International Conference on Digital Technologies and Applications moves to New York, a research bridge linking Arab scientific output with international labs

The scientific and technological research sector records the move of the International Conference on Digital Technologies and Applications in its sixth edition to New York, a first-of-its-kind step for the series of academic conferences founded in Morocco in 2021. The conference sessions will be held on October 9 and 10, 2026 at the Fon College of Aeronautics and Technology in the Flashing area, with technical cooperation from the International Federation for Information Processing, turning this specialized gathering from its Maghreb incubator into a direct communication platform with academic institutions and technical labs in the United States.

This milestone follows a continuous trajectory in which the city of Fez hosted the first three editions, then the city of Ibn Jarrir hosted the 2024 edition, followed by the 2025 edition at Al Akhawayn University in Ifrane. Conference documentation indicates that the global publisher Springer Nature published the full papers of the previous five editions as part of its specialized series on networks and information systems, totaling 968 peer-reviewed research papers. The New York edition aims to gather about 250 participants through a hybrid format that combines in-person attendance with digital participation, and relies on an international scientific committee composed of 145 experts from 49 countries, with vetted research contributions from authors in Morocco, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Tunisia and Qatar, as well as researchers from the United States, Canada, France, China and other nations.

The conference's scientific program treats artificial intelligence as an applied field closely linked to productive sectors, with its sessions focusing on large language models, natural language processing, computer vision, multimodal systems, predictive analytics, and responsible AI.Research on embedded systems, robotics and smart networks turns into technological solutions directly applicable to industry.The tracks cover renewable energy, smart irrigation systems, water resource management, biomedical technologies, cybersecurity, digital governance, and supply chains. Prominent researchers and technologists taking part in the sessions include Kouthar Al-Magravi from IBM Research and Columbia University, Diana Nassar from Amazon, Amir Tuliyat from New York City University, researchers from Predictcom, as well as leaders from the Fon College and conference co-founder Saad Muthar.

This geographic shift of the conference has a tangible impact for those working in academic circles and development centers in the Gulf, Egypt and the Arab region.Institutional linking between regional research publishing platforms and international accreditation centers provides development teams with a direct pathway to document their research beyond the local scope.This enables participating researchers and engineers from Riyadh, Cairo and Doha universities to build research partnerships with American labs and access international peer-review bodies that enhance the visibility of their studies. It also compels technical leaders in the region’s advanced energy and agriculture sectors to monitor the outcomes of smart-control sessions on irrigation networks and photovoltaic cell systems, in order to leverage published standards for developing embedded systems locally rather than relying solely on imported ready-made technical solutions.