Blerim Emruli

Blerim Emruli

Senior lecturer

Personal profile

Research

My research interest lies in data-centric and data-driven approaches, with a focus on Decision Support Systems and AI. I view Information Systems from the lens of a fusion and entanglement between ICT and human/organizational activities (adopting a sociotechnical view of IS) that lead to digital transformation, automation, and business and social development. 

My research journey started in 2008 by studying a MSc with a focus in applied Artificial Intelligece (AI) at Dalarna University, continuing to Luleå University of Technology for a PhD in Technology with a focus in AI, next moving to RISE SICS in Västerås as Senior Researcher with a focus in Machine Learning and AI, and then completing a PostDoc in Computer Science at Malmö University with a focus in Machine Learning and IoT. Moreover, during my PhD studies I have been a visiting researcher at Monash University and University of California, Berkeley. Further, I have served as a reviewer, associate editor and member of organizing committee in various conferences and journals, including the International Joint Conferences on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI), European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) and the Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) conference.

Together with my PhD studies supervisors and collaborators, since 2010 I worked on AI using Hyperdimensional Computing (HD), which is an emerging computing framework that takes inspiration from attributes of neuronal circuits such as hyperdimensionality, fully distributed holographic representation, and (pseudo)randomness. My PhD thesis entitled "Ubiquitous Cognitive Computing: A Vector Symbolic Approach" led to 3 journal publicatios and one contribution to a top-tier conference proceedings such as International Joint Conference on Neural Networks (IJCNN).

Teaching

I have taught courses within Information Systems and Computer Science, with a primary focus on courses that are data-driven and data-centric. For example, database technology (SQL and NoSQL), business information systems, decision support systems, business intelligence, and AI. Moreover, I have held multiple roles, including teaching assistant, lecturer and course responsible for courses totalling from 40 to 140 students, thesis supervisor and examinator; and hold experience from course design and development from scratch both at basic and advanced levels.

Currently within the Department of Informatics at LUSEM, I'm lecturer and course responsible for the Artificial Intelligence in Business (INFA45), Decision Support Systems (INFC35), Business Intelligence (INFN45), and Business and Artificial Intelligence (INFN65) that are at BSc and MSc level, respectively. A distinctive feature of all these courses is that they help in addressing the need to educate data- and AI-literate generation (often required by the business and public sector) by being grounded in solid theoretical foundations, addressing real-world projects and using practitioner-oriented tools. Moreover, every year, I supervise and examine students for bachelor's and master's thesis in Information Systems primarly embracing a Qualitative Methods in Information Systems Research, which is an additional teaching activity that I enjoy doing.

Furthermore, I am keen on maintaining and promoting high quality in higher education and am continuously engaged in cutting-edge training and development activities that relate to pedagogy in higher education. For example, I have finished four courses in higher education teaching and learning (totalling to 22 ECTS), the latest being "Course design in higher education" 4.5 ECTS from the Division for Higher Education Development of Lund University in June 2020. Currently, I am in a process of further adapting my courses for distance education by embracing evidence-based online and blended learning models in order to create more interactive, enriched and sustainable teaching and learning; as outlined in this news piece from LUSEM. For example, I'm an advance user of Canvas (similar to Turnitin), Inspera (similar to ProctorExam), Mentimeter (similar to Slido), Micorosft Teams, and Padlet—given that Lund University provides these tools for free to staff and students. Overall, I’m keen to explore technology’s potential to enrich learning experiences for diverse students on campus and around the globe.

In particular, for the courses I'm responsible, I'm keen to design and update them from the perspective that "jobs and education go hand in hand", which has led me to boost the collaboration with local industry experts from the region of Scania, with a focus on the city of Lund and Malmö. Just to mention a few, I deepen our collaboration as a department with Qlik via their fantastic Academic Program, Orango AB, DXC Technologies, Knowit, KNIME, Kapacity, and Peltarion. For example, I invite industry experts for guest lectures, and during some of the computer labs, I invite them also to lead the labs (virtually) based on the content that we have discussed together and agreed beforehand.

In February 2021, Qlik announced that I have been selected to the Qlik's inaugural Educator Ambassador Class, and then I was reannounced again as part of 2022-2023 and 2023-2024 cohorts.

Outreach

The task as a researcher to summarize and share research outcomes in various venues, and engage in communication with the wider society in different ways via mass and social media, and giving speeches in different forums is something that also drives me. For example, the recently published news piece about myself on LUSEM news section, entitled “Data has the power to transform business and improve society” (including the Swedish version) received some publicity on social media, and was also published by Lund University Magazine (LUM) under the heading "Bred digital kompetens viktig för allt fler" ("Broad digital skills important for more and more people").

In March 2021 together with a colleague from the Department of Business Administration at LUSEM we worked together with Lund University Commissioned Education (LUCE) to produce a content for one-day course entitled “Is AI something for our company?” (in Swedish, “Är AI något för vårt företag?”). Given that our bid/application for the course was accepted, we deliver training to companies from the counties of Skåne and Blekinge (located in southern Sweden) to get an overview at a strategic level about what AI is, what it can do and be used for. The course was part of the interregional CoSkill project, which is funded by the European Social Fund, Region Skåne and Region Blekinge, and aimed to contribute to the transition of technological skills that companies and society need today. 

I'm keen to address pressing societal challenges by embracing a triple helix model of innovation and collaborate with the surrounding commercial, industrial and governmental actors (in Swedish, keywords explaining this approach are "samverkan, verksamhetsnära") in order to co-produce better outcomes and generate value. For example, watch the following video and read this press release in Swedish to get a sneak peek about a research and development work that I led as a Case Manager by working together with five divisions of Atlas Copco in order to co-produce better outcomes and generate value. Moreover, as a by-product of this collaboration the following paper entitled "pyISC: A Bayesian Anomaly Detection Framework for Python" was published in the Proceedings of the 30th International FLAIRS Conference.

Between June 2016 - August 2017, I was a Workpackage Manager and core member of the Project Executive Board (PEB) in the Horizon 2020 project FUDIPO: Future Directions of Production Planning and Optimized Energy – and Process Industries, with a budget of approximately EUR 6 million. I led and managed the largest workpackage—WP2: Tools and Requirments—with 120 man-months that united 11 partners from 6 different European countries. Moreover, I was also the internal project manager for FUDIPO within RISE SICS Västerås (now part of RISE), which held the second-largest share of the total FUDIPO budget with approximately EUR 700k.

UKÄ subject classification

  • Information Systems, Social aspects

Free keywords

  • artificial intelligence
  • decision support systems
  • business intelligence

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Collaborations the last five years

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