Keynote Speaker

Prof. Lajos Hanzo IEEE Distinguished Lecturer of both the Communications Society and the Vehicular Society University of Southampton, UK

• Lajos Hanzo received his Masters degree in electronics in 1976 and his Doctorate in 1983 from the Technical University of Budapest. In 2010 he was awarded the university’s highest honour, namely the Honorary Doctorate "Doctor Honaris Causa". Since 1986 he has been with the University of Southampton, UK and in 2004 he was awarded the Doctor of Sciences (DSc) degree. During his 36-year career in telecommunications he has held various research and academic posts in Hungary, Germany and the UK. Since 1986 he has been a member of academic staff in the School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, UK, where he currently holds the Chair in Telecommunications and he is head of the Communications Research Area. He is also a Chaired Professor at Tsinghua University, Beijing, China.

Prof. Ozan Tonguz Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering Carnegie Mellon University

• Ozan K. Tonguz is a tenured full professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department of Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. He currently leads substantial research efforts at CMU in the broad areas of telecommunications and networking. He has published about 300 papers in IEEE journals and conference proceedings in the areas of wireless networking, optical communications, and computer networks. He is the author (with G. Ferrari) of the book Ad Hoc Wireless Networks: A Communication-Theoretic Perspective (Wiley, 2006). He is the founder, President, and CEO of Virtual Traffic Lights, LLC, a CMU spinoff that was launched in December 2010, which specializes in providing solutions to several transportation problems, such as safety and traffic information systems, using vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications paradigms. His current research interests include vehicular ad hoc networks, wireless ad hoc and sensor networks, self-organizing networks, smart grid, bioinformatics, and security. He currently serves or has served as a consultant or expert for several companies, major law firms, and government agencies in the United States, Europe, and Asia.

Prof. Tommaso Melodia Associate Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Northeastern University, USA

• Tommaso Melodia is an Associate Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University, where he directs the Wireless Networks and Embedded Systems Laboratory. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2007. He had previously received his M.S. in Telecommunications Engineering and Doctorate from the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, Rome, Italy, in 2001 and 2005. He is an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, and Computer Networks. His research is currently supported by several grants from the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Research Laboratory, the Office of Naval Research, and local and national industrial partners. He received a National Science Foundation CAREER award, and coauthored a paper that was recognized as the “Fast Breaking Paper in the field of Computer Science” by Thomson ISI Essential Science Indicators and a paper that received the “Elsevier Top Cited Paper Award”. His research interests are in modeling, optimization, and experimental evaluation of wireless networks, with applications to ultrasonic intra-body area networks, multimedia sensor networks, underwater networks, cognitive and cooperative networks.

• Giacomo Morabito received the Laurea degree in electrical engineering and the PhD degree in electrical, computer, and telecommunications engineering from the Istituto di Informatica e Telecomunicazioni, University of Catania, Catania (Italy), in 1996 and 2000, respectively. From November 1999 to April 2001, he was with the Broadband and Wireless Networking Laboratory, Georgia Institute of Technology, as a research engineer. Since April 2001, he has been with the Dipartimento di Ingegneria Elettrica Elettronica e Informatica, University of Catania, where he is currently an associate professor. His research interests focus on analysis and solutions for wireless networks. He serves on the editorial boards of the IEEE WirelessCommunication Magazine, Elsevier Computer Networks, and ACM/Baltzer Wireless Networks. Furthermore, he has been co-guest editor for the IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, Elsevier Computer Networks, and ACM/ Baltzer Mobile Networks and Applications. He is a member of the IEEE.

Dr. Raed Mesleh Vice Dean German Jordanian University

• Raed Mesleh received his Ph.D. from Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany. From February 2016, he joined the Electrical and Communications Engineering Department as an Associate Professor and from September 2016 he holds the position of vice Dean at the School of Electrical Engineering and Information Technology, German Jordanian University, Amman, Jordan. From October 2010 to January 2016, he was with University of Tabuk in Saudi Arabia as an associate professor in electrical engineering department and the Director of Research Excellence Prizing unit and Intellectual Property Unit. From 2007 to 2010 he was with the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Jacobs University, Bremen, Germany where he worked as a postdoctoral fellow. He was a visiting scholar at several substantiated organizations such as, Boston University, The University of Edinburgh and Herriot-Watt University. His main research interests are in wireless communication and optical wireless communication with particular focus on MIMO techniques, FSO, and VLC. He is an inventor of Spatial Modulation and quadrature spatial modulation techniques. He holds seven patents, three of them are already granted, and published more than 100 papers at top-tier journals and international conferences. His citations exceed 3600 with exponential growth from 2007 till this date.

Vijay Anand Director Aricent

• Vijay Anand is an Technology Director in Aricent and plays an strategic leadership role in Research & Development by building (Middleware Frameworks / Protocol Stacks / Enablers / Apps) for Hi-Tech market Segments specifically on Connected Vehicle - Connected Car & Connected MotorBike; Residential - Connected Home (M2M Gateway / Cloud Platform); Aerospace - Connected Aircraft (IFED & Avionics Communication Gateway); O&G Industry; and Connected City Offerings that masterminds technology direction and innovation for “Consumer, Automotive, Enterprise, Aerospace, O&G and M2M/IoT verticals. He does research activities that drive the state-of-art in the design of next-generation wireless technologies and along with his group, he builds Software Products, Proof-of-concepts, engage with OEM’s/ODM’s/Tier-1’s/Service Providers/Operators and publish papers in competitive conferences and journals for the research community. He has organized and chaired several technical sessions and delivered tutorials at various International Conferences and symposia - IoTA 2016, ICCVE -2015 , WiSPNET -2016, ITACT, NTMS, NCC, WPMC, CSI, IEEE Wi-MAX, ICEMC2, AICT & MAP. He is a sought after panellist, keynote speaker, architect and has been involved in several Research projects related to NG Mobile Terminals, Consumer and Connected Car technology domains.