Together, the proliferation of sensors and communicating devices and the emergence of cloud computing represents a major opportunity to develop applications for connected environments in general, and especially management systems that address urgent challenges facing society. These challenges include the deployment of large-scale cloud computing, smart power grids, intelligent transportation systems, and next-generation communications and collaborations that will provide the foundation for a post-carbon society. In this talk we discuss the socio-economic context that gives these challenges urgency as well as the technical challenges that need to be addressed by the ICT community.

About the Speaker: Alberto Leon-Garcia holds the Jeffrey Skoll Chair in Computer Networks and Innovation. He also holds a Canada Research Chair in Autonomic Service Architecture. His current research interests are focused on application-oriented networking and autonomic resources management. From 1999 to 2002, he was founder and CTO of AcceLight Networks in Ottawa, which developed an all-optical fabric multiterabit multiservice core switch. He holds several patents and has published research extensively in the areas of switch architecture and traffic management. He is recognized as an innovator in networking education. In 1986 he led the development of the University of Toronto-Northern Telecom Network Engineering Program. In 1997 he also led the development of the Master of Engineering in Telecommunications program and the communications and networking options in the undergraduate computer engineering program. He is the author of leading textbooks, Probability and Random Processes for Electrical Engineering and Communication Networks: Fundamental Concepts and Key Architecture.

One of the most urgent challenges of the 21st century is to investigate new technologies that can enable a transition towards a more sustainable society with reduced energy use and a smaller CO₂ footprint. ICT is a direct contributor to more than 2% of global CO₂ emissions, and this is expected to double in the near future. It has been shown that PCs (which consume about 2% of the electricity in the US and a growing amount in developing countries) are idle most of the time and the majority of them do not have power management enabled. In this talk, I will describe ongoing standards work by IEEE 802.3az to address an Energy Efficient Ethernet and by Ecma to address reduction of induced energy use of network-connected hosts, such as PCs. I will also describe possible future directions for further reducing energy consumption of both ICT and non-ICT equipment, systems, and processes focusing on the role of networks. Networks can play a significant role in reducing global energy consumption and achieving a level of comfortable conservation needed for a sustainable society.

About the Speaker: Ken Christensen is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of South Florida. His work has had direct influence on emerging green networks standards including Energy Efficient Ethernet (IEEE 802.3az) and Proxying Support for Sleep Modes (Ecma TC32-TG21). Ken received his Ph.D. from North Carolina State University in 1991 and was an Advisory Engineer at IBM Research Triangle Park before joining the University of South Florida in 1995. Ken received an NSF CAREER in 1999. He is currently the Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal of Network Management (Wiley).