Featured Speakers & Panelists
Mischa Dohler
Professor Mischa Dohler
VP Emerging Technologies, Ericsson Inc.
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.
Sachin Katti
Senior Vice President, Intel; General Manager, Network and Edge Group
Sachin Katti is senior vice president and general manager of the Network and Edge Group (NEX) at Intel Corporation. He is responsible for driving technology and product leadership throughout the network to the intelligent edge. Katti previously served as vice president and chief technology officer for NEX, a role responsible for technical strategy and vision across the group. Prior to joining Intel in 2021, he served as the vice president of Telco & Edge Strategy at VMware, where he defined both the product and technology vision to capitalize on the cloudification of the network and edge. Katti is a professor of electrical engineering and computer science at Stanford University. He is also the co-chair of the Technical Steering Committee for the O-RAN Alliance and was founding director of the xRAN Foundation before its merger with the O-RAN Alliance. Katti is co-founder and former CEO of Uhana (now part of VMware), which built a network AI platform to monitor and optimize mobile networks and applications. He previously co-founded Kumu Networks, which commercializes breakthrough research from his lab on full duplex radios. Katti received his doctorate in electrical engineering/computer science from MIT in 2009.
Margaret Martonosi
H.T. Adams ’35 Professor of Computer Science, Princeton University
Margaret Martonosi is the H.T. Adams ’35 Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University, where she has been on the faculty since 1994. Martonosi’s research interests are in computer architecture and mobile computing. Her work has included the development of the Wattch power modelling tool and the Princeton ZebraNet mobile sensor network project for the design and real-world deployment of zebra tracking collars in Kenya. Her current research focuses on hardware-software interface approaches in both classical and quantum computing systems. Martonosi is an elected member of the US National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2021, she received computer architecture’s highest honor, the ACM/IEEE Eckert-Mauchly Award, for contributions to the design, modeling, and verification of power-efficient computer architecture. She is a Fellow of IEEE and ACM. Her papers have received numerous long-term impact awards in the SIGARCH, SIGMOBILE, and other communities. Other notable awards include the 2018 IEEE Computer Society Technical Achievement Award, 2010 Princeton University Graduate Mentoring Award, and the 2019 ACM SIGARCH Alan D. Berenbaum Distinguished Service Award. Her work with others to co-found the ACM CARES movement was recognized by the Computing Research Association’s 2020 Distinguished Service Award.
Thyaga Nandagopal
Division Director, Technology, Innovation, and Partnerships (TIP), National Science Foundation (NSF)
Dr. Thyaga Nandagopal serves in the Directorate of Technology, Innovation and Partnershps (TIP). He is the Division Director for the Division of Innovation and Technology Ecosystems (ITE). Prior to this role, he was the Deputy Division Director (DDD) for the Division of Computing and Communication Foundations (CCF) in the CISE Directorate. He leads the 5G/NextG initiatives within the NSF, from his time as a program officer in this directorate from 2012 – 2017, where he managed wireless networking and mobile computing research within the Networking Technologies and Systems (NeTS) program. Prior to that, he was a Member of Technical Staff at Bell Labs in New Jersey. Dr. Nandagopal holds 38 US patents and is an IEEE Fellow.
Steve Papa
CEO, Parallel Wireless
Steve has been on the forefront of infrastructure innovation since graduating with a BSE in OR from Princeton and an MBA from Harvard . Early on he was involved putting the first Intel chips in the data center, conceiving of what became Akamai, and building one of the most successful in-memory database companies, Endeca, that was then acquired by Oracle for more than $1B. At Parallel Wireless the work is to challenge conventional 3GPP 5G architectures and expand global connectivity while also greatly reducing the carbon footprint of the global cellular network that can consume as much as 2% of global electric production. The scope of the innovation at Parallel Wireless spans from software, signal processing, and silicon all the way through analog ICs. His work has led to involvement in at least 5 IPOS and at least 10 different university technology spinouts with faculty such as Dr. Mung Chiang at Princeton, Dr Amin Shokrollahi at EPFL, Dr. Vishal Misra at Columbia, Dr. Vivek Farias at MIT, Dr. Eric Brewer at UC Berkeley, Dr. Tom Leighton at MIT, and more. In addition he has worked for the Rockefeller Family venture capital arm and as a board partner for Andreeseen Horowitz.
Rob Soni
Vice President, Radio Access Network (RAN) Technology, AT&T Services, Inc.
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.
Peter Vetter
President of Bell Labs Core Research, Nokia
Peter Vetter is President of Bell Labs Core Research and Bell Labs Fellow. He leads an eminent global research organization with the mission to create game changing innovations that define the future of networks and insure portfolio leadership for Nokia’s core business. He is also Honorary Professor at KULeuven and IEEE Fellow. During an international career of thirty years in research leadership mostly in fixed and mobile networks, he and his teams have realized several world-first system demonstrations and successfully transferred industry leading concepts to the business groups. He is recognized as an expert with more than hundred peer-reviewed publications.
Eric Wang
Research Leader, Ericsson Research
Y.-P. Eric Wang is a Research Leader at Ericsson Research in Santa Clara, CA. He holds a PhD degree in electrical engineering from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. In 2001 and 2002, he was a member of the executive committee of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society and served as the society’s Secretary. Dr. Wang was an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology from 2003 to 2007 and has served as a member of the Technical Committee in various IEEE conferences. He has been a technical leader in Ericsson Research for research and standardization of cellular Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, including LTE-M, NB-IoT, NR URLLC, NR IIoT, and NR RedCap. Dr. Wang was a co-recipient of Ericsson’s Inventors of the Year award in 2006. He has contributed to more than 200 US patents and more than 60 IEEE articles. He is a coauthor of the book “Cellular Internet of Things: From Massive Deployments to Critical 5G Applications”.
Chris White
President, NEC Labs America
Christopher A. White is the president of NEC Laboratories America where he leads a team of world-class researchers focusing on diverse topics from sensing to networking to machine learning based understanding. Prior to NEC, he spent 22 years at Bell Labs where he led the Algorithms, Analytics, Augmented Intelligence and Devices (AAAID) research lab. He holds a BS in Chemistry from Carnegie Mellon University and a Ph.D. in theoretical quantum chemistry from the University of California in Berkeley. His research interests include creating computational models and methods for the simulation, modeling, and control of interesting physical and digital systems. Dr. White’s current research activities focus on the creation of assisted thinking tools that leverage structural similarity in data with the goal of augmenting human intelligence.
Charlie Zhang
Senior Vice President, Samsung Research America
Charlie Zhang is an SVP at Samsung Research America, where he leads research, prototyping, and standardization for 5G/6G and other wireless systems. He is also a Corporate VP and head of the global 6G team at Samsung Research. He is currently serving as the ATIS North America Next-G Alliance Full Member Group Vice Chair. He was the Board Chair of the FiRa Consortium from May 2019 to May 2023, and the Vice Chairman of the 3GPP RAN1 working group from 2009 to 2013, where he led development of LTE and LTE-Advanced technologies. He worked for Nokia Research Center and Motorola Mobility for 6 years before joining Samsung in 2007. He received his Ph.D. degree from the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Dr. Zhang is a Fellow of IEEE.