Prof. Zakaria Maamar of Zayed University

Abstract: We present our ongoing research agenda on Internet of Things (IoT) in the context of Artificial Intelligence (AI). Three initiatives define this agenda: integration of IoT into business process management, agentification of things, and mutation of things. IoT is among the latest ICT developments that is making the boundaries between reality and fiction vanish. According to Mark Weiser, ``...The most profound technologies are those that disappear. They weave themselves into the fabric of everyday life until they are indistinguishable from it’’[1]. And according to Gartner[2], 6.4 billion connected things were in use in 2016, up 3% from 2015, and will reach 20.8 billion by 2020. In the first initiative, we adopt storytelling principles to design and develop Process of Things (PoT). In the second initiative, we shed the light on some obstacles that are slowing down IoT expansion and adoption, for instance diversity of things' development technologies and communication standards, users' reluctance and sometimes rejection due to privacy invasion, lack of killer applications that would demonstrate their necessity, lack of an IoT-oriented software engineering discipline, and finally, the passive nature of things. Finally, the third initiative examines thing mutation in the sense that things bind and/or unbind capabilities on the fly (and as they see fit)

Biography:

Zakaria Maamar is Professor in the College of Technological Innovation at Zayed University, Dubai, UUAE. His research interests include blending social computing with other forms of computing such as service and cloud, impact of social media on organizations, and lately Internet of Things. Zakaria has extensively published in different peer-reviewed journals and conferences, regularly serves on the program and organizing committees of several international conferences and workshops, and finally serves on the editorial boards of many international journals. He is the recipient of an IBM Faculty Award in 2009 in support of his research on social Web services. Zakaria has a PhD in computer science from Laval University, Quebec City, Canada