Digital Transformation with AI and Smart Servicing Technologies for Sustainable Rural Development

Dr Shengfeng Qin is currently a Professor in Design in Northumbria School of Design at Northumbria University, UK. Prior to Northumbria University, he was a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Product Design in the Department of Design at Brunel University, UK. He received his Ph.D. degree in design from the University of Wales, UK, in 2000. He was the 2019 Newton Prize recipient based on his collaborative research work with Professor Cuixia Ma at the Institute of Software of Chinese Academy of Sciences on Transforming Service Design and Big Data Technologies into Sustainable Urbanization. Professor Qin has established the Smart Design Lab (SDL) at Northumbria School of Design, leading design research into future smart products, services, and interconnected systems design by applying cutting‑edge smart technologies and smart multidisciplinary design research methods/tools. He is currently the Editor‑in‑Chief of the International Journal of Advanced Design Research and Editor‑in‑Chief of the International Journal of Rapid Manufacturing.

Hongan Wang is currently a Professor with the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences. He is also the Director of Beijing Key Laboratory of Human Computer Interaction. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, in 1999. He has published over 120 papers on important journals and conferences. Prof. Wang won the Second Prize of the 2018 National Science and Technology Progress Award and the First Prize of the 2015 Beijing Science and Technology Award. His research interests include human–computer interaction, real‑time intelligence, and real‑time database.

Cuixia Ma is currently a Professor with the University of Chinese Academy of Science and the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences. She received her B.S. and M.S. degrees from Shandong University, China, in 1997 and 2000, respectively, and her Ph.D. degree from the Institute of Software, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, China, in 2003. She was the 2019 Newton Prize recipient and received the First Prize of the 2015 Beijing Science and Technology Award. Her research interests include natural user interface, sketch interaction, multimodal fusion, and visual analysis.