano-scale Communication Networks” at the Australian National University (ANU) located in the Australian capital city of Canberra. This was sponsored as an IEEE Distinguished Speaker Program (DSP) talk. The ACT Chapter chair, Dr. Xiangyun (Sean) Zhou, first approached me to prepare this talk, which was later approved by the AP region as an official DSP talk. To ensure that all local IEEE members are notified of the talk, details of the speech was advertised as a DSP talk on the IEEE eNotice mailing list. Approximately 20-25 graduate students and academics attended the talk from a diverse set of research groups, including Applied Signal Processing, Systems and Control, Materials and Manufacturing and Centre for Sustainable Energy Systems. In this talk, I first introduced the emerging research topic of nano-scale communication and networking followed by a presentation of the recent works done in my research group at the University of New South Wales. The abstract along with some photos of the talk are attached in Appendix A and the presentation slides are available online at http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~mahbub/PDF_Publications/DSP_ANU.pdf. The actual length of the talk was 1 hour, from 10am to 11am, which allowed me to cover the most fundamental issues as well as the highlights of our results. Due to the novelty and relatively young age of the topic, there was a great interest from the audience in this talk. There were many questions during the talk and many members wanted to follow up with more questions. To allow further interactions, the chapter chair, Sean, organized a series of activities after the talk. First I stayed for about 20 minutes in the lecture room to talk with a number of graduate students and then visited a couple of academics with one-to-one meetings. Finally, I went to the lunch with three academics to continue further discussions there. After the lunch, I provided a copy of my presentation slides to Sean for further dissemination to his colleagues and students. The following day I visited the ACT Node of the Australian National Fabrication Facility (ANFF) located at ANU. This is one of the two nodes in Australia capable of manufacturing nano-scale device features. While visiting the ANFF, I shared some of the highlights of my DSP talk with the colleagues in the facility. The researchers there mainly focus their research in nano-material and nano technology without the prospect of nano communication. As such, they found the topic of nano communication quite interesting. This trip was indeed a good opportunity for me to experience true cross-disciplinary interactions with two distinct IEEE research communities located in the same university. I would like to end my report by thanking Sean who did a remarkable job of organizing the talk and facilitating the interactions with their colleagues.

Appendix A Photos of the DSP Talk

Appendix B IEEE eNotice advertisement of the talk -------- Forwarded Message --------

Subject: IEEE ACT ComSoc and ANU: Nano-scale Communication Networks Date: Fri, 1 Aug 2014 09:30:34 -0400

From: IEEE eNotice <enotice@ieee.org> Reply-To: no_reply_enotice@ieee.org

To: xiangyun.zhou@gmail.com The Australian National University and IEEE Communications Society Nano-scale Communication Networks Speaker: Professor Mahbub Hassan (University of New South Wales) Date: 2014-08-14 Thursday Time: 10:00 - 11:00 Location: RSISE Seminar Room, ground floor, building 115, cnr. North and Daley Roads, ANU Map: http://campusmap.anu.edu.au/displaybldg.asp?no=115 ABSTRACT: Thanks to advances in nanotechnology, nano-scale devices are now within reach. This development has motivated researchers to investigate possibilities for establishing a communication network among these tiny devices. While networking at nano-scale would undoubtedly open the door to innovative applications in almost every sector of the industry, we are facing fundamental challenges for transmitting digital information in this physical regime. Although the field of nano communication network is at an embryonic stage, it is rapidly gaining momentum. In the first part of this talk, I will explain the opportunities and challenges and summarize the current state-of-the-art of this emerging field of research. In the second, I will present the nano communication networking research currently pursued in our group. Specifically, I will describe a new application of nano communications for industrial chemistry highlighting some of the unique challenges and our approaches to address them. This talk is sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society's Distinguished Speaker Program. BIO: Mahbub Hassan is a Full Professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering, the University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He is a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE (COMSOC) for 2013 and 2014. He was a Keynote Speaker for 2011 ACIS International Conference on Software Engineering, Artificial Intelligence, Networking and Parallel/Distributed Computing and 2009 IEEE International Worskshop on Vehicular Networking. He worked as Visiting Professor at Osaka University, Japan, University of Nantes, France, and National ICT Australia. He was a tutorial speaker at IEEE ICC 2012 and IEEE VTC 2011. He is currently an Editor of IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial and has previously served as Guest Editor for IEEE Network and Associate Technical Editor for IEEE Communications Magazine. He has co-authored three books on Communication Networks, one US patent, and over 100 refereed articles. Professor Hassan has earned a PhD from Monash University, Australia, and an MSc from University of Victoria, Canada, both in Computer Science and Engineering. More information about Professor Hassan is available from http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au/~mahbub. ============================================================ IEEE Australian Capital Territory Section <http://www.ieeeact.org>. Manage your IEEE Communications Preferences: <https://www.ieee.org/profile/commprefs/showcommPrefpage.html> ============================================================ IEEE 445 Hoes Lane, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA http://www.ieee.org/