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Keynote Lectures

Simulation Methods for Improving Healthcare Services: How to Choose the Right Method and to Model a System Right
Murat Gunal, Fenerbahce University, Industrial Engineering Department, Türkiye, Türkiye

Simulating Robots Activities and Humans Experiences in Underwater Environment
Fabio Bruno, University of Calabria, Italy, Italy

Distributed and Hybrid Digital Twins for Low Latency Applications: The Pros of Exploiting Edge Cloud Computing and the Challenges for Simulation
Paolo Bellavista, Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna, Italy, Italy

Simulation Methods for Improving Healthcare Services: How to Choose the Right Method and to Model a System Right

Murat Gunal
Fenerbahce University, Industrial Engineering Department, Türkiye

Brief Bio
Murat M. Günal is a professor, researcher, and consultant working as an industrial engineer and operational researcher since 1999. He received his MSc and PhD degrees in Operational Research (OR) from Lancaster University, U.K. His main areas of research are simulation methodologies and applications particularly in healthcare, service sector, and the industry. His PhD thesis was funded by EPSRC and titled District General Hospital Performance Simulation. His simulation models are being used in various National Health Service (NHS) hospitals in the UK for performance improvements. He took part in consultancy and research projects funded by Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, TUBITAK (Turkish Science and Technology Research Council), and Ministry of Health in Turkiye. He published scholarly papers in academic journals and book chapters in edited books. He also publishes at conference proceedings including Winter Simulation Conference (WSC), Spring Simulation Conference, and SIMULTECH. His most recent edited book is “Simulation for Industry 4.0” and published by Springer. He is currently a faculty member at Fenerbahce University, and managing director of Simarter, an analytics company specialized in simulation and optimization. He teaches simulation, mathematical modelling, probability, facility planning, service science, decision analysis, and O.R. applications at graduate and undergraduate levels. He is an associate editor of Journal of Simulation.

Abstract
Healthcare is a vast area for research and is one of the trending domains in simulation modelling for decades. Almost all methodologies of simulation have been applied individually, or as a blend, for healthcare system improvements. In this talk, I am going to share my personal experiences on healthcare simulation modelling projects and particularly focus the transition between problem definition phase and model development. Scoping, framing, and formulating a problem in healthcare is essential for increasing the usefulness of a simulation model.

Simulating Robots Activities and Humans Experiences in Underwater Environment

Fabio Bruno
University of Calabria, Italy

Brief Bio
Fabio Bruno is Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanical, Energetics and Management Engineering (DIMEG), University of Calabria (UNICAL) where he teaches “Rapid Prototyping” and “Virtual and Augmented Reality”. He is cofounder and President at 3D Research s.r.l. a spin-off Company specialized in the development of eXtended Reality technologies. His research interests include the development of robotic and digital technologies for the documentation, preservation and dissemination of underwater cultural and natural heritage. He is the scientific coordinator of 4 EU funded projects: INTERREG MED – BLUEMED PLUS, H2020-MSCA TECTONIC, Creative Europe CREAMARE and ART4SEA. He had leading roles in many other EU projects like H2020 – iMARECULTURE, EASME/EMFF Lab4Dive and DiveSafe; EASME MeDryDive.

Abstract
The underwater world is a challenging and huge environment where humans have severe difficulties and limitations to operate. For this reason, remotely operated and autonomous robotic systems are widely used in this peculiar operational environment. Simulation technologies can effectively support the assessment of humans and robots interaction with the underwater environment, offering the opportunity for validating new devices and systems before their deployment as well as for the training of scuba divers and underwater vehicle pilots. The speech will present some of the emerging approaches to simulate the behaviour of sensors and robots under the water. Moreover, it will show how virtual reality offers to the users the opportunity to experience the direct and indirect exploration of the seabed.

Distributed and Hybrid Digital Twins for Low Latency Applications: The Pros of Exploiting Edge Cloud Computing and the Challenges for Simulation

Paolo Bellavista
Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna, Italy
https://www.unibo.it/sitoweb/paolo.bellavista

Brief Bio
Paolo Bellavista is a Full Professor of mobile and distributed systems at the University of Bologna, Italy. His primary research interests include middleware for mobile computing, digital twins for Industry4.0 and smart city applications, QoS management in the cloud continuum, infrastructures for big data processing in industrial environments, and performance optimization in wide-scale and latency-sensitive deployment scenarios. Related to digital twins, he was the scientific coordinator of the H2020 IoTwins project.

Abstract
Digital twins are becoming a crucial tool for both design purposes (e.g., dimensioning before implementation – offline digital twins) and efficiency goals (e.g., online reconfiguration to improve quality – online digital twins), by posing several, still open, technical challenges to their effective implementation. In particular, the keynote speech will focus on the emerging directions of hybrid (synergically exploiting simulations and data-driven machine learning models) and distributed (running also in cloud continuum edge nodes, e.g., for federated learning and efficient after-training operations) digital twins. Practical examples of implemented testbeds with edge cloud nodes supporting digital twins will be described from the IoTwins H2020 project, in the vertical domains of industrial manufacturing plants and smart city management optimization. Moreover, the speech will present our original recent research work on the design and implementation of a novel simulation tool for vehicular applications, which can exploit ETSI MEC-compliant edge cloud nodes in proximity.