Director of Institute of Software Development and Engineering

Innopolis University

A Short Biography

Prof. Dr. Manuel Mazzara is a professor of Computer Science at Innopolis University (Russia) with a research background in Software Engineering, Service-Oriented Architecture, concurrency theory, formal methods, and software verification. He published many relevant and highly cited papers, in particular in the field of Service Engineering and Software Architectures. Manuel received a Ph.D. in computing science from the University of Bologna, Italy, and has collaborated with European and US industries, plus governmental and inter-governmental organizations such as the United Nations, always at the edge between science and software production. The work conducted by Dr. Mazzara and his team in recent years focuses on the development of theories, methods, tools, and programs covering the two major aspects of Software Engineering: the process side, related to how we develop software, and the product side, concerning the results of this process. Currently, Dr. Mazzara is the director of the Institute of Software Development and Engineering and the Head of the International Cooperation Office at Innopolis University.

The topic and presentation abstract

Education after COVID-19 (“Humanity and machines: the future of education”)

The year 2020 has brought life-changing events for many and affected numerous professional sectors. Education has been one of those fields heavily impacted, and institutions have almost worldwide switched to forms of online education, which has become a common practice. With a fourth industrial revolution happening in front of our eyes, some elements of the existing education system are showing themselves as out- dated. However, despite the realization that online teaching is here to stay, frontal classes are a millennia-old practice that cannot be entirely replaced without neglecting human nature. Instead, old and new can coexist, and humanity and machines can cooperate for societal development. In this talk, I present the past, present, and future of education, what we have learned by the experience of teaching online, and how we see and are getting ready for future developments in the field.