Angeliki Alexiou is a professor of Broadband Communications Systems at the department of Digital Systems, ICT School, University of Piraeus, Greece. She received the Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens in 1994 and the PhD in Electrical Engineering from Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of London in 2000. Since May 2009 she has been a faculty member at the Department of Digital Systems, where she conducts research and teaches undergraduate and postgraduate courses in Broadband Communications and Advanced Wireless Technologies. Prior to this appointment (1999-2009), she was with Bell Laboratories, Wireless Research, Lucent Technologies, (later Alcatel-Lucent, now NOKIA), in Swindon, UK. Professor Alexiou is the Chair of the Working Group on Radio Communication Technologies and of the Working Group on High Frequencies Radio Technologies of the Wireless World Research Forum. Her current research interests include radio communication technologies for 6G systems, MIMO, THz wireless communications, Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces, Joint Communications and Sensing and Machine Learning for wireless systems.
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Ebtesam Almazrouei is the Director and Co-Founder of the Al-Cross Center Unit at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII). Focused on delivering AI and advanced tech solutions for international and national stakeholders across multiple industries from healthcare, energy, biotech, telecommunication, education, and security among others. Dr. Almazrouei’s leadership and expertise have been key in the successful development of Falcon LLM (home-built rival to ChatGPT) which significantly outperforms models like BLOOM-62 and GPT-3. Matching the performance of other high-performing LLMs from DeepMind (Chinchilla), Google (PaLM-62B), and Anthropic, making it one of the top players in the market today. Additionally, she led the development of Noor, the world’s largest Arabic large language model (LLM) model to date.
Almazrouei is recognized worldwide for her contributions to AI and was featured in Leading AI Women in the World in 2023 list, alongside other distinguished women in the field. She is also an advocate for sustainability and AI for Good initiatives, as well as the general chair of Abu Dhabi AI Connect and TPC chair of many IEEE international conferences. Her contributions extend beyond her work at TII where she leads the big data expert subcommittee of the UAE Council for AI and Blockchain and is a member of the Steering Board of the WWRF. She is a scientific author, inventor, entrepreneur, and renowned speaker. Dr. Almazrouei previously worked in the telecommunications industry, such as BT, Etisalat, and KU where she developed advanced technical solutions and products in the areas of Internet of Things (IoTs), autonomous vehicles and drones, wireless localization, intelligence network optimization, 5G and beyond.
Dr. Almazrouei is the first Emirati woman to hold a Ph.D. in Artificial Intelligence for Wireless Communication Engineering and Computer Science. She obtained her Ph.D. and MSc in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Khalifa University of Science and Technology and earned a BSc in Communication and Electrical Engineering from the United Arab Emirates University.
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Hendrik Berndt is Vice-president of the Wireless World Research Forum for Europe, Middle East and Africa. He also serves as an advisor to the Association of Radio Industries and Businesses (ARIB) Japan with focus on beyond 5G/6G. He has been continuously appointed to support the European Commission for establishing next generation mobile communication system research directions. From 2001 until 2014 Berndt held the position as Chief Technology Officer of DOCOMO’s Communications Laboratories Europe, in Munich, Germany. From 2000 to 2010 he has been teaching concurrently as Visiting Professor at the Global Information and Telecommunication Institute, Waseda University, Tokyo, Japan. Berndt was stationed from 1993 until end of 2000 in the USA, working within Bellcore, Red Bank, NJ as Executive Director of Advanced Technology for Global One in Reston, Virginia and held the position as Chief Technology Officer of the TINA-C headquarters in New Jersey.
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Bharat B. Bhatia is the Vice Chairman of WWRF for Asia Pacific & CEO and President of IAFI, the ITU-APT Foundation of India. Earlier he was also the President of TEMA – India’s Telecom Equipment Manufacturers Association and Vice President of Association of Telecom Industries of Singapore. He was a senior spectrum regulator and ICT policy specialist with the Indian Government for 22 years and was instrumental in opening of the Indian telecom sector for private participation the 90s. He was the key architect of India’s National Frequency Allocation Plans1981 and 2000. He joined Motorola Inc. USA in 96 where he was head of Motorola’s international spectrum team until recently. He has been actively participating in ITU meetings for the last 24 years and is currently the chairman of the working group on 5G for industrial applications. Mr. Bhatia holds a degree in electronics and telecommunications from Delhi university and has studied in George Washington University and National university of Singapore.
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Mérouane Debbah is a researcher, educator and technology entrepreneur. He is a full professor at Centrale Supélec and Adjunct Professor at Mohamed bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. Over his career, he has founded several public and industrial research centers, start-ups and is now Chief Researcher at the Technology Innovation Institute in Abu Dhabi. He is a frequent keynote speaker at international events in the field of telecommunication and AI. His research has been lying at the interface of fundamental mathematics, algorithms, statistics, information and communication sciences with a special focus on random matrix theory and learning algorithms. In the Communication field, he has been at the heart of the development of small cells (4G), Massive MIMO (5G) and Large Intelligent Surfaces (6G) technologies. In the AI field, he is known for his work on distributed AI systems for networks as well as large scale AI models. He received multiple distinctions for his contributions to both fields.
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Nigel Jefferies is Chairman of the Wireless World Research Forum (WWRF), a global partnership between industry and academia to develop a research agenda for mobile communications. He is Director of Montreal Consulting Ltd and a senior Wireless Standards Consultant for Huawei Technologies. He is a member of the Governing Body of Amity University in London. Previously he was Chief Engineer and Head of Academic Relationships within Vodafone Group Research & Development and a Principal Mathematician at Racal Research Ltd. In the past he led the European-funded IST project SHAMAN, which studied the security of future mobile systems, and ran the Secure Applications Steering Group for Mobile VCE. Other collaborative research projects on various aspects of security for mobile communications include 3GS3 in the UK-funded LINK programme, and ASPeCT and USECA in the European ACTS programme. His research interests include cryptography, security of systems and applications of mathematics to telecommunications. He received a PhD in functional analysis from Goldsmith's College, London, and an MA in mathematics from the Queen's College, Oxford. He is a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematics and its Applications and a Chartered Mathematician, a Senior Member of the IEEE, and a member of the EPSRC Peer Review College.
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Vinod Kumar was Director in Wireless Research at Alcatel Lucent Bell Labs, France and has held WWRF Secretary’s position (since 2001) and WWRF Treasurer position since 2013. During his 35+ year experience in mobile and wireless communication R&D he contributed to multiple research projects in PHY and MAC layer design for 2G to 5G systems. He contributed to standardisation & Patent Management activities related to the above and was Technical Auditor of CELTIC, H2020 and ANR-France projects. He holds the MS and Ph.D. degrees from ENST Paris.
Kumar has taught graduate courses in mobile communications in IMT Paris-Tech, CENTRALE-SUPELEC, ISEP and EURECOM in France; at Kingston University London; in MNIT, Jaipur, in India. He has been an invited lecturer at IEEE events (on 5G and IoT), guest editor and referee for IEEE publications; PhD guide and examiner with Centrale-Supelec and INRIA, France and in Aarhus University, Denmark. He has 80+ technical publications and 30+ patents in wireless communications and Radar signal processing.
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Seshadri Mohan is currently a professor in Systems Engineering Department at University of Arkansas at Little Rock, where, from August 2004 to June 2013, he served as the Chair of the Department of Systems Engineering. Prior to the current position, he served as the Chief Technology Officer (CTO) and Acting CEO of IP SerVoniX, where he consulted for several telecommunication firms and venture firms, and served as the CTO of Telsima (formerly known as Kinera). Besides these positions, his industry experience spans a decade at New Jersey-based Telcordia (formerly Bellcore) and Bell Laboratories. Prior to joining Telcordia, he served as an associate professor at Clarkson and Wayne State Universities. He has authored/coauthored over 150 publications in the form of books, patents, and papers in refereed journals and conference proceedings with citations to his publications in excess of 5800. He is the inventor of 15 inventions with US and international patents. He has co-authored the textbook Source and Channel Coding: An Algorithmic Approach. He has also served as a Guest Editor for several Special issues of IEEE Network, IEEE Communications Magazine, ACM MONET and Wireless Personal Communications. In April 2011, he was awarded the 2010 IEEE Region 5 Outstanding Engineering Educator Award. He received the best paper award for the paper “A Multi-Path Routing Scheme for GMPLS-Controlled WDM Networks,” presented at the 4th IEEE Advanced Networks and Telecommunications Systems conference. He is a co-founder of the startup IntelliNexus, LLC. His research interests include Wireless and Optical Networking, Source and Channel Coding, 4G LTE and LTE-A, massive MIMO, and 5G, 6G and beyond. He is a Life Senior Member of IEEE. He holds a PhD degree in electrical and computer engineering from McMaster University, Canada, a Master’s degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India, and a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunications from the University of Madras, India.
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Christos Politis is a Professor (Chair) of Digital Technologies at Kingston University London, School of Computer Science and Mathematics (CSM), where he is also currently the Director of the Digital Information Research Centre (DIRC). Prior to this role, he worked for Ofcom, the UK Regulator and Competition Authority, as an R&D Team Leader. Before that he was at the University of Surrey, UK, as a Postdoc Researcher working on virtual distributed testbeds in the Centre for Communication Systems Research (now the Institute for Communication Systems). This was preceded by engineering positions with Intracom-Telecom SA and Maroussi 2004 SA in Athens, Greece. He has successfully raised sustained funding from the EU and UK research and technology frameworks under the ICT and Security programmes. He holds two patents and has published over 200 papers in international journals and conferences and eleven book chapters. Being an avid enthusiast of the start-ups, he is the Founder and one of the Directors of Ubitech Ltd, which focuses on gaming platforms for the rehabilitation of patients with neurological disabilities. Politis also advises and consults for several governmental, Universities and commercial organisations. Politis holds a PhD and MSc from the University of Surrey, UK and a BEng from the University of Athens, Greece, all in Electrical/ Electronic Engineering. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and is a UK chartered engineer.
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Steffen Ring is specializing in the spectrum utilization of the defence industry (drone tracking and radar system) including compliance with the NATO HQ planning. He founded RING Advocacy LLC on telecommunications, standards and spectrum consulting and engineering including government affairs matters. He is Registered in the EU Transparency Register, Register of EU Experts and partner in an EU Horizon 2020 project (MONICA) on IoT wearables (www.monica-project.eu).
He is a Technical Expert in delegations of the Danish Spectrum Authority in CEPT/ECC and ITU-R (World Radio Conferences since WRC-2003) meetings, and was was Chairman of ETSI EP TETRA, WG4 for Motorola Inc., Chicago, and joined Mobile Data International (MDI) Inc, Vancouver, BC, Canada as Director of European Type Approval. He also assumed a position with Motorola Inc. Cellular Systems as Senior Director Global Government Affairs, Motorola Inc., and prior hereto worked for General Electric Inc, Lynchburg, Va. USA as Head of Special Radio Systems development, Transit, Utilities and Law Enforcement Radio communications, Europe.
Ring began his career in 1976 with Storno A/S, Copenhagen as Software Development Engineer on new advanced UIC Train Radio system for the Danish Railways (DSB), and head of the Storno A/S systems development department. He holds an MSEE degree.
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Knud Erik Skouby is professor emeritus, Aalborg University (AAU). He was a Founding director of Centre for Communication, Media and Information technologies (CMI), AAU-Copenhagen (2007-17) - a center providing a focal point for multi-disciplinary research and training in applications of CMI. He has a career as a university teacher and within consultancy since 1972. He has focused on ICT since 1987. His areas of interest are: Techno-economic Analyses; Development of mobile/wireless applications and services, including issues related to developing countries; Regulation of telecommunications. He was a project manager and partner in a number of international, European and Danish research projects. He has served on a number of public committees within telecom, IT and broadcasting, and as a member of boards of professional societies, as a member of organizing boards, evaluation committees and as invited speaker on international conferences. He has published a number of Danish and international articles, books and conference proceedings. He was a member of EU’s Economic and Social Council during the period 1994-98. He is a past department chair IEEE Denmark, editor-in-chief of Nordic and Baltic Journal of Information and Communication Technologies (NBICT), and is presently the Chair of WGA in Wireless World Research Forum.
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Vino Vinodrai is one of Canada’s leading experts in the mobile radio industry with more than 40 years of experience ranging from regulatory, spectrum engineering, standards development, new wireless services and satellite communication. After graduating in 1968, he worked for COSSOR and PYE in UK. He launched his consulting business in early 2006 following his retirement from Bell where he worked for 16 years. He was responsible for Bell University Laboratories in various Canadian universities in wireline, wireless, internet and portals across Canada. He was also responsible for advanced wireless technology research, standards work, future technologies, health-related issues, and spectrum planning. He also worked for Ontario Government for ten years in Telecommunication prior to that General Electric -Mobile Division. He is now retired but volunteers his time to WWRF.
He was Adjunct Faculty Member, Dofasco Centre for Engineering and Public Policy, McMaster University. (2006 – 2019). He is an active member of WWRF and has been involved in organizing a series of workshops across the world on “The Future of the Wireless Internet Communication in the 2020/2030s. Vinodrai represented Blackberry at ITU, TechUK and Ofcom. He has also consulted for Industry Canada on a number of projects and with IBI Group for Toronto Transit Commission on their 2020 technology outlook project. He was working with Motorola Solutions on the use of Mobile Broadband applications for Public Protection and Disaster Relief. He completed a report for the Railway Association of Canada – “Canadian Railway Communication for 2020s”. He obtained his degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of London, United Kingdom.