Special session 1: Biomass and Electricity Production

Scope
The production of sustainable energy sources (Wind, solar, biomass, etc.) will ensure a significant reduction in using fossil resources for energy production. These fossil fuels have severe impact over the atmosphere in various aspects. Among the renewable sources of energy, the biomass is the cheapest and eco friendly. The association of the biomass source with other renewable sources has great potential to provide higher quality and more reliable power to customers than a system based on a single source. The renewable energy sources can complement each other. Hybrid renewable energy sources are recognized mainly for remote area power applications and are nowadays cost-effective, where extension of grid supply is expensive. This special session will be devoted mainly to the production of electrical energy from biomass including agricultural wastes, wood, crop residues, household, etc. Environmental and socio-economic impacts will be highlighted.

• Biomass availability in a changing climate
• Innovative, smart solutions for sustainable valorization of organic waste streams
• Biomass electricity generation
• hybrid Solar- biomass Microgrid system
• hybrid Wind- biomass Microgrid system
• Energy storage
• Environnemental impact
• Socio_economic impact
• etc.

Chair:
Prof. BOUKHELIFA Akkila USTHB Alger, Algeria
Co-Chair:
Prof. BOUCHAFAA Farid USTHB Alger, Algeria
Contact:
boukhelifa.a@gmail.com
fbouchafa@gmail.com

Special session 2: Emerging Technologies in Education and Training

Scope
Information and Communication Technology (ICT) is actually very present in our normal lives. We are surrounded by the product and services of this technology from automatic parking systems, smart sensors for taking spectacular photos to personal assistance. Similarly, in the field of education and training ICT is being felt more and more and traditional teaching/learning methods are changing dramatically. Furthermore, rational using and integrating of ICT in classroom practices as in distance teaching/learning can significantly contribute to a good quality of education and its effectiveness. In other hand, the emergence of Artificial intelligence AI techniques such as Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) together with the Internet of Things (IoT) promises to open new advances in the detection, understanding, and correction of Handicaps and learning disabilities. The purpose of this special session is to present recent high-quality research on different problems related to information technology and its applications in intelligent education and training from primary to higher school.

• Smart classroom
• IoT for learning
• Mobile Learning
• Blended Learning
• Personalized Learning
• Reinforcement Learning
• Smart Content management
• Intelligent Learning Systems
• Game-based learning and systems
• Data Analytics & Big Data in Education
• ICT in Administrative Tasks management
• ICT skills and competencies among teachers
• Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL)
• ICT in Evaluation and Assessment of Student Learning
• Effective Ways of integrating ICT in Education and training
• Virtual Reality (VR) and Augmented Reality (AR) in learning
• AI for Detection and correction of handicaps and learning disabilities
• etc.

Chair:
Prof. CHERRADI Bouchaib CRMEF Casablanca-Settat, S. P. El Jadida, Morocco
Contact:
bouchaib.cherradi@enset-media.ac.ma

Special session 3: Machine Learning and Deep Learning Applications

Scope
The latest advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) have revolutionized retail, healthcare, sports, business, biology, industry, and many other fields. In fact, modern Machine Learning (ML) and Deep Learning (DL) Applications have already given us self-driving cars, virtual assistants, intelligent systems to detect fraud, manage resources more efficiently such as electricity, predict Parkinson’s and Alzheimer, detect and predict breast cancer and heart diseases and whatnot. The sophisticated analysis of ML and especially DL which is achieved through neural networks (NNs) can also realize extremely complex pattern spotting like recognizing speech or images, natural language processing (NLP) which has evolved into natural language understanding (NLU). Contributions describing applications of ML and DL techniques to real-world problems, experimental and/or theoretical studies yielding new insights into the design and development of ML and DL systems, interdisciplinary research involving ML and DL, and papers presenting and analyzing the development of new analytical frameworks that advance practical ML approaches are especially encouraged.

• smart cities
• security applications
• speech and image recognition
• sentiment mining, natural language processing and natural language understanding
• business, e-commerce and retail
• autonomous vehicles and systems
• intelligent virtual environments
• meteorology and climate forecasting systems
• medicine, health, bioinformatics and systems biology
• industrial and engineering applications
• game playing and problem solving
• etc.

Chairs:
Prof. RAHIMI Hasnae ESI Rabat, Morocco
Prof. ELÇI Atilla Aksaray University, Aksaray, Turkey
Contact:
hasnae.rahimi@gmail.com
atilla.elci@gmail.com

Special session 4: Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition

Scope
Computer vision and pattern recognition are essential areas of artificial intelligence. Research work has been considerably expanded over the last ten years, and this trend continues especially in computer vision, pattern recognition, automatic speech recognition, etc. This trend has become a strategic element in developing methods, control tools and inaccessible data access techniques from images, audio and video. Indeed, the growth of the population requires the implementation of intelligent systems to ensure a competitive advantage of cost optimization and the satisfaction of users.
The purpose of this special session is to develop intelligent systems in the field of computer technologies such as: image processing, shape analysis, graphics recognition, speech recognition, video processing, etc. In this context, it is necessary to design new algorithms, new methods, new applications and new techniques related to computer vision and the pattern recognition.

• 3D Object Recognition
• Automatic Speech Processing
• Character and Word Recognition
• Character and Word Segmentation
• Digital Libraries
• Distributed Document Collections
• Document Image Processing
• Facial Recognition
• Feature Detectors and Descriptors
• Graphics Recognition
• Handwriting Models and Analysis
• Image and Video Synthesis
• Intelligent Systems
• Machine Vision
• Medical Image
• Multimedia and Hypermedia Analysis
• Natural Language Issues
• Recognition of Traffic Signs
• Robotics
• Speech Recognition
• Storage and Retrieval of Documents
• Text Analysis and Processing
• Vision Applications and Systems
• etc.

Chair:
Prof. EL MAKHFI Noureddine UAE Tetouan, Morocco
Contact:
nelmakhfi@uae.ac.ma

Special session 5: Nature-Inspired approaches Towards Intelligent Biomedical Engineering

Scope
Nature-Inspired Approaches Toward Intelligent Biomedical Engineering is a vital reference source for scientific research and healthcare industry on new trends and techniques in the exploitation of nature-inspired approaches in biomedical engineering. These advancements have led to significant progress and novel opportunities for biomedical engineering. This special session aims to give a theoretical discussion on using nature-inspired artificial intelligent techniques, Swarm Intelligence, Clinical Decision Support Systems… for obtaining intelligent applications within biomedical engineering. This special session is an ideal resource for medical practitioners, professionals, students, engineers, and researchers interested in the latest developments in biomedical technologies.

• Biomedical Signal Processing
• Biomedical Imaging and Image Processing
• Micro/Nano-bioengineering and Cellular/Tissue Engineering & Biomaterials
• Computational Systems, Modeling and Simulation in Medicine, Multiscale Modeling, Synthetic Biology
• Cardiovascular and Respiratory Systems Engineering
• Artificial Immune System
• Artificial Intelligence
• Clinical Decision Support Systems
• Counting Bacteria
• Differential Diagnosis
• Swarm Intelligence
• Watershed Transformation
• etc.

Chair:
Prof. SALLEM Amin ISGI-SFAX, Tunisia
Contact:
aminsallem@hotmail.com

Special session 6: Smart Grid and Renewable Energy

Scope
To deal with the economic and environmental challenges of the energy systems management, several nations have set some ambitious targets in terms of their energy policy. Modernization of the electricity grid, decentralization of electricity production and the integration of renewable energies constitute the main pillars of this challenge. This session will highlight original research that concerns such issues as the design, operation, control or implementation of sustainable energy systems and smart grid infrastructure, clean and renewable energy, power engineering and sustainable transportation systems. Emphasis will be placed on those issues that concern the technologies and methods that deal with any of these aspects of smart grids and sustainable energy: demonstrating experimental analysis and design; control engineering; protection systems; modelling and simulation; computational intelligence; optimization algorithms; and data analysis.

• Applications of smart grid to cyber and physical security systems
• Energy management systems (with application to building and home automation)
• Communication and control in energy systems Intelligent monitoring and outage management
• Smart sensors and advanced metering infrastructure
• Wide-area protection
• Microgrids
• Renewable energy
• Energy storage and distributed energy resources
• Plug-in vehicles and low-carbon transportation alternatives
• etc.

Chairs:
Prof. KAHAJI Abdelilah ENSA Agadir, Morocco
Prof. RAIHANI Abdelhadi ENSET Mohammedia, Morocco
Contact:
a.kahaji@uiz.ac.ma
raihani@enset-media.ac.ma