Prof. Zabih Ghassemlooy
Northumbria University, United Kingdom

CEng, BSc (Hons.) in EE Engineering, Manchester Metropolitan Univ., (1981), MSc (1984) and PhD (1987) from Manchester Univ., UK. 1987-88 as a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at City Univ., UK. 1988-2004 joined Sheffield Hallam University, UK, and 2004-14 joined Faculty of Eng. & Env., Northumbria University, UK as an Associate Dean Research, and currently is the Head of Optical Communications Research Group.

He is a Research Fellow (2016-) and a Distinguished Professor (2015-) at the Chinese Academy of Science. He was the Vice-Chair of EU Cost Action IC1101 (2011-16) and is Vice- Chair of the EU COST Action CA19111 NEWFOCUS (European Network on Future Generation Optical Wireless Communication Technologies, 2020-2024). He has published over 900 papers (more than 350 journals and 8 books), 100 keynote/invited talks, supervised 10 Research Fellows and 65 PhD students. His research interests are in the areas of optical wireless communications, free space optics, visible light communications, hybrid RF and optical wireless communications.

He is the Chief Editor of the British Journal of Applied Science and Technology and the International Journal of Optics and Applications, Associate Editor of a number of international journals, and Co-guest Editor of a number of special issues OWC. He is the Vice-Cahir of OSA Technical Group of Optics in Digital Systems (2018-). He is the Chair of the IEEE Student Branch at Northumbria University, Newcastle (2019-). From 2004-06 he was the IEEE UK/IR Communications Chapter Secretary, the Vice-Chairman (2006-2008), the Chairman (2008-2011), and Chairman of the IET Northumbria Network (Oct 2011-2015).

Dr. Volker Jungnickel
Fraunhofer-Institut für Nachrichtentechnik,
Heinrich-Hertz-Institut (HHI), Berlin, Germany

Volker Jungnickel (M) received doctoral and habilitation degrees in Physics and Communications Engineering from Humboldt University and Technical University, both in Berlin, in 1995 and 2015, respectively.

He joined Fraunhofer HHI in 1997 working on optical wireless communication, adaptive multiple antenna techniques in mobile networks and fixed optical access infrastructures. Besides, he serves at Technical University in Berlin as Privatdozent teaching courses on advanced wireless communications and supervising Masters and Ph.D. thesis. Volker serves as Chair of IEEE P802.15.13 task group on Multi-Gbit/s Optical Wireless Communications and as Technical Editor of the IEEE P802.11bb task group on Light Communications.

Dr. Majid Safari
University of Edinburgh, United Kingdom Dr. Majid Safari is a lecturer in optical communications in the Institute for Digital Communications at the School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh and a member of LiFi R&D Centre. Before joining Edinburgh in July 2013, Dr. Safari held MITACS postdoctoral fellowship at McMaster University, Canada. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada in 2011. Dr. Safari has more than 10 years of experience in modelling and analysis of optical wireless communication (OWC) systems. He has significantly contributed to the design of novel communication techniques for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and cooperative/relaying optical wireless systems. His research has also addressed unconditionally secure communication through quantum cryptography and mitigation of dispersion and nonlinear effects in fibre-optic communication systems. Dr. Safari is the recipient of several research and academic awards including best student paper award in 21st Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2008, the University of Waterloo doctoral thesis completion award in 2010 and MITACS elevate strategic fellowship in 2012. He has served as a TPC co-chair of the 4th International Workshop on Optical Wireless Communication (IWOW) held in September 2015 and is currently an associate editor of IEEE Communication letters. He is also serving as a guest editor for a special issue of IEEE Access journal on Optical Wireless Technologies for 5G Communications and beyond.

Dr. Hani Kanaan
CEA-LETI, France Lighting program manager & Business development, Hani KANAAN received his PhD degree in Electric engineering from University of Toulouse in 2009, where he worked on electrical simulation and fabrication of OLED and Organic photovoltaic devices. He then moved to Belgium to work for Materia Nova & ArcelorMittal on OLED fabrication using metallic substrates with Top configuration architecture. He has a large background in electro optical characterization, device design and optimization. He joined the CEA in 2010 where he worked on the development, optimization and characterization of microdisplays for AR/VR applications in a joined lab with Microoled Company. He had the opportunity to work on several European and industrial projects as a project manager and coordinator. Since 2015 he talk the responsibility of developing the industrial partnership for the optoelectronics components at Leti with a focus on the microLED activity for Lighting and Microdisplay.

Dr. Ashish Pandharipande
Signify (Philips Lighting) Eindhoven, Netherlands

Ashish Pandharipande received the M.S. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mathematics, and the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Iowa, Iowa City, in 2000, 2001, and 2002, respectively.

He is currently Lead R&D engineer at Signify (formerly Philips Lighting) in Eindhoven, The Netherlands. He has held previous positions as a senior scientist at Philips Research, senior researcher at Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology, and a post-doctoral researcher at University of Florida. He has held visiting positions at AT&T Laboratories, NJ, and the Department of Electrical Communication Engineering, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India.

Ashish is a senior member of the IEEE. He is currently a senior editor of IEEE Signal Processing Letters, topical area editor for Sensor Data Processing for IEEE Sensors Journal, and associate editor for Lighting Research & Technology Journal, and IEEE Journal of Biomedical and Health Informatics. His research interests are in sensing, networking and controls, data analytics, smart lighting and cognitive wireless systems.

Subhas Mondal
Wipro Fellow and >Chief Architect - 5G

Subhas has over 25 years of Engineering experience primarily in Telecom R&D. He is driving adopti on of new technologies in transforming Telecom Networks that include SDN/NFV, 5G, LiFi, Security and AI based network automation solutions as part of Technology BU (Business Unit) CTO function.

He is a distinguished member of technical staff in Wipro DMTS community. Subhas is an engineering Graduate from IIT Kharagpur in Electronics and Electrical communications engineering. Prior to joining Wipro, he worked for CDOT as a research Engineer and developed a product from scratch for remote switching need.

Satish Jamadagni
Chair Study Group-Networks, TSDSI

Satish has 20 years of industry experience in the telecom domain. And is currently working as Vice President and Head of Standards in Reliance JIO. He is also serving as the Vice Chairman of TSDSI, and Chair of the Networks Study Group at TSDSI; Co-Chair of the Asia Regional Operators Group; Small Cell Forum (SCF), Previously on the board of the International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium (IMTC). He has been granted over 120 patents in the wireless domain.

A.K. Mittal
Advisor, TSDSI

Shri A.K. Mittal obtained his Graduate degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee in 1976. He also holds a Diploma in Management. He has spent over 44 years in the field of Telecommunications, starting with R&D at Indian Telephone Industries and thereafter with Department of Telecom (DoT), Government of India. He has worked in variety of domains like Satellite Communications, OFC, Mobile Networks, Switching Systems, Transmission Systems, Network Management, Licensing, Regulation, Standards, Testing and Certification etc. He was head of Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC), the technology arm of Department of Telecommunications. He has been a Director on the board of Tata Communications. He is also convener of BIS panel on ICT enabled buildings. He has represented Government of India in various bilateral and multilateral international meetings.

Mr. Mittal is currently associated with TSDSI as Advisor with special focus on standardization in wireless and wireline systems and handles TSDSI’s standards related activities in 3GPP and ITU-R.

Deepak Solanki
Founder and CEO, Velmenni

Deepak always had a keen eye for science-bound discoveries & inventions. Choosing electronic engineering as a lifelong pursuit, Deepak then defined his core to be aggressive & impactful R&D.

He has participated in various projects from academic institutions like IIIT - Hyderabad & Sine IIT - Bombay while alongside publishing multiple research reports on mobile robotics. Recently he remedied one of the biggest Road Traffic Control issues in Delhi NCR, India. Today, he's conquering the ever-evolving start-up culture while constructing Li-Fi & disclosing its application in exciting new verticals.

Prof. Anand Srivastava
Professor (ECE), IIIT Delhi Anand Srivastava did his M.Tech. and Ph.D. from IIT Delhi. Before joining IIIT Delhi, I was Dean & Professor in School of Computing and Electrical Engineering at Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, HP, India and also Adjunct Professor at IIT Delhi. Prior to this, I was with Alcatel-Lucent-Bell Labs, India as solution architect for access and core networks. Before joining Alcatel Lucent, I had a long stint (20 years) with Center for Development of Telematics (CDOT), a telecom research center of Govt. of India where I was Director and member of CDOT Board. During my stay in CDOT, I provided technical leadership and motivation to extremely qualified team of about 150+ engineers engaged in the development of national level projects in the areas of Telecom Security Systems, Network Management System, Intelligent Networks, Operations Support Systems, Access Networks (GPON) and Optical Technology based products. Majority of these projects were completed successfully and commercially deployed in the public network. I also carried out significant research work in the Photonics Research Lab, Nice, France, under the Indo-French Science & Technology Cooperation Program on “Special optical fibers and fiber based components for optical communications” during 2007-2010. I was also closely involved with ITU-T, Geneva in Study Group 15 and represented India for various optical networking standards meetings. My research work is in the area of optical core & access networks, Fiber-Wireless (FiWi) architectures, optical signal processing, free space optical communications and energy aware optical networks.

Dr. Vivek Bohara
Associate Professor, IIIT Delhi Vivek Ashok Bohara (S’08–M’13–SM’19) received the Ph.D. degree from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, in 2011. From 2011 to 2013, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher (Marie Curie fellowship) in ESIEE Paris, University Paris-East. In 2013, he joined IIIT-Delhi, India, where he is currently an Associate Professor and is also heading the Wirocomm research Group. He has authored and co-authored numerous publications in major IEEE/IET journals and refereed international conferences, two book chapters and patents. His research interests are towards next-generation communication technologies, such as visible Light Communication (VLC), hybrid RF-VLC communication, integration of optical communication with intelligent reflective surfaces (IRS), UAV and vehicular communication. Prof. Bohara received First Prize in National Instruments ASEAN Virtual Instrumentation Applications Contest in 2007 and 2010. He was also the recipient of the Best Poster Award at the IEEE ANTS 2014 and the IEEE Comsnets 2015 and 2016 conferences.

Dr. Gourab Ghatak
Assistant Professor, IIIT Delhi Dr. Gourab Ghatak has received the B.Tech. degree from the National Institute of Technology Durgapur, India, in 2013, and the M.Tech. degree from the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur, India, in 2015. He has obtained his Ph.D. degree with a thesis on multi-RAT 5G networks in CEA-LETI, France, and in Telecom ParisTech (ENST), France in 2019. During his masters, he was a DAAD Research Scholar in the Vodafone Chair Mobile Communications Systems, Technische Universitat Dresden, Germany, from 2014 to 2015, where he worked on channel estimation schemes for GFDM. He has won the Best Paper Award in the 4th International Workshop on Smart Wireless Communications, 2017, Rome, Italy. He is the main inventor of 4 patents and the author of several journals and conference publications.