Special Sessions
Focused tracks at the frontier of IoT, Data & Cloud Computing — curated by leading researchers to spotlight the most consequential directions shaping 2027 and beyond.
Five Frontiers, One Conference
Special Sessions complement the main technical program with deep, theme-driven tracks led by domain experts. Each session welcomes original research papers, position papers, and demonstrations, and follows the same double-blind peer review process as the main track. Selected high-quality papers will be invited for extension and publication in prestigious international journals — with the first MDPI partner journals already confirmed (see below).
Generative AI and Large Language Models (LLMs) at the Edge
Generative models are moving off the cloud and onto the devices that surround us. This session explores how foundation models and LLMs can be compressed, distilled, and deployed across resource-constrained edge hardware — enabling private, low-latency intelligence without a round trip to the data center.
Selected papers from this session will be invited for extension and publication in the following MDPI journal:
Topics of Interest
Why it matters
As LLMs become infrastructure, the bottleneck shifts from model capability to deployment: latency, cost, privacy, and energy. Pushing generative intelligence to the edge unlocks real-time assistants, autonomous agents, and context-aware IoT — while keeping sensitive data on the device.
Edge AI Hardware & Embedded Intelligence for IoT
Intelligence at the edge is ultimately a silicon problem. As models shrink to run on microcontrollers and battery-powered sensors, the decisive gains come from the hardware — accelerators, low-power circuits, and tight hardware–software co-design. This session focuses on the chips, architectures, and embedded systems that make real-time, energy-efficient AI possible on constrained IoT devices.
Selected papers from this session will be invited for extension and publication in the following MDPI journal:
Topics of Interest
Why it matters
Every milliwatt and square millimeter of silicon decides what AI can run untethered from the cloud. Advances in TinyML, edge accelerators, and energy harvesting move inference onto devices that were once too small or too power-starved to be "smart" — turning billions of passive sensors into intelligent endpoints.
Cybersecurity & Zero-Trust Architecture in 6G-Enabled IoT
The perimeter is dead. As 6G promises massive connectivity, ultra-low latency, and AI-native networks, billions of IoT endpoints become both the surface and the target. This session examines how Zero-Trust principles — never trust, always verify — can be engineered into next-generation IoT at scale.
Topics of Interest
Why it matters
6G will connect orders of magnitude more devices than 5G — and traditional castle-and-moat defenses cannot scale to that surface. Zero-Trust reframes security around identity, context, and continuous verification, making it the foundational model for trustworthy hyper-connected IoT.
Digital Twins for Smart Healthcare & Wearable IoT
A digital twin is a living, data-driven replica — and in healthcare it can mean a virtual model of a patient, an organ, or an entire hospital workflow. Fed by continuous streams from wearable and implantable IoT, twins enable prediction, personalization, and prevention in ways static records never could.
Topics of Interest
Why it matters
Wearables already generate continuous, high-resolution health data. Digital twins turn that stream into foresight — simulating interventions before they reach the patient, personalizing treatment, and shifting medicine from reactive to predictive and preventive care.
Sustainable IoT: Green Computing and Energy Harvesting
Trillions of connected devices carry a hidden cost — energy, e-waste, and carbon. This session gathers research on making IoT genuinely sustainable: from battery-free sensors powered by ambient energy to carbon-aware computing and circular hardware design.
Topics of Interest
Why it matters
The environmental footprint of computing is on track to rival entire industries. Energy harvesting and green computing make it possible to deploy IoT at planetary scale without a proportional rise in carbon and waste — turning sustainability from a constraint into a design principle.
Submitting to a Special Session
Same Review, Same Quality
Special Session papers undergo the identical double-blind peer review as the main track, with 3+ independent expert reviewers.
Journal Publication Track
Outstanding papers will be selected and their authors invited to extend their work for publication in prestigious international journals — with confirmed MDPI partners (Electronics, Computers) for selected sessions.
How to Submit
Select the relevant Special Session on the submission page and follow the standard conference template. Full papers: 6–8 pages.