Agenda

Hadi Shahriar Shahhoseini received BSc, MSc, and PhD degrees in electrical engineering in 1990, 1994, and 1999 respectively. He is an associate professor in the School of Electrical Engineering at Iran University of Science and Technology (IUST). His areas of research include networking, supercomputing, and network management. More than 200 papers have been published from his research works in scientific journals and conference proceedings.  Dr. Shahhoseini served as IUST Vice Chancellor for International Affairs from 2016 to 2023. He was the Director of International and Scientific Cooperation for IUST from 2014 to 2016. He served as Program Chair and member of the Iran National Committee for WSIS and coordinator of the Iran delegation in WSIS Forums from 2012 to 2018. He is the founder and director of IUST Research Center for ICT Strategic and International Studies (ICT-SIS).

Dr. Shahhoseini received the IEEE Computer Society Award in 2007 for outstanding and sustained services to the IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Committee on Scalable Computing (TCSC) as the regional coordinator for the Middle-East region. He was an executive committee member of IEEE TCSC and IEEE TCSC’s regional coordinator in Middle-East Countries since 2004 to 2007. From 1999 to 2004, he was an executive committee member of IEEE TFCC and its regional coordinator in Middle-East Countries. Additionally, he received the Best Professor Award of IUST e-Learning Center in 2008. Furthermore, he is the winner of the Best Researcher Award in the 3rd National ICT Festival, ICT Ministry, 2013; and received the certificate of the Best Industrial Researcher of the Iran University of Science and Technology in 2014. Dr. Shahhoseini was the manager of two research projects carried out by IUST that succeeded in being the Winner of WSIS-Prize-2012 in action line C-11 (International and Regional Cooperation) and Winner of WSIS-Prize-2015 in action line C-7 (e-Science).

MohammadMohsen Sadr is the Deputy ICT Minister and Head of the Information Technology Organization of Iran (ITO). He received his BSc, MSc, and PhD degrees in Computer Engineering in 2004, 2010, and 2020 respectively.  He has been a faculty member at Payam Noor University since 2012, and served as a Member of the University Board of Directors from 2013 to 2018 Additionally, he contributed to the university's administrative functions such as the Director of Public Relations and Deputy Director of the Information Technology and Statistics Office. Beyond academia, Dr. Sadr has held significant roles in the private sector, serving on boards and in management positions in various financial and ICT companies. He was Vice Chairman of the Board of Directors and CEO of Rightel Informative Company from 2018 to 2021. Since 2024 Dr. Sadr has served as Deputy Minister of ICT and Head of the Information Technology Organization of Iran (ITO), the body responsible for developing information technology within the country in general and accelerating government digital ecosystem of Iran in particular.

Deniz Susar is a Governance and Public Administration Officer, Digital Government Branch, Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government is a Governance and Public Administration Officer at the Division for Public Institutions and Digital Government of UNDESA. Deniz's main work areas include digital government and preparation of the biannual UNDESA flagship publication 'United Nations E-Government Survey'. As part of his current role, he also supports the Internet Governance Forum (IGF). His main research areas include e-government, open government, citizen engagement, internet governance, artificial intelligence and other frontier technologies and open government data. Deniz holds a Master Degree on International Political Economy and Development from Fordham University, New York, United States and a Computer Engineering degree from the Bosphorus University of Istanbul, Turkiye.

Walid Mathlouthi received a PhD in Optics, Photonics and Lasers. He spent his early career at Optical Research Laboratories in France, Italy, Canada and the US with Intel Corp where he worked, among other things, on the first Raman silicon laser.

In 2010, he joined AT&T Labs in California as a Senior Member of Technical Staff. He worked mainly on data mining for complex Analysis/problem solving, Laboratory and field experimentation, 3G, 4G and LTE service quality and optimization, RF optimizations, Self-organizing Networks, Large scale UE data collection and analysis for actionable analytics and IP migrations such as VOLTE services.

In 2014, he joined Google Headquarters in Mountain View managing Global Network Architecture. He worked on building high quality networks to provide broadband connectivity in emergent markets and connect the under-connected. He also led Google Global Data Centre design to support cloud services deployments (compute, storage, ML Pods and AI infrastructure).

In 2021, Dr. Walid Mathlouthi began to work for ITU as the head the Future Networks and Spectrum Management division leading various projects to leverage technologies such as satellite and AI to support economic growth in developing countries and help bridge the digital gap.

Zahra Taghipour earned her BSc in Pure Statistics in 2002, followed by an MSc in Public Administration in 2007 and received PhD degree in Human Resources Management in 2024. Her professional experience includes supervising the Iran National Digital Transformation Document Project in 2017, serving as a member of the Economic Studies Working Group for the National Digital Economy Document in 2021, and supervising the Investment Model Project for the Digital Economy Core in the 7th Development Plan in 2023.  She currently served as Deputy Director of the Office of Resource Provision and Investment at the Ministry of ICT. She also serves as supervisor of the Iran National Digital Transformation Document Project and contributes to the Digital Economy Measurement Project.