INVITED SPEAKERS

Sergio Barbarossa

Sapienza University, Rome, Italy

Nicola Piovesan

Huawei Technologies, Paris, France

Manu Perumkunnil

IMEC, Leuven, Belgium

Tom Z.Q. LUO

The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen

Athina Petropulu

Junil Choi

KAIST, South Korea

Fan Liu

Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

Henk Wymeersch

Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Yu Xiao

Aalto University, Finland

Berk Canberk

Edinburgh Napier University, UK

Georges Kaddoum

École de Technologie Supérieure (ÉTS), Université du Québec, Canada

Sudhir Dixit

WWRF

Marco Di Renzo

CentraleSupélec, France

Halim Yanikomeroglu

Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

Ali Ghrayeb

Texas A&M University, Qatar

YUANWEI LIU

University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

Title : Junil Choi (Senior Member, IEEE) received the B.S. (Hons.) and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Seoul National University in 2005 and 2007, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Purdue University in 2015.

Abstract:
He is currently working as a tenured associate professor with the School of Electrical Engineering, KAIST. From 2007 to 2011, he was a member of technical staff at the Samsung Advanced Institute of Technology (SAIT) and Samsung Electronics Company Ltd., South Korea, where he contributed to advanced codebook and feedback framework designs for the 3GPP LTE/LTE-Advanced and IEEE 802.16m standards. Before joining KAIST, he was a post-doctoral fellow at The University of Texas at Austin from 2015 to 2016 and an assistant professor at POSTECH from 2016 to 2019. His research interests include the design and analysis of massive MIMO, mmWave communications, satellite communications, visible light communications, and communication systems using machine-learning techniques.

Bio:
Dr. Choi was a co-recipient of the 2022 IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Best Vehicular Electronics Paper Award, the 2021 IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Neal Shepherd Memorial Best Propagation Award, the 2019 IEEE Communications Society Stephen O. Rice Prize, the 2015 IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award, and the 2013 Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) Signal Processing for Communications Symposium Best Paper Award. He was awarded the Michael and Katherine Birck Fellowship from Purdue University in 2011, the Korean Government Scholarship Program for Study Overseas (2011–2013), the Purdue University ECE Graduate Student Association (GSA) Outstanding Graduate Student Award in 2013, the Purdue College of Engineering Outstanding Student Research Award in 2014, the IEEE ComSoc AP Region Outstanding Young Researcher Award in 2017, the NSF Korea and Elsevier Young Researcher Award in 2018, the KICS Haedong Young Researcher Award in 2019, and the IEEE Communications Society Communication Theory Technical Committee Early Achievement Award in 2021. He is an IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Distinguished Lecturer, an Area Editor of IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society and an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and IEEE Transactions on Communications.

Bio:
Marco Di Renzo (Fellow, IEEE) received the Laurea (cum laude) and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of L’Aquila, Italy, in 2003 and 2007, respectively, and the Habilitation à Diriger des Recherches (Doctor of Science) degree from University Paris-Sud (currently Paris-Saclay University), France, in 2013. Currently, he is a CNRS Research Director (Professor) and the Head of the Intelligent Physical Communications group in the Laboratory of Signals and Systems (L2S) at Paris-Saclay University – CNRS and CentraleSupelec, Paris, France. Also, he is an elected member of the L2S Board Council and a member of the L2S Management Committee, and is a Member of the Admission and Evaluation Committee of the Ph.D. School on Information and Communication Technologies, Paris-Saclay University. He is a Founding Member and the Academic Vice Chair of the Industry Specification Group (ISG) on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) within the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI), where he served as the Rapporteur for the work item on communication models, channel models, and evaluation methodologies. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, IET, EURASIP, and AAIA; an Academician of AIIA; an Ordinary Member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, an Ordinary Member of the Academia Europaea; an Ambassador of the European Association on Antennas and Propagation; and a Highly Cited Researcher. Also, he holds the 2023 France-Nokia Chair of Excellence in ICT, he holds the Tan Chin Tuan Exchange Fellowship in Engineering at Nanyang Technological University (Singapore), and he was a Fulbright Fellow at City University of New York (USA), a Nokia Foundation Visiting Professor (Finland), and a Royal Academy of Engineering Distinguished Visiting Fellow (UK). His recent research awards include the 2021 EURASIP Best Paper Award, the 2022 IEEE COMSOC Outstanding Paper Award, the 2022 Michel Monpetit Prize conferred by the French Academy of Sciences, the 2023 EURASIP Best Paper Award, the 2023 IEEE ICC Best Paper Award, the 2023 IEEE COMSOC Fred W. Ellersick Prize, the 2023 IEEE COMSOC Heinrich Hertz Award, the 2023 IEEE VTS James Evans Avant Garde Award, and the 2023 IEEE COMSOC Technical Recognition Award from the Signal Processing and Computing for Communications Technical Committee. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Communications Letters during the period 2019-2023, and he is now serving in the Advisory Board. He is currently serving as a Voting Member of the Fellow Evaluation Standing Committee and as the Director of Journals of the IEEE Communications Society.

Title: Chancellor’s Professor Non-Terrestrial Networks Lab Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada

Bio:
Dr. Halim Yanikomeroglu has been with the Department Systems and Computer Engineering at Carleton University (Ottawa, Canada) since 1998, where he is currently a Chancellor’s Professor. He received the BSc degree from the Middle East Technical University (Turkiye) and the MASc & PhD degrees from the University of Toronto. His research interests cover many aspects of wireless communications and networks, with a special emphasis on non-terrestrial networks (NTN) in recent years. He has supervised or hosted over 165 postgraduate researchers in his lab at Carleton. Dr. Yanikomeroglu has coauthored 650 peer-reviewed research papers including 300+ papers in 31 different IEEE journals. His extensive collaborative research with industry resulted in 40 granted patents. Dr. Yanikomeroglu is a Fellow of the IEEE, the Engineering Institute of Canada (EIC), the Canadian Academy of Engineering (CAE), and the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA). He is a Distinguished Speaker for the IEEE Communications Society and the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society, and an Expert Panelist of the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA).

Dr. Yanikomeroglu is currently serving as the Chair of the Steering Committee of IEEE’s flagship wireless event, Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC). He is also a member of the IEEE ComSoc Governance Council, IEEE ComSoc Globecom/ICC Management & Strategy (GIMS) Standing Committee, IEEE ComSoc Conference Council, and IEEE PIMRC Steering Committee. He served as the General Chair and Technical Program Chair of several IEEE conferences. He has also served in the editorial boards of various IEEE periodicals. Dr. Yanikomeroglu received several awards for his research, teaching, and service, including the IEEE ComSoc Satellite Communications Technical Recognition Award (2023), IEEE ComSoc Fred W. Ellersick Prize (2021), IEEE VTS Stuart Meyer Memorial Award (2020), and IEEE ComSoc Wireless Communications TC Recognition Award (2018). He received best paper awards at IEEE Competition on Non-Terrestrial Networks for B5G and 6G in 2022 (grand prize), IEEE ICC 2021, IEEE WISEE 2021 and 2022.

Bio:
{Yuanwei Liu} (S'13-M'16-SM'19-F’24, \url{https://www.eee.hku.hk/~yuanwei/}) has been a (tenured) full Professor in Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering (EEE) at The University of Hong Kong (HKU) since September, 2024. Prior to that, he was a Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) (2021-2024) and a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) (2017- 2021) at Queen Mary University of London (QMUL), London, U.K, and a Postdoctoral Research Fellow (2016-2017) at King's College London (KCL), London, U.K. He received the Ph.D. degree from QMUL in 2016. His research interests include non-orthogonal multiple access, reconfigurable intelligent surface, near field communications, integrated sensing and communications, and machine learning.

Yuanwei Liu is a Fellow of the IEEE, a Fellow of AAIA, a Web of Science Highly Cited Researcher, an IEEE Communication Society Distinguished Lecturer, an IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Distinguished Lecturer, the rapporteur of ETSI Industry Specification Group on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces on work item of “Multi-functional Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS): Modelling, Optimisation, and Operation”, and the UK representative for the URSI Commission C on “Radio communication Systems and Signal Processing”. He was listed as one of 35 Innovators Under 35 China in 2022 by MIT Technology Review. He received IEEE ComSoc Outstanding Young Researcher Award for EMEA in 2020. He received the 2020 IEEE Signal Processing and Computing for Communications (SPCC) Technical Committee Early Achievement Award, IEEE Communication Theory Technical Committee (CTTC) 2021 Early Achievement Award. He received IEEE ComSoc Outstanding Nominee for Best Young Professionals Award in 2021. He is the co-recipient of the 2024 IEEE Communications Society Heinrich Hertz Award, the Best Student Paper Award in IEEE VTC2022-Fall, the Best Paper Award in ISWCS 2022, the 2022 IEEE SPCC-TC Best Paper Award, the 2023 IEEE ICCT Best Paper Award, and the 2023 IEEE ISAP Best Emerging Technologies Paper Award. He serves as the Co-Editor-in-Chief of IEEE ComSoc TC Newsletter, an Area Editor of IEEE Communications Letters, an Editor of IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, and IEEE Transactions on Communications (2018-2023). He serves as the (leading) Guest Editor for Proceedings of the IEEE on Next Generation Multiple Access, IEEE JSAC on Next Generation Multiple Access, IEEE JSTSP on Intelligent Signal Processing and Learning for Next Generation Multiple Access, and IEEE Network on Next Generation Multiple Access for 6G. He serves as the Publicity Co-Chair for IEEE VTC 2019-Fall, the Panel Co-Chair for IEEE WCNC 2024, Symposium Co-Chair for several flagship conferences such as IEEE GLOBECOM, ICC and VTC. He serves the academic Chair for the Next Generation Multiple Access Emerging Technology Initiative, vice chair of SPCC and Technical Committee on Cognitive Networks (TCCN).

Bio:
Dr. Berk Canberk is a Professor within the School of Computing, Engineering and The Built Environment at Edinburgh Napier University-UK, where he leads interdisciplinary research and initiatives in AI-enabled Digital Twins, IoT Communication, and Smart Wireless Networks. He’s been an Adjunct Faculty within the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University USA since 2017, and Adjunct Professor within the Department of Artificial Intelligence and Data Engineering at Istanbul Technical University (ITU) since 2022. He is also the Innovation Director of BTS Group, the biggest network automation and cloud computing company in Turkey. He is a distinguished recipient of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering's Global Talent Endorsement in 2022. He is an IEEE Senior Member, and he acts as an active Associate Editor at several world-leading academic journals such as IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology since 2016, Elsevier Computer Networks Journal since 2013, Elsevier Communication Networks Journal since 2017, and IEEE Communications Letters between 2018-2021. He’s actively involved in several conferences as TPC chair and Organizing Committee Member. In his research group named Broadband Communication and Network Automation Research Group (BCRG, www.bcrg.uk ), he leads the research activities in highly interdisciplinary fields in digital twins and IoT, actively supervising 5 PhD and 2 MSc students. So far, he has supervised 16 MSc students, and 6 PhD students who are now all tenure-track professors. In the last 5 years, he has published over 100 journal papers, 2 books, 7 book chapters, 3 approved US patents and 12 patents waiting for approval. Prof. Canberk has been a Post-Doctoral researcher at Georgia Institute of Technology USA between 2011-2013. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Istanbul Technical University (ITU) Turkey in 2011, his MSc in Telecommunications Engineering from the Chalmers University of Technology Sweden in 2005, and his BSc in Electrical Engineering from ITU in 2003. He was an Associate Professor at Department of Computer Engineering at ITU between 2016-2021, and full Professor between 2021-2022. He has been involved with several industrial research activities with leading technology companies all over the world, including research scholarship program funding with Google Deepmind, TUBITAK, BTS Group Turkey, Turkcell, Turkish Telekom, and Uniper Energy Germany.