Björn W. Schuller

Affective Computing brings machines closer to the world of emotions. It enables them to recognize, generate, and respond to emotions – of humans, or in multimodal data. Its young evolution over the last three decades is at present disrupted for the second time in a major manner: First, the rise of deep learning brought self-learnt representations and even self-optimised architectures as well as increasing coupling of analysis and synthesis into the field. The present second major disruption goes one step further: The rise of so-called large or foundation models that currently help pave the way to general artificial intelligence shows emergent skills across the tasks of Artificial Intelligence, hence, also massively re-shaping Affective Computing research. This talk will discuss the impact of this development across the tasks and modalities of Affective Computing – often at so far unreached quality in the result. An additional change is underway by the current discussion and de-facto regulation of AI that hits heavy on Affective Computing.  This raises the question on tomorrow’s research challenges in the field, which will be discussed, including prompt fine-tuning, targeted model distillation, or coping with “night shades” poisoning tomorrow’s learning data, and pro-active development of technical solutions for safety, dependability, and trustworthiness. In the result, one can soon expect a whole new generation and quality of artificially emotionally intelligent robots and virtual agents.

Biography:

• Björn W. Schuller received his diploma, doctoral degree, habilitation, and Adjunct Teaching Professor in Machine Intelligence and Signal Processing all in EE/IT from TUM in Munich/Germany where he has been called as Full Professor of Health Informatics. He is also Full Professor of Artificial Intelligence and the Head of GLAM at Imperial College London/UK, Full Professor and Chair of Embedded Intelligence for Health Care and Wellbeing at the University of Augsburg/Germany, co-founding CEO and current CSO of audEERING – an Audio Intelligence company based near Munich and in Berlin/Germany, amongst other Professorships and Affiliations. Previous stays include Full Professor at the University of Passau/Germany, Key Researcher at Joanneum Research in Graz/Austria, and the CNRS-LIMSI in Orsay/France. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and Golden Core Awardee of the IEEE Computer Society, Fellow of the BCS, Fellow of the ELLIS, Fellow of the ISCA, Fellow and President-Emeritus of the AAAC, Elected Full Member Sigma Xi, and Senior Member of the ACM. He (co-)authored 1,200+ publications (50,000+ citations, h- index=100+), is Field Chief Editor of Frontiers in Digital Health and was Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing amongst manifold further commitments and service to the community. Currently, he was awarded IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Lecturer 2024.

Pascal YIM

Neural digital twins and applications

Biography:

• Pascal Yim is a university professor specializing in new information technologies. As a teacher-researcher at the Ecole Centrale de Lille, he has published nearly 40 articles in international conferences and journals and supervised ten doctoral theses. During an eight-year period of availability, he was the innovation director of a large group (3SI), and created his own innovation consulting firm. When he returned to Ecole Centrale in 2014, he undertook a thematic reconversion on the applications of artificial intelligence, and deep learning in particular. He participates in the work of the Construction 4.0 Chair with Professor Zoubeir Lafhaj.
• Pascal Yim is also involved in the world of entrepreneurship: he has participated in the creation of several startups in the field of artificial intelligence, and accompanies students in their creation process

Timothy JUNG

• Timothy Jung is Chair Professor of XR (eXtended Reality), the Founder and Director of the Creative AR & VR Hub and the Digital Transformation Knowledge Platform Lead at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is an internationally recognised leading expert and he is renowned for his work in AR, VR, XR in tourism, cultural heritage, education & training and health care. He extensively published in these areas with over 150 journal articles, books chapters and conference papers, and has received numerous industry awards and academic paper awards in recognition of his contribution to the immersive tech area. His current research interests focus on XR, AI, Blockchain powered Metaverse innovation for well-being and quality of life. He is President of the International Association of Immersive Technology Innovation (IAITI) and Conference Chair of the 8th International XR-Metaverse 2023 Conference.

Biography:

• Timothy Jung is Chair Professor of XR (eXtended Reality), the Founder and Director of the Creative AR & VR Hub and the Digital Transformation Knowledge Platform Lead at Manchester Metropolitan University, UK. He is an internationally recognised leading expert and he is renowned for his work in AR, VR, XR in tourism, cultural heritage, education & training and health care. He extensively published in these areas with over 150 journal articles, books chapters and conference papers, and has received numerous industry awards and academic paper awards in recognition of his contribution to the immersive tech area. His current research interests focus on XR, AI, Blockchain powered Metaverse innovation for well-being and quality of life. He is President of the International Association of Immersive Technology Innovation (IAITI) and Conference Chair of the 8th International XR-Metaverse 2023 Conference.