Committed to connecting the world

Biographies

Bernard Barani Deputy-Head, Unit in CONNECT Directorate General, European Commission After 11 years as Communication engineer in industry and with the European Space Agency, Bernard Barani joined the European Commission in 1994 as responsible for implementation of research and policy issues in wireless communication. He is currently Deputy head of unit in the CONNECT Directorate General of the European Commission where he is responsible for the definition and implementation of the 5G Public Private Partnership launched in 2013, as the flagship EC initiative to support 5G European R&D. His field of activities covers strategic R&D planning and negotiations with stakeholders, standardisation, international cooperation, demonstration and pilot programmes. He is also involved in the implementation of the 5G Action Plan adopted by the Commission in 2016 to support early 5G deployment in Europe. He is also vice chairman of the Steering committee of the EUCNC conference, the main showcasing event for telecom research sponsored by the EU programmes. In view of future R&D supported by the Commission under the next Horizon Europe programme proposed by the Commission (2021-2027), he is currently coordinating the setting up of a successor to the current 5G PPP. He has an engineering degree from the "Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne".
Sundeep Bhandari Strategy Manager (Digital), National Physical Laboratory Sundeep is Strategy Manager (Digital) for the UK’s National Physical Laboratory (NPL). NPL is owned by the UK government’s Department of Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy (BEIS) and is a world-leading National Measurement Institute, responsible for measurement strategy and delivery in the UK. Measurements and standards are key to effective digital infrastructure; Sundeep’s work focuses on shaping the evolution of physical metrology into the ‘cyber-physical’ world, embedding measurement into processes using digital and data sciences to deliver confidence in the intelligent and effective use of data. The largest component of his work relates to digital infrastructure, developing and guiding future communications initiatives at NPL. His work (alongside government, industry and academia) identifies that future networks will be key to economic productivity and realisation of the digital economy. But, developing future networks that will underpin new technologies and business models is far from straightforward. Emerging technologies such as Network Function Virtualisation (NFV), Software Defined Networks (SDN) and quantum communications, for example, will affect how networks are designed, as is an increasingly competitive industry landscape where the boundary between traditional telecoms and IT is fast disappearing. There is a growing need to ensure that the telecommunications infrastructure of the future supports the demands of services, are resilient and secure, and that the traceable measurement underpinning for future converged, interoperable and automated networks is developed and in place to realise the benefits of digital transformation across sectors and society. Sundeep is also a member of the UK5G Testbeds and Trial Working group that evaluates and supports the UK governments 5G programme.
Stuart Clayman University College London Stuart Clayman received his PhD in Computer Science from University College London in 1994. He is currently a Principle Research Fellow at UCL EEE department, and he has worked as a Research Lecturer at Kingston University and at UCL. He co-authored over 50 conference and journal papers. His research interests and expertise lie in the areas of software engineering and programming paradigms; distributed systems; virtualised compute and network systems, network and systems management; sensor systems and smart city platforms, and artificial intelligence systems. He has been involved in several European research projects since 1994. He is currently a leader in the NECOS Network Slicing project, looking at cross domain slicing and orchestration for Networks and Data Centers. He also has extensive experience in the commercial arena undertaking architecture and development for software engineering, distributed systems and networking systems. He has run his own technology start-up in the area of NoSQL databases, sensor data, and digital media.
Mostafa Essa AI and Data Analytics D.E., Digital Transformation T.D, Digital Transformation Director, Mostafa RAN AI and Data Analytics Vodafone distinguished engineer is a globally recognized authority in Digital Transformation and RAN strategy, design and optimization, applying AI/ML to new tools via using new innovative AI concept. He is also Chairman for ITU Network 2030, co-chairman in ITU FGML5G WG1, ETSI POC rapporteur chair and Board Member advisor for The AUC. Distinguished Engineers community consists of 15 world class members (Professors and Highest standard Engineering experts worldwide), shaping the future of the technology worldwide by researches and technical consultancies. Mostafa holds a BSc in Electronics & Telecommunication and is undertaking MSc in Nano-technologies & Artificial Intelligence. He holds 3 patents, the 4th in progress and has authored/contributed to numerous publications and participation regarding AI, Cognitive Networks in ITU-ETSI-GSMA.
Leo Lehmann Chairman of ITU-T Study Group 13 Since April 2015, Dr. Leo Lehmann is the elected Chairman of ITU-T Study Group 13 (Future networks including cloud computing, mobile and next-generation networks). Before his election, he already served the ITU-T as vice-chairman and working party co-chairman of Study Group 13 since October 2008. From 2012 until 2014, he also acts as Vice-chairman of the ITU-T Focus Group on Disaster Relief Systems, Network Resilience and Recovery (FG DR&NRR). Afore he was the Rapporteur on “multimedia service mobility management” in the ITU-T Study Group 16 (Multimedia Services) for many years. An internationally recognized expert, Leo has worked in telecommunications for 24 years and has experience in private industry as well as the public sector. Prior to joining OFCOM, Switzerland in 2002, Leo held senior management positions in network engineering, system design and services at major telecommunications players on both the vendor and operator side of business. As designated expert on Next Generation Networks and Future Networks including 5G and Multimedia, he has contributed many conferences and workshops. He is one of the winners of the best paper award of the ITU-T Kaleidoscope event 2011“The fully networked human? − Innovations for future networks and services”.
Alex Galis University College London, United Kingdom Alex Galis is a professor in Networked and Service Systems at University College London (UCL) - www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~agalis/. His current interests are on 5G and beyond 5G networking, software defined infrastructure and services, AI and networking, virtualization and softwarization, network and cloud programmability and management. He has co-authored more than 250 publications inclusive of 10 research books in the future Internet areas (i.e. including research book” Programmable Networks for IP Service Deployment” ISBN 1-58053-745-6, pp450). He has contributed to ITU-T, ETSI and IETF standard activities. He has been a co-principal investigator at UCL on a number of EU research projects with a total UCL budget of more than 12 M£, including overall technical leadership of the MISA - Management of IP networks, FAIN - programmable networks, CONTEXT-context aware networking, AUTONOMIC INTERNET-autonomic network and NECOS - Novel Enablers for Cloud Slicing projects. He acted as PTC/ keynotes/ panels/ workshops co-chair of 37 IEEE conferences and reviewer in more than 200 IEEE conferences and journals. He is a co-editor of IEEE Communications Magazine series on Telecom Software, Network Virtualization, and Software Defined Networks, IEEE JSAC series on Network Softwarization and Enablers, ETRI Journal published by Wiley and of the IEEE Communications Magazine feature topic on Advances in Networking Software. He was selected as a Vice Chair of the ITU-T Focus Group on Future Networking.
Liang Geng Network and IT Technology, Department of China Mobile Research Institute Liang Geng works in the Network and IT Technology Department of China Mobile Research Institute, where he lead the edge computing research group. He joined China Mobile in 2013 after receiving his PhD degree from University of Cambridge, UK. His main research interests include optical access network, edge computing, next generation internet protocols, industrial internet and OT/IT/CT convergence. Liang Geng has led many standardization and innovation projects in the field of edge computing in industrial internet. He chairs the architecture working group of Network 5.0 Alliance and Edge Computing IT Infrastructure working group in Edge Computing Consortium. He is an active contributor in IETF. He is responsible for research portfolio of data communication and leads the edge computing research on technical and strategic planning in China Mobile.
Sheng Jiang Senior Principal Engineer, Network Technology Laboratory, Huawei Dr. Sheng Jiang received his Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from University College London 2005 for his excellent work on combining Grid with IPv6 and Mobile IPv6. He started to involve Internet Protocol research and standardization since 2001. He joined Huawei Technologies 2007, is now mainly working on IP innovation research and standardization, in charge of standardization and industry promotion works as a Senior Principal Engineer in the Network Technology Laboratory. He is active in ITU-T, IRTF, IETF, and ETSI. He is currently chairing the IETF ANIMA WG and has published 27 RFCs, 3 ITU-T standard documents, 3 ETSI industry specification and 20+ papers.
Kireeti Kompella SVP and CTO, Juniper Engineering, Juniper Networks Currently SVP and CTO of Juniper Engineering at Juniper Networks, Kireeti was formerly CTO at Contrail Systems, and before that, CTO and Chief Architect of JunOS at Juniper Networks. Dr. Kompella has deep experience in Packet Transport, large-scale MPLS, VPNs, VPLS, and Layer 1 to Layer 3 networking, and has been very active in the IETF, as past chair of the CCAMP Working Group and as author of several Internet Drafts and RFCs across several WGs (including CCAMP, IS-IS, L2VPN, MPLS, NVO3, OSPF, and TE). His focus now is on Self-Driving Networks and the application of Machine Learning to networking. Prior to Juniper, Kireeti worked on file systems at NetApp, SGI, and ACSC (acquired by Veritas). Dr. Kompella received his BS EE and MS CS at IIT, Kanpur, and his PhD in Computer Science at USC, specializing in Number Theory and cryptography.
Andrey Koucheryavy SG11 Chairman, SPbSUT/NIIR After graduating from Leningrad University of Telecommunications in 1974, A. Koucheryavy joined Telecommunication Research Institute LONIIS, where he worked till October 2003 (from 1986 to 2003 as the First Deputy Director). Dr. A. Koucheryavy holds Professor position at the Bonch-Bruevich St. Petersburg State University of Telecommunications (SUT) since 1998. There, in 2011 he became a Chaired Professor in “Telecommunication Networks and data transmission” department. Dr. A.Koucheryavy was an advisor of the Central Science Research Telecommunication Institute (ZNIIS) from 2003 to 2010. Co-founder of the International Teletraffic Seminar (1993, 1995, 1998, 2002); founder of the model network for digital networks at LONIIS (1997); co-founder of the model network for packet networks at ZNIIS (2004); co-founder of the Internet of Things Laboratory (2012) and Quality of Experience and IPTV Laboratory (2014) at SUT. Chair of the Scientific school on teletraffic theory in LONIIS (1990 – 2003); Founder and scientific school chair “Internet of Things and self-organizing networks” in SUT (2010 up to now); Steering committee member of IEEE technically co-sponsored series of conferences ICACT and NEW2AN. SG11 ITU-T vice-chairman 2005 – 2008, 2009 – 2012. WP3/WP4 SG11 chairman 2006 – 2012, WP4 SG11 vice-chairman 2015-2016, Chairman of SG11 in Study period 2017-2020. Co-founder of International Testing Center for new telecommunications technologies at ZNIIS under ITU-D competence. Host and technical program committee member of the “Kaleidoscope 2014” at SUT. Honorary member of Popov’s society (2002).
Matti Latva-aho Director for 6G Flagship, University of Oulu, Finland Matti Latva-aho received the M.Sc., Lic.Tech. and Dr. Tech (Hons.) degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Oulu, Finland in 1992, 1996 and 1998, respectively. From 1992 to 1993, he was a Research Engineer at Nokia Mobile Phones, Oulu, Finland after which he joined Centre for Wireless Communications (CWC) at the University of Oulu. Prof. Latva-aho was Director of CWC during the years 1998-2006 and Head of Department for Communication Engineering until August 2014. Currently he serves as Academy of Finland Professor in 2017 – 2022 and is Director for National 6G Flagship Programme for 2018 - 2026. His research interests are related to mobile broadband communication systems and currently his group focuses on beyond 5G systems research. Prof. Latva-aho has published close to 500 conference or journal papers in the field of wireless communications. He received Nokia Foundation Award in 2015 for his achievements in mobile communications research.
Yong Liu Professor of the ECE department at the Tandon School of Engineering, New York University Yong Liu is currently a Professor of the ECE department at the Tandon School of Engineering, New York University, USA. He obtained his Ph.D degree from the ECE Dept. at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 2002. His general research interests lie in modeling, design and analysis of networked systems. His current research directions include multimedia networking, network measurement and analytics, software-defined networks, online social networks, and recommender systems. He is the winner of the Best Paper Award at ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC) 2012, the National Science Foundation Career Award in 2010, the Best Paper Award of IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM) in 2009, and the IEEE Communication Society Multimedia Communications Best Paper Award in 2008. He is a fellow of IEEE for his contribution to multimedia networking. More information about him is available at: http://eeweb.poly.edu/faculty/yongliu/
Scott Mansfield Standard Researcher, Ericsson Scott Mansfield is a Standard Researcher at Ericsson focusing on wireline network standardization. Scott is Vice-Chairman of ITU-T Study Group 13 and the Chairman of the Joint Coordination Activity on IMT-2020 (JCA-ITM2020). Also in the ITU-T, Scott is the Associate Rapporteur of Question 14 in Study Group 15 and the editor of the protocol neutral network management modeling recommendations for Ethernet, MPLS-TP, and OTN. Scott is active in IETF serving as the IETF - ITU-T liaison coordinator. Scott is the chair of the YANGsters group in the IEEE. Scott is a MEF Distinguished Fellow and serves as the Secretary of the MEF Board of the Directors.
Yutaka Miyake Senior Manager, Technology Strategy Department, KDDI Corporation Dr. Yutaka Miyake has been engaged in the research on high-speed communication protocol and secure communication system at the KDD R&D Laboratories and KDDI R&D Laboratories Inc. He is currently a senior manager of Technology Strategy Department in KDDI Corporation, and is also a senior manager of Smart Security Laboratory in KDDI Research Inc. He began participating in ITU-T SG 17 in 2005 and has been actively contributing to its activities as information security experts. He is a vice chair of ITU-T SG17, and a chair of WP1/SG17 from March 2017.
Gyu Myoung Lee LJMU, UK/KAIST, Korea (Chair, ITU-T Focus Group on Data Processing and Management for IoT and Smart Cities & Communities) Gyu Myoung Lee is with the Liverpool John Moores University (LJMU), UK, as a Reader from 2014 and with KAIST Institute for IT convergence, Korea, as an Adjunct Professor from 2012. Prior to joining the LJMU, he has worked with the Institut Mines-Telecom, Telecom SudParis, France, from 2008. Until 2012, he had been invited to work with the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI), Korea. He also worked as a research professor in KAIST, Korea and as a guest researcher in National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), USA, in 2007. His research interests include Internet of things, computational trust, knowledge centric networking and services, multimedia services, and energy saving technologies including smart grids. He has been actively working for standardization in ITU-T, IETF and oneM2M, etc., and currently serves as a WP chair in SG13, a Rapporteur of Q16/13 and Q4/20 as well as an the chair of ITU-T Focus Group on data processing and management (FG-DPM) to support IoT and smart cities & communities. He is a Senior Member of IEEE. He received his BS degree from Hong Ik University, Seoul, Korea, in 1999 and his MS and PhD degrees from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), Daejeon, Korea, in 2000 and 2007.
Kari Leppänen Professor of Practice, Autonomous Wireless Systems, University of Oulu, Finland Kari Leppänen received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, in 1992 and 1995, respectively, majoring in space technology and radio engineering. He worked in Helsinki University of Technology, Finland in 1988-1992 and 1995-1996, National Radio Astronomy Observatory, USA in 1992-1995, Joint Institute for VLBI in Europe, The Netherlands, 1996-1997, Nokia Research Center, Finland 1997-2013 and Huawei Finland 2013-2018. Currently he is Professor of Practice for Autonomous Wireless Systems in University of Oulu and is also the founder of a radio technology start-up Koherent. His research interests include wireless autonomous systems, ultra-dense wireless networks with sensing capabilities and radio positioning.
Richard Li FG NET-2030 Chairman and Chief Scientist, Huawei, United States Dr. Richard Li is Chief Scientist of Future Networks at Huawei USA, where he leads a senior research team to design and develop next-generation network architectures, technologies, protocols, and solutions. Before establishing the Future Networks Lab, Richard was Vice-President and Head of the Internet Technology Lab, Huawei USA, where he spearheaded network technology innovation and development encompassing several areas of networking such as Routing and MPLS, Cloud and Virtualization, SDN, and Orchestration. Prior to joining Huawei, he worked with Cisco and Ericsson in his various capacities, being a major contributor to their networking technologies, standards, solutions and operating systems. Richard serves as the Chairman of ITU-T FG Network 2030, the Vice Chairman of ETSI ISG Next-Generation Protocols, Co-Chairs of the Technical Program Committees for some international conferences and workshops. Richard is extremely passionate about advances in data communications, and challenges himself by solving problems in their entirety thus creating a bigger and long-term impact on future networks.
Kiran Makhijani Principal Research Scientist, Network Technologies Lab, Futurewei USA Kiran Makhijani is Principal Research Scientist at Network Technologies Lab, Futurewei USA. Her current work involves exploration of the new internet architecture, technologies and protocols. In this regard, she has contributed to standards & research activities at ETSI, ITU, IEEE, and ACM organizations. In her current role, Kiran has helped develop the vision of Network 2030, mainly on new communication services and their performance targets. Her research focus is on identifying limitations in the current network architectures and developed technology solutions such as cloud scale routing protocols, identity orientated networking, backhaul optimizations and network slicing. Prior to joining Futurewei, Ms Makhijani worked with Cisco and has led a broad array of industry projects in the forwarding and routing systems, designed scalable and reliable routing platform, policy-based routing and virtual network architectures.
Dook van Mechelen Senior Scientist & Project leader of THz Technology, ABB Corporate Research Dook van Mechelen is senior scientist and project leader of THz technology at the global engineering group ABB. Since 2011, with his research team, he initialized the industrialization of THz spectroscopy and successfully applied it to various industrial sections for process inspection. He holds 20 patents, among which several are globally used for the societal application of optically generated THz radiation. Dook holds a PhD from the University of Geneva, Switzerland (2010) in the field of condensed matter physics, is author of over 30 scientific publications, and is a frequent speaker at international conferences and seminars in the area of the industrial application of THz technology.
Luis Roberto da Silva Olumene Assistant University Professor and Researcher, Eduardo Mondlane University Luis Roberto da Silva Olumene has 2, two, Master's degrees in the research area of Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive Sciences at Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM) and also holds a degree in Electrical Engineering, by Eduardo Mondlane University. The signatory has 25 Years of Technical Experience, at Telecommunications of Mozambique (TDM), in the Mozambique National Telecommunications Network. He was a member of the steering committee at TDM's under the TMN (Telecommunication Management Network / ITU-T Standard) Project and currently holds the TMN Specialist category. He is a Pioneer, in Mozambique, of the 1st Technical Course on Internet of Things, Networks of the Future and Technological Trends, held at ISUTC (Superior Institute of Transport and Communications), advertised in Jornal Noticias of Mozambique on July 3, 2017. He is an assistant university professor and researcher at MASTERS LEVEL in computing, Eduardo Mondlane University (UEM), where he teaches the Subjects "Advanced Topics in Information and Communication Technologies and Research". At the undergraduate level, he teaches the subjects "Mobile Computing and Wireless Networks" at São Tomas University of Mozambique.
Jeff Tantsura Head of Networking Strategy, Apstra Jeff Tantsura has been in the networking space for 20+ years and has authored/contributed to many RFC's and patents, worked in both, SP and vendor environments. He is co-chair of IETF Routing Working Group, chartered to work on New Network Architectures and Technologies, including protocol independent YANG models and Next Gen Routing Protocols as well as co-chair of RIFT (Routing in Fat Trees) Working Group chartered to work on the new routing protocol that specifically addresses Fat Tree topologies typically seen in the Data Center environment. Jeff also serves the Internet Architecture Board (IAB). His focus has been 5G transport and integration with RAN, IoT, MEC, Low Latency networking and Data modeling. Jeff is Head of Networking Strategy at Apstra, company championed Intent Based Networking, defining company’s Networking strategy and technologies.
Mehmet Toy Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Verizon Communications Mehmet Toy holds Ph.D degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, NJ. He is a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff in Verizon Communications and involved in the architecture, implementation, and standards of SDN, NFV, Cloud Services, 5G, Network Slicing, Lifecycle Service Orchestration, Block Chain and Machine Learning. Prior to this position, Dr. Toy has held technical and management positions at various levels in several well-known companies and startups including Comcast, Intel Corp., Verizon Wireless, Fujitsu Network Communications, AT&T Bell Labs and Lucent Technologies. He has also been a tenure-track faculty and adjunct professor in several universities including Stevens Institute of Technology, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Worchester Polytechnic Institute, and University of North Caroline at Charlotte. Dr. Toy contributed to research, development and standardization of Cloud, Overlay, Self-Managed, SDN, Virtualization, Carrier Ethernet, IP Multimedia Systems (IMS), Optical, IP/MPLS, Wireless, ATM, and Signal Processing technologies. He holds twelve issued or pending patent applications. He has also published numerous articles, seven books and a video tutorial in these areas. Three of his books are being used as college text books. Dr. Toy has served in the Open Cloud Connect Board, the IEEE Network Magazine, the IEEE Communications Magazine, the IEE-USA and the IEEE ComSoc in various capacities. He has received various awards from Verizon, Comcast, AT&T Bell Labs and IEEE-USA for his accomplishments in these fields. He is currently a Sr. Member of IEEE, Vice-Chair of ITU-T FGNET2030 Focus Group, Co-Chair of FGNET2030 Architecture WG, and serves in MEF and ETSI NFV.
Ning Wang Professor, University of Surrey, United Kingdom Prof. Ning Wang received his PhD degree in Electronic Engineering from University of Surrey, and he is currently with the UK 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC) hosted at Surrey. He has been the principle investigator of EU and UK national research projects in the areas of future networks, 5G, content delivery, network management and smart-grid communications. Since 2013 Prof. Wang has been leading a team at 5GIC on the development of 5G network edge intelligence and core network development. Till now Prof. Wang has published over 130 research papers and his research outputs have several times featured IEEE ComSoc Technology News (https://www.comsoc.org/ctn). Prof. Wang’s research interests generally include future network design including 5G and beyond, content/information centric networking, SDN/NFV, network management and control, Quality of Services/Experiences and Internet-of-Things applications.
Xie Yunpeng IP Technical Director & Senior Engineer, IP and Future Network Research Center, Beijing Research Institute, China Telecom Co. Xie Yunpeng hods a master's degree in computer application technology from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. He is the IP Technical Director and Senior Engineer of IP and future network research center, Beijing Research Institute, China Telecom Co., Ltd¬CCSA ¡°Network 5.0 Technology Standards Promotion Committee, deputy group leader. The main research fields are future network architecture, IP metropolitan area network, data center network, etc.He already won 5 provincial and ministerial awards, more than 10 invention patents, co-authored 3 books, published more than 10 papers.
Shang Yuxiang Senior expert, of China Mobile HQ Shang Yuxiang, Senior expert of China Mobile HQ technology department, has long-term experience in core network and new services. He helped China mobile build world’s largest VoLTE commercial network , Novonet open lab and trial network，promoted China Mobile ‘s network transformation based on NFV/SDN, now he is leading 5G SA trials in China Mobile. He worked as representative of ITU-T SG2, also have a lot of experience in open source, ONAP etc.
Sophie Zhang Senior expert of China Telecom Research Institute Senior expert of China Telecom Research Institute, and long-term research experience on core network, SDN/NFV and key technologies of future network. Act as Vice-Chairman of ITU-T FG NET 2030, Rapporteur of ITU-T SG13 Q2 Network Evolution based on SDN/NFV, Group leader of CCSA TC3 WG1(Network Group), Vice-Chairman of Communication Network Professional Committee of Beijing Communication Society, and Two-term Expert Members of Core Network Group of China Telecom Science and Technology Commission. In 2014, she won the honor of "Top Ten Promoters of International Standardization" selected by China Standardization Association.