Delegates from around the world will gather in Bathurst next week for a major international conference hosted by Charles Sturt University.
 
The brainchild of CSU information technology lecturer Dr David Tien, the first International Conference on Information Technology and Applications (ICITA) 2002 has attracted over 160 delegates of which some 80 per cent come from more than 20 different countries. 

According to Dr Tien the conference has received many high quality academic papers and several professors from top international universities who are coming to present their research results.

“Some are bringing their entire research teams to the conference to meet their peers, exchange ideas, and establish professional networks.  It is a very pleasing outcome for an event that is the first of its kind,” he said.

“ICITA 2002 represents a continuing effort to attract international academic events to regional Australia, to promote Bathurst as an international event hub, and judging by the overwhelming response, the uniqueness of attending a conference in regional NSW obviously has great appeal to overseas delegates. 

There are many international academic conferences hosted in major Australian cities and Dr Tien maintains that, despite indications that there is growing interest among international delegates in rural and regional Australia, few full scale international academic events have been hosted outside metropolitan cities.

He believes there are many benefits to local communities in having a university with the standing of CSU able to attract international academic events to regional areas.

The conference has drawn over 200 academic submissions across a total of 19 topic areas ranging from telecommunication, engineering, healthcare, multimedia, e-commerce, computer security, biomedical and education to humanities and natural language processing. 

“After reviewing by subject experts from 12 countries, 153 papers have been selected to be presented by delegates from over 90 universities and IT organisations all over the world,” Dr Tien said.

Among those represented are NTT Service Integration Laboratories, University of Tokyo and Hitachi Ltd, all from Japan, Hong Kong University and the Institute of Robotics Research, Germany.

“ICITA 2002 will provide a platform for academics to exchange their experiences in using and developing IT. It is an important opportunity for the cross-fertilisation of ideas across a range of disciplines,” he added.

The conference will run from November 25 to 29 and details can be found online here.