Islamabad, April 19 /DNA/ – COMSTECH organized an online webinar on energy consumption by information and communication technologies: facts and challenges, on Tuesday. The webinar was delivered by Prof. Sami Erol Gelenbe, Turkish computer scientist, electronic engineer and applied mathematician currently serving 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 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 centers, and the millions of routers and fiber optics lines and copper connections for the digital interfaces.

Prof. Sami asked that why do we care about energy and ICT? He said that ICT has significant environmental impact both good and bad, including heat dissipation and of course energy consumption, production and transportation cost. So energy in ICT is a substantial part of the cost. He mentioned that the energy has a real impact on the profitability. And energy extraction of whatever kind we use has 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 makes them more energy consuming. He mentioned that 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 to reduce energy consumption and environmental impact of the use of information and communication technologies.

Coordinator General COMSTECH, Prof. Dr. M. Iqbal Choudhary said in his introductory remarks that today people from different continents are attending this first webinar of COMSTECH-MSTF webinar series. He said that COMSTECH is an OIC ministerial standing committee on scientific and technological cooperation which represents 57 OIC member states and Mustafa^(pbuh) Science and Technology Foundation (MSTF) is a Tehran based non-profit organization that honors scientists of the Islamic world with Mustafa Prize biennially, along with training future scientists worldwide.

Prof. Choudhary said that 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 professor at Institute of Theoretical and Applied Informatics, Polish Academy of Science, Poland.