Two professors from Unicamp and members of the SMARTNESS participated as Keynote Speakers at the IEEE Colombian Conference on Communications and Computing (COLCOM) 2025, held from August 13 to 15 in Popayán, Colombia. Their talks addressed current developments and challenges in communication networks and distributed computing.
Space: A New Frontier for Communications and Computing
On August 13, Carlos Alberto Astudillo Trujillo (Unicamp – Associate Researcher at SMARTNESS) presented the keynote “Space: A New Frontier for Communications and Computing”.
His talk explored how space is becoming an important domain for the development of communication and computing technologies in 5G and 6G networks. He discussed the integration of terrestrial networks with low Earth orbit (LEO) satellites and the increasing deployment of computational infrastructure in space. These advancements not only expand global connectivity but are also essential to improving user experience and network operation. The presentation concluded with key research challenges and future opportunities in this emerging field.
The Computing Continuum: Beyond Cloud and Edge Intelligence
On August 15, Luiz Fernando Bittencourt (Unicamp – Co-PI at SMARTNESS) delivered the keynote “The Computing Continuum: Beyond Cloud and Edge Intelligence”.
He examined how the combination of the Internet of Things (IoT), edge computing, and cloud computing is shaping a continuum of computing resources, spanning from user devices to cloud data centers. This distributed and heterogeneous platform enables large-scale data processing with lower latency and enhanced performance. Despite progress, Bittencourt emphasized that building a seamless distributed infrastructure remains a challenge, especially when dealing with distributed machine learning and applications with highly diverse requirements.
Additional Research Contributions
In addition to his keynote, Prof. Carlos Alberto Astudillo Trujillo contributed to the technical program of COLCOM 2025 with two research presentations. He co-authored the paper “xAITC: an approach for explaining and improving opaque-based depression classification”, presented in the Graduate Students Symposium (GSS 1) – Explainable AI and Applications, together with researchers from Universidad del Cauca. He also presented the poster “IoT Ecosystem Integrated with DLT Applied to the Tourism Sector”, developed in collaboration with colleagues from Universidad del Cauca.
About COLCOM 2025
Organized by the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc), COLCOM is the leading annual conference in Colombia dedicated to telecommunications and computing. It attracts researchers, professionals, and students from across Latin America. Now in its 18th edition, the event took place in Popayán, known as Colombia’s “White City”, a destination rich in history, culture, and landscapes. The conference featured a broad technical program, including tutorials and keynotes from internationally recognized speakers.
More details are available on the official website: https://2025.ieee-colcom.org/
