Under the Patronage of HE Mr. Kamal Ahmed, the Minister of Transportation and Telecommunications, the IT Innovations Conference was launched on April 6 at Downtown Rotana, Manama. The two-day conference was organized by the College of IT, Ahlia University, and featured a number of world-renowned experts, researchers, professionals and specialists in the field of IT. HE, the Minister, deputised Mohammed Al Amer, the Chairman of the Telecommunications Regulatory Authority (TRA), to inaugurate the conference. Mr. Al Amer addressed the gathering in his opening keynote speech and declared, “Bahrain has become an ideal place for providing innovative IT solutions. The Kingdom is now occupying a leading position in the field of IT at regional as well as international levels. According to the Infrastructure Indicator, Bahrain is highly ranked in international telecommunications.”
The Founding President of Ahlia University, Prof. Abdullah Al Hawaj expressed great pleasure upon witnessing the gathering of experts, government officials and representatives of several telecommunication companies under one roof. He added that he was confident that the conference would deliver and achieve its goals.
Rise of the Robots
The President of Ahlia University, Prof. Mansoor Alaali, stated that technology has become a key ingredient in every aspect of human life, including education, health, communication, and transportation. “Despite facilitating our lives, technology has presented us with many challenges, especially in the workplace. Robots haven’t just replaced humans in the workplace, but they are also expanding skills, productivity and retention rates, and increasingly pushing aside their human competitors. We are in an era of cars without drivers, and operation rooms without surgeons. Recent statistics reveal that one-third of jobs will be taken over by robots.”
Determining Identity through Biological Characteristics
Several papers were presented during the conference, notably, the one delivered by Dr. Sayed Mohammed Al Alfi, an Associate Professor in the Saudi-based King Fahad University. His paper was titled: “The Current and Modern Trends in Vital Measurements”, and presented a brief summary of biometrics to identify people through different biological characteristics such as fingerprints, palm prints, voice prints, electrical signals of the heart, and motion during walking.
Increasing the Value of Information
Moreover, Dr. Ahmed Jedidi, the Chairperson of the Department of Computer Engineering at Ahlia University, presented a paper titled: “The Challenges of Securing the Internet”, where he stressed the importance of protecting information on the Internet. He stated that statistics reveal that the number of Internet users would increase to 5 billion users by 2030, underlining that technology must be simplified, and its capacity should be extended to accommodate this number in the future. “We need to enhance internet security to maintain the protection of this significant volume of information,” he added.
