A Bangladeshi university chief urged researchers to build human-centred artificial intelligence and explore marine-cooled data centres in the Bay of Bengal as two international IEEE conferences closed in Cox’s Bazar.
Stamford University Bangladesh Vice-Chancellor Sharif Nafe As-Saber made the appeals at the closing of the 12th IEEE International Conference on Sustainable Technologies for Engineering and the 11th IEEE Asia-Pacific Conference on Computer Science and Data Engineering, held from Nov. 1 to 3, according to a press release.
Bangladesh University of Business and Technology hosted the hybrid event with the IEEE Bangladesh Section and NPS Australia. Hundreds of researchers, engineers and data scientists from 35 countries took part, with dozens of virtual sessions linking overseas speakers to keynote presentations on emerging research, under the theme “Sustainable Technology for Humanity and Global Impact”.
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As-Saber said AI should support human capabilities, protect dignity and prioritise wellbeing, with development guided by practical needs. He called for greater investment in Bangla-language AI, including large language models, to help narrow the digital divide, and urged Bangladesh to assess its readiness and link adoption to sustainable uses.
Turning to infrastructure, he highlighted data centres’ heavy energy consumption and the large volumes of water some cooling systems use. He proposed exploring underwater data storage and marine-cooled facilities, saying Bangladesh’s proximity to the Bay of Bengal could offer a chance to study more energy-efficient cooling methods.
He also said education and AI training should align with public policy, ethical principles, local skills and regional conditions, and asked researchers, academics and businesses to develop affordable, sustainable technologies that respond to the needs of the wider population.
BUBT Vice-Chancellor ABM Shawkat Ali chaired the opening and closing sessions, including the closing award ceremony. The three-day hybrid event was staged at the Best Western Heritage in Cox’s Bazar.