IEEE EPPC Working Group on ICT

Cecilia Metra is a Full Professor, who has been working since 1991 at the University of Bologna (Italy), from which she received the Laurea in Electronic Engineering and the Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science. In 2002 she was a Visiting Faculty Consultant for Intel Corporation. At the University of Bologna she currently is Deputy President of the School of Engineering and Architecture and Coordinator of the Masters in Electronic Engineering. She is the 2019 President of the IEEE Computer Society (CS).

She has published extensively in the design for test and reliability of integrated systems. Her research has been funded by government and industries, including Intel Corporation, STMicroelectronics, Alstom Transport, the EU, the Italian MISE and MIUR Ministries.

She has been Editor-in-Chief (EIC) of the IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing and the CS Computing Now Magazine. She was also the Associate EIC of the IEEE Transactions on Computers. She has been a member of the Advisory Board of the IEEE Institute, and on the Editorial Board of several Journals, such as IEEE Transactions on Computers, IEEE Design & Test, ACM Transactions on Design Automation of Electronic Systems. She contributed to numerous IEEE International Conferences/Symposia/Workshops as General/Program Chair/Co-Chair (14 times), Vice-General/Program Chair/Co-Chair (6 times), Topic/Track Chair (33 times), and Technical Program Committee Member (96 times). She received two Meritorious Service Awards and five Certificates of Appreciation from the IEEE CS. She is an IEEE Fellow, IEEE CS Golden Core Member, and member of the IEEE-HKN Honor society.

Dr. Javier Alonso-Mora is an Associate Professor at the Delft University of Technology, where he leads the Autonomous Multi-robots Laboratory. He is a Principal Investigator at the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions ( AMS) and co-founder of Routable AI. His main research interests are in navigation, motion planning and control of autonomous mobile robots, with a special emphasis on multi-robot systems, on-demand transportation, and robots that interact with other robots and humans in dynamic and uncertain environments.

Dr. Alonso-Mora was a Postdoctoral Associate at the Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab (CSAIL) of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He received his Ph.D. degree in robotics from ETH Zurich, in partnership with Disney Research Zurich. He is the recipient of multiple prizes and grants, including the ICRA Best Paper Award on Multi-robot Systems (2019) and a talent scheme VENI award from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (2017).

John B. Anderson (Fellow, 1987) was born in New York State in 1945 and received the Ph.D. from Cornell University in 1972. He was professor of electrical engineering at McMaster Univ. (Canada,1972-1980), Rensselaer Polytechnic Inst. (USA, 1981-1998), and since then Ericsson Chair in Digital Communication at Lund Univ., Sweden (now emeritus). He has held many visiting positions, including 2 years at Deutsche Luft- und Raumfahrt (Germany). He was part time staff member at General Electric Global Research during 1983-1998 and Director of the Strategic Research Foundation Center for High Speed Wireless Communication at Lund during 2005-11. His research work is in coding and communication algorithms.

Dr. Anderson was president of the IEEE Information Theory Society in 1985 and twice Co-Chair of its Symposium on Information Theory. He served 7 years on the IEEE Publications Board, and twice as Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Press.

He is author of 8 books, including most recently Digital Transmission Engineering, IEEE Press (2005), and Bandwidth Efficient Coding, Wiley (2017). He received the Humboldt Research Prize in 1991.

Valentina E. Balas is currently Full Professor in the Department of Automatics and Applied Software at the Faculty of Engineering, “Aurel Vlaicu” University of Arad, Romania. She holds a Ph.D. Cum Laude, in Applied Electronics and Telecommunications from Polytechnic University of Timisoara. Dr. Balas is author of more than 350 research papers in refereed journals and International Conferences. Her research interests are in Intelligent Systems, Fuzzy Control, Soft Computing, Smart Sensors, Information Fusion, Modeling, and Simulation. She is the Editor-in Chief to International Journal of Advanced Intelligence Paradigms (IJAIP) and to International Journal of Computational Systems Engineering (IJCSysE), member in Editorial Board member of several national and international journals and is evaluator expert for national and international projects, as well as Ph.D. Thesis.

Dr. Balas is the director of Intelligent Systems Research Centre in Aurel Vlaicu University of Arad and Director of the Department of International Relations, Programs and Projects in the same university. She served as General Chair of the International Workshop Soft Computing and Applications (SOFA) in nine editions organized in the interval 2005-2020 and held in Romania and Hungary. Dr. Balas participated in many international conferences as Organizer, Honorary Chair, Session Chair, member in Steering, Advisory or International Program Committees, and Keynote Speaker. Now she is working in a national project with EU funding support: BioCell-NanoART = Novel Bio-inspired Cellular Nano-Architectures - For Digital Integrated Circuits, 3M Euro from National Authority for Scientific Research and Innovation. She is a member of European Society for Fuzzy Logic and Technology (EUSFLAT), member of Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics (SIAM), and a Senior Member IEEE, member in Technical Committee – Fuzzy Systems (IEEE Computational Intelligence Society), chair of the Task Force 14 in Technical Committee – Emergent Technologies (IEEE CIS), member in Technical Committee – Soft Computing (IEEE SMCS). Dr. Balas was past Vice-president (responsible with Awards) of IFSA - International Fuzzy Systems Association Council (2013-2015), and is a Joint Secretary of the Governing Council of Forum for Interdisciplinary Mathematics (FIM), - A Multidisciplinary Academic Body, India. She is recipient of the "Tudor Tanasescu" Prize from the Romanian Academy for contributions in the field of soft computing methods (2019).

Enrico Del Re holds the Dr.Ing. degree in electronics engineering from the University of Pisa, Pisa, Italy, in 1971. After an experience as design engineer in electronics industry, since 1975 he was with the University of Florence, Italy, where in 1986 he was appointed Professor at the Department of Information Engineering until his retirement in 2017. During the academic year 1987-1988 he spent a nine-month period of research at the European Space Research and Technology Centre of the European Space Agency, The Netherlands. His main research interests are digital signal processing, mobile and satellite communications, next generation internet, with more than 300 papers published in international journals and conferences.

He was the co-editor of the book Satellite Integrated Communications Networks (North-Holland, 1988), one author of the book Data Compression and Error Control Techniques with Applications (Academic, 1985) and editor of the books Mobile and Personal Communications (Elsevier, 1995), Software Radio Technologies and Services (Springer, 2001), Satellite Personal Communications for Future-Generation Systems (Springer, 2002), Mobile and Personal Satellite Communications 5-EMPS2002 (IIC, Italy, 2002) and Satellite Communications and Navigation Systems (Springer, 2008). He was the Chairman of the European Project COST 227 “Integrated Space/Terrestrial Mobile Networks” (1992-95) and the EU COST Action 252 “Evolution of satellite personal communications from second to future generation systems” (1996-2000). He was the Chairman of the Software Radio Technologies and Services Workshop (2000), the Fifth European Workshop on Mobile/Personal Satcoms (2002) and the Satellite Navigation and Communications Systems (2006). He was Recipient of the 1988/89 premium from the IEE (UK) for the paper “Multicarrier demodulator for digital satellite communication systems”. Since 1992, he was elected member of the New York Academy of Sciences. He was President of the Italian Interuniversity Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT) in the period 2011-2017, having served before as Director in the period 2005-2008. He was Director of the Department of Information Engineering (DINFO) of the University of Florence, Italy in the period 2013-2016. He is Member of the ICT Italian Expert Committee for EU Horizon2020 Programme appointed by the Ministry of University and Research. He is a Senior Life Member of the IEEE.

Giambattista Gruosso is associate professor at Politecnico di Milano. He has 20 years of experience in research issues in electrical engineering and its links with ICT. For years he has been working on systems and components for Smart City, Smart Mobility and Smart Factory. He is director of the master Digital Skills for industry 4.0. He is secretary of the IEEE IES Committee on Transportation Electrification and is an active member of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society. He is member of committees for the promotion of ICT for intelligent life. He was secretary of the Italian section of IEEE (2016-2019), member of the local board of engineers (Milan). He is currently also scientific head of the technical area of MADE (competence center for Industry 4.0)

Panagiota Karadimitriou completed her studies as an Electrical & Computer Engineer in Greece and then moved to Edinburgh to do a M.Sc. in Computer Science. It was at that time she discovered IEEE and became a member. She has a background of 20 years in IT, serving positions in the private sector, national administration, and EU administration. The last 7 years in leadership positions; as Coordinator or Head of Sector. Recently, she took up the endeavor to study again; this time an LLB in the University of London, driven by her strong interest in IT Law. With COVID, new opportunities arose for serving IEEE online. She is an IEEE-Standards member and participate in various standard committees or WGs in areas of her expertise, especially in emerging technologies. She has a great enthusiasm to contribute to our interesting online meetings and agenda and exchange views with the other members of this group.

Dr. Cyril Onwubiko is Director, Enterprise Security Architecture at Pearson Plc. He is also Director, Artificial Intelligence, Blockchain & Cyber Security at Research Series Limited, where he directs strategy and governance in AI, Blockchain & Cyber Security. Prior to Research Series, he had worked in the Financial Services, Telecommunication, Health, Government, and Public Services Sectors. He is a leading scholar in Cyber Situational Awareness (CyberSA), Cyber Security, Security Information and Event Management (SIEM), Data Fusion, and Cyber Security Operations Centres (SOCs), and experienced in Information Assurance, HMG Security Policy Framework and Risk Assessment & Management. His work in AI, especially Machine Learning for Cyber Security demonstrates an ability to converge multiple applications of AI across business units (in many domains e.g. NLP, Deep Learning, Machine Learning and Data Science etc.), and applying these models to solve real world problems.

Cyril holds a Ph.D. in Computer Network Security from Kingston University, London, UK; M.Sc. in Internet Engineering, and B.Sc., first class honors, in Computer Science & Mathematics. He has authored several books including "Security Framework for Attack Detection in Computer Networks" and "Concepts in Numerical Methods." He co-edited the book on "Situational Awareness in Computer Network Defense: Principles, Methods & Applications". He is the editor of the Cyber Science series, and Editor-in-Chief of the International Journal on Cyber Situational Awareness (IJCSA), ISSN (Print) 2057-2182, (Online) 2633-495X.  Cyril has authored several book chapters and has published over 30 peer-reviewed articles in leading and most prestigious academic journals and conferences.

He is a Senior Member IEEE, Distinguished Speaker (DVP), IEEE Computer Society, Past Secretary, IEEE United Kingdom and Ireland, Past Founding Chair, IEEE United Kingdom and Ireland Blockchain Group. And a member of many IEEE Societies and Affinity Groups e.g., Computer Society, Young Professionals, etc. He is also a Trustee, Director and Volunteer to other Charity organizations.

He is a passionate speaker, keynote presenter, and invited guest lecturer to a number of universities in the UK, and has given many invited lectures, the most recent being at the Cyber Science 2019 conference at the University of Oxford, UK. He is a reviewer, program & steering committee member to over 30 academic conferences and journals. He is a Ph.D. assessor and examiner to a number of universities in the UK and Europe.

In the summer of 2014, Cyril founded the Centre for Multidisciplinary Research, Innovation, and Collaboration (C-MRiC), a not for profit and nongovernmental organization dedicated to the advancement of outstanding research and innovation through collaboration, and dissemination of scientific and industrial contributions through seminars and publications (https://www.c-mric.com).

Eng.D João Quintas (M) is, since 2011, a Principal Researcher of ICT for Active and Healthy Ageing at Instituto Pedro Nunes - Automatics Lab. He has a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering (specialization in Automation and Robotics) from University of Coimbra (UC), 2018. He has more than 10 years of expertise acting as technical manager, project manager, and researcher in European and national projects including (FP7; AAL; H2020; QREN; P2020). He is a member of the Autonomous Robotics (AuR) Ontology WG developing IEEE 1872.2 Standard. He is also a Research Associate at the Artificial Perception for Intelligent Systems and Robotics of Institute of Systems and Robotics - University of Coimbra (ISR-UC). His main areas of research interest are related to artificial social companions, robotics, human-machine interaction, and knowledge engineering.