SpliTech 2019 is a conference technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Communications Society. It was held on June 18-21, 2019 at the Hotel Elaphusa at Bol, Island of Brac, Croatia, and at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering and Naval Architecture–FESB, Split, Croatia.
More than 500 participants from over 30 countries participated in this international event. Scientists and experts from academia, industry and public institutions joined to share their knowledge in the areas of smart environments, Internet of Things (IoT), energy, engineering modeling and eHealth. The conference attracted 244 scientific and professional papers. Only 49 percent of submitted papers were accepted for publication, therefore guaranteeing high quality contributions. All accepted contributions were published in the IEEE Xplore digital database in September 2019, with further indexation in other databases, such as SCOPUS and Web of Science (WoS). In the 2019 edition of the SpliTech conference, a total of 120 papers, 46 percent more than last year, were published.
The opening ceremony was held in Bol. The welcoming speech was given by Prof. Jiří Jaromír Klemeš, General Chair, Prof. Sven Gotovac, Dean of the Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Naval Architecture, and Vice-Rector Prof. Tomislav Kilić. Finally, Prof. Sandro Nižetić thanked the sponsors, especially Rimac Automobili, ICT County and Thermtest Instruments Europe, the gold sponsors of the 2019 conference. The greatest interest of the attendees was attracted by the keynote speeches: Luigi Atzori and David Wilkinson.
Prof. Luigi Atzori, University of Cagliari, Italy, gave a lecture on the topic “The Great Potential of Collaboration of IoT Devices”. According to Prof. Atzori, an estimate shows that there will be over 13 million IoT devices deployed worldwide in 2019. In addition to interacting with humans as end users, the need for interaction among devices will increasingly evolve. This creates the need for protocols and standards that will allow easy and seamless communication among devices. The benefits of effective device collaboration are great, and the technical questions that need to be answered as well as the decisions to be made remain a challenge.
The other keynote lecture was delivered by a research team leader who developed the first commercial lithium-ion battery, a pioneer in the development of the first modern PEM hydrogen cell, Prof. David Wilkinson from the University of British Columbia, Canada. Through his presentation on “21st Century Electrochemical Technologies for Energy Storage”, he introduced the participants to various aspects of advanced electrochemical energy storage technologies such as electrochemical capacitors, electrolysis, fuel cells, and batteries for the efficiency of stable energy system management. He also presented various versions of advanced technologies for electrochemical energy storage, including examples from his own research related to next-generation fuel cells, electrolysis and batteries.
All accepted papers will be invited for extension for possible further publication in Special Issues of some international journals in whose editorial teams are the organizers of the conference.
Within the conference, a “Meet the Editor” workshop was held for future Ph.D. students from the University of Split and less experienced authors. In the relaxed atmosphere Prof. Jiří Jaromír Klemeš, Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Cleaner Production, introduced them to the experience of writing papers for highly cited journals. The workshop was designed to encourage Ph.D. students to write research papers with the intention of publishing in prestigious international journals.
Prof. Nižetić delivered a lecture on “Smart and Sustainable Photovoltaic Techniques” focusing on recent advances in smart and efficient cooling techniques for photovoltaic systems as part of the Croatian Science Foundation project “Smart Hybrid Techniques for Cooling Silicon Photovoltaic Panels”.
IoT Day: Practical Workshops for Students
On the last day, the conference was held on FESB, where the all-day event IoT day was organized by assistant professors Toni Perković and Petar Šolić as part of the Croatian Science Foundation project “Internet of Things: Research and Applications”. An interesting Workshop on Industrial Internet of Things was organized by Prof. Luigi Patrono, University of Salento, Italy, and Prof. Petar Šolić, FESB, Croatia, involving several important companies working in the IoT field in order to report their own vision and the state of art of technologies, solutions, experiences, and work-in-progress activities. Further practical workshops were fully booked in record time. Assistant professor Dubravko Čulibrk from the University of Novi Sad, Tandemlaunch Inc,, Startup Foundry, Canada, and NVIDIA Ambassador, held an NVIDIA Deep Learning Workshop for the 30 people during the IoT day, where all attendees could get acquainted with in-depth techniques learning and neural networks, using hands-on examples using NVIDIA cloud-based graphics cards.
Simultaneously with the NVIDIA workshop, the “IoT for Beginners with Croduino NOVA” workshop was held for the students, under the guidance of David Zovko, owner of e-radionica. com. Students learned how to connect devices to the Internet. In addition to the mentioned workshops, there were exhibition stands, as well as various interesting lectures. The most prominent lecture was held by Rimac Automobili representative, Tomislav Lugaric. In the lecture he presented the vision of the car of the future from the perspective of the Internet of Things, and what it takes to build for a new generation of drivers. He also outlined the challenges of developing a connected car and new possibilities for science fiction cars, Rimac C_Two.
SpliTech 2020 will be held in Split and Bol on July 1-4, 2020, and all the community is invited to submit new contributions on the conference topics.