The webinar was delivered by Prof. Sami Erol Gelenbe, a Turkish computer scientist, an electronic engineer and applied mathematician currently serving at the Polish Academy of Science, Institute of Theoretical and Applied Informatics in Gliwice, Poland. Prof. Sami mentioned that information and communication technologies impact the amount of energy that we consume in the world and impact the CO2 or other emissions that are influencing global warming.
He said, “Having online meetings we save travel energy but at the same time we consume the energy of electrical power in megawatts because we could not possibly operate online conversation if we don’t have in the background, some very large data centres, and the millions of routers and fibre optics lines and copper connections for the digital interfaces.”
Responding to the question Prof. Sami said”ICT has significant environmental impact both good and bad, including heat dissipation and of course energy consumption, production and transportation cost. So the energy in ICT is a substantial part of the cost.”
He mentioned that energy has a real impact on profitability. And energy extraction of whatever kind we use has a significant environmental impact.
Prof. Sami concluded that ICT systems are complex and highly interconnected. Although individual components are more energy-efficient, however, the complexity and the interconnectivity make them more energy-consuming.
He mentioned”The presence of ICT is growing and new applications such as cryptocurrencies, blockchain and artificial intelligence are highly energy-consuming.
For instance, it is estimated that Bitcoin consumes as much electricity as a small country, the Netherlands. Prof. Sami suggested careful analysis, experimentation and active management reduce energy consumption and environmental impact of the use of information and communication technologies.”
Coordinator-General COMSTECH, Prof. Dr. M. Iqbal Choudhary in his introductory remarks said”Today people from different continents are attending this first webinar of the COMSTECH-MSTF webinar series.”
He said, “COMSTECH is an OIC ministerial standing committee on scientific and technological cooperation which represents 57 OIC member states and Mustafa (Peace Be Upon Him) Science and Technology Foundation (MSTF) is a Tehran based non-profit organization that honours scientists of the Islamic world with Mustafa Prize biennially, along with training future scientists worldwide.”Prof. Choudhary said “This is an important series of lectures which will be given by prominent scientists in the world both within the OIC system and outside.
” He said, “Today’s speaker, Prof. Dr. Sami Erol Gelenbe is a very eminent scholar and hoped that this lecture will lay the foundation of collaboration.”
Prof. Sami Erol Gelenbe is a Turkish computer scientist, electronic engineer and applied mathematician.
He is a member of the Science Academy of Turkey and holds the “Dennis Gabor” professorship in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at Imperial College, London. Prof. Gelenbe received Mustafa Prize in 2017 for his pioneering research on “Modeling and Performance Evaluation of Computer Systems”.
He is currently working as a professor at the Institute of Theoretical and Applied Informatics, Polish Academy of Science, Poland.