By Our Reporter
SHILLONG, Dec 14: The Indian Institute of Management (IIM) Shillong hosted the first edition of the international conference on ‘Leveraging Emerging Technologies and Analytics for Development (LEAD-2024), with the theme ‘Empowering Humanity. The event brought together distinguished academics, policymakers, and industry leaders to explore innovative solutions for global challenges through the intersection of technology, analytics, and development.
With leading sponsors such as AMTRON (Platinum Sponsor), ICSSR (Silver Sponsor), Numaligarh Refinery Ltd., Globus Infocom Limited, IEIC, and Omnicode Systems Pvt. Ltd, the conference underscored the importance of partnerships in advancing global goals.
The LEAD-2024 logo, which was unveiled during the event, symbolises the conference’s vision and commitment to integrating artificial intelligence, analytics, and sustainability principles. It reflects the alignment of LEAD-2024 with several key United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), including No Poverty (SDG 1), Quality Education (SDG 4), Industry, Innovation, and Infrastructure (SDG 9), Peace, Justice, and Strong Institutions (SDG 16), and Partnerships for the Goals (SDG 17).
The pre-conference began with a Round Table Discussion featuring Jeewitesh Prabhakar, Partner at EY specialising in business transformation; Mathangi Sandilya, Accenture’s Global Technology Lead for Comms, Media and Technology; Manjit Nath, Head of the State e-Mission Team, Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY); Jagjit Singh, Chief Logistics Officer, Tata Steel; and Biswajit Hazarika, General Manager (Information Systems), Indian Oil Corporation Ltd. Their discussions set the stage for insightful dialogues on leveraging technology for transformative impact, moderated by Prof Basav Roychoudhury, Professor and Dean (Research), IIM Shillong. The pre-conference concluded with a session by Anand, Technology Advisor at Amtron, who highlighted the role of emerging technologies in regional development. The discussions were enriched by contributions from industry leaders, ensuring a practical perspective alongside academic insights.
The 1st prize for the Best Paper Awards was awarded to the paper on “Constructing a Multi-Item Scale for Measuring Citizens’ Perception Towards Success of e-Gov Services in a Smart City in India: Exploring Age and Gender Dynamics”, which explored the critical role of e-Governance in shaping citizen experiences in smart cities.
The 2nd prize went to “Rhombus Context-Based Gradient Estimation for Information Retrieval Using Digital Media”, a pioneering work that advanced information retrieval techniques in the digital media landscape.
The 3rd prize was awarded to “Industry 4.0 Technologies Adoption and Organizational Performance”, offering valuable insights into the transformative power of Industry 4.0 on business performance.
The conference spanned critical themes such as artificial intelligence, sustainable development, and management practices, fostering interdisciplinary dialogue to address challenges such as climate change, economic inequality, and digital transformation. The unveiling of the Book of Abstracts and the official release of the LEAD-2024 Conference Proceedings highlighted cutting-edge research contributions from global scholars and also featured contributions from Dr John Hadjimarcou, a distinguished academic in international marketing and sustainability, who, though unable to join in person, addressed the gathering virtually, offering inspiring perspectives on sustainability in marketing strategies.
