Speakers 2023

We are honored to have guest speakers that represent top authorities in their fields for the 2023 themes. The workshop will be carried out in two days with a series of exciting topics focusing on Technologies and Solutions Relevant for the First Generation of 6G.

Professor Andrea Neto

TU Delft

Wide Band Communication Architectures: Ultra Wide Band Phased Arrays vs. Fixed Beams- high frequency Lenses

Andrea Neto (Fellow, IEEE) received the Laurea degree (summa cum laude) in electronic engineering from the University of Florence, Florence, Italy, in 1994, and the Ph.D. degree in electromagnetics from the University of Siena, Siena, Italy, in 2000. He then worked for over two years at the European Space Agency Research and Technology Center, Noordwijk, The Netherlands. From 2000 to 2001, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher with the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA, where he worked with the Submillimeter Wave Advanced Technology Group. From 2002 to January 2010, he was a Senior Antenna Scientist with TNO Defence, Security, and Safety, The Hague, The Netherlands. In February 2010, he became a Full Professor of Applied Electromagnetism with the EEMCS Department, Technical University of Delft, Delft, The Netherlands, where he formed and now leads the THz Sensing Group. His group now hosts roughly 35 researchers and PhD students. His research interests include the analysis and design of wide band antennas with an emphasis on phased arrays and dielectric lens antennas. Dr. Neto was an Associate Editor for the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON ANTENNAS AND PROPAGATION (2008–2013), IEEE ANTENNAS AND WIRELESS PROPAGATION LETTERS (2005–2013), and IEEE TRANSACTION ON THZ SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (2014–2016). Since 2010, he is a member of the Technical Board of the European School of Antennas and organizer of the course on antenna imaging techniques. In 2011, he was the recipient of the European Research Council Consolidator Grant to perform research on Advanced Antenna Architectures for THz Sensing Systems.

Professor Luca Sanguinetti

University of Pisa

On the effects of mutual coupling in holographic MIMO

Prof. Luca Sanguinetti is currently an Associate Professor with the Dipartimento di Ingegneria dell’Informazione, University of Pisa. From June 2007 to June 2008, he was a Postdoctoral Associate with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Princeton. From July 2013 to October 2017, he was with the Large Systems and Networks Group (LANEAS), CentraleSupélec, France. He has coauthored two textbooks: ``Massive MIMO Networks: Spectral, Energy, and Hardware Efficiency’’ (2017) and ``Foundations of User-centric Cell-free Massive MIMO’’ (2020). His expertise and general interests span the areas of communications and signal processing. Dr. Sanguinetti received the Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications in 2018 and 2022, the IEEE Communications Society Outstanding Paper Award in 2023 and coauthored a paper that received the Young Best Paper Award from the ComSoc/VTS Italy Section. He served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless communications, IEEE Signal Processing Letters, and IEEE Journal on Selected Areas of Communications. He is currently serving as an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Communications and is a member of the Executive Editorial Committee of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. He is an IEEE Senior Member.

Professor François Rottenberg

KU Leuven

How to reduce energy consumption in wireless networks? Towards an information theory of energy-saving techniques in radio access networks

François Rottenberg received the M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Université catholique de Louvain (UCLouvain), Louvain-la-Neuve, in 2014, and the Ph.D. degree jointly from UCLouvain and Université libre de Bruxelles (ULB), Brussels, in 2018. From 2018 to 2019, he was a postdoctoral researcher with the University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles. From 2019 to 2021, he was a postdoctoral researcher with UCLouvain and ULB, funded by the Belgian National Science Foundation (FRS-FNRS). He is now an assistant professor of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven (KU Leuven). He has been a regular visitor and collaborator of the Centre Tecnològic Telecomunicacions Catalunya (CTTC), Spain and the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology (NICT), Japan. Since 2021, he has been the secretary of the IEEE Benelux Section. His main research interests are in signal processing for sustainable next generations of communication systems, including novel modulation formats, multi-antenna systems and physical-layer security.

Dr. Jordi Serra

CTTC

Sustainable AI in 6G Networks

Dr. Jordi Serra received the Telecommunications Engineering degree in 2006 and the Ph.D. in signal theory and communications in 2016, all from the Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC), Barcelona, Spain.

He joined the Telecommunications Technological Center of Catalonia (CTTC) in 2007, where he currently holds a position as a senior researcher in the Sustainable Artificial Intelligence (SAI) research unit. He has participated in research projects funded within the framework of H2020 EC programs and funded by private entities. In those projects he dealt with several topics such as resource management, signal processing and machine learning applied to 5G networks and Internet of Things domains. He has been principal investigator in the DARLENE H2020 project and in the PANDORA EDIDP project. Jordi Serra is a senior member of the IEEE. He has been session chair at the IEEE CAMAD 2018 conference. He was invited to give a scientific presentation at the Visions for Future Communications Summit, organized by NetworldEurope, 6G-IA, the European Commission and IEEE in 2021. He has been co-recipient of the prize for the best demonstration of the IEEE CAMAD 2018 conference, the ENIAC JU 2015 innovation prize for the E2SG project and the second prize in the ENF'15 exhibition prize. His current research interests include AI sustainability, high-dimensional probability and statistics, large-scale optimization, and its applications to B5G networks and the Internet of Things.

Professor Jeronimo Castrillon

TU Dresden

Programming models and abstractions for computational efficiency

Jeronimo Castrillon is a professor in the Department of Computer Science at the TU Dresden, where he is also affiliated with the Center for Advancing Electronics Dresden (CfAED). He is the head of the Chair for Compiler Construction, with research focus on methodologies, languages, tools and algorithms for programming complex computing systems. He received the Electronics Engineering degree from the Pontificia Bolivariana University in Colombia in 2004, his masters degree from the ALaRI Institute in Switzerland in 2006 and his Ph.D. degree (Dr.-Ing.) with honors from the RWTH Aachen University in Germany in 2013. In 2014, Prof. Castrillon co-founded Silexica GmbH/Inc, a company that provides programming tools for heterogenous architectures, now with Xilinx/AMD.

Dr Konstantinos Nikitopoulos

University of Surrey

Re-thinking Physical Layer Processing. Time for a Change?

Dr Konstantinos Nikitopoulos is currently a Reader with the Institute for Communication Systems, University of Surrey, UK, and the Director of its “Wireless Systems Lab”. He is an active academic member of the 5G/6G Innovation Centre (5G/6GIC) where he leads the “Theory and Practice of Advanced Concepts in Wireless Communications” research area. His research focuses on the physical layer (PHY) aspects of pragmatic, energy and latency efficient wireless communication systems that “work in practice” and, in particular, on the intersection of (i) advanced, highly efficient, physical layer (PHY) processing design, (ii) advanced computing architectures and (iii) system level design and demonstration. As an academic, he has led a plethora of research projects, with a big part of those being market-driven and industry supported. Dr Nikitopoulos is an IEEE Senior Member and a recipient of the prestigious First Grant of the UK's Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council.

Professor Gonzalo Seco-Granados

Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona

Unleashing the Power of 5G and 6G Technologies for Localization and Sensing

Gonzalo Seco-Granados received the PhD degree in electrical engineering from the Universitat Politecnica de Catalunya, Spain, in 2000, and the MBA degree from the IESE Business School, Spain, in 2002. From 2002 to 2005, he was technical staff of the European Space Agency, The Netherlands, where he was involved in the design of the Galileo system and receivers. In 2015, 2019 and 2022, he was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at the University of California, Irvine, CA, USA. He is currently a Professor with the Department of Telecommunication Engineering, Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, where he was Vice Dean of the Engineering School, from 2011 to 2019. His research interests include localization based on GNSS and cellular systems. In the case of cellular systems, he contributed to the seminal works on “5G positioning”. In the area of GNSS, he has developed techniques to increase the robustness against of interference, multipath and spooﬁng attacks, and to improve energy efficiency of GNSS receivers. He is co-founder of Loctio, a start-up providing low-energy positioning solutions for IoT. He is an IEEE Fellow. He serves as a member of the IEEE Signal Processing Society Sensor Array and Multichannel Technical Committee (SAM TC), and of the EURASIP Signal Processing for Multisensor Systems Technical Committee, since 2018 and 2022, respectively. Since 2019, he is the President of the Spanish Chapter of the IEEE Aerospace and Electronic Systems Society.

Professor Sofie Pollin

KU Leuven

Below 6 GHz integrated communication and sensing

Sofie Pollin is professor at KU Leuven focusing on wireless communication systems. Before that, she worked at imec and UC Berkeley, and she is currently still a principal member of technical staff at imec. Her research centers around wireless networks that require networks that are ever more dense, heterogeneous, battery powered, and spectrum constrained. Her research interests are cell-free networks, integrated communication and sensing, and non-terrestrial networks.

Prof. Dr.-Ing. habil. Slawomir Stanczak

TU Berlin

Dense user-centric RAN: Enhancing the capacity-energy efficiency trade-off in 6G

Slawomir Stanczak is Professor of Network Information Theory at the Technical University of Berlin and Head of the Wireless Communications and Networks Department at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI). Prof. Stanczak is co-author of two books and more than 200 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers in the field of information theory, wireless communications, signal processing, and machine learning. Prof. Stanczak received research grants from the German Research Foundation and the Best Paper Award from the German Society for Telecommunications in 2014. He was an associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing from 2012 to 2015 and chair of the ITU-T Focus Group on Machine Learning for Future Networks including 5G from 2017 to 2020. Since 2020 Prof. Stanczak is chairman of the 5G Berlin association and since 2021 he is coordinator of the projects 6G-RIC (Research & Innovation Cluster) and CampusOS.

Professor Mikael Gidlund

Mid Sweden University

Unlocking AI/ML for Wireless Networks: Enhancing Connectivity, Performance, and Innovations for Verticals

Mikael Gidlund received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Mid Sweden University, Sundsvall, Sweden, in 2000 and 2005, respectively. In 2005, he was a Visiting Researcher with the Department of Informatics, University of Bergen, Bergen, Norway. From 2006 to 2007, he was a Research Engineer and a Project Manager with Acreo AB, Kista, Sweden, where he was responsible for wireless broadband communication. From 2007 to 2008, he was a Senior Specialist and a Project Manager with Nera Networks AS, Bergen, where he was responsible for next-generation IP-based radio solutions. From 2008 to 2014, he was a Senior Principal Scientist and head of wireless and mobility solutions with ABB Corporate Research, Västerås, Sweden, where he was responsible for technology and strategy plans, standardization, and innovation in the wireless automation area. Since 2014, he has been a Full Professor of computer engineering with Mid Sweden University and he is an adjunct professor at Beijing Jiaotong University, China. He holds over 20 patents (granted and pending applications) in wireless communications. His current research interests are within intelligent wireless communication and networks for industrial applications.

Professor Gidlund received the Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Industrial IT in 2014. He was a co-author to the 2022 IEEE Sweden VT-COM-IT Joint Chapter Best Student Journal Paper Award (Awarded to Luca Beltramelli for the paper “LoRa Beyond ALOHA: An Investigation of Alternative Random-Access Protocols,). Between 2019-2021 he was the Chair of the IEEE IES Technical committee on Cloud and Wireless Systems for Industrial Applications. He is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Trans. on Industrial Informatics, IEEE Journal of Emerging and Selected Topics in Industrial Electronics.

Professor Emil Björson

KTH Royal Institute of Technology

Massive Spatial Multiplexing in 6G: What kind of antenna arrays are needed?

Emil Björnson is a Professor of Wireless Communication at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. He is an IEEE Fellow, Digital Futures Fellow, and Wallenberg Academy Fellow. He has a podcast and YouTube channel called Wireless Future. His research focuses on multi-antenna communications and radio resource management, using methods from communication theory, signal processing, and machine learning. He has authored three textbooks and has published a large amount of simulation code.

He has received the 2018 and 2022 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Awards in Wireless Communications, the 2019 EURASIP Early Career Award, the 2019 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize, the 2019 IEEE Signal Processing Magazine Best Column Award, the 2020 Pierre-Simon Laplace Early Career Technical Achievement Award, the 2020 CTTC Early Achievement Award, the 2021 IEEE ComSoc RCC Early Achievement Award, and the 2023 IEEE Communications Society Outstanding Paper Award. His work has also received six Best Paper Awards at conferences.

Jeanette Wännström

Swedish Post and Telecom Authority

Reflections on the upcoming WRC-23, from a Swedish point of view

Jeanette Wännström has a Ph. D in physics, awarded at the Uppsala University in 1990. After that she worked at the university for some years followed by a position at Ericsson – conducting courses in mobile communication. Since 2014 she has been working with spectrum issues at the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS). Currently her main focus is towards the WRC-23 to be held in Dubai during four weeks in November-December 2023.

Tor Eriksson

Swedish Post and Telecom Authority

Reflections on the upcoming WRC-23, from a Swedish point of view

Tor Eriksson has a B.Sc. in Mathematics and Economics, currently Swedish representative in CEPT/ECC. Started in telecommunications 1989 with a number of years working in an international environment within product management and network planning at Ericsson followed by management positions in Network Planning & Engineering at Mobile operators, Vodafone and 3. At present he holds a position as International coordinator at the Swedish Post and Telecom Authority (PTS) in the Spectrum Resource Management Department.

Professor Maya Neytcheva

Uppsala University

Computational building blocks in numerical solution methods, HPC impact

Maya Neytcheva has finished the Faculty of Mathematics and Informatics at Sofia University with specialization Mathematical Modelling. In 1995 she obtained her PhD degree at the Catholic University of Nijmegen (now Radboud University), Netherlands, on the topic 'Arithmetic and communication complexity of preconditioning methods'. Since 2001 she moved to the Department of Information Technology, Uppsala University in Sweden on the position of associate professor. She became docent in 2005 and professor in 2016.

Her research interests and expertise include numerical analysis, numerical solution methods, preconditioned iterative solution methods, multilevel methods, parallelization of iterative solution methods, parallel aspects of numerical algorithms, applied to various applications, mostly modelled by partial differential equations.

Professor Arman Farhang

Trinity College Dublin

On Practical Aspects of Delay-Doppler Domain Waveform Design

Arman Farhang is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at Trinity College Dublin. He received his PhD in wireless communications from Trinity College Dublin, Ireland in 2016. Prior to this, he was an Assistant Professor at Maynooth University and University College Dublin in Ireland. He has published over 60 peer-reviewed international journal and conference papers, 4 book chapters, 1 edited book, and he holds 3 patents. Dr Farhang is a Principal Investigator of multiple research projects around the broad areas of waveform design, multiple antenna processing, and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces that are funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under the research excellence award, Frontiers for the Future and the US-Ireland R&D Partnership Programme. He is also a member of SFI research centres ADVANCE-CRT and CONNECT as a Principal Supervisor and a Funded Investigator, respectively, where he leads research around the topics of waveform design and multiple antenna systems for future wireless networks. The focus of Dr Farhang's research team is on the design of novel physical layer technologies and advanced modulation schemes, bolstered with multiple antenna solutions to provide high reliability, low latency, and scalability to the wireless networks of the future. He is a senior member of IEEE and serves as an associate editor for the EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking since 2018. He has served in the Organization Committees of the IEEE ICC 2023 Workshop on “OTFS and Delay-Doppler Multicarrier Communications for 6G” and IEEE ICC 2020. He regularly serves as a TPC in top-tier IEEE conferences and workshops in addition to being an active reviewer of several major IEEE journals.

Professor Jörg Conradt

KTH

Neuromorphic Sensing and Computing for Low-Power Systems

Jörg Conradt is an Associate Professor at Computational Science and Technology, KTH, Stockholm. Understanding and applying the computational principles behind how brains turn perception into behavior is one of the most challenging research questions for the upcoming decades. His group’s research investigates theory, models, and implementations of distributed neuronal information processing, to (a) discover key principles by which large networks of neurons operate and to (b) implement those in engineered systems to enhance their real-world and real-time performance. He holds an M.S. degree in Computer Science/Robotics from the University of Southern California, a Diploma in Computer Engineering from TU Berlin, and a Ph.D. in Physics/Neuroscience from ETH Zurich.