2nd-International Scientific Conference of Engineering Sciences (ISCES 2020), University of Diyala, College of Engineering, Iraq

Ahmad S. Abdullah1,*, Ali Khudhair Al-Jiboory2, Ali Laftah Abbas3, Ahmed J. Obaid4 1Department of Communications Engineering, University of Diyala, Baqubah, Iraq. 2Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Diyala, Baqubah, Iraq. 3Department of Civil Engineering, University of Diyala, Baqubah, Iraq. 4Faculty of Computer Science and Mathematics, University of Kufa, Najaf, Iraq. Email: ahmed_alogaidi_eng@uodiyala.edu.iq Under the auspices of the President of the University of Diyala, Prof. Dr. Abdul Mun’em Abbas Karim, and under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Anees Abdullah Khadom, Dean of the college of Engineering, the ISCES had been held at university of Diyala, college of engineering, Baqubah, Iraq at 16 and 17 December 2020. The ISCES 2020 aimed to bring researchers, academicians, scientists, students, engineers and practitioners together to participate and present their latest research finding, developments and applications related to the various aspects of engineering fields. The website for the conference is http://www.isces2020.com/. The conference consists of seven major tracks: • Civil and environment engineering • Electronic and communication engineering • Architectural and urban design • Mechanical and material engineering • Electrical engineering • Chemical and petroleum engineering • Computer and information Many researchers, students, and practitioners have contributed to the conference from different countries. The conference had been held under the slogan “Advancing Technologies for Sustainable Development Goals During COVID-19 Pandemic”. In the first day of the conference, the opening celebration had been held physically with a large number of attendees at 9 AM in Baghdad time. The university chancellor and the deans of ten colleges were at the opening celebration as well as many faculty, researchers, and graduate students. The opening session included two plenary sessions with two invited speakers. All the activities of the opening celebration have been broadcasted online through Zoom application to maximize the benefit of the sessions. List of Virtual Conference Dates, Location of Organisers and Conference model, Technology that was used to deliver the conference, Conference Chairs, Editorial Committee, Organizing Committee, Scientific Committee, Invited Speakers, Organizing Institutions, Images and Logos are available in this pdf.

Under the auspices of the President of the University of Diyala, Prof. Dr. Abdul Mun'em Abbas Karim, and under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Anees Abdullah Khadom, Dean of the college of Engineering, the ISCES had been held at university of Diyala, college of engineering, Baqubah, Iraq at 16 and 17 December 2020. The ISCES 2020 aimed to bring researchers, academicians, scientists, students, engineers and practitioners together to participate and present their latest research finding, developments and applications related to the various aspects of engineering fields. The website for the conference is http://www.isces2020.com/. The conference consists of seven major tracks:  Civil and environment engineering  Electronic and communication engineering  Architectural and urban design  Mechanical and material engineering  Electrical engineering  Chemical and petroleum engineering  Computer and information Many researchers, students, and practitioners have contributed to the conference from different countries. The conference had been held under the slogan "Advancing Technologies for Sustainable Development Goals During COVID-19 Pandemic".
In the first day of the conference, the opening celebration had been held physically with a large number of attendees at 9 AM in Baghdad time. The university chancellor and the deans of ten colleges were at the opening celebration as well as many faculty, researchers, and graduate students. The opening session included two plenary sessions with two invited speakers. All the activities of the opening celebration have been broadcasted online through Zoom application to maximize the benefit of the sessions. the Zoom platform to conduct the sessions. We believe that the decision to hold the conference virtually was totally right in many aspects. For example, we noticed increased number of participants higher than expected due to the simplicity of accessing the sessions electronically regardless of the location. Since there is no one can predict when the COVID-19 pandemic spread will stop, the conference organizers move to the virtual option instead of postponing the events. We believe that we toke the right decision as it is clear that the advantages of virtually conferences are to reduce time and space and to break the limitations between peoples and authors anywhere.

Virtual Conference Dates
The ISCES 2020 have been held for two days, Wednesday and Thursday 16-17 December 2020. In the first day in addition to the plenary session two virtual sessions have been conducted. In the second day four sessions have been conducted. It is worth to mention that the sessions are held simultaneously for all tracks.

Location of Organisers and Conference model
The ISCES had been held at university of Diyala, college of engineering, Baqubah, Iraq. The location of the college of engineering is close to the Alqudis intersection in Baqubah city, Diyala province.
As have been mentioned earlier, the opening celebration have been conducted physically in the first day. The other sessions conducted virtually in the evening of the first day and all the second day through Zoom platform. The talks in the plenary session took around hours. The first talk was from professor Dr. Ahmed Al-Gabban, the president of the Technology University, Iraq. It was very interesting topic regarding sustainability development in Iraq. The second talk was from professor Dr. Adel O. Sharif, he is a professor of desalination and process innovation, and founder director of the Centre for Osmosis Research and Applications (CORA) at the University of Surrey, UK. He was talking about 1 hour about " The Role of Science and Technology in Addressing Water, Energy and Food Security". The other sessions held virtually for two hours each. The time for each presenter was 15 to 20 minutes through the Zoom software. In every session, Q&A had been conducted at the end of the presentation. Five to ten minutes are allowed for Q&A depending on the topic and number of questions. However, in the plenary session, the Q&A took about thirty minutes. A lot of interesting questions had been asked to explore further the presented topic. The number of participants and attendees in the ISCES 2020 was very high from different countries. We have received around 223 manuscripts in all of the seven tracks. Presenters and attendees were from many other countries.

Technology that was used to deliver the conference
In the first day of the conference, the opening celebration had been conducted physically at 9 AM in Baghdad time. The opening session included two plenary sessions with two invited speakers. The first talk had been presented physically while the second one conducted virtually. All the activities of the opening celebration have been broadcasted online through Zoom application to maximize the benefit of the sessions. All the other sessions have been conducted virtually with the same platform.