Speakers

Dr. Aadeel Akhtar is the CEO and Founder of PSYONIC, a company developing advanced bionic limbs that are accessible to humans and robots. Dr. Akhtar received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience and M.S. in Electrical & Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 2016. He received a B.S. in Biology in 2007 and M.S. in Computer Science in 2008 at Loyola University Chicago. In 2021, he was named as one of MIT Technology Review’s top 35 Innovators Under 35 and America’s Top 50 Disruptors in Newsweek.

Andersen heads the Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Silicon Innovation group at Synopsys, where he focuses on developing new technologies in the AI and ML space to automate the future of chip design. He has more than 20 years of experience in the semiconductor and EDA industry. Dr. Andersen started his career at IBM’s TJ Watson Research Center in Yorktown Heights, New York, followed by managing digital implementation product groups at Magma Design Automation and Synopsys. He holds a master’s degree from the University of Stuttgart and a Ph.D. in Computer Engineering from the University of Kaiserslautern in Germany

Dr. Rajive Bagrodia is the Chief Technologist for Network Digital Twins at Keysight Technologies. Previously he was the Founder and CEO of Scalable Network Technologies, Inc. which was acquired by Keysight in September 2021. Dr. Bagrodia is also an Emeritus Professor of Computer Science at UCLA.

Together with his team at UCLA and SCALABLE, he has published over 175 research papers on parallel simulation, high performance computing, wireless communications and network digital twins. At SCALABLE, Dr. Bagrodia led the company to become a leader in the design and use of network digital twins to assess performance and cyber resilience of a diverse set of networked systems.

Rajive obtained his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Texas at Austin and his B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

Dr. Fan Bai is a Technical Fellow and Lab Group Manager in the Connected Vehicle Experience Research Lab, Global Research & Development, General Motors. His current research is focused on the discovery of fundamental principles and the analysis and design of protocols/systems for next-generation vehicular networks, for safety, infotainment and autonomous driving applications. He is a recipient of several GM corporate awards for his contributions to connected vehicle domain. He also received four best paper awards or best paper runner-up awards from reputable IEEE/ACM conferences. He is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Distinguished Member.

Sahil Bansal is Sr. Director of Product Management in the XR Business Unit at Qualcomm. In this role, he is responsible for developing and growing Qualcomm’s XR Split Processing and new business initiatives working internally and globally with OEMs and Operators.  He joined Qualcomm in 2010 and has over 25 years of experience across product management, BD/Partnerships, strategy, and engineering for wired and wireless communications semiconductors.  Sahil holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering & Computer Science from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management. 

Dinesh Bharadia is faculty in ECE at University of California San Diego. Dinesh Bharadia received his PhD from Stanford University in 2016 and was a Postdoctoral Associate at MIT. Specifically, in his dissertation, he built prototype of a radio, that invalidated a long held assumption in wireless is that radios cannot transmit and receive at the same time on the same frequency. In recognition of his work, Dinesh was named to Forbes 30 under 30 for the science category worldwide list. Dinesh was also named a Marconi Young Scholar for outstanding wireless research and awarded the Michael Dukakis Leadership award. He was also named as one of the top 35 Innovators under 35 in the world by MIT Technology Review in 2016. Dinesh is also recipient of the Sarah and Thomas Kailath Stanford Graduate Fellowship. From 2013 to 2015, he was a Principal Scientist for Kumu Networks, where he worked to commercialize his research on full-duplex radios, building a product that underwent successful field trials at Tier 1 network providers worldwide like Deutsche Telekom and SK Telecom. This product is currently under deployment. His research interests include advancing the theory and design of modern wireless communication systems, wireless imaging, sensor networks and data-center networks.

Dinesh received his bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur in 2010, where he received the gold medal for graduating at the top of his class. His research has been published at top conferences such as SIGCOMM, NSDI, MobiCom and has been cited over 2000 times. He would offer core courses in wireless communication, IoT networks, and networked systems building.

Gagandeep Bhatti is a Senior Staff Standardization Specialist in 5G-Advanced and 6G technologies at Nokia, with over 16 years of experience spanning 3G, 4G, 5G, ORAN (RIC), and now 6G. He currently serves as the Vice Chair of the Green G Working Group within the Next G Alliance (an ATIS initiative), the lead editor of the RAN KPI white paper, and contributor to the several Green G initiatives, showcasing his commitment to sustainability in technology. He is actively involved in the research and (pre) standardization of 6G and has made contributions to 3GPP 5G-Advanced RAN1/2 Network Energy Savings (NES), including publications and patent filings. He's an expert in R&D product software design and specification with a strong background in NPI technical management. He holds a B.E. and a diploma in Computer Engineering from Thapar Institute of Engineering & Technology, India.

Sanjeev Bhavnani MD is a senior cardiologist and digital health and artificial intelligence clinical trialist at Scripps Clinic. He has developed wearable and mobile digital health technologies, handheld imaging platforms, and software as a medical device algorithm for use in patient care.  Dr. Bhavnani has designed clinical trials using digital health technologies in health systems of the US and Canada, as well as in low and middle income countries of Uganda, India, and Mexico.  He held senior roles at national professional societies and served as senior medical officer in digital health at the Food and Drug Administration where he was responsible for developing digital health policy for new devices and drugs.  Dr. Bhavnani’s interests are in the translation of new devices to patient care, extending virtual care to improve access, and in AI governance models for the responsible use of new technologies in healthcare. 

Shruti Bothe is a Senior Researcher at Ericsson Research, specializing in sustainable Artificial Intelligence solutions in the telecommunications industry. With extensive experience as a data scientist and researcher, she has dedicated her career to exploring innovative applications of AI. Holding an MS degree in Telecommunications and Data Science from the University of Oklahoma, Shruti brings a unique blend of theoretical knowledge and practical expertise to her work. She has contributed to numerous published papers and holds several patents in the field. Additionally, Shruti serves as a reviewer for several journals and has been recognized for her contributions to the academic community. Shruti Bothe has also been actively involved in cross-Atlantic projects, fostering collaboration between European and American institutions. Passionate about promoting diversity and inclusion in the tech industry, she actively supports initiatives supporting women in technology within Ericsson and beyond.

Christopher G. Brinton is the Elmore Rising Star Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at Purdue University. His research interest is at the intersection of networking, communications, and machine learning, specifically in fog/edge network intelligence, distributed machine learning, and AI/ML-inspired wireless network optimization. Dr. Brinton is a recipient of four of the nation’s top young investigator awards, from the National Science Foundation (CAREER), Office of Naval Research (YIP), Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (YFA), and Air Force Office of Scientific Research (YIP), the IEEE Communication Society William Bennett Prize Best Paper Award, the Intel Rising Star Faculty Award, and roughly $16M in sponsored research projects as a PI or co-PI. He has also been awarded Purdue College of Engineering Faculty Excellence Awards in Early Career Research, Early Career Teaching, and Online Learning. He currently serves as an Associate Editor for IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, and previously was an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. Prior to joining Purdue, Dr. Brinton was the Associate Director of the EDGE Lab and a Lecturer of Electrical Engineering at Princeton University. He also co-founded Zoomi Inc., a big data startup company that has provided learning optimization to more than one million users worldwide and holds US Patents in machine learning for education. His book The Power of Networks: 6 Principles That Connect our Lives and associated Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) have reached over 400,000 students. Dr. Brinton received the PhD (with honors) and MS Degrees from Princeton in 2016 and 2013, respectively, both in Electrical Engineering.

Danijela Cabric is a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received M.S. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2001 and Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 2007, both in Electrical Engineering. In 2008, she joined UCLA as an Assistant Professor, where she heads Cognitive Reconfigurable Embedded Systems lab. Her current research projects include novel radio architectures, signal processing, communications, machine learning and networking techniques for spectrum sharing, 5G millimeter-wave, massive MIMO and IoT systems. She served as a principal investigator in the three large cross-disciplinary multi-university centers including SRC/JUMP ComSenTer and CONIX, and NSF SpectrumX. Prof. Cabric was a recipient of the Samueli Fellowship in 2008, the Okawa Foundation Research Grant in 2009, Hellman Fellowship in 2012 and the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2012, and the Qualcomm Faculty Award in 2020 and 2021. She is an IEEE Fellow.

J.-F. Thomas Cheng is a Principal Researcher at Ericsson Research Silicon Valley. Since joining Ericsson, he has been driving a wide range of new technology development, system design and standardization to evolve cellular wireless PHY and MAC layer technologies from 2.5G through 5G and on to 6G. His research interests include coding, MIMO signal processing, spectrum sharing and application of AI and ML techniques to wireless systems. He was the principal designer of the LTE channel coding and rate matching procedures for both data and control channels. Dr. Cheng holds over 350 US patents and was named Ericsson Inventor of the Year in 2012. He was a co-recipient of IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Prize Paper Award. He received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from National Taiwan University, and the Ph.D. degree from California Institute of Technology, all in Electrical Engineering.

Rajeev is a technical expert and an active contributor to the mobility industry with 20 years of experience including having worked on his own startups. Currently, Rajeev leads the Software-defined Intelligence research domain at Honda Research Institute. His research involves thinking about technologies and systems in a smart city ecosystem from the viewpoint of the computing continuum & connectivity, embedded systems and informative data to enable convenient, accessible, sustainable, and efficient mobility solutions for the future. Rajeev is a founding member of 99P Labs jointly formed between Honda and The Ohio State University with the idea to do collaborative research and innovation with public partners, startups and Universities in the broad domains of Mobility, Energy and Data. One of his all-time favorite books is “The Creative Act: A way of being” by Rick Rubin.

Julio Costa was born in Sao Paulo, Brazil.  He is currently  Vice President of RF Technologies at Global Foundries which he joined in 2022.  Previously he was a Senior Director of  Technology Development for QORVO in Greensboro, North Carolina, where he had been since 2002 leading a group of researchers focusing on Silicon SOI and RF MEMS technologies for next generation wireless systems.  He received his BSEE (1984) from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and his MSEE (1987) and PHD (1992) from the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis.   He worked at Motorola Semiconductor Products  Sector (Freescale) from 1991 to 2001, where he worked as a researcher and technical manager in silicon and GaAs RF technology development.   He worked at ON Semiconductor until 2002, where he was a Director of R&D focusing on power management technology solutions.   He is the author of over 60 issued patents in the area of device and process technologies in RF, and has numerous publications and presentations in international conferences.      

Megha Daga works at Qualcomm Technologies, Inc. as a Senior Director of Product Management, leading AI enablement across IoT verticals and Intelligent Edge devices for Industrial Automation. Megha has spent more than 18 years in the embedded industry as a developer, researcher, technical marketing, and product manager. Her focus and passion have been to research industry trends and requirements in computer vision, AI & Compute to create leading-edge intelligent solutions. Megha holds an MS degree in ECE from Purdue University, and BE in Electrical Engineering from IET, DAVV. 

Dr. Das is currently the CTO of Viasat's Government Fixed/Nomadic and Land Mobile Broadband SATCOM business (GC4). He has over 20 years of experience in the industry mostly in the PHY/MAC design of Ka-band high throughput satellite systems.  He has a wide range of interests including digital communication, statistical signal processing and estimation theory, optimization, implementation of communication systems on hardware etc. Nandan has considerable experience leading diverse multi location teams and was one of the initial members of the team that won the Guinness World Record for the highest capacity satellite system. He has been awarded multiple patents, been awarded the best paper prize at IWSSC, and his work has been cited over 300 times. He is also a member of the faculty at UCSD where he teaches a graduate course on Signal Processing in the Wireless Embedded Systems program.

Dr. Das obtained his PhD from UCSD, a MSEE from Stanford University and a BS in Engineering from Harvey Mudd College.

Sujit Dey is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Director of the Center for Wireless Communications, and the Director of the Institute for the Global Entrepreneur at University of California, San Diego.  He heads the Mobile Systems Design Laboratory, developing innovative technologies in mobile cloud computing, adaptive multimedia and networking, green computing and communications, and predictive and prescriptive analytics to enable future applications in connected health, immersive multimedia, and smart transportation. In 2017, he was appointed as an Adjunct Professor, Rady School of Management, and the Jacobs Family Chair in Engineering Management Leadership.

Dr. Dey served as the Faculty Director of the von Liebig Entrepreneurism Center from 2013-2015, and as the Chief Scientist, Mobile Networks, at Allot Communications from 2012-2013. He founded Ortiva Wireless in 2004, where he served as its founding CEO and later as CTO and Chief Technologist till its acquisition by Allot Communications in 2012. Prior to Ortiva, he served as the Chair of the Advisory Board of Zyray Wireless till its acquisition by Broadcom in 2004, and as an advisor to multiple companies including ST Microelectronics and NEC. Prior to joining UCSD in 1997, he was a Senior Research Staff Member at NEC C&C Research Laboratories in Princeton, NJ. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Duke University in 1991.

Dr. Dey has co-authored more than 250 publications, and a book on low-power design. He holds 18 U.S. and 2 international patents, resulting in multiple technology licensing and commercialization. He has been a recipient of seven IEEE/ACM Best Paper Awards, and has chaired multiple IEEE conferences and workshops. Dr. Dey is a Fellow of the IEEE.

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/deysujit/

Mischa Dohler is now VP Emerging Technologies at Ericsson Inc. in Silicon Valley, working on cutting-edge topics of 6G, Metaverse, XR, Quantum and Blockchain. He serves on the Spectrum Advisory Board of Ofcom, and served on the Technical Advisory Committee of the FCC.

He is a Fellow of the IEEE, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET); and a Distinguished Member of Harvard Square Leaders Excellence. He is a serial entrepreneur with 5 companies; composer & pianist with 5 albums on Spotify/iTunes; and fluent in several languages. He has had ample coverage by national and international press and media, and is featured on Amazon Prime.

He is a frequent keynote, panel and tutorial speaker, and has received numerous awards. He has pioneered several research fields, contributed to numerous wireless broadband, IoT/M2M and cyber security standards, holds a dozen patents, organized and chaired numerous conferences, was the Editor-in-Chief of two journals, has more than 300 highly-cited publications, and authored several books. He is a Top-1% Cited Innovator across all science fields globally.

He was Professor in Wireless Communications at King’s College London and Director of the Centre for Telecommunications Research from 2013-2021, driving cross-disciplinary research and innovation in technology, sciences and arts. He is the Cofounder and former CTO of the IoT-pioneering company Worldsensing; cofounder and former CTO of the AI-driven satellite company SiriusInsight.AI, and cofounder of the sustainability company Movingbeans. He also worked as a Senior Researcher at Orange/France Telecom from 2005-2008.

David van Gilluwe is a leader in public sector technology and data. He has worked for various California cities for over a decade as a big data practitioner and currently serves as the Chief Data Officer for the City of Carlsbad, CA. Also known as, Data Dave, he leads the city’s data services practice and is the co-lead on the city’s innovation program. David is responsible for developing a Citywide Data Governance and Management policy and program for Carlsbad and heads up the city’s Data Governance Committee. He runs the team developing data applications and visualizations that support the city’s economic recovery and revitalization initiative, deep data insights that are driving organizational change, and citywide innovation sprints that use data to drive new approaches to delivering impactful city services. David is a passionate advocate for digital transformation and data-driven decision making. He drives civic innovation through data and supports growing the next generation of technology leaders in government with the City’s robust data fellow internship program.

Ravikiran Gopalan is the Co-Founder, Chief Technology Officer and AI Systems lead at Aira Technologies. He is broadly responsible for the tech stack at Aira and oversees the scoping, design, development and deployment of Aira’s technology. Beyond the tech. stack, he is also involved in Aira’s strategy, product and business development.

Before delving into entrepreneurship Ravi spent multiple decades in the high tech industry with stints at Bell Labs, Texas Instruments and almost a decade at Qualcomm. Ravi’s technical education is in Electrical Engineering, with a bachelor's degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras (IIT-M) and a PhD from University of Notre Dame. His business education is in entrepreneurial leadership with a masters degree from Stanford Graduate School of Business. 

Dr. Hall earned a B.S. degree in computer engineering with honors from the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, in 2005, along with M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 2008 and 2012, respectively. He was a research scientist at Intel Labs from 2011 to 2013 in the Integrated Biosensors Laboratory. In 2013, he joined the Jacobs School of Engineering at the University of California, San Diego, where he is currently a full professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and an affiliate professor in the Department of Bioengineering.

His research interests lie at the nexus of engineering and the life sciences. Specifically, his research group works on bioelectronics, biosensors, analog circuit design, medical electronics, and sensor interfaces. Dr. Hall has published over 100 papers related to biosensors.

Venkatesan Iyer (Venky) serves as Director at Xpeng Motors, leading the Localization and Mapping Team. Under his guidance, the team has achieved remarkable success in developing and implementing positioning solutions. Leveraging multi-sensor fusion and transformer-based BEV net outputs, they have played a pivotal role in enhancing Xpeng's XNGP, CNGP, and HNGP L3 autonomous driving products, which are now integrated into over a quarter million vehicles in China. 

Prior to Xpeng, Venky has worked in Intel and Qualcomm. He graduated with a PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

A seasoned executive with a passion for driving product innovation and strategic vision, Alex currently serves as the Chief Strategy Officer at HealthUnity, leading efforts to shape the organization’s strategic direction in transforming healthcare through GenAI and digital transformations.

Prior to joining HealthUnity, Alex founded and led the Digital Health Lab at Samsung Research America, spearheading groundbreaking projects aimed at revolutionizing healthcare delivery through innovative digital technology, human-centered design, and AI solutions. He also served on the Board of Managers for the Personal Connected Health Alliance (PCHA), a HIMSS organization dedicated to advancing the technology and application of connected health innovations.

With 27 years of global experience in building technology-driven organizations, Alex has made significant contributions across various sectors, from Fortune 100 companies to Silicon Valley startups.

His expertise spans consumer electronics & IT convergence, internet & mobile communications, semiconductors, and, most notably, digital health.

During his tenure at Samsung Research America, Alex led the Technology Strategy team, where he was responsible for establishing models, principles, and practices for successful R&D in Silicon Valley. His leadership emphasized vision-driven initiatives focused on digital services creation, user experience design, product concept innovation, and computing science research.

Alex holds a Master of Science degree from Stanford University and a Bachelor of Science degree from Tsinghua University. Additionally, he has authored 50 peer-reviewed publications, held 35 global patents, and led 10 international design awards.

Tara Javidi (Fellow, IEEE) received her BS in electrical engineering at Sharif University of Technology, Tehran, Iran. She received her MS degrees in electrical engineering (systems) and in applied mathematics (stochastic analysis) from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor as well as her Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer science in 2002. In 2005, she joined the University of California, San Diego, where she is currently a Jacobs Family Scholar and Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Founding Faculty and Fellow of Halıcıoğlu Data Science Institute. She also is a founding co-director of UCSD Center for Machine-Intelligence, Computing and Security.

Tara Javidi’s research interests are in theory of active learning, information acquisition and statistical inference, information theory with feedback, stochastic control theory, and wireless communications and communication networks. Tara served as a Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Information Theory Society (2017/18) as well as Communications Society (2019/20). She is also the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Jorunal of Selected Areas in Information Theory. She is a recepient of 2019 and 2020 Qulcomm Faculty Awards. She and her Phd students are recipients of the 2021 IEEE Communications Society and Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award.

Tingfang Ji joined Qualcomm in 2003 and is currently a Vice President of engineering in Wireless R&D. From 2003 to 2014, he made instrumental technical contributions toward the development of LTE and LTE-Advanced technology and served as a vice chairman of the radio working group (RAN4) of 3GPP. Since 2014 he has been responsible for the flagship Qualcomm 5G/6G research project, driving Qualcomm's 5G NR air interface design/standardization efforts, sub6 GHz multi-vendor pre-commercial 5G NR IODT/trials, experimental macro network developments, and pre-6G research.

Since 2022, Tingfang has been chairing the technology working group of NextG Alliance to promote North American 6G technologies. Before joining Qualcomm, Tingfang was a member of the technical staff at Bell Labs. As an inventor, he has more than 600 granted US patents. Tingfang received his Ph.D. in E.E. from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, in 2001 and a B.Sc. from Tsinghua University, Beijing. 

Abha is a Director, Product Management, with over 25 years wireless industry experience, currently driving next generation premium 5G Connectivity product and enabling Connected Services for Automotive business unit at Qualcomm.

She started her professional career as a Software Engineer in Hughes Software Systems and later worked at Sprint, before joining Qualcomm in 2004.

Over her career, Abha has led commercialization of multiple generations of 3G/4G/5G smartphones/mobile broadband devices/C-V2X and Automotive products for lead OEMs globally.

She holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics and Telecommunications Engineering from Punjab University, India and mini MBA from Rutgers Business School.

Karri manages T-Mobile’s long-term network technology strategy, roadmap and associated development, including spearheading the development and evolution of the next generation wireless network and device platform related technologies. With a focus on technology development especially related to Radio Access Network, Karri is responsible for identifying worldwide trends in telecommunications and applying them to T-Mobile’s network plan. Karri and his team have been instrumental in driving T-Mobile’s nationwide 5G strategy. Additionally, Karri is responsible for research, analysis and development related to advanced and emerging technologies that go beyond the scope of organic evolution of T-Mobile’s network technology.

Karri additionally oversees the company’s new spectrum development and associated support for regulatory bodies in the U.S. His team is also responsible for driving T-Mobile’s technology and development goals with global standardization and other industry forums. Karri is a frequent speaker at industry events in the area of innovation and network technology.

Karri has close to 30 years of international experience in product marketing, product development and technology management in the wireless industry, and has worked in multiple countries in Europe, Africa and USA. He has a proven track record in introducing, defining and developing new technologies for the telecommunications market.

John Macias is an Associate Fellow, Systems Architecture at Verizon Wireless with over 30 years of wireless industry experience.  He currently serves as a Vice Chair of the Applications Working Group within the Next G Alliance (an Alliance for Telecommunications Industry Solutions (ATIS) Initiative), and is the co-lead on papers ranging from Network Enabled Robotic and Autonomous Systems to 6G Codecs for Machine Type Communications (MTC).  His contributions to novel designs in the civilian and non-civilian space have led to some industry firsts, including 5G-specific applications within the Veterans Affairs (VA) Healthcare Systems. Macias is a primary investigator of new technologies within the Verizon Technology and Product Development community.  He is currently conducting research in Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN), next generation radio access technologies, and non-terrestrial network interoperability. Macias has been granted more than 30 patents and holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.

Patrick Martin joined Soitec in March 2021 where he is responsible for the Field Technology Organization. Previously he was working for Applied Materials from 2007 through 2021 where he held several positions in customer facing roles as Head of Field Technology for the Transistor and Interconnect Group and as a Sr. Technical Director for North America and European regions. His last position was in business development of new markets for growth opportunities. Prior to joining Applied Materials, Patrick was the Executive Director for Research and Development at Photronics working on photomask technology. He began his career at Texas Instruments and held positions in Unit Process Development and Process Integration. As Worldwide Plasma Technology Manager, he worked on TI’s Joint Venture strategy where he led a core team that determined the infrastructure and technology transfer for 11 fabrication expansion facilities worldwide. He has numerous patents, publications, and invited talks within the technical community and was an Executive Steering Committee member representing Applied Materials for SEMI SCIS from 2015 through 2020 and is the current Chair of the SOI International Consortium within SEMI.

Patrick P. Mercier (S’04–M’12–SM’17) received the B.Sc. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada, in 2006, and the S.M. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering and computer science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA, USA, in 2008 and 2012, respectively.

He is currently a Professor in Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California San Diego (UCSD), where he is also the co-Director of the Center for Wearable Sensors and the Site Director of the Power Management Integration Center. His research interests include the design of energy-efficient microsystems, focusing on the design of RF circuits, power converters, and sensor interfaces for miniaturized systems and biomedical applications.

Prof. Mercier has published over 200 peer-reviewed papers, including 26 ISSCC papers, 34 JSSC papers, and several papers in high-impact journals such as Science, Nature Biotechnology, Nature Biomedical Engineering, Nature Electronics, Nature Communications, Advanced Science, and more. He has received numerous awards, including a Natural Sciences and Engineering Council of Canada (NSERC) Julie Payette fellowship in 2006, NSERC Postgraduate Scholarships in 2007 and 2009, an Intel Ph.D. Fellowship in 2009, the 2009 IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) Jack Kilby Award for Outstanding Student Paper at ISSCC 2010, a Graduate Teaching Award in Electrical and Computer Engineering at UCSD in 2013, the Hellman Fellowship Award in 2014, the Beckman Young Investigator Award in 2015, the DARPA Young Faculty Award in 2015, the UC San Diego Academic Senate Distinguished Teaching Award in 2016, the Biocom Catalyst Award in 2017, the NSF CAREER Award in 2018, a National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering Lecture in 2019, the San Diego County Engineering Council Outstanding Engineer Award in 2020, the ISSCC Author Recognition Award in 2023, and the ECE Teacher of the Year award in 2023. He has served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (TVLSI), the IEEE Transactions on Biomedical Circuits and Systems (TBioCAS), and the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Letters. He is currently a member of the Executive Committee of ISSCC, and has served on the technical program committees for ISSCC, CICC, and the VLSI Symposium. Prof. Mercier was the co-editor of Ultra-Low-Power Short Range Radios (Springer, 2015) Power Management Integrated Circuits (CRC Press, 2016), and High-Density Electrocortical Neural Interfaces (Academic Press, 2019).

Udayan Mukherjee is the Intel Senior Fellow and Chief Architect of Intel’s Wireless Network & Edge Products.  Udayan architected industry's first fully virtualized 5G infrastructure Software on open architecture through FlexRAN & FlexCore which are being deployed worldwide.  He also leads the team driving Intel’s NextG network technology & 3GPP/ORAN standards development.  As chief technologist in wireless networking, Udayan is also responsible for developing Silicon enhancements for RAN & Core and is currently working on developing comprehensive network AI architecture and distributed model addressing deployment and automation.

Udayan is also responsible for establishing new growth areas for Intel in the intelligent edge both in the enterprise as well as communications market segment, a role that includes developing technologies and optimizations for distributed AI/ML model, software-based networking, as well as developing edge specific intellectual property.

Udayan’s research interests include distributed & connected compute @ the edge; next-generation wireless including augmenting classical algorithms with AI/ML models, SoC design for the edge as well as QoS/Time Sensitive Networking for industrial usages.  Udayan has been deeply involved with IEEE, ORAN alliance and TIP/Facebook, has been a keynote and distinguished speaker multiple times @ IEEE Globecom, IEEE WCNC, IEEE 5G Silicon Valley summits, IEEE NFIC, CTIA, GSMA, Cable Labs, ORAN Summits as well as FCC and other Global forums.  A three times recipient of Intel achievement awards, Udayan also has more than dozen granted patents and many pending in networking & communications including edge architecture.

Carl Nuzman is a Bell Labs Fellow at Nokia Bell Labs in Murray Hill, New Jersey, where he currently focuses on fundamental aspects of wireless communications and machine learning. Since joining Bell Labs in 2000, he has carried out and managed research in additional diverse applications including audio signal processing, vectored DSL, optical networking, micro electro-mechanical systems, power control, and traffic modeling. An inventor of 50 US patents, he received his Ph. D. in electrical engineering from Princeton University as well as B.S. degrees in electrical engineering and mathematics from the University of Maryland College Park.

Mark Pierpoint is senior vice president of Keysight Technologies, and president of Keysight's Ixia Solutions Group which provides network test and visibility solutions for validating, optimizing and securing networks.

Before being named ISG President, Pierpoint served as vice president and general manager of the Internet Infrastructure business within the Communications Solutions Group at Keysight Technologies, where he was responsible for developing and delivering solutions across the commercial communications network from network access points to data centers and the cloud. Prior to this, he led Keysight's move in modular products, growing the business to over $150 million in FY15.

Pierpoint joined the company in 1987, when it was still part of Hewlett-Packard. He has held multiple management positions in R&D, sales, marketing, and operations across various businesses within Hewlett Packard and Agilent Technologies in both the United States and Europe.

Pierpoint holds a Ph.D. in Microwave Engineering, and a B.Sc. in Electrical & Electronic Engineering from the University of Leeds in the UK.

John-Ross (JR) Rizzo, M.D., M.S.C.I., FACRM is a physician-scientist-leader at NYU Langone Health. He is currently the Health System Director of Disability Inclusion, Endowed Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine, and the Vice Chair of Innovation & Equity in the Rusk Institute of Rehabilitation Medicine at the NYU Grossman School of Medicine, with cross-appointments in the Department of Neurology, the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, and the Department of Biomedical Engineering at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering.

He is the Associate Director of Healthcare for the renowned NYU WIRELESS and associate faculty in the Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) at the NYU Tandon School of Engineering. He leads the Visuomotor Integration Laboratory (VMIL), exploring motor control with a special emphasis on visual guidance, and the Rehabilitation Engineering Alliance and Center Transforming Low Vision Laboratory (REACTIV), exploring bio-inspired, multi-sensory assistive technologies with a special emphasis on advanced wearables.

Andreas Roessler is working as a Technology Manager for Rohde & Schwarz, a premium supplier of test and measurement solutions to the wireless industry, headquartered in Munich, Germany. As a technology manager, he focuses on 3GPP’s 5G New Radio (NR) standard and advancing 6G research topics. His responsibilities include strategic marketing and product portfolio development for the entire value chain offered by Rohde & Schwarz test and measurement division. By carefully following industry trends and the standardization process for cellular communication standards, he gained more than 20 years of experience in the mobile industry and wireless technologies. He holds an MSc in electrical engineering with a focus on wireless communication.

Ashutosh Sabharwal is the Department Chair & Ernest D. Butcher Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering department at Rice University. He works in two independent areas - wireless networks and digital health. His ongoing work in wireless focuses on joint wireless communications & imaging and large-scale experimental platforms. He is leading Rice RENEW (renew-wireless.org), which has developed and deployed an open-source massive MIMO wireless network platform. He also leads the Rice Digital Health Initiative (dhi.rice.edu); his digital health research focus is the development of devices and data science to quantify behavior-biology pathways across many diseases. He was awarded the 2017 IEEE Jack Neubauer Memorial Award, the 2018 IEEE Advances in Communications Award, the 2019 & 2021 ACM Test-of-time Awards, the 2019 ACM MobiCom Community Contribution Award, and the 2023 ICC Best Paper Award. His research has led to multiple startups and FDA-approved products. He is a Fellow of IEEE, ACM, and the National Academy of Inventors.

Kamal Sahota is Senior Vice President of Engineering at Qualcomm, leading the Radio Frequency Integrated circuit design team for 3G, 4G and 5G cellular radio transceivers used in modern smart phones. He received his BSEE (Sum Cum Laude) and ME in electrical and computer engineering from UCSD in 1993 and 1999 respectively with a minor in art history.

He joined Qualcomm in 1993 as an analog integrated circuit designer working on the first CDMA digital cell phones. Over his career he has contributed to the evolution of the cellular phone radio subsystem from 1G to 5G. He holds over 290 patents in the field of RF analog circuits and systems for wireless communications.

Terry works in the Devices team at Deutsche Telekom serving all global business units and natcos with strategy, partner management, technology and trend scouting, technical research and developer engagement. He focuses on emerging technology topics: spatial computing (XR), AI, 5G, and edge computing. Terry leads Deutsche Telekom’s XR and other next generation hardware scouting activities. As an official Telekom Ambassador he brings the passion and spirit of #TeamMagenta to everyone!

Vishal Shah is currently the General Manager of XR (AR/VR) and Metaverse at Lenovo. In his role, Vishal has global responsibility of all aspects of Product Management, Sales, Marketing and Operations for the XR/Metaverse group. 

He is responsible for managing the portfolio of ThinkReality XR solutions, an industry leading end-to-end solution that powers the Enterprise Metaverse. This includes the award-winning ThinkReality A3 smart glasses, Mirage VR S3 for enterprise VR solutions, and that the ThinkReality Platform, which is among the first truly device- and cloud-agnostic XR platforms to enable commercial customers to build, deploy, and manage applications and content on a global scale, with global support.  

Vishal has demonstrated a deep passion for AR/VR technology with significant go-to-market expertise across the industry.  Most recently, Vishal was Vice President of Sales at Tech Mahindra, one of the largest global system integrators in telecom, networking, and IT services. At Tech Mahindra, Vishal led the AR/VR, IoT, and 5G practice sales to record levels. Under his leadership, Tech Mahindra won and deployed leading AR/XR solutions for Industry 4.0. Healthcare and Education verticals globally. 

Prior to that Vishal held key executive roles in product management, sales and business development at Qualcomm, Motorola and Atheer. Vishal has also provided consulting services to C-level executives at F1000 corporations, venture capital firms, and startups globally.  

Vishal has an M.B.A. from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and a Master’s in Computer Science from Pennsylvania State University.

John Smee is Senior VP of Engineering and Head of Wireless Research at Qualcomm, where he oversees all 5G/6G and Wi-Fi R&D projects including systems design, standards contributions, and advanced radio, hardware, and software research testbeds and technology trials with industry partners. He joined Qualcomm in 2000, holds over 175 U.S.Patents, and has focused on the innovation and commercial launches of wireless communications across 5G NR, 4G LTE, 3G CDMA, and IEEE 802.11.

He also leads Qualcomm’s companywide academic collaboration program across technologies including wireless, semiconductor, automotive, multimedia, security, and machine learning. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Princeton University and holds an M.A. from Princeton and an M.Sc. and B.Sc. from Queen's University.

Rob is responsible for all aspects of AT&T’s RAN architecture and infrastructure technical road maps for hardware and software, including baseband units, radios, antennas and all ancillary components. In addition, his team oversees certification and development for RAN hardware, software and features. This team drives our strategy and contributions to global standards and to technical industry and government organizations.

Prior to joining AT&T, he led RAN architecture at VMware, overseeing their cloud platform infrastructure technology, including product definition and portfolio strategy. Rob also held technical roles with Nokia Bell Labs, Alcatel-Lucent, and Lucent driving architecture, innovation and strategy for their entire wireless portfolio with a more recent particular focus on cloud RAN and 5G.

Through his many key roles on the product side driving cellular infrastructure, Rob has driven large teams and small teams to provide innovative solutions that have reached significant market penetration across 3G, 4G, and 5G networks in several large wireless operators around the world. He has supported and developed technologies that significantly improved performance, increased resiliency, significantly decreased power consumption and reduced total cost of ownership.

Rob holds a doctorate and master’s degree in electrical engineering from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and a bachelor’s in science in electrical engineering from the University of Cincinnati. He currently lives in Columbus, Ohio, with his wife and three children

Joseph Soriaga received the B.S. degree in electrical engineering in 1999 from Caltech, and both the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering in 2001 and in 2005 from UC San Diego in the area of communications systems, coding and information theory. Since 2005, he has been with Qualcomm Technologies, Inc., as part of Corporate Research and Development, focusing on cellular systems and the physical layer. He has made contributions to the commercial development of base station and handset modems, as well as advanced antenna systems for both infrastructure and mobile devices, and implementation of uplink interference cancellation. He is currently working on research and development towards 5G.

Chad Sweet is the co-founder and CEO of ModalAI, Inc, a Blue UAS Framework manufacturer of VOXL autopilots for drones and ground robots. Sweet is highly experienced in robotics R&D, and during his 20 years at Qualcomm, led efforts in computer vision and wireless communications with 15 patents granted. He was responsible for groundbreaking projects such as the Snapdragon Flight, which is powering NASA’s Ingenuity, the first drone to fly on Mars. Sweet is committed to advancing the drone industry by providing innovators with smaller, smarter, and safer open robot and drone autopilots manufactured in the U.S.A.

As a worldwide expert in imaging, she is leading the company's future in Multimodal AI and its applications in many industries including healthcare.  Until recently, she was the Chief Scientist of the Medical Sieve Radiology Grand Challenge that helped launch the field of Radiology AI and the IBM Watson Health Imaging business. As an IBM Fellow, she is also involved in long-term strategic thinking on the evolution of the field of AI. She has over 300 refereed publications and over160 filed patents. Dr. Syeda-Mahmood has chaired many international conferences over the years including IEEE CVPR (2008), IEEE HISB (2011), IEEE ISBI (2021), MICCAI (2023). She is a Fellow of IEEE, MICCAI (Medical Image Computing and Computer-Assisted Intervention),  AIMBE (American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering) and AAIA (Asian Association of Artificial Intelligence).

Michael Thompson is a Cadence Distinguished Engineer in the CPG organization and works primarily on developing design flows in the analog and high-frequency domain. He was the original architect of the Virtuoso RF Solution and is continuing that work into Heterogeneous Integration Solutions and design methodologies. These flows incorporate AI/ML capabilities initially focused on circuit optimization and node-to-node migration to reduce design turn-around time and increase productivity. Michael has over 25 years of EDA experience and was previously a Microwave/mmWave Designer. He designed and developed radar and radiometric components and systems for space-based applications.

Alex Tu is Vice President of Technology at Qualcomm. He is leading the global Snapdragon chipset power systems engineering team. In his role, Alex is responsible in overseeing Qualcomm's chipset power consumption planning, execution and roadmap covering handset, compute, automotive, AR/VR, IOT and wearable products.

Alex joined Qualcomm as a senior systems engineer in 1998. During his 26-years tenure at Qualcomm, Alex has taken on various lead roles in modem systems, chipset power, chipset architecture and project engineering. Alex started working on chipset power since 2005, helped lead and commercialize 20+ Qualcomm chipset products with world-class low power consumption.

Alex has a PhD degree in Aerospace Engineering from The University of Texas at Austin and a BS degree in Electrical Engineering at National Chiao Tung University in Taiwan. He holds 169 globally granted patents in the field of wireless communication, power consumption and semiconductor ASIC.

Djordje is the Senior Director and Head of Wireless at Meta Reality Labs (RL), responsible for overseeing wireless architecture design, development, and validation across all RL device products. He leads a team with expertise in antenna, RF, firmware, systems, standards, spectrum policy, certification, verification, and test.

Prior to his current role, Djordje held various leadership positions within Meta's network infrastructure organization over the past decade. Before joining Meta, he had over ten years of experience in wireless device silicon design while serving as Director of Engineering at Broadcom and Beceem. Djordje holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering with a focus on wireless communications from the University of Oulu and was a postdoctoral fellow at Stanford University's Smart Antennas Research Group (SARG).

Deepak Vasisht is an Assistant Professor in Computer Science at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. His research is focused on mobile computing and internet-of-things (IoT) systems, including in-body, in-farm, and in-space systems. Deepak’s research has been published in multiple top venues, including SIGCOMM, MobiCom, NSDI, and Ubicomp. His research on IoT systems for agriculture has been deployed across farms in United States, India, and Africa. His work has been featured in the Economist, IEEE Spectrum, BBC, MIT News, Daily Mail, and CBC among others. Deepak received his undergraduate degree from IIT Delhi where he was awarded the President of India gold medal. In 2021, Deepak was named as a Graduate of the Last Decade by IIT Delhi. He has a Ph.D. from MIT, where his research won the ACM SIGCOMMM Doctoral Dissertation Award, two best paper awards, and the Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship. Deepak was recently awarded an NSF CAREER award and the VMWare Systems Research award.

Siva Veerepalli is currently Vice President of Engineering in the Automotive Business Unit at Qualcomm. Siva heads up the Automotive Telematics Engineering organization responsible for providing wireless solutions for the connected car. His team, including systems, software, chipset, hardware platform and test engineering, is responsible for the commercialization of telematics hardware and software including Cellular, WLAN and V2X connectivity solutions. Prior to joining the automotive team in 2017, he was part of the modem systems team in the mobile organization in various systems and project engineering roles. During his time with Qualcomm, he contributed to the evolution of wireless data services, broadcast services, V2X etc and holds over 70 US patents with a few more pending.  Siva joined Qualcomm in 1996 as a Systems Engineer in the Globalstar Satellite project, after graduating from Rutgers University with an MS degree in Electrical Engineering.

Dr. Yongbin Wei is currently a Vice President of Product Management in Technology Planning & Edge Solutions for Qualcomm Incorporated. At Qualcomm, Yongbin has been leading new technology development over the years on system design, standardization and product development for 3G cdma2000, 4G LTE, and recently the cutting-edge 5G New Radio technology for industrial IOT and spectrum sharing. He has authored more than 20 journal and conference papers, and holds more than 350 US issued patents with many more pending. Yongbin received Bachelor and Master degrees from Univ. of Science and Technology of China, and Ph.D. degree from Purdue University, all in Electrical Engineering.

Gary Xu is a vice president at Samsung Research America, where he leads beyond 5G and 6G wireless technology development. Currently, his team is mainly focusing on massive MIMO and mmWave systems. Before joining Samsung in 2012, he worked at Nokia and then TI as a wireless system engineer.

Dr. Yanduru is currently the Vice President and General Manager of the RF Business Unit at Renesas. Before Renesas, he has held various technical and management roles at Texas Instruments, Samsung, Psemi and Qualcomm. He has designed, led and managed teams in the development of various connectivity and cellular RF Front-Ends, Transceivers and SoCs. Naveen has 26 US patents, has over 25 IEEE publications and served as Distinguished Lecturer for IEEE-CAS. He has a PhD from the University of Texas at Dallas.

Taesang Yoo is a Senior Director of Technology at Wireless R&D Qualcomm Research in San Diego, CA, USA. He leads Qualcomm’s wireless AI/ML R&D for 5G/6G system design and 3GPP air-interface standards. With over 15 years of experience at Qualcomm, Taesang has made significant contributions across various domains, including MIMO design and standards, advanced receiver algorithms, precise indoor positioning, and machine learning for wireless communications. His expertise spans wireless communications, machine learning, deep learning, and signal processing. Taesang Yoo has authored more than 30 journal and conference papers and holds over 300 US granted patents and over 1500 internationally. He received his B.S. (Hons.) in electrical engineering from Seoul National University, Korea, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, California.

Dr. Xiaoxia Zhang got her Ph.D. in ECE from the Ohio State University in 2002 and holds M.S. and B.S. in ECE from the University of Science and Technology of China.  She joined Qualcomm after graduation and has worked on 3G, 4G and 5G, including PHY/MAC system design, evaluation, prototyping and standardization. Dr. Zhang is currently leading the project focusing on digital twin, industrial IOT,  shared/unlicensed spectrum and RAN disaggregation on 5G/6G technology. She is a senior director, technology in Qualcomm and a prolific inventor.

Xinyu Zhang is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California San Diego. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2012. His research interest lies in wireless networking and ubiquitous sensing, and more specifically in (i) next-generation wireless network architectures and protocols;  (ii) ubiquitous systems that leverage wireless signals to sense micro-locations and micro-activities with near-vision precision. He is the recipient of two ACM MobiCom Best Paper Awards (2011 and 2020), Communications of the ACM Research Highlight (2018), ACM SIGMOBILE Research Highlight (2018), NSF CAREER Award (2014), Google Research Award (2017, 2018, 2020), Sony Research Award (2018, 2020), and ACM SIGMOBILE RockStar Award in 2023.  He served as the TPC chair for ACM MobiCom 2019, IEEE SECON 2017, co-chair of the NSF millimeter-wave research coordination network, and Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing from 2017 to 2020.