Bio
Graduated in Law, he exercised his professional activity between 1986 and 1993, when he left the law to run as number two on the PSD Madeira List for the Funchal City Council. Miguel Albuquerque was elected deputy for the PSD in 1988 and 1992. He chaired JSD Madeira between 1990 and 1992, during that period belonging to the JSD's National Political Commission. After leaving the leadership of JSD Madeira, he was elected Deputy Secretary General of PSD Madeira, between 1992 and 1995. In September 1994, he became Mayor of Funchal, being re-elected in 1997, 2001, 2005 and 2009, always with an absolute majority. Between 1994 and 2002, he was President of the Association of Municipalities of the Autonomous Region of Madeira and member of the Board of Directors of the National Association of Municipalities. In December 2014, he ran for the second time for leadership of PSD Madeira, winning with 64% of the votes, in the second round of direct elections. On March 29, 2015 he won the regional legislative elections with an absolute majority, thus becoming the successor of Alberto João Jardim as the third president of the Regional Government of Madeira. On October 17, 2023, as a result of the genuine expression of popular will and a clear victory in the regional legislative elections, he was declared President of the XIV Regional Government of the Autonomous Region of Madeira.

Bio
Pedro Ramos was born in São Martinho, Funchal, in 1960. He was Director of the Emergency Department at Hospital Dr. Nélio Mendonça from 2009 to June 2016. He was Clinical Director of the Health Service of the Madeira Region from June to December 28, 2016. He was Director of the Madeira Clinical Simulation Center from 2012 to 2016. Throughout his clinical career, he acquired competence in the area of Emergency Medicine and Trauma, having developed intense training at regional, national and international levels. He was Coordinator of the Trauma Chapter of the Portuguese Society of Surgery. He was Vice President of the Military and Disaster Section of the European Society for Trauma and Surgical Emergency. International instructor in the following training areas: TEAM; ATLS; STD; magnetic resonance; ETC. On December 29, 2016, he began his duties as Regional Secretary for Health, in the XII Government of the Madeira Region. On October 15, 2019, he assumes the functions of Regional Secretariat for Health and Civil Protection, in the XIII Government of the Madeira Region. On October 17, 2023, he took office again as Regional Secretariat for Health and Civil Protection, in the XIV Government of the Autonomous Region of Madeira.

Bio
Cristina Pedra was the first and only woman to preside over the Commercial and Industrial Association of Funchal (ACIF), an important organization of the class, which has been in existence for 186 years. Born and resident in Funchal, Cristina Pedra has a degree in Law and in Business Organization and Management. An economist registered with the Order, she is a European matters specialist for the Horizon 2020 programme, an accredited European financial analyst and Executive Advisor to the Economic Advisory Council of RAM. Businesswoman and Guest Assistant at the University of Madeira, Cristina Pedra served as president of ACIF-CCIM, from 2013 to 2018, and as General Counsel of the Confederação Indústria Portugal and Vice-President of the same body.

Bio
Saila Rinne currently works at the Directorate-General for Communications Networks, Content and Technology (DG CONNECT) of the European Commission. She is the Head of Sector for policy in the unit “eHealth, Well-Being and Ageing”. This unit's main mission is to support innovative digital health solutions and services that foster the delivery of high quality and efficient digital health and care services and products and enable the empowerment of citizens in managing their own health. Saila has previously worked on the research and innovation activities of the Data Policy and Innovation unit in DG CONNECT and as a translator and terminologist in DG Translation of the Commission.

Bio
Andrea Belz is Vice Dean of Transformative Initiatives at USC Viterbi, Research Director at the Information Sciences Institute, Director of the Center for Research in Space Technologies (CREST), and Professor of Practice in Industrial and Systems Engineering, where she specializes in engineering policy and technology strategy. She is on the leadership team of the California Defense Ready Electronics and Microdevices Superhubs (California DREAMS), funded by the Defense Department as a Microelectronics Commons Hub, where she serves as Director of Translational Strategy. She currently serves as President of the IEEE Technology and Engineering Management (TEMS) Society.

Digitalisation in Europe - Digital transformation through the EDIH network

Abstract
Digital technologies are transforming the world we live and work in. Digital transformation is one of the key priorities for the EU. The digital decade initiative sets out the EU targets that will guide digital transformation until 2030. The European Digital Hubs (EDIH) Network is the driving force behind Europe's digitalisation. With the support of the European Commission, it brings together EDIHs, SMEs, and public sector organisations (PSOs) to make the EU's Digital Decade 2030 targets a reality.

Bio
Helena Rodrigues has been working for the European Commission - DG CNECT since 2011. At the beginning she was working as a financial officer managing research and innovation projects. Currently she is a programme officer in the unit “Technologies & Systems for Digitising Industry”, being in the team responsible for the Digital Innovation Hubs in the Digital Europe Programme. Helena's main areas of expertise and experience include telecommunications, business and financial sector, digital economy.

A methodology for improving tracking precision in servo systems: An equivalent-input-disturbance estimator approach

Abstract
There are disturbances, nonlinearities, and uncertainties in a mechatronic system. Many control methods have been devised to suppress their influence and to achieve satisfactory control performance. In this talk, I am going to explain a method called the equivalent-input-disturbance approach. It took the influence caused by those factors to be an equivalent disturbance on the control-input channel and developed an improved servo system to compensate for it. This ensures high control performance. I am going to explain the basic idea, the control-system configuration, some design methods, and some simulation and experimental results that demonstrate the validity of the method.

Bio
Professor Jinhua She received his B.S. degree in engineering from Central South University, Changsha, China, in 1983; and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in engineering from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 1990 and 1993, respectively. In 1993, he joined the School of Engineering, Tokyo University of Technology, where he is currently a professor.
Dr. She's research interests include control theory and application, repetitive control, active disturbance rejection, mobile learning, and assistive robotics. He devised control methods such as position-domain repetitive control, two-dimensional repetitive control, and equivalent input disturbance approach. He has published more than 400 academic journal papers, 11 authorized invention patents, 4 monographs, 6 textbooks, 1 translation, and 15 chapters of monographs. He received the IFAC (International Federation of Automatic Control) Control Engineering Practice Paper Prize in 1999 (jointly with M. Wu and M. Nakano).
Dr. She is an IEEE Fellow, a member of IEEE IES AdCom (Management Committee), a member of IEEE Hyperintelligence Committee Advisory Board, and one of the founding chairs of the China-Japan International Workshop on Information Technology and Control Applications. He served as the Chair of IEEE IES Human Factors Technical Committee from 2018 to 2021, and IEEE IES Cluster 4 Representative from 2020 to 2021 (containing 6 TCs). He serves as a Technical Editor of IEEE/ASME Transactions on Mechatronics and an Associated Editor of IEEE Transactions on Industrial Electronics, IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Industrial Electronics, IEEJ Journal of Industry Applications, Journal of Advanced Computational Intelligence and Intelligent Informatics, and Intelligence and Robotics.

Securing the Future: Enhancing Energy System Resilience with AI-Driven Cybersecurity Innovations

Abstract
Energy systems are essential in today's world as they underpin all sectors and are crucial for society and the economy. Energy system failures could lead to devastating consequences for interdependent critical sectors, e.g., healthcare or transportation. At the same time, energy systems suffer by sophisticated cyberattacks, threatening the availability and reliability of the operational environment. To protect the energy systems from disrupting incidents, innovative cybersecurity solutions are needed, which continuously monitor complex energy systems, detect potential threats, and timely enforce policies to prevent potential disruptions. In this context, Artificial Intelligence (AI) has a prominent role in multiple aspects of cybersecurity, including user-based behavioural analysis and classification of potentially malicious actions and zero-day threats. In this keynote speech, we will review numerous use cases to illustrate the applications of AI to protect the energy systems. Furthermore, we will explore the key outcomes of three relevant EU-funded projects, namely, ELECTRON: rEsilient and seLf-healed EleCTRical pOwer Nanogrid (Grant agreement ID: 101021936), AI4CYBER: Trustworthy Artificial Intelligence for Cybersecurity Reinforcement and System Resilience (Grant agreement ID: 101070450) and DYNABIC: Dynamic business continuity of critical infrastructures on top of adaptive multi-level cybersecurity (Grant agreement ID: 101070455).

Bio
Panagiotis Sarigiannidis is the Director of the ITHACA lab (https://ithaca.ece.uowm.gr/), co-founder of the 1 st spin-off of the University of Western Macedonia: MetaMind Innovations P.C. (https://metamind.gr), and Full Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in the University of Western Macedonia, Kozani, Greece. He received the B.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Thessaloniki, Greece, in 2001 and 2007, respectively. He has published over 330 papers in international journals, conferences and book chapters, including IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Internet of Things, IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting, IEEE Systems Journal, IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology, IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Access and Computer Networks. He received 6 best paper awards and the IEEE SMC TCHS Research and Innovation Award 2023. He has been involved in several national, European and international projects, while coordinating four H2020 / Horizon Europe projects. His research interests include telecommunication networks, internet of things and network security. He is an IEEE member and participates in the Editorial Boards of various journals.

Bio
Richard Stevens is Associate Vice President and Director of the Government Consulting unit at IDC where he carries out technical, economic and policy analysis for topics related to information technologies. Stevens has more than 20 years' experience in the research and development related to Data Exchange and Interoperability of enterprise class software. Stevens is a trained ICT project manager and has lead international teams developing and deploying IT systems. Central themes in his research include dataspaces, interoperability of data, data governance: workflows, rules, responsibilities and policies in IT Systems as well as modeling Information architectures, flows of information, Interfaces, events, messages and data in middleware and execution environments. Stevens holds a bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin and a master's degree from the John's Hopkins University. Stevens is responsible for a number of studies and collaborative projects and is an expert evaluator and reviewer for DG Connect, DG Grow, DG Research and the European Research Council.

Enhancing trust in AI across critical domains

Abstract
The rapid integration of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in critical domains presents challenges in ensuring trustworthiness and adherence to ethical standards. Although the existing AI based systems offer unprecedented capabilities and efficiencies, they also face multiple risks which can undermine public trust, including: (i) safety, (ii) explainability and interpretability, (iii) fairness and harmful bias, (iv) accountability and transparency, (v) security and resiliency, (vi) privacy, and (vii) validity and reliability. The latter highlights the need for the development of robust and easy to utilize trustworthy AI assessment frameworks to precisely assess the risks of AI systems and ensure that they operate within ethical boundaries across critical sectors, such as, media, transportation, and education, among others. This involves not only the implementation of stringent data security protocols but also the development of protocols to ensure that AI decisions are transparent and equitable. The integration of AI systems within complex human-centric environments requires additional emphasis on interoperability and adaptability so that they can function more effectively. To effectively mitigate these risks and to foster trust in AI systems, the EU funded project FAITH introduces an AI Trustworthiness Assessment Framework which is based on the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) Risk Management Framework (RMF) and the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA). Through a series of large-scale pilots across critical sectors, the project aims to demonstrate the impact of its framework to ensure that AI systems meet the highest standards of trust and reliability.

Bio
Prof Dimitrios I. Fotiadis received the Diploma degree in chemical engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Athens, Greece, in 1985, and the Ph.D. degree in chemical engineering and materials science from the University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, in 1990. He is currently a Professor of Biomedical Engineering in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering, University of Ioannina, Ioannina, Greece, where he is also the Director of the Unit of Medical Technology and Intelligent Information Systems, and is also an Affiliated Member of Foundation for Research and Technology Hellas, Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology, Dept. of Biomedical Research. He was a Visiting Researcher at the RWTH, Aachen, Germany, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Boston. He has coordinated and participated in more than 200 R&D funded projects. He is the author or coauthor of more than 250 papers in scientific journals, 450 papers in peer-reviewed conference proceedings, and more than 50 chapters in books. He is also the editor or coeditor of 35 books. His work has received more than 12.000 citations (h-index=57). He is IEEE EMBS Fellow, Technical Committee of information Technology in Healthcare, Editor in Chief of IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics and Associate Editor for Computers in Biology and Medicine. His research interests include multiscale modeling of human tissues and organs, intelligent wearable/implantable devices for automated diagnosis, processing of big medical data, sensor informatics, image informatics, and bioinformatics. He is the recipient of many scientific awards including the one by the Academy of Athens.

Empowering Physicians and Patients: How AI is Changing Healthcare

Abstract
This keynote address delves into the dynamic intersection of artificial intelligence (AI) and healthcare, focusing on practical applications and the transformative potential of AI technologies. Attendees will gain invaluable insights into how AI is revolutionizing patient care, improving outcomes, and pushing the boundaries of the healthcare system and medical research. The discussion aligns with the broader theme of digital transformation, making it relevant and engaging for a diverse audience, including technologists, healthcare professionals, policymakers, and industry leaders. Real-world examples of AI in diagnostics, treatment planning, and personalized medicine will be explored, demonstrating its current impact on healthcare delivery. Emerging technologies and innovations poised to reshape the healthcare landscape will be introduced, highlighting the future potential of AI in this field.

Bio
Georg Dorffner is Associate Professor at the Institute of Artificial Intelligence, Center of Medical Data Science, Medical University of Vienna. He holds master's degrees in Computer Science and Communication Engineering from the Vienna University of Technology, as well as a PhD in Computer Science from Indiana University (USA). He has performed research in AI since the 1980s, when he was one of the Austrian pioneers in applying neural networks for both machine learning and as a cognitive model of language acquisition. In the 1990s, he received tenure (“Habilitation”) for his work in applying novel types of neural network to data in medical applications. His research has strongly focused on signal and time series processing. In the early 2000s he founded the spin-off company The Siesta Group - serving as its CEO until 2014 -, which since its beginning has applied AI methods to the analysis of brain waves (EEG), in particular those during sleep (polysomnography and sleep staging). The company today provides such analysis services for clinical trials, mainly in the pharmaceutical area. Since 2014 he has been the Curriculum Director of the Master program “Medical Informatics” at the Medical University of Vienna. He is also one of the vice presidents of the Austrian Society of Artificial Intelligence (ASAI).