Eddie Custovic is a qualified engineer with undergraduate and postgraduate qualifications in electronics and business. He is a business owner, entrepreneur, thought leader, mentor, philanthropist and global citizen. A highly result-driven individual with standout leadership capabilities, Eddie's multicultural background, multilingualism, and "borderless" approach to work have enabled him to take a politically and culturally sensitive perspective on life, volunteer roles, and professional career.

Eddie is an academic and industry project manager in the School of Engineering and Mathematical Sciences, La Trobe University, Australia, and the founder/director of the La Trobe Innovation & Entrepreneurship Foundry (LIEF). LIEF is an inter-disciplinary innovation think tank and R&D lab that has worked with industry, government, and local communities to provide sustainable and effective solutions. Eddie is a longtime IEEE volunteer and currently serves on numerous IEEE boards, including: Publication Services & Products, Industry Engagement, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, and Young Professionals. Outside of his day-to-day roles, Eddie founded the Bosnia & Herzegovina Futures Foundation that empowers youth through education and technology access as well as leadership development. He also advises numerous organizations on innovation, technology, and R&D. He is extremely passionate about STEM education and has led several federal government and NGO initiatives to help youth from low socioeconomic backgrounds overcome challenges in undertaking higher education. Eddie is a certified Level 1 Partnership Broker and has successfully developed, negotiated, and steered numerous partnerships to success.

Thomas M. Coughlin has worked for over 35 years in the digital storage industry as an engineer and engineering manager. In 2000, he started Coughlin Associates, which publishes reports on digital storage and applications, as well as provides various types of consulting services.

Tom is the founder and organizer of the Storage Visions Conference (a partner event to the annual CES), as well as the Creative Storage Conference. He was Chairman for 10 Flash Memory Summits. Tom has over 100 published articles, book chapters, reports, books, and articles and is an inventor on six patents.

Tom is an active member in IDEMA, IEEE, SMPTE, SNIA, and other technical organizations. He is a Fellow of IEEE and a member of the Consultants Network of Silicon Valley (CNSV).

He received his B.S. in Physics from the University of Minnesota, where he also received an M.S. in Electrical Engineering with a minor in Materials Science. He received a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Shinshu University in Nagano, Japan.

Mr. Kraemer is recently retired from his position as Senior Manager of Strategy and Standards for Marvell Semiconductor, where the job focused on wired and wireless systems communications product development and associated standards activities.

In addition to IEEE activities detailed below, he has participated in various standards development organizations such as ETSI BRAN, 3GPP, ITU-R, GSC, and ISO/JTC1, as well as in industry groups such as NIST/Smart Grid Interoperability Panel, Open SG, Bluetooth, ZigBee, and the Wi-Fi Alliance. A large portion of time was spent within the Wi-Fi Alliance, where he chaired several working groups and served on the board as the Conexant representative and Vice Chair of the Board of Directors.

He has traveled extensively in Europe and Asia for meetings with government ministries, company discussions, and presented at conferences on topics such as 802 communication technologies, 5G, robotics, internet policies, connected and intelligent vehicles, power engineering, and engineering ethics.

Within IEEE he served as chair of 802.11n followed by chair of 802.11 and a member of the 802 Executive Committee. During that period of time within the IEEE Standards Association he also served as a member of RevCom, AudCom, and the Board of Governors. Upon leaving the position of 802.11 chair, Mr. Kraemer served as President of the IEEE Standards Association during 2015 and 2016, where he chaired the Standards Association Board of Governors and served as a Director on the IEEE Board of Directors.

He currently holds the position and duties of Past President of the IEEE Standards Association and has several assignments on a variety of IEEE Board committees. He has published numerous technical conference papers.

He holds a B.S. degree in Chemistry from MIT and a master's degree in Management Science from Worcester Polytech.

Hossam is a project manager at Vodafone with eight years of passion and in-depth hands-on practice in ICT projects within a global environment. He managed project resources, budget, schedules, quality, risks, and releases throughout the project lifecycle and achieved successful delivery of variety of projects with customer satisfaction and maintained relationship.

Hossam previously worked at multinational companies such as Nokia and Alcatel-Lucent, handling projects in ten different countries with multiple telecom operators, equipment vendors, and third-party providers. Hossam has a broad experience in project management and he is PMP^®, PRINCE2^®, AgilePM^®, and ITIL^® Certified.

Hossam started his volunteering journey at IEEE ten years ago as one of the cofounders of IEEE Cairo University Student Branch, and since then he held many positions on the local and global level. Hossam is currently the secretary of Industry Applications Society (IAS) Egypt chapter, is a member of IEEE Technology and Engineering Management Society, and also was the global chair of IEEE Day 2017 leading a team of 400+ active members around the globe to organize around 1,000 events celebrating IEEE Day.

Lola Awoniyi-Oteri currently works as a Systems Research & Development engineer within the Qualcomm Technologies Incorporated organization. In her role, she conducts research on various wireless communication technologies. Her research interests span myriad Wide Area Network (WAN) and Local Area Network (LAN) technologies, such as LTE, 5G, IEEE 802.11 WLANs, and Bluetooth.

She has extensive experience in research, algorithm development, and commercialization of features geared toward improving wireless connectivity and performance, enabling seamless mobility in wireless networks, reducing network and device power consumption, and enhancing user experience. Prior to joining Qualcomm, she worked at Texas Instruments developing chipsets for HSPA and HSPA+ mobile handsets. At Qualcomm and TI, she also worked on 3GPP standardization activities for HSPA and LTE technologies. Leveraging her education and experience in telecommunications, Dr. Awoniyi-Oteri’s work has resulted in over 30 US-approved patents and 90 worldwide-approved patents.

In recent years, Lola has been actively involved in IEEE organization, serving as the 2016–2017 IEEE Communications Society Young Professionals Standing Committee Chair. She is currently on the boards of the IEEE Communications Society Marketing Committee and the IEEE Communications Society Nominations and Elections Committee.

Dr. Awoniyi-Oteri received a B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering with highest honors from Georgia Tech in 1999 and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 2002 and 2006, respectively.

Stefano Galli (S’95-M’98-SM’05-F’12) received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Rome “La Sapienza” (Italy) in 1998. He is a Lead Scientist in Huawei’s Wireless Lab in Bridgewater, NJ, USA. Past positions include Director of Technology Strategy at ASSIA, Director of Energy Solutions R&D for Panasonic Corporation, Senior Scientist at Bellcore (now Ericsson), and independent consultant.

He is serving as the IEEE Fellow Committee Chair and the ComSoc Vice President for Industry and Standards. He has served as IEEE Governance Committee member, ComSoc Board of Governors member (2008–2015), founder and first Chair of the ComSoc Technical Committee on Powerline Communications (2006–2010), and as Editor for various IEEE journals (2005–2016). He also served as General Chair, TPC Chair, and Steering Committee member for numerous conferences, including SmartGridComm, SPAWC, ISPLC, ICC, Globecom, and SmartGrid World Forum.

He is very active in Standards. He is serving as Rapporteur (Chair) for the ITU-T Q15/15 “Communications for Smart Grid” standardization group. Past positions include serving as Co-Chair of the “Communications Technology” Task Force of the IEEE 2030 Smart Grid standard, and Co-Leader of the “Theoretical and Mathematical Models” Group of the IEEE 1901 Broadband over Power Lines standard. He has submitted numerous standards contributions to a variety of Standards Developing Organizations: IEEE, ITU-T, ETSI, BBF, ATIS, and NICC.

Stefano is a Fellow of IEEE and has received the 2014 Broadband Forum Outstanding Contributor Award, the 2013 IEEE Donald G. Fink Best Paper Award, the 2010 and 2015 IEEE ISPLC Best Paper Awards, the 2011 IEEE ComSoc McLellan Meritorious Service Award, and the 2011 Outstanding Service Award from the IEEE ComSoc Technical Committee on Power Line Communications. He holds 25 issued/pending patents, has authored 100+ papers, and has co-authored one book and five book chapters. His interests lie in statistical signal processing, communications theory, and modeling with applications to wireless communications, broadband access, home networking, and smart grid.

Tingting Liu currently works as a director of University Relations of Tencent, a leading provider of Internet value-added services in China. In her role, she conducts the collaborative programs between industry and academia, and leads the strategy and execution for collaboration of top university and academia organizations worldwide. Prior to joining Tencent, she worked at IBM as a senior manager of the UR program.

Tingting Liu received an M.S. degree in Communications from Peking University in 2004.

Dejan is a distinguished technologist at Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto, CA, USA [1998–]. His areas of technical expertise include operating systems, distributed systems, and systems management. He worked in the OSF Research Institute, Cambridge, MA, USA [1994–1998] and Institute “Mihajlo Pupin”, Belgrade, Serbia [1983–1991].

Dejan was a managing director of the Open Cirrus Cloud Computing testbed (2007–2011), with the academic and industrial sites in the US (6), Europe (3), and Asia (6). Dejan has published over 170 papers and two books; he has 25 granted patents and over 50 patent applications.

Dejan is an IEEE Fellow (2010), ACM Distinguished Engineer (2008), and USENIX member. He was president of the IEEE Computer Society and is currently on the IEEE Board. He has been on many conference program committees and journal editorial boards. He started two conferences (IEEE ASAP and USENIX WIESS).

He received his Ph.D. from University of Kaiserslautern, Germany (1993) and M.Sc./B.Sc. from Belgrade University, Serbia (1983/86).

Ed Palacio is President and a founding partner of P&L Technical Management Solutions (PLTMS). Previously, Ed was Vice President of Program Management and Business Operations for ITT Exelis Electronic Systems, a US$1.5-billion Strategic Business Unit and a leading supplier of Electronic Warfare, Communications, Radar, and Electronic Support Measure Systems. In this position, he was responsible for Program Management excellence throughout all of Electronic Systems’ multiple locations. Before joining ITT as part of its acquisition of EDO, Ed was Sector Vice President for EDO Corporation’s Electronic Warfare Sector. This sector consisted of three business entities with annual sales of more than US$350 million.

Ed has more than 37 years of experience in directing the development and production of complex electronic systems with a history of successful performance. He has proven expertise in corporate strategy formulation, organizational construct, international teaming, and major program pursuit and capture. He has held profit and loss responsibility at the Business Unit and Sector levels, as well as functional lead positions in Program Management, Engineering, and Operations.

Ed holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the Cooper Union School of Engineering and Science. He also holds two master's degrees, in Electrical Engineering and Technology Management, from Polytechnic Institute of New York, USA. He is a Program Management Institute certified Project Management Professional (PMP) as well as a Lean Six Sigma Greenbelt. Ed also teaches graduate-level Product Development, Project Management, and Global Operations Management courses at the State University of New York, Stony Brook campus, USA.

Glenn Parsons is an internationally known expert in mobile backhaul/fronthaul and Ethernet technology. He is a standards advisor with Ericsson Canada, where he coordinates standards strategy and policy for Ericsson, including network architecture for 5G radio transport networks.

Previously, he has held positions in development, product management, and standards architecture in the ICT industry. Over the past number of years, he has held several management and editor positions in various standards activities including IETF, IEEE, and ITU-T.

He has been an active participant in the IEEE-SA Board of Governors, as well as the Standards Board and its Committees since 2004. He is currently involved with 5G transport standardization in MEF, IEEE and ITU-T and is chair of IEEE 802.1. He is a Technical Editor for IEEE Communications Magazine and Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Communications Magazine Standards Supplement. He graduated in 1992 with a B.Eng. degree in electrical engineering from Memorial University of Newfoundland.

Sohaib Sheikh is a London-based Digital Consultant with multidisciplinary, cross-sector, global consultancy experience. He has expertise in strategy, design, implementation, and commissioning of large-scale complex information and communications systems on high-profile, major international capital investment programs, particularly in the commercial property and sport sectors across the United Kingdom, Middle East, and Russia.

Sohaib is passionate about STEM education and technology management and has volunteered for international organizations such as IEEE, Engineers Without Borders, and Rotary International to promote both causes. Currently, he is a member of the IEEE Education Activities Board. He is also the Chair of the IEEE EMEA Education Activities Sub-Committee and was a member of the Board of Directors’ appointed 2017 IEEE Humanitarian Activities Committee. He has given plenary talks and delivered workshops at 40+ international events including the UNESCO World Science Forum, IEEE Sections Congress, and the World Engineering Education Forum.

For more than 30 years, IEEE Fellow Barry L. Shoop has been a member of and leader within the global IEEE community. In 2016 he served as the IEEE President and CEO. During his tenure as Vice President of MGA, Barry was the architect of MGA’s Regional Geographic Strategy and created the Metropolitan Area Workshops. Additionally, as IEEE Secretary, he restructured IEEE’s Governance Committee to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of IEEE governance.

Barry received his Ph.D. from Stanford University and B.S. from the Pennsylvania State University, both in electrical engineering. During his tenure at West Point, he has served in a number of leadership positions including Director of the Electrical Engineering Program and Director of the Photonics Research Center. He is currently Professor of Electrical Engineering and Head of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, responsible for an undergraduate academic department with over 79 faculty and staff supporting ABET accredited programs in electrical engineering, computer science, and information technology.

Earlier in his career, he was a satellite communication engineer responsible for the design and installation of a high-capacity, global digital communication network, and also the CTO for a US$4.5-billion organization addressing the Improvised Explosive Device (IED) challenge worldwide.

In addition to being an IEEE Fellow, Barry is also a Fellow of the Optical Society of America (OSA) and the International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE). In 2008, OSA recognized Barry with their Robert E. Hopkins Leadership Award and, in 2013, he earned both the SPIE Educator Award and the IEEE Haraden Pratt Award. He holds a patent on photonic analog-to-digital conversion and has authored over 150 archival publications as well as eight books and book chapters. He is a licensed Professional Engineer in Virginia, USA.

Allan is co-founder and managing partner of RevUp. Allan has invested in 120+ high-growth startups and managed a portfolio of companies that has raised more than US$65 million in follow-on funding and produced multiple exits. As a technology entrepreneur, Allan has founded three venture-funded startups. Allan is an active angel investor in early-stage technology companies and advises national, state, and local government on nurturing high-growth startup ecosystems.