IPaT is pleased to welcome Dr. Wei Zhao, Rector of the University of Macau, to discuss fundamental issues related to the Internet of Things (IoT), and principles that should guide research and development.

Given its tremendous application potential, IoT has attracted attention from both academia and industry. Dr. Zhao will present several approaches that may lead to implementation of IoT and examine their advantages and disadvantages. He’ll also discuss the IoT project “Winternet” and demonstrate its application. Finally, Dr. Zhao will talk about critical issues that must be addressed in order to fully realize the objectives and potentials of IoT.

Bio:

An internationally-renowned scholar, Dr. Wei Zhao has been serving as the eighth Rector (i.e., President) of the University of Macau since 2008. Before joining the University of Macau, Dr. Zhao served as the Dean of the School of Science at the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in the U.S., Director for the Division of Computer and Network Systems in the U.S. National Science Foundation, and Senior Associate Vice President for Research at Texas A&M University. Dr. Zhao completed his undergraduate studies in physics at Shaanxi Normal University, Xi'an, China, in 1977, and received his MSc and PhD degrees in Computer and Information Sciences at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst in 1983 and 1986, respectively. During his academic career, he has also served as a faculty member at Shaanxi Normal University, Amherst College, the University of Adelaide, Texas A&M University, and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Zhao has made significant contributions in distributed computing, real-time systems, computer networks, and cyberspace security. His research group has received numerous awards including the outstanding paper award from the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing Systems, the best paper award from the IEEE National Aerospace and Electronics Conference, an award on technology transfer from the Defense Advanced Research Program Agency, and the best paper award from the IEEE International Communication Conference. In 2011, he was named by the Ministry of Science and Technology as the Chief Scientist of the national 973 Internet of Things Project.