Conference Summary

The two days 1st Online International Conference on “Rebuilding Bharat with Artificial Intelligence (AI) Interventions after COVID-19 Pandemic: Opportunity and Challenges” is held on 02-03^rd May 2020, organized by Department of Computer Science and Engineering, University School of Information and Communication Technology, Greater Noida, Uttar Pradesh, INDIA. Participants from academia as well as industry submitted their research papers on advancements in Artificial Intelligence (AI) Interventions and exchanged their ideas and information across the AI2CP-2020 platform. The conference increases the research thrust by bringing together the leading protectors, scientists, academicians, researchers, government officials, practicing engineers, industry professionals and students whose fruitful discussions contributed to the success of this conference.

The response from the academic community has been passionate and overwhelming, with more than 325 submissions received. The received papers were not only from the nearby regions but from Maharashtra, Assam, Pune, Himachal Pradesh, Haryana, Jammu, Rajasthan, Jharkhand, Punjab, Mumbai, Chennai and Vellore and also from International level like Denmark, Italy, Vietnam, U.K., Korea, Taiwan, Morocco and Malaysia etc. More than 400 participants participated and attended the AI2CP 2020 and near about 280 research papers were presented by the participants from different organizations.

The first day of the conference i.e. 02^nd May 2020 started with technical sessions in virtual space and the conference was divided into 16 technical parallel sessions. The entire conference was divided into two days. On each day, we conducted 16 sessions of one hour each on Cisco webex platform. Each session had one coordinator, the role taken up by the faculty of the department of Computer Science, SoICT, Gautam Buddha University. We also had two session chairs per session, represented by some of the learned and most researched personalities in the education field. Each session was concluded by the session’s chair. Each session chair had been honored by Certificate for their time and valuable feedback.

The first day of the conference i.e. 02^nd May 2020 started with the session coordinated by Mr. Ankur Singhal and a parallel session by Mr. Anuj Sachan. Their session chairs were Mr. G, Suseendran, Dr. K. Rajalakahmi, Dr. Anju and Dr. Deepak Nandal. Presentations on various topics like, deep learning, convolution neural networks, fake news analysis, etc., was delivered live by the participants. Following by we had more sessions coordinated by Ms. Aparna Singh, Ms. Diksha Sharma, Ms. Snehlata, Ms. Mamta Punia, Mr. Jatin, Ms. Sumedha Dangi, Ms. Archana, Ms. Deepti and Mr. Vipin Rai. We discussed some of the most relevant and needed topics of the hour. Some of the researched fields that came out to be the most popular among the candidates were blockchain, automation, role of AI in healthcare, digital marketing, education, bitcoin and deep learning.

We were privileged to have the presence of some of the most learned session chairs in these sessions whose feedback and suggestions not like enlightened the participants but also motivated them to go further in their respective research field. We are more than glad to have worked under their guidance. To name a few of the session chairs, we had the presence of, Dr. Vipin Kumar, Dr. Vaibhav Panwar, Dr. Aarsh Kumar, Dr. Arpit Bhardwaj, Dr. Jagdeep Kaur, Dr. Balkishan, Dr. Latika kharb, Dr. Deepali Singh, Dr. Vidhush Sharma, Dr. Anand Paul, Dr. Varun G. Menon, Dr. Payal Gulati, Dr. Roma, Dr. Suman Malik, Dr. Parminder Singh, Dr. Ashok Kumar Suhag, Dr. Neeta Singh, Dr. Aarti Gautam Dinker, Dr. Manu Singh, Dr. Kavita Sheoran, Dr. Satish Kumar, Dr. Rajesh Benival and Dr. Sandeep Kumar.

On the second day, 03^rd May 2020 the response of the delegates was respectively high. Again throughout the day a large number of presentations were delivered by the delegates in 16 parallel sessions. These presentations were reviewed by the eminent Session chairs from the various organizations. The session chairs critically analyzed the paper and recommended some good papers for publishing in the journals. The last session of the second day of the conference i.e. 03^rd May 2020 was coordinated by Ms. Sumedha Dangi and a parallel session by Mr. Mayank Tyagi. The session chairs were Dr. Suman Malik, Dr. Shiv Kumar, Dr. Chander Diwaker and Dr. Dinesh Singh. Some of the topics discussed were from the field of automation, distributed AI, AI tools in education field, healthcare industry, 3D printing, etc.

The second day of the conference i.e. 03rd May 2020 after lunch started with panel discussion, the whole programme coordinated by Ms. Aditi Sakalle. Ms. Aparna Singh worked as repporteur and preapre the proceddings of panel discussion. Vedio Recording of the panel dicussion was done by Ms Tarana and Mr. Harshit Bhardwaj.

Dr. Pradeep Tomar, Head of Computer Science and Engineering department and convener of AI2CP-2020 started this session with a welcome note for all the dignitaries and delegates. He expressed his sincere gratitude towards our Vice chancellor, Prof. Bhagwati Prakash Sharma whose vision and guidance made this conference possible. He also thanked the Dean of SoICT, Prof. Sanjay Sharma, along with the entire organizing committee and technical programme committee for making this conference a huge success. He expressed his sincere gratitude towards USICT former deans Like Prof. Sanjay Jasola, Prof. Brahmjit Singh and Prof Ela Kumar for their e-messages.

Dr. Arun Solanki, Organizing Secretary of the conference gave a brief summary about the AI2CP-2020. He shared with us some of the statistics of the conference where he received more than 350 research papers by 600 plus authors, coming from 20 different states across India. Some of the key areas that were discussed in the conference were related to bio technology, educational field, management, block chain, machine learning, 3D printing, etc. He also shared how this entire conference was made possible only within 11 days as the seed for this conference was laid down on 22^nd April, 2020. He also thanked everyone whose presence and guidance made the conference a milestone in the history of Gautam Buddha University.

Keynote address was delivered by the Prof. Nasib Singh Gill, Director, Digital Learning Center, M. D. University, Rohtak, Haryana. He started his speech with a congratulations message dedicated to Gautam Buddha University and the department of SoICT for hosting the conference, a one of its kind with an even more appropriate topic given our current situation. In his starting note he listed out the impact of Covid-19 and the havoc created by it across multiple countries and how this large scale impact is forcing us to make changes in all the faces of our life. He also quoted the novel prize winner, French physicists and chemist Madame Curie, “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less.” Learning from the quote, he advised us to not fear this time and instead understand from it so that we can be better prepared for situations like these, those might occur in our near future. He motivated us by comparing this lockdown phase with one of the similar times faced by Newton in 1965 and how that phase was one of the most productive period of his entire life. He refreshed our memory of World War 2 and pointed out how that period of adversity lead to some of the greatest and creative inventions in time, like the first computer, international space stations, ball point pen, etc. These creations would not have been possible without the “forced necessity”. Further moving on he explained how Artificial intelligence and machine learning have reached a critical point and they’ll only grow vertically from here and remarked that Artificial Intelligence will be the new electricity of our age. He also gave some recent examples of AI, where Professors at MIT developed a machine learning based model on neural network that proved that by relaxing the rules of lockdown imposed, we’ll see a significant spike in Covid-19 cases. In the last part of his speech he requested everyone to focus on the post Covid-19 impact that will be change management irrespective of any walk of life and how we as a citizen of India should trust in the framework of change management. He listed out the three domains of teaching that will be most affected by this pandemic: Teaching and Learning, Innovation and Research and Exchange and Interaction. Lastly he showed some light on cyber crimes in India and how we as a user should be aware of what data is sensitive to us and what can be made public and shared three trends of it, they being, Force code execution, Program level indicators and Automatic sequence detection. He ended his intellectual and well researched speech with a thank you note to the University and expressed his happiness on the overwhelming response received by the conference.

Word of blessings for conference was delivered by our Hon’able Vice Chancellor Prof. Bhagwati Prakash Sharma and sir address the audience about the importance of Artificial Intelligence.

After the blessings of Vice Chancellor sir Panel Discussion on “Rebuilding Bharat with Artificial Intelligence (AI) Interventions after COVID-19 Pandemic” was started by the Organizing Team of AI2CP-2020. The panel discussion were started by the eminent academician and industry personnels from national and international organizations like Prof. Anand Nayar, Duy Tan University, Vietnam. He focused his speech on two very important aspects: 1. How Artificial intelligence technology can help us during the covid-19, and 2. How India should revive it’s declining economy after Covid-19. Covering the first aspect, he listed out the areas where AI can and is being used, like Virtual healthcare assistance, diagnostic AI, facial and fever recognition and Information Verification based AI. Moving onto the second aspect of his talk, he suggested how India should invest in sustainable infrastructure, healthcare and recovery packages. Apart from this India should focus on resilience for needy people and should use some fiscal mechanisms for spiking up our falling GDP.

Moving on with the panel discussion we had, Mr. Parvender, Head, Java Engineering, Verint Systems UK Ltd., United Kingdom. He along with thanking the University and the Vice chancellor for this innovative conference, focused on how the need of the hour is a technology that can be implemented, which can stop the infected Person from further infecting the rest of the masses. He highlighted a very important point of how this pandemic has changed our thinking approach and shifted it from our individual sense to the society. He also emphasized on how this pandemic and the lockdown has given the environment a chance to refresh itself and hopefully, we as a responsible human being can maintain this positive impact of Covid-19 even when it’s over.

The next panel discussion was by Dr. Vijay Malik, Director, Ecoden Solution, Noida, India. He shared with us his concern regarding the breakthrough technology of AI and whether all the applications of AI will be implemented in a way that will include everyone and not disrupt the balance of mankind. He remarked how AI can break the barriers of language and it should be used as an inclusive technology rather than being exclusive. He ended his talk by saying that AI should include all the people of Bharat and not just be limited to a selective few.

Moving on we had, Ms. Shaily Chaudhary, Head, Data Analytics, EMMAR, Duabi and Mr. Mohit Chaudhary, Digital Marketing Manager, FirstScreen, Dubai, UAE. He started his discussion by discussing the Indian GDP growth rate and how it’s directly proportional to the growth of the agriculture sector in India. He pointed out the three channels to boost industry profits which are, Intelligent Automation, Labor and capital augmentation and Innovation Diffusion. He ended his talk with listing out some of the domains that can be helped by the AI, like agriculture and forestry, accommodation and food services, financial service, education and social services. In his last remark he showed some examples of smart cities and focused on the importance of skilled doctors, labor, students who should be ready to deliver the vaccine throughout the county once it’s out as soon as possible.

Our next panel discussion was by Dr. Nisha Kant Ojha, Advisor Cyber Security, TCIL, India. He very enthusiastically pointed out how Artificial Intelligence is not just limited to the post phase of Covid-19 and rather it should and can be used during this pandemic also. He shared one of his apps, called AI-MED wherein a user can simply input his or her medical files and get timely diagnosis. Apart from this, he also shared an app called COVID-RAKSHAK, an app very similar to Aarogya Setu which works worldwide.

Next we had, Dr. Vikrant Nain, Assistant Professor, Gautam Buddha University, India. He started his speech by praising the concept of this conference and also pointed out how the topic could not have been more relevant than this, given our situation. He started his speech by quoting, “It’s not the strongest that survive but the one that is most adaptable to the environment.” He remarked that two aspects that makes a country strong are it’s Institutions and the character of it’s citizens and this conference being one of the prime examples of how we are adapting with the situation. He listed out the areas that will be most affected by this pandemic, they being political and social areas, healthcare industry and also agriculture. According to him, the two major areas of concern will be the agriculture field and the medicinal sciences.

The next person on our panel was, Mr. Vivek Varshnay, MD and CEO, Vivtra Technologies Pvt Ltd., Gurugram, Haryana, India. He started his speech by disusing the lessons that we should learn from this sudden pandemic that has taken over the entire world in just few months. He focused on the silver lining during this pandemic, by stating how India saved 45 billion $ of foreign currency by not using oil because of the imposed lockdown by the government. He also mentioned how some of the sectors that will benefit from this pandemic are, online e-commerce, online retailing, online education and healthcare. He also talked about his fondness of the online education system and it’s impact on the youth as well as on the children of all ages. Lastly, he ended by remarking how telecom industry has saved us all during this period of misfortune.

Last but not the least, we had, Prof. O. P. Sangwan, GJU ST University, Hissar, Haryana, India. He started his speech with the applications of AI and Machine learning, chat bots and how they are used in medicinal field. He also reminded us that how a technology this vast and powerful should be used responsibly. He also gave an example of the Risk assessment scanner that is already being used by the Apollo hospital in real time to reduce the risk of further contaminating more people. In his next example he told how robots in a hospital in Jaipur are being used to distribute food and medicines to the patients to stop the contamination chain. He focused on the role of AI in drug discovery, antibodies and vaccine development.

At the end, Dr. Sandhya Tarar, organizing secretary of the conference delivered the vote of thanks to our honorable Vice Chancellor, Prof. Bhagwati Prakash Sharma and to the Dean academic, Prof. Shweta Anand, Dean, Prof. Sanjay Sharma. She also thanked all the industry experts and the prominent leaders in the field of education for giving us their valuable time and sharing with us their deep knowledge.