About the speaker
Ms. Federica Matteoli has 18 years of experience in the field of climate change, political science, and participatory approaches in international agencies such as FAO and the World Bank and government agencies. She has collaborated with the Global Alliance for Climate Smart Agriculture since 2014. She is Leader of the CSA Team in the Office of Climate Change, Biodiversity and Environment (OCB) at FAO and she is coordinator of a project that supports FAO knowledge activities on CSA and projects at the field level in Botswana and Ecuador. She coordinated a FAO project on Communication for Development on climate change in Bolivia, Democratic Republic of Congo and in the Caribbean. She worked for the World Bank on climate change matters. She has a degree in Law, a Master on International Cooperation and a PHD on Science and Management of Climate Change.

Abstract
It is widely acknowledged that climate change and weather extremes pose myriad threats to agriculture and agrifood systems globally. Projected changes in rainfall patterns, temperature, seasonal trends and more extreme weather events are key drivers of food insecurity and malnutrition globally, adversely affecting agrifood production and food availability, access, utilization and stability.
Systematizing the links between climate risks, the key stages of the agrifood value chain and the potential of climate services to boost the resilience of agrifood systems is fundamental to achieve a sustanable food systems.
A key role is played by Climate Smart Agriculture (CSA), an approach that helps guide actions to transform agrifood systems towards green and climate-resilient practices. The CSA approach can help to build resilient agrifood systems by acting on the production phase, but it can also enhance the quality and nutrient properties of agrifood products, making them better able to overcome the challenging conditions of low-tech post-harvest chains frequently found in rural areas of developing countries (FAO, 2022). Key CSA practices to achieve these objectives include enhancing the efficient use of natural resources and farm inputs (e.g. fuels, energy, pesticides, mineral fertilizers); increasing or keeping carbon stored into the soil (e.g. through conservation agriculture); introducing improved varieties and breeding; and making farming systems more diverse (European Commission, 2021). CSA practices and climate services have complementarities, ultimately accelerating the achievement of climate-resilient agrifood systems. For instance, in the production and harvest phases, early warning systems can enhance preparedness to extreme weather events, thereby optimizing the efficacy of CSA practices. On the other hand, the benefits of CSA practices can last in the post-harvest chains (e.g. by improving the shelf life of agrifood products), contributing together with climate services to reduce food losses and waste and improving food security.

Dr. Gurdip Singh is the Division Director for Computer and Network Systems in the CISE Directorate at National Science Foundation. He is currently on leave from Syracuse University where he was the Associate Dean for Research and Graduate Programs of the College of Engineering and Computer Science. He previously served as Program Director in the Division of Computer and Network Systems in the CISE Directorate at NSF from July 2014 to August 2016. From 2009 and 2014, he was the Head of Computer Science Department at Kansas State University, and Graduate Program Director from 2006 to 2009. Dr. Singh earned his MS and PhD degrees in Computer Science from SUNY, Stony Brook in 1989 and 1991 respectively, and his B. Tech degree in Computer Science and Engineering from IIT Delhi in 1986. His research and teaching interests include real-time embedded systems, sensor networks, network protocols and distributed computing.

Dr. Ness Shroff received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Columbia University in 1994. He joined Purdue University immediately thereafter as an Assistant Professor with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. At Purdue, he became a Full Professor of ECE and the director of a university-wide center on wireless systems and applications in 2004. In 2007, he joined The Ohio State University, where he holds the Ohio Eminent Scholar Endowed Chair in networking and communications, in the departments of ECE and CSE. He currently serves as the Institute Director of the NSF AI Institute for Future Edge Networks and Distributed Intelligence (AI-EDGE. He holds or has held visiting (chaired) professor positions at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Shanghai, China, and IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India. He has received numerous best paper awards for his research and is listed in Thomson Reuters’ on The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds,and has been noted as a Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters in 2014 and 2015. He currently serves as the steering committee chair for ACM Mobihoc and Editor in Chief of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking. He received the IEEE INFOCOM Achievement Award for seminal contributions to scheduling and resource allocation in wireless networks.

Dr. Yiran Chen received B.S (1998) and M.S. (2001) from Tsinghua University and Ph.D. (2005) from Purdue University. After five years in industry, he joined University of Pittsburgh in 2010 as Assistant Professor and then was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2014, holding Bicentennial Alumni Faculty Fellow. He is now the Professor of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Duke University and serving as the director of the NSF AI Institute for Edge Computing Leveraging the Next-generation Networks (Athena), the NSF Industry–University Cooperative Research Center (IUCRC) for Alternative Sustainable and Intelligent Computing (ASIC), and the co-director of Duke Center for Computational Evolutionary Intelligence (DCEI). His group focuses on the research of new memory and storage systems, machine learning and neuromorphic computing, and mobile computing systems. Dr. Chen has published 1 book and about 500 technical publications and has been granted 96 US patents. He has served as the associate editor of more than a dozen international academic periodicals and served on the technical and organization committees of more than 60 international conferences. He is now serving as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Circuits and Systems Magazine. He received eight best paper awards, one best poster award, and fourteen best paper nominations from reputable international conferences and workshops such as MICRO, KDD, DATE, SEC, etc. He received numerous awards for his technical contributions and professional services such as IEEE Computer Society Edward J. McCluskey Technical Achievement Award, ACM SIGDA Service Award, etc. He is a Fellow of the ACM and IEEE and now serves as the chair of ACM SIGDA.

Dr. Franco Zambonelli is full professor of Computer Science at the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia. He got his PhD in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Bologna in 1997. His research interests include: pervasive computing, multi-agent systems, self-adaptive and self-organizing systems, with applications to healthcare and smart cities. He has published over 130 papers in peer-review journals, and has been an invited speaker at many conferences and workshops. He is in the editorial board of the ACM Transactions on Autonomous and Adaptive Systems, Springer-Nature Computer Science Journal, IEEE Society and Technology Magazine, the BCS Computer Journal, the Journal of Pervasive Computing and Communications. He has been scientific manager of the EU FP6 Project CASCADAS and coordinator of the EU FP7 Project SAPERE and of the PRIN 2017 Project Fluidware. He is ACM Distinguished Scientist, member of the Academia Europaea, IEEE Fellow, and has been recipient of the 2018 IFAAMAS Influential Paper Award.

About the speaker
Experienced Manager of Business Development with a demonstrated history of working in the information technology and technological services industry. Strong sales professional, skilled in Product and Marketing Management, Business Planning, Innovation Management, Entrepreneurship, and Customer Relationship Management. Pioneering smart city and smart mobility themes and promoting safety and physical and cyber security in complex environment and critical infrastructures. Successfully addressed various international markets, leading multidisciplinary and multicultural teams, creating new opportunities and value. Senior Expert of public R&D funding programs with impressive results in EU programs (FP7, H2020, ECSEL, EIT Digital, ...) and an active large established network of partnerships and contacts. He works in Thales Italia since 2008 where currently he has the responsibility of Business Development in civil markets. He has various pro-bono collaborations with Academies and Universities in Italy.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberto-rossi-26923a1/

Abstract
Digitalization is the process which enable the smartening of many areas, like smart cities, smart roads, smart cars, smart societies etc. . Digitalization has been made possible thanks to technologies which have had a strong evolution during last years: ICT, Internet of Things, 4G/FTE/5G, Cloud, Blockchain, Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence, to cite the main ones. Digitalization is a transformative process and it implies also the need to change approaches, methodologies, procedures and responsibilities and sometime regulations and standards are not yet available or sufficiently adopted. Furthermore, digitalization exposes to cyber security and civil rights/privacy risks. All these aspects make the situation complex in order to accomplish the objectives of smart cities, smart roads, etc. such as environmental sustainability, new and better services, cost reduction, energy consumption optimization, mobility improvement, urban security and safety. These factors have a strong impact on the business models too and early expectations are enormous and still to be satisfied in many cases. Another key issue to be addressed is the availability and usability of data: they come (or will come) from many sources, must be properly processed to accomplish multiple tasks, distributed to all authorized users and protected in every part of its life. Summarising it is necessary to adopt multidisciplinary methods and approaches and act at many levels, not only technological ones. Good luck to all of us who are and will be dealing with these matters in the foreseeable future!