In October, a total of four panels took place as part of the event series celebrating IFIP’s 60th anniversary. The panels, organised by various members of IFIP, featured experts discussing contemporary topics in information processing.

The event on the IFIP Code of Ethics and Professional Conduct, moderated by David Kreps, chair of IFIP Technical Committee 9 on ICT and Society, focused on the importance of the IFIP Code in today’s rapidly transforming digital landscape, where it is vital to set explicit boundaries and outline clear values. The panel featured Don Gotterbarn, University of East Tennessee, Kai Rannenberg, Goethe University Frankfurt, Moira de Roche, IP3 and IFIP Vice President, and Kai Kimppa, University of Turku.

On 11 October, the fifth panel in the Future of Information Processing Event Series took place online on the topic Decision Making for Sustainable Global Society. The panel, moderated by IFIP WG 8.3 Chair Ciara Heavin, featured four speakers from academia and industry: Patrick Humphreys, Emeritus London School of Economics, Sara Goulartt, Energias de Portugal S.A., Xavier Dubuisson, Retrokit/XD Sustainable Energy Consulting Ltd, and Karen Neville, University College Cork. The panelists discussed decision making, decision support and decision support systems (DSS) over the last 60 years and considered new opportunities to innovate and disrupt in order to enable and achieve a more resilient, sustainable society.

A week later, the event Autonomous vehicle safety and security: An information processing imperative was organised by the leaders of a WG10.4 project on autonomous vehicle safety and security. The panel of global experts, moderated by John Meyer, discussed information processing advancements that are imperative to the realisation of highly dependable and secure road vehicles. In addition to discussing technical aspects of such advancements, it also debated related societal and ethical issues. The panel featured Ravi Iyer, University of Illinois, Missy Cummings, Duke University, Wilfried Steiner, TTTech and Philip Koopman, Carnegie Mellon University. (See separate article from WG10.4 for more details about this event.)

The most recent event, Trends on Computing Systems, took place on 25 October and was organised and moderated by Graziano Pravadelli, Chair of IFIP WG 10.5 on Design and Engineering of Electronic Systems. The panel focused on computing systems trends to cope with the increasing need of low power and performance in the IoT world. It discussed some new computing systems (like quantum and neural processors) that forecast a revolution on computing architectures and systems. The invited panelists were Nikil Dutt, UC Irvine, Victor Grimblatt, Synpopsys, David Atienza, École polytechnique fédérale de Lausane and Manfred Glesner, Technische Universität Darmstadt.

Videos of all of the past Future of Information Processing Events can be viewed on the IFIP YouTube channel.