Speakers
Keynote Speaker
Prof. Md. Asri bin Ngadi
Universiti Teknologi Malaysia, Malaysia
Biography:
Md. Asri Bin Ngadi received the Ph.D. degree in computer science from Aston University, Birmingham, U.K., in 2005. He had spent more than a decade with leading technology firms and universities as a Process Analyst, a Senior Systems Analyst, a Project Manager, and a Lecturer. He had participated in and managed several communication and security software technologies development projects. He is currently a Professor and the Chair of the Computer and Telecommunication Engineering Department, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM), Malaysia. His contributions include publishing several academic books and in the development of programs to enhance minority involvement in bridging the ICT digital gap. He has published more than 90 articles in reputable journals and conference proceeding. His areas of research specialization include system survivability and security, autonomic computing and self-healing and regenerating systems, and network modeling.
DATO’ TS. GS. AZHAR ISMAIL
Map2U, Malaysia
CEO of Map2U
Biography:
DATO’ TS. GS. AZHAR ISMAIL graduated in Urban & Regional Planning from Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) in 2002. He is a Project Management Professional and an active member of the Institute of Geospatial & Remote Sensing Malaysia (IGRSM) and the National Entrepreneur Foundation (NEF). With over 20 years of experience, he has led and participated in more than 100 GIS projects across federal, state, and local governments as well as the private sector. In 2012, he founded Map2U Sdn Bhd, a leading Malaysian geospatial solutions provider with over 100 professionals. Under his leadership, Map2U attained Malaysia Digital Status in 2024 with MDEC and established strategic talent development partnerships with UKM, UTM, USIM, and MIMOS. He has successfully positioned Map2U as a Big Data solutions provider aligned with the Enterprise Big Data Framework (EBDF) and drives GIS industry strategies focused on revenue growth and the vision to “Grow the Pie.”
Speech Title: Geospatial Analytics to Accelerate Resilient Smart Cities in Malaysia
Prof. Ts. Dr Dayang Nurfatimah bt Awg Iskandar
Universiti Malaysia Sarawak (UNIMAS), Malaysia
Biography:
Dayang NurFatimah Awang Iskandar is a professor at the Faculty of Computer Science and Information Technology (FCSIT), UNIMAS, Sarawak. She obtained her Bachelor degree with Honours in Information Technology (majoring in Computational Science) from UNIMAS. She holds a Master in Multimedia Computing from Monash University, Australia and a PhD degree in Computer Science from Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) University, Australia. She pursued her postdoctoral studies with the Biomedical Informatics Systems Engineering Laboratory (BISEL) at Heriot-Watt University, UK, working under the EU funded project Combining and Uniting Business Intelligence with Semantic Technologies (CUBIST). Dayang has expertise in spatio-temporal image analysis, semantic representation and retrieval, her research focuses on AI for minimising the gap between image features and high-level semantics in the domain of medicine, agriculture and astronomy. She was attached as a visiting academic researcher at the Jodrell Bank Centre for Astrophysics, within the Department of Physics and Astronomy at The University of Manchester, where she contributed to several cutting-edge research projects. Recently, she extended her professional expertise by serving with Petroleum Sarawak Berhad (PETROS), under the CEO@Faculty Programme hosted by the Ministry of Education Malaysia.
Speech Title: From Sensors to Solutions: AIoT Convergence for Smart Water Utilities and Agriculture in Rural Areas
Prof. Lin Chen
Macao Polytechnic University, China
Biography:
Prof. Lin Chen received his B. Sc. degree in Radio Engineering in 2002 from Southeast University, Nanjing, China, his M. Sc. in Networking in 2005 from University of Paris 6, his engineer and Ph. D. degree in Computer Science and Networking in 2005 and 2008 from Telecom ParisTech, Paris, and the Habilitation in 2017 from University of Paris-Sud. From 2009 to 2019, he was an associate professor at University of Paris-Sud. From 2019 to 2025, he was a professor at Sun Yat-sen University. Since 2025, he has been a professor at Macao Polytechnic University. He worked as a Postdoc Researcher at Telecom ParisTech during 2008-2009 and a visiting researcher at NICTA in 2008. He was a member of the Institut Universitaire de France (class 2018) and received the CNRS Bronze Medal in 2018. His research interests are centered around algorithm design and analysis in networked systems.
Invited Speaker
Engineer, Neha Boloor,
Carnegie Mellon University (Alumni), USA
Biography:
Neha Boloor is a Machine Learning Engineer specializing in generative AI for autonomous vehicle validation at Zoox. She holds a Master’s in Computer Vision from Carnegie Mellon University, with research in 3D perception and smart city infrastructure. With prior roles at Matic Robots and Oracle, Neha has expertise in autonomous exploration algorithms, marketing cloud SaaS development, and AI-driven solutions. She graduated with distinction in IT from NIT Karnataka and was awarded the JN Tata Scholarship.
Speech Title: Vision Zero: Leveraging AI and Advanced Datasets for Safer, Smarter Roadways in Smart Cities