The 2nd Annual Transatlantic Symposium on ICT and Policy
The “2nd Annual Transatlantic Symposium on ICT and Policy “Leveraging People, Technology, and Information for a Smart and Connected Society” was held on June 18-19, 2018 at the Wilson Center in Washington, DC, USA. This two-day event included keynotes, panel discussions, and interactive workshops to facilitate knowledge exchange with leading EU-US experts, convening leaders in government, academia, and industry around the theme of leveraging people, technology, and information for a smart and connected society.
This 2nd Symposium explored several key ICT topics for EU-US cooperation, including current and future mutual strategic research priorities and orientations as well as cross-cutting policy issues. Speakers addressed key topic areas critical to global ICT innovation and collaboration: Cybersecurity, Big Data, Cyber-physical Systems and Internet of Things (IoT), Artificial Intelligence, 5G and Beyond, Autonomous Systems, along with Policy issues of global concern, such as privacy, security, standardization, and spectrum. In addition, cross-cutting topics, such as expanding support for citizen science initiatives, the future of ICT development and its impact on society were explored.
The 20+ speakers and panelists included program directors from NSF, industry representatives such as the General Manager for Global Security Strategy at Microsoft, the Director of Strategic Partnership at Uber Technologies and many others; researchers from the University of Minnesota, MIT, Berkeley, and leading European Universities; the leaders of European initiatives such as Big Data Value Association, FIWARE, Cyberwatching.eu, AEGIS, and members of ICANN board of directors; and the leaders of PICASSO Expert Groups in 5G, IoT/CPS, Big Data and Policy.
A plenary session format was adopted, with only three breakout sessions organized only in the second day, to allow experts to explore specific topics – CPS/IoT, Big Data, and 5G – in greater technical depth. Hosts for the event were the Wilson Center’s Science and Technology Innovation Program and the PICASSO project.
Keynote talks were delivered by Peter Fatelnig, Minister-Counsellor for Digital Economy Policy, Delegation of the European Union to the United States of America, and Dawn Tilbury, the head of the Engineering Directorate of the National Science Foundation. The 20+ speakers and panelists included program directors from NSF, industry representatives such as the General Manager for Global Security Strategy at Microsoft, the Director of Strategic Partnership at Uber Technologies and many others; researchers from the University of Minnesota, MIT, Berkeley, and leading European Universities; the leaders of European initiatives such as Big Data Value Association, FIWARE, Cyberwatching.eu, AEGIS, and members of ICANN board of directors; and the leaders of PICASSO Expert Groups in 5G, IoT/CPS, Big Data and Policy.
Closing remarks, which included suggestions for the 3rd Annual Transatlantic Symposium, were offered by the conference chair, Anne Bowser, Director of Innovation, the Wilson Center; and co-chairs Svetlana Klessova, PICASSO project coordinator and Director of inno TSD, France, and Tariq Samad, Senior Fellow, Technological Leadership Institute, Univ. of Minnesota; as well as Jean-Yves Roger of the European Commission.
Video of the Symposium and its sessions are available on the related event webpage (via YouTube). For a complete list of speaker, you can refer to the Symposium agenda, in annex.
The event was sponsored by the European Commission, US National Science Foundation, and Mississippi State University. The Symposium attracted 90 participants on site and 380 online viewers, about 42% from the EU and 58% from the US, with a gender share of 63% men and 37% women. The event built on the success of the first Transatlantic Symposium on ICT Technology and Policy (held in Minneapolis, MN, USA on June 19th and 20th, 2017) and was the final event of the PICASSO project.