Speakers

Dimitra Simeonidou (FREng, FIEEE) is a Full Professor at the University of Bristol, the Co-Director of the Bristol Digital Futures Institute, and the Director of the Smart Internet Lab. Her research focuses in the fields of high performance networks, programmable networks, wireless-optical convergence, 5G/B5G and smart city infrastructures. She is increasingly working with Social Sciences on topics of digital transformation for society and businesses. Dimitra has also been the Technical Architect and the CTO of the Smart City project Bristol Is Open. She is currently leading the Bristol City/Region 5G urban pilots. ​ She is the author and co-author of over 500 publications, numerous patents and several major contributions to standards. Dimitra is a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, and a Royal Society Wolfson Scholar.​

Carol Fletcher is responsible for BT’s research relationships with over 30 universities in the UK and beyond, collaborating to push the boundaries on major technical challenges. She also runs the Tommy Flowers Network, which connects the new generation of researchers with industry to understand the big problems which need inter-disciplinary research to solve them, and to ensure the next cohort of research leaders have the right skills. Carol joined BT in 1999 and has worked in a variety of roles in research, particularly focused around the realisation of the outputs of research and the management of research programmes. She has a degree in Natural Sciences, specialising in physics, from the University of Cambridge; and is a member of industry advisory boards at the University of Essex and Loughborough University.

George Kanellos current research focuses on exploiting recent advancements in photonic integration to introduce radically new architectural approaches and concepts in Datacom and Computercom. Dr Kanellos aims to tackle key physical layer technological challenges for increasing throughput, reducing latency and power consumption across all hierarchical levels of computer interconnects. Previously, George worked on routing and switching technologies for telecom applications, with interest in the design of integrated optical components and subsystems and their application to computer architecture and networking.

Timothy Pelham is a Senior Research Associate within the Smart Internet Lab and aligned with the Communications, Systems and Networks Research Group. Timothy obtained a PhD in next generation antenna array design methods in 2018, and a Masters in Physics at the University of Surrey in 2009 following a year as a visiting researcher at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory. Timothy's research interests cover both novel electromagnetics models and methods to design and model antennas and antenna arrays for sensors and communications, informed by his work at MBDA on radar, antennas and propagation modelling.

I received a B.Eng. degree in electromagnetic field and wireless technology from the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, Chengdu, China, in 2010 and a M.Sc. degree (with distinction) in wireless communications and signal processing from the University of Bristol, Bristol, U.K., in 2016. I am currently working towards the Ph.D. degree in electrical and electronic engineering at the University of Bristol. From 2010 to 2015, I was a Hardware Engineer at the National Engineering Research Center of Mobile Communication, Guangzhou, China, working on high-speed low-power wireless sensor networks and RFID systems. My research interests include photoconductivity modelling and its applications to optically tunable microwave and millimeter-wave devices.

Xueqing Zhou is a second-year PhD student at the Smart Internet Lab, University of Bristol. She received her B.S. degree in Communication Engineering from the Jilin University in 2018, and her M.S. degrees in Communication Network and Signal Processing from University of Bristol in 2019. Her research interests include machine learning strategy and network resource allocation.

Simon spent 13 years working in a variety of roles in the electronics and communications industries before moving into the world of radio spectrum in 2001. During his work on spectrum Simon led several industry groups as well as leading spectrum policy development within the O2 and Telefónica Groups. He took the opportunity of a voluntary redundancy package from Telefónica to undertake a PhD at the EPSRC Centre for Doctoral Training in Communications at the University of Bristol in September 2018. The focus of his research project is secure Dynamic Spectrum Access. Simon joined Real Wireless as Radio Spectrum Expert in September 2020.

Currently a Ph.D. Candidate at the University of Bristol in the Electronic and Electrical Engineering department. She is working on Green Photonics specialising in novel semiconductor compounds with respect to absorption and emission in the near-to mid-infrared spectrum. She is a teaching assistant within the department where she develops and delivers synchronous and asynchronous content for undergraduate and masters students. She also works in science communication and outreach within the local community to promote the next generation of STEM, in particular Women in STEM and Women in Engineering.

Chrys is a final-year Ph.D. student at the University of Bristol working in the field of security in wireless communications. With a background in mathematics of cryptography and communications, Chrys currently investigates new ways for secure authentication and key generation by exploiting the randomness inherited in the physical medium. Her most recent work involves authentication against relay attacks.

Dan Warren is Director of Advanced Network Research at Samsung Research UK. He leads a team of researchers working on cutting-edge mobile telecoms technology innovation, in the fields of 5G, Beyond 5G and the application of Artificial Intelligence. Dan applies his broad experience in the industry across technical, commercial, strategic and regulatory topics to steer Research towards relevant and commercially viable solutions. He is currently Chair of the Steering Board of the European Commission 5G-PPP, a Board member of 5GIA and a member of a number of External Advisory Boards for academic research projects. Prior to joining Samsung, Dan held senior roles at Capita, GSMA, Vodafone and Nortel. Dan is a widely respected authority on Telecoms, having been included in Global Telecoms Business Magazine ‘Top 40 Under 40’ list for three years, and in Capacity Magazine’s ’20 Innovators to Watch’ in 2018. Dan holds a Ph. D. in Applied Mathematics from Brunel University.

Martin Cryan is a Professor of Applied Electromagnetics and Photonics at the Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Bristol. He has worked in the fields of electromagnetic modelling, device and circuit fabrication for 34 years. He is Co-I on a newly awarded EPSRC grant (GLIMMER) developing Phononic Integrated Circuits for RF applications which use integrated acoustic waveguides in GaN to implement ultra-small RF filtering and delay devices. He is also Co-I and Co-Director of a major EPSRC project QuPIC which aims to develop the world’s first integrated quantum photonics foundry service. He has published 106 journals, 15 Invited and more than 150 International conference papers.

James Pope received his M.S. in Telecommunications and his Ph.D. in Information Technology from George Mason University in the U.S. He completed a postdoc on pervasive healthcare monitoring as part of the EurValve project at the University of Bristol where he collected and helped analyse cardiac patients' data to access activity levels. He was subsequently a faculty member of the computer science department at a U.S. university before returning to the U.K. where he currently works as a researcher to detect anomalous events from an IoT-Cloud platform. James' research interests lie in constrained low-lower networking and applied machine learning and their use in sensing applications.

Anderson Bravalheri is a Senior Research Associate at the High Performance Networks Research Group and a member of the Smart Internet Lab at the University of Bristol, currently working on network and edge computing orchestration under the Zero Downtime Edge Application Mobility (ZeroDEAM) project funded by Samsung Electronics. Previously, he worked at CPqD, a Brazilian Research and Development Center in Telecommunications, with a variety of technical projects covering from control of optical components and firmware development up to SDN applications for optical networks. His research interests include Distributed Systems, Type Theory, Fuzzy Inference, AI, MEC and NFV orchestration.

Obada graduated with a First class honours BEng degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Bristol in 2018. Currently, Obada is a PhD candidate at the High Performance Networking Research Group, Smart Internet Lab, doing his research in quantum communication and networking, mainly investigating the feasibility of coexisting quantum and classical signals in dynamic optical networks and specialty fibres such as Multicore fibre and Hollow core fibre.

Hilary received his BSc(Hons) and MSc degrees from the University of Port Harcourt (Nigeria) and Oxford Brookes University (UK). He is an alumnus of the United States Telecommunications Training Institute and recently achieved the status of Associate Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy for teaching and learning support in higher education. Hilary conducts his doctoral research in the High Performance Networks Research Group which is aligned with the Smart Internet Lab, University of Bristol. His research interest has been on 5G Non-Public Networks (NPN) and presently working on the design of functional architecture for multi-access, multi-connectivity in 5G non-public networks. He has been involved in the European Commission research project - 5G CLARITY and contributed to deliverable D3.1 on the State-of-the-Art review and initial design of the integrated 5GNR/Wi-Fi/LiFi network frameworks on coexistence, multi-connectivity, resource management and positioning.

Constantinos Vrontos is a Senior Research Associate at Smart Internet Lab, while also working towards his PhD degree in Communications at the University of Bristol, UK. Constantinos finished his undergraduate degree (MEng) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the same university in 2016 and has been investigating mmWave Spectrum Sharing between Mobile Operators ever since. His professional role is mainly focused around the 5GUK Test Network, from cloud to the end-user.

Siddarth Koduru Joshi is a Research Fellow at University of Bristol’s Quantum Engineering Technology labs (QET labs). He works in quantum enhanced sensing and metrology and quantum communication. He has worked on 4 quantum communication cubesat projects and is the science team leader for an ESA selected mission to the International Space Station to test fundamental quantum physics. He also works on long distance fibre optic quantum communication, many-user quantum networks and their protocols. Siddarth completed his PhD in NUS Singapore on loophole free Bell tests, a postdoc at IQOQI in Vienna and he is currently part of UK’s national quantum communication hub and quantum imaging hub.

Zhihan Ren received her master degree from the University of Bristol in ‘Communication Networks and Signal processing’. She is a second year PhD student currently focusing on cell-free massive MIMO communications. She is a member of the Smart Internet Lab aligned with the Communication Systems and Networks Research Group.

Ian Poyner is currently the Technical Project Manager for the IoTSF (Internet of Things Security Foundation) delivering the ManySecured gateway initiative. He received his BEng in Electronic Engineering from Manchester University in 1990 and his MSc in Computing for Commerce and Industry from the Open University in 2000. He has extensive experience in operating and designing communication and navigation satellite systems and ground segments, and also in delivering secure communication systems. Ian is currently a part-time Researcher at Reading University investigating the use of LPWAN (low power wider-area networks) with smart wearables for remote health monitoring.

The core focus of Mark's research is the application of multi-element antenna systems (also known as Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) or Smart Antennas) to enhance the performance of wireless systems in terms of higher data rates, whilst conserving both bandwidth and power. Fundamental to the successful design and deployment of such systems is an in-depth understanding of the multi-dimensional wireless channel necessitating joint characterisation of both the antenna elements and the propagation medium.

Solutions architect at the University of Bristol’s Smart Internet Lab, working on the 5G Logistics Project to develop 5G products and services to support Bristol Port and Gravity Smart Campus operations.

Krishna Balram is an Associate Professor in Photonic Quantum Engineering at the University of Bristol. He did his PhD at Stanford and was a CNST-UMD postdoctoral fellow at NIST, Gaithersburg before joining Bristol. His primary research interest is the development of novel nanofabricated device platforms for manipulating light and high-frequency sound waves at the nanoscale and engineering controlled interactions between them and other solid-state systems, in particular single spins. His group's recent work includes the development of novel III-V PIC platforms borrowing ideas from silicon photonics (Jiang and Balram, OpEx 2020), phononic integrated circuits in GaN for future RF front-ends (Valle et al. APL 2019), and N-rich silicon nitride for quantum photonics (Smith et al., APL 2020).

Teresa Yu Bi is a research associate at the Smart Internet Lab aligned with the High Performance Networks Research Group. She received her B.Sc. degree of Optical Information Science and Technology from Beijing Jiaotong University and then her M.Sc. with distinction in Communication Networks and Signal Processing from the University of Bristol where she is currently pursuing her Ph.D. degree. Her research interests include Network Optimization, Game Theory, Network Function Virtualization and Optical Networks.

Tommaso Cappello received his Laurea degree (cum laude) in electrical engineering and his Ph.D. degree from the University of Bologna, Italy, in 2013 and 2017, respectively. Since 2020, he is a Lecturer in Electrical and Communication engineering at the University of Bristol, UK. Between 2017 and 2019, he was a Post-doctoral Research Associate with the Microwave and RF Research Group at the University of Colorado Boulder, CO, USA. His current research interests include design and characterisation of RF and power electronic circuits.

In 2012 Ufuk graduated from Suleyman Demirel University, in Turkey with a BSc degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering. He worked at 'Turkcell', a telecommunication service provider, as an Access Network Engineer focusing on network access and aggregation. In 2017 he received his MSc in Communication Networks and Signal Processing at the University of Bristol. His research focused on Data Centre Architectures including simulation performance of various architectures with using OMNET++. Currently, he is doing his PhD in Electrical and Electronic Engineering, researching Internet of Things(IoT).

Robert Zakrzewski is a Research Associate at the Communication Systems and Networks Research Group aligned with Smart Internet Lab, University of Bristol where he pursues his Ph.D. degree. His experience covers systems research, feasibility studies, systems and protocol engineering, standardisation and innovation which resulted in several patents filing. His research interests focus on Complex Systems, IoT and Wireless Sensor Networks, Artificial Intelligence, Cyber Security, and Anomaly Detection.

Jiaqing Li is a PhD student and Teaching Support Assistant in Photonics and Quantum Research Group at the University of Bristol. He received his B.Sc. degree of Optoelectronic Information Science and Technology from Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications (CQUPT) and then his M.Sc. in Optical Communications and Signal Processing from University of Bristol where he is currently pursuing his Ph.D. degree. His research area includes Optical Space-Division Multiplexing (SDM) Communication Systems; All-Optical Signal Processing and Photonic Integrated Circuit (PIC) Design.