SCOPE
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The 2nd International Congress on Blockchain and Applications 2020 will be held in L'Aquila from 17th to 19th of June, 2020. This annual congress will reunite blockchain and artificial intelligence (AI) researchers, who will share ideas, projects, lectures, and advances associated with those technologies and their application domains. This meeting will be co-located with that of PAAMS’20.

Among the scientific community, blockchain and AI are seen as a promising combination that will transform the production and manufacturing industry, media, finance, insurance, e-government, etc. Nevertheless, there is no consensus with schemes or best practices that would specify how blockchain and AI should be used together. Combining blockchain mechanisms and artificial intelligence is still a particularly challenging task.

The BLOCKCHAIN’20 congress is devoted to promoting the investigation of cutting-edge blockchain technology, to exploring the latest ideas, innovations, guidelines, theories, models, technologies, applications and tools of blockchain and AI for the industry, and to identifying critical issues and challenges that researchers and practitioners must deal with in future research. We want to offer researchers and practitioners the opportunity to work on promising lines of research and to publish their developments in this area.



info@blockchain-congress.net






TOPICS
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Technologies and techniques

-Key and innovative theories, methodologies, schemes and technologies of blockchain and AI
-Architectures and platforms for blockchain and AI
-Blockchain and AI for Big Data
-Blockchain and AI for Multi-Agent systems
-Blockchain and AI for the Internet of Things
-Blockchain and AI in 5G
-Sensors and devices for blockchain
-Distributed consensus mechanisms (PoW, PoS, PoE…)
-Encryption algorithms
-Fault tolerance mechanisms
-Other distributed ledger technologies
-Cloud, fog, and edge computing approaches for blockchain
-Blockchain standardization issues
-Platforms for smart contracts
-Side-chain and cross-chain systems
-Anonymity and privacy in blockchain
-Malicious transactions detection


Applications

-Blockchain and AI enabled new business models and applications
-Blockchain and AI for e-commerce
-Blockchain and AI for logistics and transportation
-Blockchain and AI for supply chain management
-Blockchain and AI for product life cycle
-Blockchain and AI for knowledge and innovation management
-Blockchain and AI for agriculture
-Blockchain and AI in eHealth
-Applications of cryptocurrencies
-Blockchain as a Tamper-Proof Technology
-Application of smart contracts
-Blockchain Governance and Human Rights
-Applications of blockchain and AI in other domains.
-Use-cases of blockchain and AI in Industry 4.0, banking, etc.






COMMITTEE
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Advisory Board


António Pinto
Instituto Politécnico do Porto
Portugal


General Chair


Javier Prieto
University of Salamanca
Spain



Technical Program Committee Chairs


Ashok Kumar Das
IIIT Hyderabad
India

Abdelhakim Hafid
Université de Montréal
Canada



Local Chair


Stefano Ferretti
University of Bologna
Italy






INVITED SPEAKERS
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Virginia Dignum

"Developing and using AI responsibly"
Umeå University
(Sweden)
Supported by: EurAI (European Association for Artifical Intelligence)



Alessio Lomuscio

"Towards formally verifying forthcoming multi-agent systems"
Imperial College London
(UK)
Supported by: EurAI (European Association for Artifical Intelligence)



Sascha Ossowski

"Building multiagent applications with agreement technologies"
University Rey Juan Carlos
(Spain)
Supported by: EurAI (European Association for Artifical Intelligence)






DOCTORAL CONSORTIUM
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The aim of the Doctoral Consortium is to provide a frame where students can present their on going research work and meet other students and researchers, and obtain feedback on future research directions.

The Doctoral Consortium is intended for students who have a specific research proposal and some preliminary results, but who are still far from completing their dissertation.

All proposals submitted to the Doctoral Consortium will undergo a thorough reviewing process with the aim to provide detailed and constructive feedback. The accepted submissions will be presented at the Doctoral Consortium and published in the conference proceedings.






SPECIAL ISSUES
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Authors of selected papers from Blockchain Congress 2020 will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to special issue in different journals.

-The research that receives an award for best paper on the topic of Data Fusion, will be sent to Information Fusion (ISSN: 1566-2535, JCR 2018: 10.716) and submitted for a quick review.

-Authors of selected papers from PAAMS 2020 and Co-located Events will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Section published in Neurocomputing (JCR 2018 Neurocomputing: 4.072).

-Authors of selected papers from PAAMS 2020 and Co-located Events will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Section published in Electronics (JCR 2018 Electronics: 1.764 (Q3)).

-Authors of selected papers from PAAMS 2020 and Co-located Events will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Section published in IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society.

-Authors of selected papers from PAAMS 2020 and Co-located Events will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Section published in Smart Cities.

-Authors of selected papers from PAAMS 2020 and Co-located Events will be invited to submit an extended and improved version to a Special Issue published in ADCAIJ (ISSN: 2255-2863, indexed in DOAJ, ProQuest, Scholar, WorldCat, Dialnet, Sherpa ROMEO, Dulcinea, UlrichWeb, Emerging Sources Citation Index of Thomson Reuters, BASE y Academic Journals Database)





AWARDS
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Electronics MDPI will award the best paper with 300 CHF

More information: www.mdpi.com/journal/electronics





PUBLICATION
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All accepted papers will be published by Springer Verlag, AISC series: https://www.springer.com/series/11156



** Indexing: The books of this series are submitted to ISI Proceedings, EI-Compendex, DBLP, SCOPUS, Google Scholar and Springerlink **






IMPORTANT DATES
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Submission deadline: --31st January, 2020-- --7th February, 2020-- 17th February, 2020 (EXTENDED)
Doctoral Consortium deadline: 29th February, 2020
Notification date: 12th March, 2020
Camera-ready deadline: 30th March, 2020
Conference dates: 17th-19th June, 2020






FORMAT
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All papers must be formatted according to the AISC template, with a maximum length of 8 pages (4 pages en Doctoral Consortium), including figures and references:

-Microsoft word format.
-Latex Format.






SUBMISSION
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All proposed papers must be submitted in electronic form (PDF format) using the BLOCKCHAIN 2020 conference management system.






ORGANIZERS
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Instituto Politécnico do Porto (Portugal)
University of Salamanca (Spain)
IIIT Hyderabad (India)
Université de Montréal (Canada)
University of Bologna (Italy)





SPONSORS
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IBM
INDRA





SUPPORT FROM NATIONAL ASSOCIATIONS
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AFIA
AEPIA
APPIA
Artificial Intelligence and Intelligent Systems
EurAi