SLIIT proudly hosted the 3rd International Conference on Advancements in Computing (ICAC 2021) on 9th, 10th and 11th December 2021. ICAC Conference was initiated by the Faculty of Computing, SLIIT and the first conference was held in December 2019. It is an open forum for academics, as well as industry professionals, to present the latest issues and trends in the broader domain of computing. Due to prevailing pandemic situation of the country this year the conference will be held as a virtual conference considering the health and safety of the participants.

This year the conference received more than 270 manuscripts from both local and international authors around the world. These manuscripts were submitted under 11 tracks which capture emerging research areas in Computing, namely, Data science and dat a dr iven approaches, Human Computer Interaction, Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning, Technology enhanced learning, Distributed Systems and Applications, Computer Vision, Autonomous intelligent machines and systems, Communication, Network services and management, Information Systems, Security and technologies. All submitted papers carefully reviewed by a panel of more than 100wellexperienced reviewers from both local and international contexts.

The reviewing process was double-blind where the reviewers provided comprehensive constructive feedback to the authors to further improve their manuscripts. Following this thorough reviewing process,110 manuscripts were selected for oral presentations on the conference dates. ICAC 2021 is technically Co-Sponsored by the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and the papers presented at the conference will be published in IEEE Xplore Digital Library, which is the research database with the highest international access. SLIIT UNI is the academic sponsor and London Stock Exchange Group (LSEG) is the Gold Sponsor of the event.

This will be an excellent opportunity for Sri Lankan Authors to take their research outcomes to the international readers. By this time the conference programme is finalised and is available at the conference web site (https://icac.lk/). The main event of the conference is graced by two eminent researchers namelyProf. Elizabeth Anne Broadbent from Department of Psychological Medicine from University of Auckland and Prof. William Wong from the Middlesex University- London. who will be delivering key note speeches.In addition to the above, several other exciting sessions has been added to the conference programme this time to widen the knowledge of the participants.

One such event is the industry session which provides a platform for prominent industry personnel to discuss how the Computing industry is involved in continual research for providing competitive advantages for its client. Three renown reputed industry personn el name ly Mr. Ar j u n a Nanayakkara ( Head of shared Services Centre, LSEG Sri Lanka ), Dr. Upendra Peiris ( ORELIT pvt Ltd ), Mr. Anura De Alwis ( Chief Digital Economy Officer - ICTA ) will be sharing their knowledge in this session followed by a panel discussion moderated by Mr. Buddhinath Hangawatta. In addition to the industry session, a special session on ‘IoT and Data Communication’ is added to the conference programme for the benefits of the participants.

ICAC 2021 also umbrellasseveral important workshops conducted by the experts of Computing domain. This time, a workshop on "Artificial Intelligence research in Practice" will be conducted by Dr. Ransalu Senenayake (Stanford University, USA), Dr. Sachin Abeywardana (Canva, Australia), and Dr. Ranuk Bhattacharyya (Oxford University, UK ) whereas Mr. Lasith Hathurusinghe (Presales Consultant - SUSE Australia & New Zealand) will be conducting a session on "Cattle Vs Pets: The adoption of Kubernetes in Enterprises". A workshop on Reinforcement Learning will also be conducted by Dr. Migara Liyanage, Faculty of Engineering, SLIIT.

The organisation committee of ICAC expects a large number of participants will be enthusiasticto be registered for these workshops. At present the ICAC organisingcommittee is tirelessly working making the final arrangements for the conference.“Main objectives of ICAC are to recognise quality research of local and international researchers through knowledge dissemination and create a collaborative platform for local and international researchers”said Prof. Pradeep Abeygunawardena, the general chair of ICAC 2021. “Increasing the h-index of ICAC through quality research publication is our ambition.

Further, bridging the gap between academia who works on researches and industrial expectation is also objective of ICAC. Industry sessions and workshops will help on this. ”he further added. The organizing committee of ICAC warmly invite young researchers and academic and industry experts to use ICAC as a platform toshare their knowledge, network and gain insights. Authors and interested parties are cordially invited to visit www.icac. lk for more information and contact ICAC organising committee via [email protected] for registrations. ICAC facebook page www.facebook. com/ICAC2021 also provides latest updates on the conference.