Plenary Speakers

Prof. Bernardo Almada-Lobo
University of Porto, Portugal

Title: Calibrating AI to Decisions Across the Industrial Value Chain
Abstract: Industrial value chains involve a continuous stream of interconnected decisions. Prescriptive AI, grounded in mathematical optimisation and operations research, provides a powerful foundation for addressing these decisions when resources are limited, alternatives are numerous and objectives compete. This talk examines the full decision pipeline, from problem framing and model formulation to implementation, monitoring and organisational adoption.
The effectiveness of prescriptive AI, however, depends not only on algorithmic sophistication, but also on how well real-world industrial decision contexts are translated into formal models. Across the value chain, objectives may be ambiguous or conflicting, constraints tacit or incomplete, data fragmented across systems, and the operational consequences of recommendations difficult to anticipate. As a result, technically sound solutions may fail to translate into operational value. Bridging the gap between optimisation theory and industrial practice therefore requires moving beyond one-off model building towards an operational lifecycle in which decision models are connected to data and workflows, stress-tested against changing conditions, monitored in use, and continuously revised as processes, priorities and environments evolve.
Generative and agentic AI create new opportunities to support this lifecycle and reshape the interface between people, models and industrial systems. Generative AI can help capture domain knowledge and decision-maker preferences, structure operational information, formulate candidate models and explain recommendations and trade-offs. Agentic AI can orchestrate more complex workflows involving model formulation, solver-code generation, execution, debugging, infeasibility diagnosis, scenario and sensitivity analysis, and human review.
Rather than replacing optimisation expertise, these technologies open a cross-fertilisation agenda between optimisation, generative AI and agentic AI. The central challenge is to calibrate the combination of technologies to the decision at hand and, ultimately, to build decision systems that create value across the industrial value chain.

Biodata: Full Professor of Industrial Engineering and Management at the Faculty of Engineering of University of Porto (FEUP). Co-founder and Partner at LTPlabs, a Business AI company. Member of the Board of Trustees of the Belmiro de Azevedo Foundation. Member of the Academy of Engineering. Former Board Member of INESC TEC and Researcher at the MIT Sloan School of Management. Holds a BEng, PhD and Habilitation in Industrial Engineering and Management from FEUP. Completed the Advanced Management Programme at INSEAD, and the Mergers and Acquisitions at London Business School. Certified Analytics Professional (CAP) by INFORMS. His area of activity is Business Analytics and Artificial Intelligence. He has coordinated and participated in more than 300 development, consultancy and research projects funded by private organisations, science agencies from several countries, the European Commission and regional bodies. He has published more than 100 scientific articles and is co-author of the book Analytics Sandwich: Bringing People and Artificial Intelligence Together to Unlock Business Value. He has supervised more than 20 doctoral theses.

Prof. Maurizio Faccio
University of Padua, Italy

Title: TBA
Abstract: TBA

Biodata: Maurizio Faccio is currently Full Professor of Industrial Systems and Logistics at the School of Engineering of the University of Padua (Italy). After graduating in Engineering Management with a score of 110/110 cum laude at the University of Padua, he got his Ph.D. in Industrial Systems from this university, discussing a thesis titled 'Assembly in the Modern Industrial Production'. He teaches and carries out research in industrial plant design and management, development of advanced manufacturing technologies, design of the assembly system, plant logistics, industrial logistics, warehouse design and management, and operations management. He has published around 180 research papers, over 150 indexed in Scopus, in international journals and conference proceedings, with a Hirsch index = 35
(https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=zCoo_HAAAAAJ&hl=it).
He is part of the World's 2% Top Scientists by Stanford University 2024
https://elsevier.digitalcommonsdata.com/datasets/btchxktzyw/7
Moreover, he serves at present as an Associate Editor in the Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, Springer, Impact Factor 8.33, ranked 15th in SJR-Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering in 2022. He has further participated as a member of different International Journal Editorial Boards, including but not limited to the following: Assembly Automation, Emerald; Applied Science, MDPI; Universal Journal of Mechanical Engineering, Horizon Research Publishing. He was awarded the Highly Commended Paper Award in 2013 by the international journal 'Assembly Automation for the paper 'Fully Flexible Assembly System (F-FAS): a New Concept in Flexible Automation.' Besides this, he also got the Best Commended Paper Award at the international conference IFAC MIMS 2022 Conference on the paper entitled, 'Influence of Task Time Variations in Adopting Walking Worker Assembly Systems: a design approach.' Top cited 2023 paper, Journal of Intelligent Manufacturing, with the paper, Human factors in cobot era: a review of modern production systems features. He was also awarded, in 2019, the Best Financed Research Project award by the Veneto Region for the project 'COLOG' - 'Methods and Tools for the Integration of Human Resources and Collaborative Robotic Systems in Manufacturing Production Management'. In 2020 he developed several parts of the project AD-HOC - Augmentation and Development of Human Operations by Cobots for improving manual work in the manufacturing companies. Member of the International Technical Committee TC 5.1. Manufacturing Plant Control (IFAC) and Scientific Vice-chair "Plant Operations Management" thematic chair. He carried out research activity in national and international research programs and participated in the European Project MAIA, under the call: H2020-MSCA-RISE, Models and Methods for an Active Ageing Workforce: an International Academy (https://maiaproject.eu/).
He leads or is part of numerous research collaborations in the research area of Industrial Systems and Logistics, with Italian and European companies. In particular, he coordinated approximately 60 research projects on innovation and technological transfer in the Industrial Systems and Logistics sector. These projects involved institutions with high economic impact - business volume - and social impact - job positions. The added value for the beneficiaries has often been high, with technology transfer and innovations affecting production, logistics, and organizational processes. This has partly enabled the development of prototypes and, on the other hand, the production of various scientific publications in international journals and conferences. For Didactics Activities look at
https://en.didattica.unipd.it/off/docente/04D34D85516C525419BAF82BD42ECA90
For Scientific Publication look at
https://scholar.google.it/citations?user=zCoo_HAAAAAJ&hl=it

Prof. Filipe Pereira
University of Porto, Portugal

Title: From Industrial AI to Industry 5.0: Human-Centric, Intelligent and Autonomous Manufacturing Systems
Abstract: The transition from Industry 4.0 to Industry 5.0 is reshaping Industrial Engineering by extending digitalisation beyond connectivity and automation towards intelligent, adaptive, human-centric and resilient manufacturing systems. Artificial Intelligence is increasingly becoming a key enabling technology in this transformation, particularly when combined with robotics, computer vision, cyber-physical systems, edge computing and digital twins.
This plenary will explore how these technologies are converging to create industrial systems capable of perceiving their environment, learning from data, supporting decision-making and adapting to changing production conditions. Applications in intelligent inspection and quality control, predictive and adaptive manufacturing, autonomous and collaborative robotics, and AI-enabled industrial automation will be discussed.
Beyond technological performance, the talk will address the evolving relationship between humans and intelligent machines in Industry 5.0, including human-machine collaboration, engineering skills and the role of education and Learning Factories in preparing future engineers for increasingly intelligent industrial ecosystems.
Finally, the plenary will discuss current challenges and future research directions towards trustworthy, interoperable, sustainable and adaptive industrial systems, bridging Artificial Intelligence, engineering practice, education and real-world industrial applications.

Biodata: Filipe Pereira holds a PhD in Electronics and Computer Engineering, specialising in Control, Automation and Robotics, and has more than 20 years of professional experience in electronics, industrial automation, robotics and industrial control. He is a Professor at the Faculty of Engineering of the University of Porto (FEUP) and an Integrated Researcher at INEGI/LAETA. His research focuses on industrial automation and control, robotics, Industrial Artificial Intelligence, computer vision, cyber-physical systems, and Industry 4.0/5.0, with particular emphasis on translating advanced research into real-world industrial applications. He serves as Associate Editor of SoftwareX (Elsevier), the International Journal of Advanced Robotic Systems (SAGE), and Applied Artificial Intelligence (Taylor & Francis). He is also involved in editorial activities for several international journals and has served as Guest Editor of Special Issues in the fields of Artificial Intelligence, robotics, engineering and Industry 4.0/5.0.