Pr. Smail Niar, since 2021, is NCP for Horizon Europe Calls in Cluster 4-Digital at the Ministry of Higher Education and Research, France (MESR). In parallel he is professor at Université Polytechnique Hauts-de-France (UPHF) and CNRS, France. He received his PhD in computer Engineering from the University of Lille (France) in 1990. He is director of the computer science department at the “Laboratory of Automation, Mechanical and Computer Engineering” LAMIH, a joint research unit between CNRS and UPHF. He is member of the European Network of Excellence (Hipeac), EuroMicro society and IEEE senior. His research interests are AI/ML-based embedded systems, autonomous driving, HPC and edge computing.