Speaker’s Bios

Abhijeet Masal

Mr. Abhijeet Abhimanyu Masal is a Lead Research Engineer in the Centre of Excellence in Wireless Technology (CEWiT), Chennai, India with 10+ years of experience in wireless standardization. He received the M.Tech. degree in Electronics and Communication from IIT Bhubaneswar, in 2014. He represents CEWiT in 3GPP RAN1, RAN2, and SA2 and has contributed to 3GPP since Rel. 13. He is ITU delegate contributing to IMT 2030 development activity in the WP5D group of radio group. His research interests include 5G & beyond and 6G wireless communications, signal processing, and machine learning in wireless networks. He is presently working on cellular Localization, C-V2X, UAV, and non-terrestrial networks (NTN) for 5G and beyond with a focus on channel modeling and estimation, new waveforms, massive MIMO, joint sensing and communication techniques, and unification of different verticals towards 6G.

Abhishek Thakur

Dr Abhishek Thakur is an Assistant Professor at the Institute for Development and Research in Banking Technology, where he coordinates 5G Use Cases Lab for BFS. His research interests include multimedia communications, financial inclusion and rural ICT deployments. In his over twenty five years career, split across industry and academia, and he has developed multiple global solutions for both product and services-based organizations.

At 5G Use Cases Lab, he champions the technology horizontals for cross domain network slicing, multi-access edge compute and rural connectivity. Besides pursuing applied academic research in BFS, he is also advising the IT teams of multiple banks. He is passionate about making technology simple and sustainable for the masses.

Akshay Aggarwal

Mr. Akshay Aggarwal is a Senior Director of Technology at MediaTek and is based out of Bangalore. In this role, he is responsible for working on next generation product development with key focus on modem and CPU technology. His current focus areas include 5G NR and 6G, AI/ML in Wireless Networks and CPU technology. With over 20 years of semiconductor industry experience in design engineering, business development and product marketing, he has worked extensively with global R&D teams and several Tier-1/2 customers worldwide.

Akshay joined MediaTek Inc in 2010 and during his 4 year stay in Taiwan he held multiple senior positions in the Wireless Communications Products Group before eventually moving to India and start the Bangalore R&D center for MediaTek.

Prior to this role, he has worked in the United States for several renowned companies including Lucent technologies, Silicon Labs, ST-Ericsson among others, where he was primarily involved in R&D (design engineering) and global marketing roles. Akshay holds various patents and publications and has also presented in multiple conferences.

Akshay graduated with a bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Mumbai, and pursued his master’s degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh US. He has also pursued and completed the Executive MBA program from University of Texas at Austin.

A.K. MITTAL

Shri A.K. Mittal is associated with TSDSI as Advisor with special focus on standardization in wireless and wireline systems and handles standards related activities of TSDSI in 3GPP and ITU-R.

He began his career in R&D at Indian Telephone Industries Ltd and later joined Department of Telecommunication (DoT), Government of India where he worked in a variety of domains like Satellite Communication, OFC, Microwave, Mobile Networks, Switching Systems, Network Management, Licensing, Regulation, Standards, Testing and Certification etc. He was Head, Telecom Engineering Centre (TEC), the technology arm of DoT. He has also headed the National Telecom Institute of Policy Research, Innovation and Training, DoT. He has represented the Government of India in various bilateral and multilateral international meetings.

He did his graduation in Electronics and Communications Engineering in 1976 from Indian Institute of Technology, Roorkee. He also holds a Diploma in Management. He has a career of over 47+ years in the field of Telecommunications.

AK Tiwari

Mr. AK Tiwari had a distinguished career spanning over 37 years with the Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Ministry of Communications, Government of India. Throughout his tenure, he held various significant positions across several states including Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, and Jammu & Kashmir. His extensive experience culminated in his retirement as the Member (Technology) at Digi Comm Consumer Goods of India and Director General of Telecom, DoT. Served as Rapporteur for ITU Study Group on NEAX from 1993 to 1996. Played a pivotal role in regulatory compliance, policy formulation, and spectrum assignment. Instrumental in the harmonization and assignment of the historic 5G spectrum auction in 2022, facilitating the rapid rollout of 5G services in India.

Mr. Tiwari’s contributions have been vital in shaping India’s telecommunications landscape, ensuring the efficient and effective deployment of cutting-edge technology. His leadership and expertise have paved the way for advancements that continue to benefit the nation’s communication infrastructure.

Amitava Ghosh

Amitabha (Amitava) Ghosh (F’15) is a Nokia Fellow and works at Nokia Standards and Strategy. He joined Motorola in 1990 after receiving his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Since joining Motorola he worked on multiple wireless technologies starting from IS-95 to 3GPP LTE. He has more than 65 issued patents, has written multiple book chapters and has authored numerous external and internal technical papers. He is currently working on 5G Evolution and 6G technologies. He is also the chair of the NextGA (an US 6G initiative) National Roadmap Working Group. He is the recipient of 2016 IEEE Stephen O. Rice and 2017 Neal Shephard prize, Sr. editor of IEEE Access and co-author of the books titled “Essentials of LTE and LTE-A” and “5G Enabled Industrial IoT Network”.

https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=4qpk4dUAAAAJ

Amit Sethi

Amit is an experienced strategist and specialises in Network Services domain. He leads the team focused on Industry 4.0 development over 5G Private Network.

Amit is seasoned professional with demonstrated leadership skills in Strategy, Planning, Advisory Services, Organisation capability, Customer Relationship and Managed high-performing cross-functional teams in delivering transformational initiatives. He is passionate about technology and its ability to help enterprises achieve business success.

Amit has 24 years of experience, which spans across Telecom service line Incubating, nurturing and scaling leading edge technology services.

Anil Prabhakar

Prof. Anil Prabhakar received his PhD in 1997 from Carnegie Mellon University, with a dissertation on the Nonlinear Spin-wave Optical Interactions. He has been with the faculty at the Dept. of Electrical Engineering, IIT-Madras since 2002. He is the principal investigator of the Centre of Excellence on Quantum Information, Communication and Computing, leads the project on Metro Area Quantum Access Networks and is a co-founder of QuNu Labs and of Quanfluence, companies incubated by IIT Madras to translate quantum technologies. He is actively involved in a number of national and international scientific and standardization committees, a member of the Editorial board of journals, and leads the Task Force on Quantum Communication for the Quad countries. He has over 50 research publications, has co-authored a book on Spin Waves, a few book chapters, and has 18 patents on a wide range of devices in areas of photonics, magnonics and assistive devices.

Anindita Banerjee

Dr Anindita Banerjee is a senior scientist and project manager at CDAC Pune in quantum technology. She worked as Quantum Research Head and VP at QuNu Labs Pvt Ltd focusing on quantum safe solutions for cyber security. She has led the scientific R&D at Qnu Labs and played in a key role in developing India’s first Quantum Technology Product in Quantum Key Distribution and Quantum random number generator in 2021. The product is tested by various government and industry organizations. She has 4 US patents awarded on QKD and 1 Indian patent awarded in QRNG.

She has academic and research association Jaypee Institute of Information Technology (JIIT), Noida, Bose Institute Kolkata, University of Calgary and University of Brunswick Canada. She has served as an Assistant Prof. in Women College of Engineering, Durgapur and CSIR Pool Officer at Bose Institute. She has published more than 20 Journal publications. She has co-authored a book on Optical quantum computation and quantum communication published in SPIE Spotlight Series.

She joined CDAC as Adjunct scientist in corporate R&D and closely worked with policy makers on National reports and roadmaps on quantum technology. At present, she is working on MeitY funded projects on fibre QKD, QRNG and aerial quantum communication platforms. She has also introduced quantum computing course in CDAC under Corporate education program.

Apart from her academics she is Alankar in Indian Classical Dance and performed nationally and internationally under Kadamb production of Padmashree Kumudini Lakhia.

Anubha Gupta

Prof. Anubha Gupta graduated with a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from IIT Delhi in 2006. She did her bachelor’s and master’s in ECE from Delhi University in 1991 and 1997, respectively. She started her professional career with the position of Assistant Director at ALL India Radio (through Indian Engineering Services) in 1993 and worked there until Feb. 1999. In Feb. 1999, she joined Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology (NSIT), Dwarka, Delhi. She worked as Assistant Professor in the Computer Engineering Department at NSIT for eight years. From July 2011 to Dec. 2013, she worked as associate professor at IIIT Hyderabad. In Dec 2013, she joined IIIT Delhi, where she is currently working as a professor in the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering.

She has authored/co-authored more than 100 technical papers in scientific journals and conferences. She has published research papers in both engineering and education. Her research interests include biomedical signal and image processing including fMRI, MRI, EEG, ECG signal processing, genomics signal processing in cancer research, Wavelets in deep learning, and signal processing for communication engineering. Prof. Gupta is a senior member of IEEE Signal processing Society and a member of IEEE Women in Engineering Society. She is Associate Editor of IEEE Access journal, Associate Editor of IEEE Signal Processing Magazine eNewsletter, and Chair, IEEE SPS Delhi Chapter.

Ashok Kumar

Ashok Kumar is an officer of the Indian Telecom Service, Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Government of India, joining in 1995. Currently, he serves as Deputy Director General at UP W LSA, DoT. Previously, he was Deputy Director General (Wireless Access) at the National Telecommunications Institute for Policy Research, Innovations and Training (NTIPRIT). He also holds the position of Vice Chair of Study Group 16 of ITU-T.

At NTIPRIT, Ashok designed and developed a 40-hour course on 5G Mobile Communications for government telecom professionals, available on the iGot Platform. He conducted five batches of a 36-hour online 5G Certificate course for Indian Telecom Service officers and other officials. As a key member of the Expert Group created by the Government of India, he helped design 5G education and awareness programs for bureaucrats, training institutes, and academia.

During his seven-year tenure with UIDAI (2013-2020), Ashok contributed to the Aadhaar project, achieving over 90% population enrollment. He was instrumental in on-boarding over 100 government programs onto the Aadhaar platform, facilitating financial and social inclusion through Aadhaar-based banking. His efforts helped achieve Sustainable Development Goal 16.9, providing legal identity to all residents of India. He represented India at the 19th APT Policy & Regulatory Forum in Bhutan, sharing insights on the Aadhaar program.

Ashok has extensive experience in planning, design, procurement, installation, and maintenance of mobile telecommunications and other technologies. He played a key role in launching BSNL’s CDMA-based 3G mobile services and other network implementations. Internationally, he delivered a course on “WiMAX Planning and RF Engineering” to participants from 23 Commonwealth countries in South Africa.

His contributions in telecommunications, ICT standards, and educational initiatives make him a suitable candidate for the post of Vice Chair in the Informal Expert Group on the World Telecommunication/ICT Policy Forum (IEG-WTPF).

ASHWANI KUMAR

An accomplished industry leader technology & spectrum standardization with 32 years of experience in Telecom industry, Ashwani has served Ministry of Communication as Indian Telecom Service officer (1992 Batch) in DoT, BSNL and TEC for about 15 years, before starting career with British Telecom, Ericsson, and Huawei in senior leadership roles in 2006. Joining Nokia in 2023, he is leading Spectrum and 6G Engagements, to drive a balance of market dynamics, academic research, and policy ambitions in India.

As a founding member of TSDSI, he has been on the Governing Council of TSDSI for two terms (2017-2019 from Ericsson and 2020-22 from Huawei). Played a significant role in propelling TSDSI to become an Organizational Partner (OP) of 3GPP at a very early stage.

He played a lead role in global IMT spectrum standardization with significant contributions to WRC-15, WRC-19 and WRC-23 cycles. He possesses rich expertise in modelling of coex studies and conducting simulations for spectrum studies. Currently, he is driving I preparatory work for WRC-27 spectrum standardization cycle in WP5D and 3GPP.

He has been actively involved in 3GPP standardization, shaping strategy priorities and mobilizing global support for Indian requirements since Rel-11 with key focus in CP-UP separation, Carrier aggregation bands combinations for India, Rel 16, 17 Coverage extension, NR functional split, Rel 16 5G Broadcast, Rel 16/17 vertical solutions including 5G-LAN/TSN, Rel 17/18 5MBS, NTN standards in Rel 17, 18 etc. In IMT-2020 cycle, he has been active in evaluation of 3GPP RIT, DECT, EUHT RITs through 5G India Forum / COAI during 2014-2022.

Currently, he is engaged in ITU-R IMT-2030/ 6G technology development process and acting to plug India 6G program Bharat 6G Alliance with global national programs like NextGen Alliance (NGA), SNS-JU/Hexa-X in EU, 5GMF in Japan, and driving strategic alignments and harmonization of 6G architecture and concepts.

As Chair of WG – 5G for Industry, in 5GIF (COAI), driving engagements with key Vertical industries and OTs, to develop the scale for 3GPP solutions. Actively evaluating spectrum and deployment strategy for Private networks, in formal collaboration with global 3GPP MRPs – 5G-ACIA, 5GAA, 5G MAG

He did his B. Tech. (Electronics & Communication) and M. Tech. (Micro-Electronics), both from IIT Roorkee.

Arzad Alam Kherani

Dr. Arzad Alam Kherani is currently the Chair of TSDSI SGSS Working Group 2: Applications and Service Layer Standards, AI/ML. He is the Associate Professor (Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science) at IIT, Bhilai. He has worked on broad areas of Computer networks, Queueing systems, Wireless communications. He has also worked for industry for a decade and gained experience with product conceptualization, product design and development, industrial R&D and standardization. He did his Masters and PhD from IISc Bangalore.

Balaraman Ravindran

Professor B. Ravindran heads the Department of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (DSAI), the Wadhwani School of Data Science and Artificial Intelligence (WSAI) the Robert Bosch Centre for Data Science & Artificial Intelligence (RBCDSAI) and the Centre for Responsible AI (CeRAI) at IIT Madras.

Along with that, he is also the Mindtree Faculty Fellow at IIT Madras. Currently, his research interests are centred on learning from and through interactions and span the areas of geometric deep learning and reinforcement learning.

He received his PhD from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst and his Master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore. He is a senior member of the Association for Advancement of AI (AAAI) and an ACM Distinguished Member. He is a Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering

Bindoo Srivastava

Bindoo Srivastava is currently responsible for MARCOM and Partner Relations at Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI). She also serves as the MARCOM Chair at oneM2M.

She has previously led Product development activities and managed large system integration programs in Smart Grids/AMI/SCADA domains. She has also contributed to the development of India appropriate standards based on indigenous research and innovations in this space.

She earned her B.E in Electrical Engineering from Delhi College of Engineering (now D.TU) in 1988 and Masters in Electrical Energy Systems from IIT Madras in 1990.

Brejesh Lall

Prof Brejesh Lall is presently the professor in the Electrical Engineering Department and has earlier served as the head of Bharti School of Telecom Technology and Management at IITD, and the coordinator of two centers of excellence, viz. Airtel IIT Delhi Centre of Excellence in Telecommunications and Ericsson IIT Delhi 5G Center of Excellence. He is also the in-charge of an IoT laboratory that he set up in collaboration with Samsung and the Co-PI of the Project “Building an end-to-end 5G Test Bed” funded by DoT.

He has mentored 5 startups, in the areas of Virtualization, Geo-fencing, UAV based solutions and recommendation and data mining. He actively participates in building and deploying technology. He has also served as an expert in numerous government and private agencies in aspects related to signal processing.

Chandra R. Murthy

Chandra R. Murthy is a Professor in the department of Electrical Communication Engineering at the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India. His research interests are in sparse signal recovery, energy harvesting-based communication, performance analysis, and optimization of 5G and beyond communications. Papers coauthored by him have received Student/Best Paper Awards at the NCC 2014, IEEE ICASSP 2018, IEEE ISIT 2021, IEEE SPAWC 2022, and NCC 2023. He is a fellow of IEEE and the Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE).

Christian Mannweiler

Christian joined Nokia in 2015 and heads the Network Architecture Research department at Nokia Strategy & Technology, Standards in Munich, Germany since 2020. In the past, he has been working on 5G network architecture standardization, and now focuses on technology enablers of the 6th-generation (6G) of mobile networks. Christian received his M.Sc. and Ph.D. (Dr.-Ing.) degrees from University of Kaiserslautern, Germany, in 2008 and 2014, respectively. Before becoming department head, he has been a member of the Network Automation Research department at Nokia Bell Labs, where he has been working in the area of cognitive network management and SON for 5G systems. Christian is co-author of numerous publications and patent (applications) in mobile networking technology.

Debarati Sen

Debarati Sen is currently a Professor of Telecommunication at IIT-Kharagpur, India. She was a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow with CUT, Sweden, and a Senior Chief Engineer with Samsung Research, Bangalore, India prior to join IIT-Kharagpur in 2013. She has about 15 years of R&D and academic experience related to Wireless Communications including Interdisciplinary Computing. She has 25 patents to her credit and has published more than 140 papers in Journals and Conferences. Debarati has contributed to standardization research accepted in global telecommunication standardization body and also contributed her expertise as a member of several government bodies, including TSDSI, TCOE, Bharat 5G lab, AICTE etc. She has received Best Paper Award at IEEE ANTS-2016, IE(I) Young Engineers Award 2010, IETE NVG Memorial Award 2013, DAAD-IIT Faculty Fellowship 2014, Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship 2017, Faculty Excellence Award IIT-Kharagpur 2020, SERB POWER Fellowship 2023. She is a Senior Member of IEEE, Fellow of IE(I) and IETE.

Debabrata Nayak

Excellence in Cyber Security Management which includes Vulnerability Management, Threat Hunting, Security Monitoring, Incident Response, Security Awareness Training, Risk Assessment, Security Product Evaluation and Insider Threat Investigation& Artificial Intelligence Cyber Security Ecosystem, Signed MoU with top IIT, NIT, Engineering colleges Proven track record in enrolling Top 20 NIRF 100 Engineering & University to build Cloud

Excellence in driving organization-level Information Security & Business Continuity Management (BCM) functions and developing & enforcing policies, processes, controls & best practices to achieve security compliance (NIST, ISO, ENISA, GDPR, Privacy Shield, ISO 27001:2022, CSA STAR. India Privacy ACT).

Actively participated in FICCI, ASSOCHAM, CII, COAI, GISFI, NASSCOM-DSCI, TRAI, TEC, DOT, 3GPP SA3, ETSI, ITU, CSA, CSRI, IEEE, TSDSI & MeiTY, NSCS. Head of cyber security Managed security service Ericsson India Pvt Ltd. June 2022 to till Continuing.

Head of cyber security National payment corporation of India, Chief cyber security officer Huawei Telecom and Technologies of India for 12 years. ABB India Pvt. Ltd., Bangalore as Cyber security Project Manager

Dinesh Chand Sharma

Mr. Dinesh Chand Sharma since 2012 is working in the capacity of Director – Standardization, Policy and Regulation for an European Project on Standards known as “SESEI, which stands for “Seconded European Standardization Expert in India” and is acting as the focal point in India for European standards organization (European Telecommunications Standards Institute” – ETSI, European Committee for Standardization – CEN and European Committee for Electrotechnical Standardization – CENELEC) and is focusing on sectors covering Digitization and Green & Clean Technologies.

Prior to this, Mr. Sharma has worked with Ericsson for 15 years with last profile of “Director – Regulatory Affairs & Industry Relation”.

Mr. Sharma began his career in Technical Customer Support way-back in 1992 and has 24 years of industry experience covering profiles of Head of Regulatory, Account & Commercial Management and Customer Support in India and USA.

Mr. Sharma has an academic base of “Bachelor’s degree in Electronics”, Diploma with highest honors in Business Management from Stratford Institute, USA and a SUN Solaris certification.

Diwakar Sharma

DIWAKAR SHARMA received the B.Tech. degree in computer engineering from Jiwaji University, India, in 1999. He is currently pursuing the MS in wireless communication with IIIT-Bengaluru, India. He has been associated with Samsung, India, since 2000, and involved in development, system engineering and research efforts of physical layer for 4G and 5G. Currently he is contributing to 3GPP RAN-1 and ITU-R standardization efforts from Samsung. His research interests include wireless communications, MIMO schemes, and optimization issues.

Erik Guttman

Erik currently represents Samsung in the 3GPP SA1 “services”. He previous served as chair of the Services and System Aspects Technical Standards Group of the 3GPP organization (2015-2019). This group is responsible for management of activity within the Services and System Aspects working groups, as well as coordination between 3GPP groups and other standards organizations. Prior to that, he served as the chair of 3GPP SA2 “architecture” working group, which is responsible for the overall 3GPP system technical specification. Erik also served as the IETF SVRLOC and ZEROCONF WG chair and contributed actively to IETF standards in the Internet Area.

He earned a MSCS degree from Stanford University.

Havish Koorapaty

Havish Koorapaty (Havish.Koorapaty@ericsson.com) has B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Engineering from North Carolina State University. He has more than 25 years of experience with Ericsson, where he has worked in the general area of wireless communications systems including cellular and satellite systems. His work spans a wide range of topics including error control coding, location determination and tracking, mobile phone systems engineering, 4G and 5G broadband wireless system design, wireless backhaul solutions, energy efficiency, spectrum sharing and small cells. He has over 250 technical papers and patents in these areas and was the recipient of the Ericsson Inventor of the Year award in 2016.

Havish has represented Ericsson in standardization efforts in the 3GPP, TIA, IEEE and ETSI standardization bodies. He has been involved in standardization efforts in 3GPP for 5G NR and LTE including serving as the rapporteur for the licensed-assisted access study and work items. He was the recipient of the 3GPP Excellence Award in 2015. Havish served as a vice-chairman in 3GPP RAN1 from November 2017 to November 2021 and as a founding co-chair for the O-RAN next Generation Research Group (nGRG) from July 2022 to October 2023. He currently works on 6G systems, serving as the technical coordinator for Ericsson’s contributions to the ATIS Next Gen Alliance as well as monitoring 6G initiatives globally.

Hemant Rath

Hemant is a Senior Member of IEEE, holds MTech & Ph.D. from IIT Bombay, and BE from VSSUT Burla, Odisha. He has 25+ years of experience in academics, research, & industry. At present, Hemant is a Principal Scientist at TCS Research & Innovation, Bhubaneswar. His research interests include AI in Networks, 5G/6G Network Design, Augmented Robotics, QoS in Networks, Software Defined Networks, Network Security, etc. He has authored many research papers, co-authored a book, delivered several talks, and has more than 85 granted patents in the broad areas of communication and networking. Hemant has received several awards including the Distinguished Engineer Award in TCS. He is active in national and international standardization in the areas of networking and communications. Hemant is also teaching at IIT Bhubaneswar (School of Electrical Sciences) as an Adjunct Faculty since July 2019.

Jishnu Aravindakshan

Jishnu Aravindakshan is Principal Architect in CTO’s office, Tejas Networks India Limited and has 17 years’ experience in the field of Telecom.

He obtained his BTech in electronics and communication from NIT, Calicut in 2001 and Masters from IISc, Bangalore in 2004. Subsequently he joined Tejas Networks and is responsible for deciding the long term roadmap of the company. He has represents Tejas at ITU-T SG15 and has contributed towards the development of ITU-T G.8032 and MPLS-TP standards. His present interests include 5G-Adv evolution, 6G, and network slicing. He is actively involved in 5G standardization through TSDSI (Telecom Standards Development Society, India) at ITU-R WP5D, and as Individual Member at 3GPP RAN1/SA2. He was closely involved in the design of 3G/4G backhaul architecture with major Indian and International operators. He successfully represented India and TSDSI during the IMT2020 standardization activity for inclusion of LMLC (Low Mobility Large Cell) as a 5G evaluation configuration in Rural eMBB. He was the founding Chairman of Optical Access and Transport Study Group (SG3) in TSDSI which developed CPRI Fronthaul standard. Later he continued as the Vice Chairman of Study Group – Networks (SGN) and coordinated the effort from TSDSI for including a 5G Radio Interface Technology (RIT) or 5Gi from India in ITU-R IMT 2020.

He has filed 18 patents and was awarded the best paper award by IETE in 2006. He has edited the Springer’s CSI Transaction on ICT on a special issue on “Wireless in the future” as a guest editor in March 2019.

Johan Johansson

Johan, born 1968, with M.Sc. 1993, Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden, is a visionary innovator and technical expert, specializing in communication related Technology, now active in the development of 6G IMT-2030. For the last 20 years Johan has been a driving force in 3GPP, having had several leadership positions, most notably Chair of 3GPP RAN2 2019-2023. He holds a high number of patents, and has worked in a variety of positions, covering the range of SW and HW product development, 3GPP Standards, Applied and Academic research, from both network and mobile device perspectives.

Luciana Camargos

Luciana Camargos is the GSMA’s Head of Spectrum. She directs the GSMA’s range of advocacy issues on public policy relating to spectrum with national governments and multilateral organisations.

Luciana’s career began with Brazilian regulator Anatel where she worked as part of the board advisory team. She joined the GSMA in 2012, where she has continued to be active in shaping the future of mobile services at international fora such as the ITU, CITEL and other multilateral organisations.

She has chaired regulatory groups charged with developing communications regulation at the ITU and in regional organisations. She is an active supporter of the role of women in technology and is a former chair of the ITU’s Network of Women.

Luciana earned an MBA in telecommunications from the University of Strathclyde, Scotland, and a degree in electrical engineering from the University of Brasilia.

Kumar Satyam

K. Satyam is the CEO of CEQU Labs, a pioneering startup dedicated to transforming rural communities through innovative technological solutions. With nearly a decade of experience in the industry, K. Satyam has successfully collaborated with multiple governments and Institutions to implement sustainable and impactful digital initiatives.

At CEQU Labs, K. Satyam leads efforts to develop sustainable model villages in partnership with the Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee and Government of Uttar Pradesh. These model villages focus on six key areas: Network, Surveillance, eHealth, eEducation, eGovernance, and Open Commerce. Under his leadership, CEQU Labs has been at the forefront of leveraging AI and advanced technologies to make rural communities viable and self-sufficient.

K. Satyam’s significant contributions include the development and implementation of the Digigram initiative, which aims to create sustainable model villages through a comprehensive digital framework. He has also spearheaded projects that integrate social media with the Gram-Samwad AI System to enhance community engagement and grievance redressal.

His work in Dhorra village, Lalitpur, exemplifies the impact of these initiatives, where he has collaborated with local authorities to demonstrate the practical applications of technology in education, governance, and community development. Notably, K. Satyam is nominated for the prestigious UN SDG Action Awards 2023 for the work done under Digigram in Dhorra village, highlighting the initiative’s impact and potential. Additionally, he has been recognized with the NBT Award for his outstanding contributions to rural digitization.

K. Satyam’s vision and dedication to rural digitization have positioned CEQU Labs as a leader in creating innovative solutions that drive sustainable development and improve the quality of life in rural India.

M. Manivannan

Dr. M. Manivannan is a professor of Biomedical Engineering at IIT Madras, in the Department of Applied Mechanics. He has been a visiting scientist at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) of Harvard Medical School (HMS) in Boston and a visiting faculty member at the Christian Medical College (CMC) in Vellore.

Before joining IIT Madras in June 2005, Dr. Manivannan served as the chief software architect of Yantric Inc., a spin-off from MIT Touch lab, in Cambridge, MA. At IIT Madras, he established India’s first Touch lab, also known as the Haptics Lab, in 2005.

He received post-doctoral training at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge and at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) in Maryland.

Dr. Manivannan holds a Ph.D. and an M.E. from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore.

Manikantan Srinivasan

Dr. Manikantan Srinivasan, currently works at NEC Corporation India Pvt Ltd (NECI) and holds a title as Assistant General Manager. At NECI, Dr Manikantan is involved in AI/ML aided 5G and beyond related research, O-RAN alliance architecture based 5G solution development, Telecom Security, 3GPP standardization initiatives and Cyber Threat Intelligence support. Dr Manikantan was an adjunct faculty member in the Computer Science and Engineering Department at Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India. He has taught courses related to Computer Networks, Network Security, Wireless Communications and Advanced Wireless Communications and Networks. As part of Technology research his interests are in application of exploring approaches for efficient and secure disaggregated mobile network deployments, Digital Twins support using 5G and beyond networks, Quantum Cryptography and Game theory application for next generation Mobile Cellular networks. His industry experience spans 24 + years in the domain of networking and network security. He is a senior member of IEEE, a Comsoc member and an ACM member.

Maria Palombini

As the practice lead, Maria is focused on recruiting a global community of multi-disciplinary stakeholders to openly collaborate and develop solutions to enable trust in and validation of breakthrough technologies/applications that will provide sustainable and universal quality of care, privacy and protection for all individuals.

Before joining the IEEE SA, Maria founded DisruptiveRx™ Media, the first information company to bring awareness in opportunities and challenges in the use of blockchain/DLTs in the pharmaceutical value chain. Maria’s professional highlights include brand and communications leader for one of the world’s largest mining investment platforms in Africa, and bringing innovative communication and information products to global markets and various industries including financial, pharma, natural resources, and telecommunications.

Maria currently holds an MBA from the Rutgers Graduate School of Business and a BA and BS from Rutgers College at Rutgers University, the State University of New Jersey.

Mombasawala Mohmedsaeed

Mombasawala Mohmedsaeed is Chief Technology Officer (CTO) at Keysight Technologies India Pvt. Ltd. heading the team of Industry Segment Experts (ISEs) in commercial communications, network security & testing, memory & peripherals interconnects as well as automotive & energy solutions. Mombasawala has 35 years of experience in various technology domains in the field of electronics, 5G, RF, network security, high speed digital & optical interface technologies, automotive electronics, and network operations.

Mombasawala earned his bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering from SVNIT- Surat. He received a Post-Graduate Diploma in Business Management (Marketing) from IGNOU.

Mombasawala’s proficiency in English and Hindi language communication coupled with his immense knowledge on Science, Engineering and General Trends makes him a strong orator and interface to external world for Keysight. Mombasawala has strong strategic thinking, is visionary and is a man of integrity. He is very adaptive and strong team worker. He is also known for perfect execution of complex projects in Industry. Mombasawala has an excellent skill on handling multiple tasks at the same time.

Mombasawala’s hobbies include reading, listening to music and watching science fiction movies. Mombasawala is married to Shamim and has a son named Maaz.

M. V. Ravibabu

Dr. M. V. Ravibabu presently holds the position of Associate Professor and Head of the Center for Information and Communication Technology (CICT) and SIRD/ETC Unit at the National Institute of Rural Development and Panchayati Raj (NIRDPR), a ministry under the Government of India, located in Hyderabad. Additionally, he serves as an associate faculty member in the CGARD department at NIRDPR. Before joining NIRDPR, Dr. Ravibabu garnered seven years of experience as a Professor and former Chair of the School of Civil Engineering at VIT University, Vellore. He earned his M.Tech in Remote Sensing from Birla Institute of Technology, Mesra, Ranchi, in 2003, and completed his Ph.D. in Geomatics Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee in 2008. Following his doctoral studies, he conducted Postdoctoral Research at Monash University, Melbourne, from 2008 to 2009, and received the Endeavour Research Awards from the Australian Government.

Dr. M. V. Ravibabu specializes in Geomatics applications for sustainable rural development, encompassing areas such as Geo-ICT, Geo-AI, energy, environment, agriculture, and climate change. He has been recognized with various awards, including the MHRD Institute Fellowship for Doctoral Research, the Endeavour Award for Postdoctoral Research, ARCNESS-Australia, IALE-Netherlands, and CSIR. He has received the DST Young Scientist award for both Project and travel grant. Notably, Dr. Ravibabu has consistently earned research awards from 2009 to 2016 at VIT University for his publications and projects.

Namseok Ko

Dr Namseok Ko, Ph.D., is a Director in the network research division of ETRI, a non-profit research organization in Korea. He has been involved in various research projects including 5G and 6G core network systems since he joined ETRI in 2000. He received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in KAIST in 2000 and 2015, respectively. He is also an adjunct associate professor at the University of Science and Technology (UST). He holds positions as Vice-Chair of SG11 at ITU-T, and serves as Vice-Chair of the Technology Committee and Chair of the Network Technology Working Group at Korea's 6G Forum. His research interests encompass 5G/6G mobile core network architecture and enabling technologies, including network programmability, networking and computing convergence, and non-terrestrial networks.

N Mohanram

N Mohanram has more than 30 years of experience in research, technology development and infrastructure deployment & operations in the domains of high-performance computing, highspeed communications, and financial technology. He is currently the Director General of Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI) – India’s Telecom SDO.

He was earlier the Chief Executive Officer of NeSL Asset Data Limited (NADL), a fintech startup company functioning as an Account Aggregator NBFC regulated by RBI. Mohanram was also the Director General/CEO of ERNET India. Prior to ERNET India, he was the Director of C-DAC Bangalore Centre and served as the CTO of C-DAC. He was the Chief Architect of India’s first National Grid Computing Initiative and the System Software stack for the PARAM Series of Supercomputers.

Mohanram has been involved in several National Missions. He has been a member of the Technology Advisory Committee of National Supercomputing Mission (NSM), chaired by Member, NITI Aayog. Earlier, he was a member of the Technology Advisory Committee of the National Knowledge Network (NKN) mission spearheaded by the Principal Scientific Advisor to the Government of India and a member of the CSIR-4PI Advisory Committee chaired by Shri Narayana Murthy, founder of Infosys.

N Subramanian

Dr. N. Subramanian is serving as Executive Director, SETS since December, 2022. Prior to joining SETS he had served at Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC), Pune as Head and Senior Director, Corporate R&D. As part of Ministry of Electronics and Information Technology (MeitY) funded initiatives, he has lead various R&D projects in cyber security and established critical infrastructures. Contributing as member of Project Review & Steering Group of MeitY, doctoral committee, hackathon reviews, and mentored start-ups. He contributes to standards formulation activities under BIS and TSDSI and involved in guiding PhD students for research guidance.

Paventhan Arumugam

Dr Paventhan Arumugam is Director (R&D) with ERNET India (autonomous society under the Ministry of Electronics and IT). At ERNET, he has handled R&D projects in various domains, including the Internet of Things, EU funded MyFIRE Future Internet, Educational Cloud, Visible Light Communications, Tactile Internet, QKD Network Security.

Before joining ERNET, Dr Paventhan held several scientific and research positions at notable institutions such as the National Informatics Centre (HQ), New Delhi, C-DAC in Bangalore and the Rutherford Appleton Laboratory (RAL) in Oxford, UK.

He is a Senior Member of IEEE, a member of Internet Society (ISOC) and a Senior Member of ACM. His current research interests focus on protocols and standards for IoT, Cloud Computing, Quantum Communications and Software-Defined Networking.

Dr. Paventhan received his M.Tech in Computer Applications from IIT Delhi and his Ph.D in Computer Engineering from the University of Southampton, UK where he was awarded a research scholarship within the School of Engineering Sciences.

Piyush Kaul

Piyush Kaul is product lead for AI Model Efficiency SDK (AIMET) at Qualcomm, primarily working on developing algorithms for model quantization and compression of Deep Neural Networks. His work focuses on enabling optimized inference of machine learning and artificial intelligence systems on edge devices.

His research interests include the mathematical characterization and understanding of deep neural networks.

He completed his B.E. degree in Electronics and Communication Engineering in 1999, from Delhi College of Engineering, and Ph.D. from the Indian Institute of Technology Delhi, New Delhi, India in 2023.

Prasanta Sarkar

Prasanta Sarkar has a total 30 years of experience. He is currently the Head – Cognitive Systems, Advanced Engineering Department, Engineering Research Center at Tata Motors.

He built the first indigenous Engine Management System of the first Nano. Recently designed, developed and implemented Digital Twin technology for Battery, Motor and Power Electronics components. Prasanta is associated with PM’s Uchchatar Avishkar Yojana with IIT for Open Software and Hardware based Powertrains.

In TSDSI he is leading the 6G Ambulance project.

Prashant Chugh

Prashant is currently working as Scientist ‘F’ & Group Leader in C-DOT, New Delhi. He has about 28 years of work-experience in Telecommunications R&D in which over the years he has worked in various capacities and led various projects. He is currently leading the development of Post-Quantum-Cryptography (PQC) based Encryption Products and some important telecom Security projects.

In addition to his role at C-DOT, Prashant has been an active IEEE Volunteer. He is a senior member of IEEE and has previously served as Chair of IEEE Communication Society, Delhi Chapter where he was awarded by IEEE Communications Society for leading the best Chapter in IEEE Asia-Pacific region.

Prashant holds a BE degree in Electronics & Communications from (NSUT) (previously DIT) and MTech in Computer Technology from IIT Delhi.

Prashant Maru

Prashant M. Maru joined Saankhya Labs in April 2019. He has 26+ years of experience in the field of Telecommunications. He worked with Ericsson for 20 years before moving to ZTE & then to Saankhya Labs. He has been in various leadership roles in Sales & Business Development, Program/Project Management, System Integration, T&V and Engineering R&D. He has managed customers across the globe like, AT&T, Cingular Wireless, Rogers, Charter Communications, Sinclair Broadcasting, Telcel, RCOM, RJIO, Vodafone, etc.

His formative years were vested in MIT, Pune, University of Texas @ Dallas and IIM, Ahmedabad.

P. S. M. Tripathi

P. S. M. Tripathi is currently Sr. Deputy Wireless Adviser in Wireless Planning & Coordination (WPC) Wing of Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications, Government of India. Presently, he is associated with radio spectrum management and planning and engineering activities for captive wireless services. Earlier, he was associated with spectrum auction held during 2010 to 2016. He has more than 20 years of experience in management, strategy in Radio Spectrum Management and Radio Spectrum Monitoring Sector.

He was graduated from M M M Technical University, Gorakhpur (UP). He worked as Research fellow at Center for Tele-infrastructure (CTIF), Italy, Department of Electronics, University of Tor Vergata, Rome, Italy and Ph.D. from Department of Electronic Systems, Aalborg University, Denmark in the 2014.

R. Muralidharan

R. Muralidharan, Fellow of the Indian National Academy of Engineering and Life Senior Member of IEEE, Fellow IAIIA, is a Professor-of-Practice at IIT Tirupati and the CTO at Tata Advanced Systems Ltd., Mumbai, responsible for mission-critical defense technologies. With 44 years of experience in Systems Engineering, he has been an IEEE volunteer for 46 years, serving as Past Chair of IEEE India Council and Bombay Section. He was an IEEE ComSoc Standards board member (2008-2010) and IEEE Computer Society distinguished lecturer. He served as Vice Chair of the Wireless Innovation Forum and a Board member. His recent research on “AI Enabled Design Agent for Software Engineering” was presented at SERP’21 and published in SPRINGER NATURE.

Radha krishna Ganti

Radha Krishna Ganti is a Professor at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, Chennai, India. He received his B. Tech. and M. Tech. in EE from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, and a Masters in Applied Mathematics and a Ph.D. in EE from the University of Notre Dame in 2009. His doctoral work focused on the spatial analysis of interference networks using tools from stochastic geometry. He received the 2014 IEEE Stephen O. Rice Prize, and the 2014 IEEE Leonard G. Abraham Prize and the 2015 IEEE Communications society young author best paper award. He was also awarded the 2016-2017 Institute Research and Development Award (IRDA) by IIT Madras. In 2019, he was awarded the TSDSI fellow for technical excellence in standardization activities and contribution to LMLC use case in ITU. He was the lead PI from IITM involved in the development of 5G base stations for the 5G testbed project funded by DOT.

Rajat agarwal

A passionate telco professional with 18+ experience having diverse skills and proven experience in Product management and Pre-sales of 4G/5G RAN/O-RAN radio products and services, AI/GenAI network platforms and network evolution consulting areas. Driven with a believer to 𝐃𝐫𝐞𝐚𝐦, 𝐃𝐚𝐫𝐞 and 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐢𝐠𝐧 the future of mobile networks at Tech Mahindra that brings tangible value to the industry and driving initiatives in building future-ready networks for 𝐀𝐈-𝐑𝐀𝐍, 𝐍𝐓𝐍, and 𝟔𝐆.

Rajesh Kapoor

Rajesh Kapoor is Technical Consultant SGSS at TSDSI. He was Director Technical of TCIL and was on board its subsidiary Tamil Nādu Telecommunications Ltd. He was Governing Council member of TSDSI and Chairman of its Study Group on Solutions and Services.

He has over 40 years of association with Telecom Industry and have wide experience of consultancy, Project management, design, development and implementation of Telecom & ICT infrastructure, software development projects in India and abroad. The domains of projects covered Tele-education & Tele-medicine Networks, Disaster Risk mitigation Networks, Message switching networks, Data Centre, National Optical Fiber Network (NOFN/ Bharat net); Submarine OFC network (Chennai to Port Blair), Nationwide OPGW network, OSS/BSS Telecommunication systems and power systems development etc. He has 1979 pass out with Bachelor degree in electronics & electrical communication from Punjab Engineering college Chandigarh.

Ramesh Ramanathan

Ramesh Ramanathan, Principal Architect at Tata Elxsi, is a distinguished technology leader known for his expertise in software-centric telecom networks, driven by SDN/NFV and the Cloud. At Tata Elxsi, Ramesh spearheads platforms and solutions in Network Orchestration and Automation. As a member of the Technical Steering Committee (TSC) in Open-Source MANO and a standards writer for ETSI, he is at the forefront of shaping the future of connected technology. Ramesh is passionate about developing autonomous networks that transform operators into business intelligence-driven entities, shifting from cloud-centric to AI-centric networks. A frequent speaker at industry events and universities, he is dedicated to building sustainable solutions that empower customers and advance the industry.

Ravi Lakhotia

Ravi Lakhotia has over 25 years of experience in the telecom industry, having worked with both telecom OEMs and service providers. He is currently with Vodafone Idea Ltd, serving in the Strategy and Radio Planning Team with a primary focus on 5G planning.

Reena Garg

Reena Garg is Scientist-F and currently the Head of ‘Electronics and IT’ standardization Department (LITD) of BIS. At present, there are 35 Technical Committees under LITD. She is B.E. (Electronics & communication) from Netaji Subhas Institute of Technology (NSIT), New Delhi and MBA. She has 30 years of experience in the field of Electronics and IT standardization at BIS. She has handled the standardization work in various important areas including Information System Security, Biometrics, Electromagnetic Compatibility, Identification Cards, Data management systems, Computer Hardware and peripherals, Indian Language Technologies and products, Safety of AV and IT products etc. She has represented India in various IEC, ISO and JTC1 meetings. She has also worked in certification activities of BIS including worked in Compulsory registration Scheme (CRS) for safety of electronics and IT Goods. She is the secretary of ISO/IEC/JTC1/SC7 Software and Systems Engineering subcommittee, responsible for formulating international standards in this area.

R K Pathak

Mr. Rajesh Pathak, after completing Masters in Technology from Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Banaras Hindu University (BHU), Varanasi, U.P. India, joined Central Government, in 1987. Since then he has been involved in Government in various disciplines like test and certification, Make in India policy formulation and implementation. He has more than 37 years of experience with 15 year in senior positions at Government of India.

Mr Pathak is recognized for his exceptional contributions to technological innovation, indigenous manufacturing and global collaboration. He was instrumental in setting up of the Telecommunications Standards Development Society, India (TSDSI), driving technology standards and innovation. He was also Director of Telecom Centre of Excellence India and instrumental in setting up of Telecom Equipment and Services Export promotion Council(TEPC). Mr. Pathak was instrumental in conceptualization and execution of Production Linked Incentive Scheme for Telecom and Networking Products, funding guidelines Digital Communication Innovation Square and Telecom Technology Development Fund.

Prior to joining Director General position in Bharat 6G Alliance, Mr. Pathak was Member Secretary in High level Forum for 5G India 2020 and implemented “Making India 5G Ready”. He was also Member Secretary of Technology Innovation Group on 6G and played strategic role in Bharat 6G Vision document and setting up of Bharat 6G Mission as its Head.

Mr. Pathak’s strategic insight extends to nurturing Indian start-ups and the “Make In India” campaign, fostering innovation, standardisation and technology commercialisation. Leading the Bharat 6G Alliance with his forward-looking approach, he continues shaping India’s telecom landscape, inspiring innovation, collaboration, and progress.

Sandeep Agrawal

Sandeep Agrawal is affiliated to Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT) India since 2008 and is working as Scientist (Team Leader). He is a Senior IEEE Member (SMIEEE) and is actively involved in the standardization of Wi-Fi & Rural Broadband technologies and contributing actively in TSDSI, IEEE and WBA. He is currently chairing IEEE SA P2872 standard to build “Interoperable and Secure Public Wi-Fi Infrastructure and architecture (ISAWANI) and IEEE SA Rural Communication Industry Connection Program. He is also the Vice Chair of recently approved IEEE standard P2061-2024 to build “Architecture for Low mobility Energy Efficient network for Affordable broadband Access”. Apart from IEEE, he is also actively involved in Wireless Broadband Alliance (WBA) as the Chair of IoT Work Group, Led of Rural Wi-Fi project and co-led of Wi-Fi sensing project.

Sandeep Sharma

Sandeep Sharma is Vice President and Global Head of portfolio 5G/RAN/ORAN at Tech Mahindra and is part of Network Services Leadership Team. His set of responsibilities includes focusing on leading and creating solutions in 5G and ORAN domain. He is a strong experienced leader with a successful track record in leading teams in Product Management, Network Planning and Pre-sales. Sandeep possesses a strong reputation for the ability to incubate new and emerging technologies in blue, red and brown ocean markets. In 20+ years of experience, Sandeep has established his credentials both in domestic market and Global markets. It helps in positioning the key initiatives in highly competitive markets, with a focus on building long term customers and business partner relationships through consultative approach. His area of interests includes technology evolution strategy around ORAN, 6G, and Applied AI. Sandeep holds an Engineering degree, and MBA from Faculty of Management Studies, Delhi University, India.

Sanjeev Dhallam

Accomplished technology leader with leadership roles across various telecom domains in Strategy, planning, engineering and Operations.

Over 24 years of experience in telecommunications and currently heading Core Network planning, Delivery and Security across all lines of business at Bharti Airtel.

As Vice President of Core Network and Security, lead team of professionals who design, implement and maintain network infrastructure and Security solutions of Bharti Airtel’s wireless and fixed networks.

Partner with internal and external stakeholders to ensure compliance to regulatory with regulatory and industry standards as well as to identify and mitigate potential risks and threats.

Santanu Chaudhury

Santanu Chaudhury did his B.Tech (1984) in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engg and Ph.D (1989) in Computer Science and Engg. from I.I.T, Kharagpur, India. Presently, he is a Professor in the department of Electrical Engineering., IIT Delhi.

He had been Director, IIT Jodhpur and Director CSIR-Central Electronics Research Institute. He was also Dean, Undergraduate Studies at IIT Delhi. He held a number of Chair Professor positions at IIT Delhi.

He was awarded INSA medal for young scientists in 1993. He is a fellow of Indian National Academy of Engineers (INAE), The National Academy of Sciences (NASI) and International Association of Pattern Recognition (IAPR). He is also a recipient of Distinguished Alumni Award of IIT Kharagpur..

He has over 350 publications in reputed Journals and conferences and 15 patents with technologies commercialised by global industries. His areas of interests are Computer Vision, Artificial Intelligence, Digital Heritage, AR-VR &Multi-sensory media.

Satish Jamadagni

Satish Jamadagni is the Senior Vice President and Head of Global Standards at Reliance Jio, bringing more than 23 years of industry experience in the telecom domain.

He previously served as the Vice Chair of TSDSI, the Indian Standards Development Organization (SDO).

Satish is actively involved in key industry groups such as 3GPP, GSMA and the O-RAN Alliance. Earlier in his career, he co-chaired the Asia Regional Operators Group at the Small Cell Forum (SCF) and was a board member of the International Multimedia Teleconferencing Consortium (IMTC).

Satish holds around 200 granted patents in the wireless and network domain.

Satoshi Nagata

Satoshi Nagata received his B.E. and M.E. degrees from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 2001 and 2003, respectively. In 2003, he joined NTT DOCOMO, INC. He worked on the research and development for wireless access technologies for LTE, LTE-Advanced, and 5G. He had contributed to 3GPP over 15 years, and contributed 3GPP TSG-RAN WG1 as a vice chairman during November 2011 to August 2013, and contributed as a chairman during August 2013 to August 2017. He had also contributed 3GPP TSG-RAN as a vice chairman during March 2017 to March 2021, and currently a vice chairman of 3GPP TSG-SA since March 2021.received his B.E. and M.E. degrees from Tokyo Institute of Technology, Tokyo, Japan, in 2001 and 2003, respectively. In 2003, he joined NTT DOCOMO, INC. He worked on the research and development for wireless access technologies for LTE, LTE-Advanced, and 5G. He had contributed to 3GPP over 15 years, and contributed 3GPP TSG-RAN WG1 as a vice chairman during November 2011 to August 2013, and contributed as a chairman during August 2013 to August 2017. He had also contributed 3GPP TSG-RAN as a vice chairman during March 2017 to March 2021, and currently a vice chairman of 3GPP TSG-SA since March 2021.

Saurabh Mittal

Saurabh Mittal is VP, Networks with Bharti Airtel Limited and leads Standards and Technology Ecosystem. He has also been instrumental in leading Airtel’s Open RAN program and providing thought leadership for network evolutions beyond 5G. With more than 27 yrs of industry experience, he has led multiple Industry first initiatives from 2G to 5G. Besides Airtel, he has worked with Telenor, Vodafone Idea and Huawei Technologies. He has done Electronics and Communication Engineering (Hons) from Jodhpur and Executive Program in Business Management from IIM-Calcutta.

Sendil Kumar

Dr. Sendil Kumar is Director – Standards and Spectrum in the Ericsson’s Group Function Technology (GFTL) Standards & Industry Initiatives and he is based out of the Ericsson India office. At Ericsson, as member of the company’s CTO organization, he is focused on future

Technology development of IMT (5G, 6G) technologies in ITU-R and other regional 6G programs and responsible for driving 6G efforts in India in addition to future spectrum and sharing studies that are subject of the World Radio Conference in ITU-R.

He is currently responsible for leading standardization and spectrum activities in international standardization bodies like ITU-R (International Telecommunication Union Radiocommunication Sector), APT, regional standardization bodies like TEC, BIS, TSDSI and other industry bodies like GSA, GSMA, COAI and 5GIF. He represents Ericsson in various committees set up by Dept. of Telecom – 6G Task Force and National Study Groups (preparatory group for ITU-R WRC-19, WRC-23, WRC-27).

He is also the chairman of the Technology Evaluation Group as well as the 6G Cooperation Group in 5G India forum.

He holds a Ph.D. degree from Indian Institute of Technology Madras. Prior to Ericsson, He was with various R&D organizations contributing to 3GPP2 as well as 3GPP RAN standardization in EVDO,3G HSPA and 4G technology.

Sharad Arora

Sharad is an international expert in telecoms, security, IoT, and e-learning, having contributed to several national and international standards, technology committees, working groups and path-breaking initiatives in an ICT career spanning more than three decades.

Sharad is currently incubating a Leapfrog Learning Program dedicated to remote education and capability development in underserved areas.

He is also the ITU-T SG13 Liaison Rapporteur for JCA-IoT and SC&C and IT Advisor to the distinguished Child Education Society.

He is credited with several technology firsts for the country, including the launch of 3G services for Tata Docomo, introduction of mobile prepaid service node in Escotel, multi-profile and remote manageable embedded SIMs for IoT devices, etc.

His new work item ITU-T Y.RemoteEd: “Requirements, capabilities and deployment modela for e-learning in remote classrooms” contributed to ITU-T SG20 in July 2022, has gained the approval of the recent ITU-T plenary concluded on 12Jul2024.

Earlier, he has steered the introduction of oneM2M standards for IoT as National Standards during his tenure as the chairperson of TSDSI SGSS. He has co-authored the ITU-T Recommendation Y.3059, Trust Registry for Devices, which was consented as a global standard in Feb-2024. He is an author of the BIS IoT Reference Architecture, ITY.3056, Bootstrapping of IoT Devices and several other Technical Reports.

Sidharth Shukla

23 years of experience in designing and operating Telecom and IT networks, with specialization in optical and wireless heterogeneous networks.

He had completed his M. Tech (Comm Sys) from IIT Roorkee and Ph. D. in Optimizing Wireless and Optical Heterogeneous Networks from IIT Indore. Pursued research in optimizing 5G cellular and pure optical networks. Published 11 research papers in International / National Journals & Conferences of repute. Five years teaching experience of Communications and IT subjects as Head of Department in premier Military Institution.

Expertise in supervision and operation of pan-India NoC of NGN Satellite & Terrestrial networks for the Indian Army. Designed and Implemented Cellular and Optical Networks for Indian Army. Awarded Certificate of Merit from Chief of Army Staff of Indian Army and Certificates of Appreciation from Vice-Chief of Indian Army in his chequered Army Career.

Designed the framework of Regulations for 5G for the Indian Telecom sector as Jt Advisor (QoS) at TRAI. Presently Head of Next Gen Tech Network Strategy at Bharti Airtel Ltd. Leading Implementation on co-existence of Satellite and 5G networks, mmWave FWA and NBIoT applications.

Srinivasan Selvaganapathy

Srinivasan working as Principal Standardisation Lead in Nokia has more 23 years of experience in Cellular Wireless Industry since 2^ndGeneration system and continuing towards 6G.
His experience spans across product development, system engineering for various Radio access network elements and contribution to cellular standards.
Actively contributing to cellular standards for more than 13+ years for standardisation research and also as delegate for various RAN groups.
On the regional standardisation activities in India, his active participation started in TSDSI since the inception of TSDSI (2015) until now contributing to various work related to radio network related aspects. Rapporteur for Network emergency saving and Sustainability study item for 5G-Advanced /6G in TSDSI.
At Nokia, In his current role leading India standardisation activities including TSDSI. Also representing Nokia in 3GPP RAN2 as RAN2 delegate for mobility enhancements and IoT-NTN.
Specialised in concept development and SEP creation for 3GPP standards. Inventor in more than 300 published patent families most of them related to 3GPP LTE/5G standards

Subhas Mondal

Subhas leads the R&D efforts for 5G product development at HFCL as a senior vice president. In this role, Subhas works with academia, standards development organizations, and technology partners. The portfolio of products include O-RAN based Macro RU, indoor small cell, medium range outdoor small cell, and Transport Products for interconnecting disaggregated RAN nodes.

Prior to joining HFCL, Subhas served as the Chief Architect of Wipro’s organization-wide 5G initiative from 2018 to 2021. He was recognized as a Wipro Fellow for his technical contributions. Subhas has served as a member at large, IEEE SA Board of Governors and is currently the chair-elect for IEEE Communication Society, Bangalore Chapter. Subhas holds an engineering degree from IIT Kharagpur in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering.

Suresh Chitturi

Suresh Chitturi is currently the Senior Director, and Head of Technology Standards at Samsung Research – Bangalore, and serving as the TSDSI Vice-Chair since 2022. He has over 20 years of experience in the mobile technology industry and is responsible for research and standardization of emerging wireless and connectivity technologies in global and regional standardization bodies such as 3GPP, ITU, FiRa, IEEE and TSDSI.

He served as the Chair of 3GPP SA6 Working Group (2018-2022) and Vice-Chair (2015-2018), which is responsible for application enablement and critical communications applications standards for vertical markets.

He holds a Master of Science degree, in Computer Sciences from University of North Texas, a graduate of Executive Thought Leadership program from Indian Institute of Management (IIM), and an accomplished individual with several publications and granted patents.

T R Ramya

T R Ramya completed her MS and Ph.D from IITM during 2002 and 2010 respectively, both in wireless communication systems. She has about 15 years of experience encompassing academia, research and industry. She has formerly worked as a research associate in HP-IITM R&D labs, Lead Engineer in Tata Elxsi. Currently she is a Principal Research Engineer in CEWiT, focusing on issues related to 5G and also studying the work scope related to 6G. Her research interests lie in integrated sensing and communications and ambient IOT devices.

Tripti Saxena

Ms. Tripti Saxena is an officer of 1987 Batch of Indian Telecommunication Services (ITS) and joined Department of Telecommunications, Ministry of Communications, Government of India in 1989. She has done her bachelor’s degree in Engineering from Allahabad University. She has rich experience of around 35 years in telecommunication sector. She has worked under various capacities in Government of India including planning, execution and operation & maintenance of telecom networks etc. In her current role, she is working as Senior Deputy Director General (Sr. DDG) & Head of Telecommunication Engineering Centre (TEC), the technical wing of Department of Telecommunications (DoT), Government of India and also the National Standardization Body (NSB) for telecommunication sector in India.

Vijay Madan

Mr. Madan is currently associated with TSDSI as Advisor & Mentor with special focus on standardization in Services & Solutions relating to evolving technologies & applications, vertical sectors use cases, Security & Crypto, IoT, Drone Services, Cloud Computing, PPDR, Future ICT enabling systems. Also, with JWGs / Focus connected with oneM2M, 3GPP, ITU-T. He is an Elect Comm Engineer with PG in Business Administration. Multiple certifications and fellowships in other subjects including research fellowship at foreign University.

He started his 55 Years long Professional career in R&D at Telecommunications Research Centre, Department of Telecom (DoT), he has headed C-DOT, Premier Telecom R&D Centre. He was also chief Mentor of a TATA group organization besides other multiple assignments in India and Abroad.

Vikram Tiwathia

Vikram is the Deputy Director General, of the COAI. This is India’s leading industry association for Telecom, Broadband and Digital services. He interacts extensively with the ICT industry leadership and senior officials at DoT, MeitY, TRAI and other government offices for regulatory and policy matters. He was a member of the Board of GCF. An active member of national industry coalitions – CII, FICCI, Assocham, TSDSI, NASSCOM, IAMAI. He participates in many International Workshops / conferences conducted by ITU, APT etc.

He has earlier worked with: –

TATA Teleservices Limited from 2008-10.
Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) as their CIO from 2005 – 2008,
Indian Army (Signals). Took voluntary retirement in the rank of Colonel in 2005.

Vinay Shrivastava

Mr. Vinay Shrivastava is General Manager (Telecom Standards) at Reliance Jio Infocomm Ltd. He holds an M.Tech. in Telecommunication Systems from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Roorkee.

Vinay is actively engaged in standardization efforts of national interest at ITU-R, 3GPP, and TSDSI, His notable contributions include leading and contributing crucial spectrum studies towards WRC23 agenda item on behalf of Indian Telecom service providers at ITU-R WP5D1. Vinay’s contributions to the standards include the NAVIC A-GNSS standardization2 work at 3GPP and TSDSI 6G contribution3 to the ITU-R draft report on Future Technology trends towards IMT2030 & Beyond.

With over two decades of experience in the telecom industry, Vinay has rich experience of physical layer modeling, simulation, and implementation for multiple generations of cellular modems while working with a range of multinational corporations.

His work at Telecom Standards Development Society of India (TSDSI) includes following studies of National interest –

“Spectrum sharing & coexistence study for IMT in upper 6 GHz band”, TR4
“Study of 6G Use cases, Requirements, and Technologies”, TR5
“Study of 6G Waveforms”, Ongoing study item
“Joint communication and sensing in 5G networks & beyond”, Ongoing SI

Vinay’s current interests revolve around next-generation technologies, such as non- terrestrial networks, 6G waveform design, and future spectrum and coexistence studies.

Vipin Rathi

Mr. Vipin Rathi is an Assistant Professor at the University of Delhi. He is Vice-Chair and Individual Board of Directors at OpenInfra Foundation. He is the Chairperson of Linux Foundation Hyperledger Telecom SIG. He is Vice President of the Emerging Open Tech Foundation. He is the organizer of OpenStack India, Magma India, NgKore, CNCF Delhi, Open Edge Computing, Hyperledger Meetups. His research interest focuses on 5G networks, Multi-Domain Orchestration, Post Quantum Encryption, Blockchain Defined Networking.

Vishnu RAM OV

Vishnu, Consultant TSDSI, has hands-on experience in the field of Telecom industry for more than 27 years, developing and implementing standards, and holds many international granted patents. He an active member of NWG13 (National Working Group 13) in India and Vice Chair of ITU-T focus group on Autonomous Networks and co-convener of ITU-T Correspondence Group on datasets (cg dataset).

He holds a Masters degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. His current passion includes coordinating standards initiatives, industry bodies, open source and academia, mentoring student projects and coordinating the ITU “AI/ML in 5G“ Challenge across the globe. He also curates and moderates webinars under the ITU Machine learning 5G webinar series and AI for Good. Vishnu was nominated as Scientific Advisory Board Associate (SABA) member of Motorola Networks and is a senior member of IEEE.

Vivek Dua

Specialties: -Setting up IT and Telecom Networks involving mix of radio, optical, wired technologies

-Software Solutions for Billing(Retails and Interconnect)

-Contract Management (Inter Operator)

data center management
rollout of software, hardware and network services in data center
cloud computing/management
implementation of nationwide disaster management program
Product and Pricing for Wifi and Fiber to Home Programs
Business Enhancements Through Customer’s Online Engagements