Thomas Magedanz
Fraunhofer Institute FOKUS, Germany
Thomas Magedanz (PhD) has been professor at the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, leading the chair for next generation networks (www.av.tu-berlin.de) since 2004. In addition, since 2003 he has been Director of the Business Unit Software-based Networks (NGNI) at the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS (www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/go/ngni) in Berlin. For 35 years Prof. Magedanz has been a globally recognized ICT expert, working in the convergence field of telecommunications, Internet and information technologies understanding both the technology domains and the international market demands. His interest is in software-based networks for different vertical industries, with a strong focus on building public and non-public campus networks. He became famous over the last two decades for the development of open software toolkits for building vendor independent open testbeds for next generation mobile networks, such as OpenIMSCore, OpenEPC, OpenMTC, OpenBaton, Open5GCore. His current interest is in the evolution from 5G to 6G and the development of the Organic 6G Core. For more details of his current work look here: www.6G-ready.org and www.open6Gnet.org
Serge Fdida
Sorbonne University, France
Serge Fdida is a Professor with Sorbonne Université since 1995. His research interests are related to the future internet technology and architecture. He has been leading many research projects in Europe, notably pioneering the activity on federated Internet testbeds. He established PlanetLab Europe in 2007 and the OneLab and FIT facilities. He was one of the initiators of the ACM Conext conference, general chair of ACM Mobicom 2015, IEEE Infocom 2019 and in 2021 and started the NetworkingChannel online program. Serge Fdida has also developed a strong experience related to innovation and industry transfer, – he was the co-founder of the Qosmos and Hopcast companies, – one of the active contributors to the creation of the Cap Digital cluster in Paris and President of EIT Health France. He is currently coordinating SLICES, the first large-scale scientific instrument in Digital Sciences, supported by the EU ESFRI framework. Serge Fdida received his PhD from Université Pierre & Marie Curie (UPMC), Paris in 1984. He received his Habilitation in 1989. Assistant Professor UPMC (1983-1987). Associate Professor UPMC (1988-1991). Professor Université Paris Descartes (1991-1995). Sabbatical at IBM Raleigh in 1995. Professor Sorbonne Université. Adviser ITC Department CNRS (2000-2005). Vice-President European affairs of UPMC (2014-2018). VP International Development of Sorbonne Université (2018-2021).
Abhimanyu (Manu) Gossain
Northeastern University, USA
Abhimanyu (Manu) Gosain is a Senior Director for Institute of Wireless Internet of Things at Northeastern University, co-Chair for the FCC 6G Technology Advisory Council and Senior Advisor for NTIA ITS and DoD OUSD R&E FutureG. He is in charge of setting strategic goals and the research agenda for a $100M public-private partnership for the NSF Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) program and $25M DARPA Colosseum program. He serves as a Board Member for the OpenAirInterface Software Alliance, Founding member for Magma Core Foundation, Academic research council representative for O-RAN Alliance, Technology Roadmap group member for NextG Alliance and co-chair on organizing committee and program committees for 6GSymposium, EuCNC,IEEE InfoCom and ACM WinTech. His numerous professional publications and experience exemplify use-inspired basic research in the field of networking technologies such as 5G,6G, AI/ML, edge computing and Internet of Things. He is an IEEE Senior Member. He received his M.S. degree from Tufts University and M.B.A. from Boston University with High Honors.
Ivan Seskar
Rutgers University, USA
Ivan Seskar is the Chief Technologist and Director/IT at WINLAB, Rutgers University responsible for experimental systems and prototyping projects. He is currently the program director for the COSMOS project responsible for the New York City NSF PAWR deployment. He has also been the co-PI and project manager for all three phases of the NSF-supported ORBIT mid-scale testbed project at WINLAB, successfully leading technology development and operations since the testbed was released as a community resource in 2005 and for which the team received the 2008 NSF Alexander Schwarzkopf Prize for Technological Innovation. Ivan is a co-chair of the IEEE Future Networks Testbed Working Group, member of the IEEE Standardization Programs Development Board and the co-founder and CTO of Upside Wireless Inc.
Matti Hämäläinen
University of Oulu, Finland
Matti Hämäläinen (Senior Member, IEEE) received his M.Sc., Lic.Tech., and Dr.Sc. degrees from the University of Oulu, Finland, in 1994, 2002, and 2006, respectively. He has been a fix-termed Institute of Advanced Science Visiting Professor with Yokohama National University, Japan, from 2016 to 2018. He is currently an Adjunct Professor (Docent) and a University Researcher with the Centre for Wireless Communications, University of Oulu. He is a contributor to the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), especially to the Smart Body Area Network (TC SmartBAN) Group. He has been an International Advisory Board Member of Wireless Medical Research Centre at Macquarie University, Sydney, Australia. He has published more than 200 scientific publications. He is the co-editor of one book, coauthor of one book and five book chapters, and holds one patent. His research interests include ultra wideband systems, radio channel modeling, wireless body area networks, and medical ICT. He was a technical program committee member for numerous IEEE conferences. He was the General Chair of the Bodynets 2018 held in Oulu, Finland. He is also a Steering Committee Co-Chair of the ISMICT Conference Series.
Alfonso Ehijo
O’Higgins University, Chile
Alfonso Ehijo is an expert in the Chilean Telecom Industry. He is a Master Engineer and Multidisciplinary Architect with 30+ years of experience in LatAm Telecom Operators and the Academy. Alfonso is a leader of high-performance teams in international projects and has a lot of experience as an executive manager and a communicator in international companies focused on Technology and Innovation. He is an Expert Evaluator of R+D+i of technology-based projects. His main professional interest is the application of Intelligence in large-scale Telecom and Power Networks. His main academic interests are university education in Industrial, Computing and Electrical Engineering, and the update of senior industry professionals in Emerging Technologies.
Joyce Mwangama
University of Cape Town, South Africa
Joyce Mwangama holds the position of an associate professor and researcher in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Cape Town (UCT), in Cape Town, South Africa. She obtained her PhD and MSc in Electrical Engineering, along with a BSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering, all from the University of Cape Town. Her prominent research interests centre on communication networks, next-generation networks, and digital health, where she leads efforts in setting up experimental next-generation mobile testbeds. Additionally, Joyce provides her expertise and guidance to the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa 5G Forum, contributing to the research and development of 5G/6G technologies.
JongWon Kim
Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology, South Korea
Dr. JongWon Kim received Ph.D. degree in Control and Instrumentation Engineering from Seoul National University, Seoul, Korea, in 1994. In 1994-1999, he was with the Department of Electronics Engineering at the KongJu National University, KongJu, Korea, as an Assistant Professor. From 1997 to 2001, he was visiting the Signal & Image Processing Institute (SIPI) of Electrical Engineering – Systems Department at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles, USA, where he has served as a Research Assistant Professor since Dec. 1998. From Sept. 2001, he has joined Gwangju Institute of Science & Technology (GIST), Gwangju, Korea, where he is now working as the dean of GIST AI Graduate School, which was established late 2019 as one of 10 government-sponsored AI graduate schools in Korea. He has been directing GIST SCENT (Super Computing cENTer) since 2008, where Top-500-listed DREAM-AI super computer has begun its operation of open HPC-AI computing services from Apr. 2023. Also he has been directing Networked Intelligence lab. from 2001, where networked systems topics are studied under the slogan of “Dynamic composition of AI-inspired cloud-native services employing programmable and virtualized resources”. Around these topics, he has co-authored more than 500 technical publications in academic journals and conferences. Dr. Kim is the senior member of IEEE, and the members of ACM, SPIE, KICS, IEEK, KIISE, and KIPS. He has been serving and served as the editorial board member of Elsevier JVIS, Elsevier ICT Express, KIISE, KIPS, and KICS Journals. He has served as various committee members of international and domestic conferences/workshops of IEEE, ACM, SPIE, and others. Also, he has/had been involved with several domestic and international working group activities based on the global R&E networks, including Technology Area director, HDTV and Cloud WG chairs of APAN (Asia-Pacific Advance Network), Steering Group member of AsiaFI (Asia Future Internet), Forum chair and Testbed WG chair of FIF (Future Internet Forum in Korea), Forum operation chair of MEC (Multi-access Edge Computing in Korea), and Forum vice-chair of Korea Super Computing.
Charley Lewis
Independent Communications Authority of South Africa
Charley Lewis (PhD, MComm) has extensive experience across the wide field of ICT sector policy and regulation, covering broadband and telecommunications, broadcasting and the Internet. Covering a wide variety of key areas, his expertise ranges from universal access and service, through the digital divide, consumer protection, quality of service, statistics and indicators, to spectrum management and the 4th industrial revolution and 5G. Dr Lewis’ varied career includes teaching Mathematics and English at high school level; Information Systems Analyst in the banking sector; Head of IT at COSATU (Congress of SA Trade Unions); Senior Lecturer at the University of the Witwatersrand; and Independent Analyst and Researcher. He has managed and taught professional development and academic courses on ICT policy and regulation to policy-makers, regulators, and industry practitioners. Dr Lewis holds a BA Hons in English, a Higher Education Diploma, an M Comm in Management of Information Systems, and the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. He is an experienced researcher and a published author, with his book, Regulating Telecommunications in South Africa: Universal Access and Service (Palgrave Press, 2020) following on from the research for his award-winning PhD thesis. Dr Lewis was part of the Ministerial Task Team on a Post-Covid-19 Economic Response Strategy, having previously served on South Africa’s national ICT Policy Review Panel (2012-2015). He was further recently appointed as an Adjunct Professor at the University of the Western Cape. In August 2020 Dr Lewis was appointed by the Minister of Communications and Digital Technologies to serve a four-year term as Councillor at the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa, where he recently served for six months in the role of Acting Chairperson of Council.
Bessie Malila
University of Cape Town, South Africa
Bessie Malila is a Research Fellow in the Division of Biomedical Engineering at the University of Cape Town. She completed the BSc degree in electrical/electronic engineering at the University of Zimbabwe and the MSc and PhD in Telecommunications Engineering at the University of Cape Town; and held a postdoctoral research fellowship in Biomedical Engineering at the same from 2017 to 2020. She has several years’ experience in the telecommunication industry and research in Digital Health. Her research interests include leveraging mobile technologies to improve the delivery of healthcare services through 5G mobile technologies, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Augmented Reality, Telehaptics and Internet of Medical Things. She is currently developing a secure digital health testbed for evaluation and validation of existing and emerging Telemedicine and mHealth services and applications. She is also investigating the concepts of smart hospitals, and virtual clinics and how these can help improve healthcare coverage in remote and rural communities. She has recently established the Telemedicine and Connected Care research group which will focus on developing and evaluating Telemedicine, Telehealth, mHealth and other digital health applications.
Anastasius Gavras
Eurescom, Germany
Anastasius Gavras (male) has more than 30 years of professional experience in academic and industry research. He is a programme manager at Eurescom in Germany and his work focuses on next generation networks, security and research infrastructures. His current interests are large scale testbeds for experimentation with 6G and Next Generation Internet technologies and systems among others in the context of the Smart Network and Services (SNS) programme. He is interested in innovation on top of advanced infrastructures and how such infrastructures can be used to demonstrate the value of new technologies for business and society. He is vice chair of the steering board and member of the technology board of the SNS Initiative and is actively involved in several work groups (e.g., 6G Architecture, Vision, Test, Measurement and KPIs Validation). He is author or co-author of several papers and articles in the area. He is member of the editorial board of the Eurescom mess@ge magazine and has authored several articles for the magazine, typically with a techno-socio-economic dimension.
Akihiro Nakao
Tokyo University, Japan
Akihiro Nakao received B.S. (1991) in Physics, M.E. (1994) in Information Engineering from the University of Tokyo. He was at IBM Yamato Laboratory, Tokyo Research Laboratory, and IBM Texas Austin from 1994 till 2005. He received M.S. (2001) and Ph.D. (2005) in Computer Science from Princeton University. He taught as an associate professor (2005-2014) and as a professor (2014-2021) in Applied Computer Science, at Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, the University of Tokyo. He has served as Vice Dean of the University of Tokyo’s Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies (2019-2021). In April 2021, he has moved to School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo (2021-present). Since April 2023, he has been serving as Head of Department of System Innovations, School of Engineering. He was appointed as an adviser to the President of the University of Tokyo (2019-2020) and has been a special adviser to the President of the University of Tokyo (2020-present). He is serving as Director, Collaborative Research Institute for NGCI,（Next-Generation Cyber Infrastructure), the University of Tokyo (2021-present). He has been appointed as the first guest professor at the University of Oulu and its Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITEE) in September 2023. For social services, he has been playing several important roles in Japanese government and also at research societies. He has also been appointed Chairman of the 5G Mobile Network Promotion Forum (5GMF) Network Architecture Committee by Japanese government. He has been appointed as Chairman of 5G/Beyond 5G committee, Space ICT Promotion Initiative Forum, International Committee, and Beyond 5G Promotion Consortium as well (2020-present). From 2020 to present, he is a chair and advisor of IEICE technical committee on network systems (NS) as well as a chair of IEICE technical committee on cross-field research association of super-intelligent networking (RISING). He has been elected to become the president of Communication Society, IEICE, in 2024.