Keynotes

bio:

Mérouane Debbah is Professor at Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, France. He was with Motorola Labs, Saclay, France, from 1999 to 2002, and then with the Vienna Research Center for Telecommunications, Vienna, Austria, until 2003. From 2003 to 2007, he was an Assistant Professor with the Mobile Communications Department, Institut Eurecom, Sophia Antipolis, France. Since 2007, he is Full Professor at CentraleSupelec, Gif-sur-Yvette, France. From 2007 to 2014, he was the Director of the Alcatel-Lucent Chair on Flexible Radio. From 2014 to 2021, he was Vice-President of the Huawei France Research Center. He was jointly the director of the Mathematical and Algorithmic Sciences Lab as well as the director of the Lagrange Mathematical and Computing Research Center. From 2021 to 2023,  he was Chief Researcher at the Technology Innovation Institute  and  leading the AI & Digital Science Research centers at the Technology Innovation Institute.  He was also Adjunct Professor with the Department of Machine Learning at the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence in Abu Dhabi.  Since 2023, he is a  Professor at  Khalifa University of Science and Technology in Abu Dhabi and founding director of the 6G center. He has managed 8 EU projects and more than 24 national and international projects. His research interests lie in fundamental mathematics, algorithms, statistics, information, and communication sciences research. He holds more than 50 patents. He is an IEEE Fellow, a WWRF Fellow, a Eurasip Fellow, an AAIA Fellow, an Institut Louis Bachelier Fellow and a Membre émérite SEE. He was a recipient of the ERC Grant MORE (Advanced Mathematical Tools for Complex Network Engineering) from 2012 to 2017. He was a recipient of the Mario Boella Award in 2005, the IEEE Glavieux Prize Award in 2011, the Qualcomm Innovation Prize Award in 2012, the 2019 IEEE Radio Communications Committee Technical Recognition Award and the 2020 SEE Blondel Medal. He received more than 30 best paper awards, among which the 2007 IEEE GLOBECOM Best Paper Award, the Wi-Opt 2009 Best Paper Award, the 2010 Newcom++ Best Paper Award, the WUN CogCom Best Paper 2012 and 2013 Award, the 2014 WCNC Best Paper Award, the 2015 ICC Best Paper Award, the 2015 IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Prize, the 2015 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize, the 2016 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award, the 2016 European Wireless Best Paper Award, the 2017 Eurasip Best Paper Award, the 2018 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award, the 2019 IEEE Communications Society Young Author Best Paper Award, the 2021 Eurasip Best Paper Award, the 2021 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award, the 2022 IEEE Communications Society Outstanding Paper Award, the 2022  ICC Best paper Award, the 2022 IEEE GLOBECOM Best Paper Award, 2022 IEEE TAOS TC Best GCSN Paper Award, the  2022 IEEE International Conference on Metaverse Best Paper Award, the 2023 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize, the 2023 ICC best paper award, the 2023 Best ICEAA-IEEE APWC Paper Award, the 2023 IEEE ICCT Best Paper Award, the 2023 IEEE Communications Society Award for Advances in Communication as well as the Valuetools 2007, Valuetools 2008, CrownCom 2009, Valuetools 2012, SAM 2014, and 2017 IEEE Sweden VT-COM-IT Joint Chapter best student paper awards. He is an Associate Editor-in-Chief of the journal Random Matrix: Theory and Applications. He was an Associate Area Editor and Senior Area Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING from 2011 to 2013 and from 2013 to 2014, respectively. From 2021 to 2022, he served as an IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Industry Speaker. He is a member of the Marconi Prize Selection Advisory Committee.

bio:

Dr Shreekant (Ticky) Thakkar is Chief Research Officer at the Secure Systems Research Centre at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a cutting-edge UAE-based scientific research Centre and Adjunct Research Professor at Khalifa University. In this role, he is responsible for carrying out advanced research that is driving end-to-end security and resilience in cyber physical and autonomous systems of systems (swarm of drones). These includes secure technologies in silicon, edge and mobile and cloud platforms working with open-source ecosystems (Dronecode, RISC-V, Linux, Apache, ROS) and research institutions across USA, Europe, and UAE.

Thakkar’s career is punctuated by industry firsts and successes that have strengthened revenue, profit, and competitive advantage for Fortune 500 firms, as well as reach labs, start-ups, and entrepreneurial divisions.

Thakkar is a hands-on leader with an invaluable blend of strategy development and tactical execution; an implementer and dedicated "doer'' who delivers corporate vision by building, leading, mentoring, and supporting highly effective, diverse, and collaborative advanced development, engineering/software engineering teams across different geographies.

Before taking on his current role, Thakkar was Chief Scientist and Executive Vice President of Engineering and Technology at the company, now Digital14, a cyber- security leader based in the UAE. In this capacity, he was instrumental in developing an engineering organization of 500 people from a start-up team in four geographical locations, delivering two generations of innovative secure smartphones and applications, and a secure VPN appliance that contributed significantly to the company's annual revenue.

In prior roles, he served as Chief Solutions Architect at Qualcomm Data Technologies, and as the Chief Technology Officer in the Personal Computing Group and as Vice President and Fellow at HP’s Emerging Computing Lab. Earlier in his career, Ticky Thakkar completed 21 years at INTEL Corporation in roles including INTEL Fellow and Chief Systems Architect - Mobile Systems Technologies.

Thakkar holds a PhD and an MSc, both in Computer Science, from the University of Manchester. He also earned a BSc in Computer Science and Statistics from University College London. He holds 87 patents and has published 33 papers and over 5000 citations in Google Scholar.

bio:

Tanzeem Choudhury is a Professor in Computing and Information Sciences at Cornell Tech, where she holds the Roger and Joelle Burnell Chair in Integrated Health and Technology. At Cornell, Tanzeem directs the People-Aware Computing group and leads the Precision Behavioral Health Initiative, focused on advancing the future of technology-assisted well-being. Tanzeem co-founded HealthRhythms Inc, a company whose mission is to add the layer of behavioral health into all of healthcare. She is also the Senior Vice President of Digital Health at Optum Labs. Prior to Cornell, Tanzeem was an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at Dartmouth College. Tanzeem received her Ph.D. from the MIT Media Laboratory.

Tanzeem has received the NSF CAREER award (2008), TR35 award (2008), TED fellowship (2009), PopTech Science fellowship (2010), Kavli fellowship (2011), Ubicomp 10yr Impact Award (2016, 2022), to be elected as an ACM Fellow (2021) and inducted into the ACM SIGCHI Academy (2022).

bio:

Simone Silvestri is currently an Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science of the University of Kentucky. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science in 2010 from the Department of Computer Science of the Sapienza University of Rome, Italy. Dr. Silvestri's research is funded by several national and international agencies such as NIFA, NATO and the NSF, and he received the NSF CAREER award in 2020. He published more than 90 papers in international journals and conferences including IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Transactions on Smart Grids, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, IEEE INFOCOM, and IEEE ICDCS. He served in the organizing committee of several international conferences including as General Co-Chair of IEEE ICNP, Technical Program Co-Chair of IEEE SECON, IEEE SmartComp, and IEEE DCOSS. He also served in the Technical Program Committee of more than 100 conferences. In 2023, Dr. Silvestri launched a YouTube channel, CSMentor, which now has over 1000 subscribers from all over the world and more than 47,000 views. On CSMentor, Dr. Silvestri provides mentoring advice to computer science and engineering students who are stepping into the world of research and education to guide them in more successfully navigating the world of academia.

bio:

Andra Lutu is a Senior Researcher at Telefónica Innovación Digital, in Madrid, Spain. Her main research interests lie in the areas of mobile network architecture design, internet measurements and (network) knowledge representation. Andra’s work translated into impactful industrial innovation projects, and was published in top venues, including ACM MobiCom, ACM SIGCOMM or IEEE INFOCOM.