Invited Short Talks

(Speakers listed below in name alphabet order)

Fumiyuki Adachi (IEEE/LEICE Life Fellow)
Professor, Tohoku University, Japan

Title: Optical & Wireless Integrated Reconfigurable User-centric Distributed mMIMO RAN for 6G systems
Time: 10:00am-10:30am, Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Abstract:
Research efforts are now intensifying worldwide to advance mobile communications towards the era of 6G systems. Due to the rapid growth of mobile data traffic, the mmWave bands have been allocated to 5G systems in addition to the sub-6 GHz bands. However, mmWave signals have serious disadvantages of high propagation path loss and frequent blockage due to their strong rectilinear propagation nature. The user-centric radio access network (RAN) based on distributed massive MIMO can turn the disadvantages of mmWave signal propagation into advantages, leading to significant improvements in both spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency. The energy efficiency can be further improved by introducing fully coherent waveform-based optical mobile fronthaul (MF) and adaptive on/off switching of distributed radio units (RUs) and by utilizing renewable energy resources. 6G RAN must also be scalable and flexible enough to adapt to dynamic changes in user distribution as well as different deployment scenarios of communication services. Furthermore, since mobile communication systems are a critical infrastructure of modern society, 6G RAN must be resilient to natural disasters. To achieve these goals, 6G RAN must be designed to be reconfigurable. The system parameters could be optimized by the RAN intelligent controller (RIC). This talk will present a possible framework for 6G RAN, focusing on recent progress in fully coherent waveform-based optical MF technology.

Biography:
Fumiyuki Adachi received the B.S. and Dr. Eng. degrees in electrical engineering from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, in 1973 and 1984, respectively. In April 1973, he joined the Electrical Communications Laboratories of NTT and started mobile communications research. From July 1992 to December 1999, he was with NTT DOCOMO, leading a research group on wideband/broadband wireless access for 3G and beyond. He contributed to developing the 3G air interface standard, known as W-CDMA. Since January 2000, he has been with Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan. Currently, he is researching resilient wireless communication technology to realize beyond 5G/6G systems as a Specially Appointed Research Fellow/Professor Emeritus at the International Research Institute of Disaster Science (IRIDeS), Tohoku University. His research interests are in the areas of wireless signal processing and networking, including multi-access, equalization, antenna diversity, cooperative transmission, channel coding, and radio resource management. He is IEEE Life Fellow and IEICE Life Fellow. He is the recipient of 2000 IEEE VTS Avant Garde Award, 2002 IEICE Achievement Award, 2004 Thomson Scientific Research Front Award, 2010 Prime Minister Invention Award, 2014 C&C Prize, 2017 IEEE VTS Stuart Meyer Memorial Award, and 2017 IEEE ComSoc RCC Technical Recognition Award.

Ender Ayanoglu (IEEE Fellow)
Professor, University of California, Irvine, USA

Title: Received Power Maximization for Discrete-Phase RISs with Elementwise Updates
Time: 5:30pm-6:00pm, Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Abstract:
The problem of optimizing discrete phases in a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to maximize the received power at a user equipment is addressed. Necessary and sufficient conditions to achieve this maximization are given. These conditions are employed in an algorithm to achieve the maximization. New versions of the algorithm are given that are proven to achieve convergence in N or fewer steps whether the direct link is completely blocked or not, where N is the number of the RIS elements, whereas previously published results achieve this in KN or 2N number of steps where K is the number of discrete phases. Thus, for a discrete-phase RIS, the techniques presented in this talk achieve the optimum received power in the smallest number of steps published in the literature. We define the uniform polar quantization (UPQ) algorithm which is an intuitive quantization algorithm that can closely approximate the continuous solution and achieve very low time-complexity. In the second part of the talk, the same problem but with a limited phase range and nonuniform discrete phase shifts with adjustable gains is addressed. Two algorithms to achieve the global optimum in linear time will be described. Depending on the phase range limitation, it is shown that the global optimality is achieved in NK or fewer and N(K + 1) or fewer steps. For this problem, two quantization algorithms and their performance will be presented.

Biography:
Ender Ayanoglu received the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Stanford University, Stanford, CA in 1982 and 1986, respectively, in electrical engineering. He was with the Communications Systems Research Laboratory, part of AT&T Bell Laboratories, Holmdel, NJ until 1996, and Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies until 1999. From 1999 until 2002, he was a Systems Architect at Cisco Systems, Inc., San Jose, CA. Since 2002, he has been a Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California, Irvine, Irvine, CA, where he served as the Director of the Center for Pervasive Communications and Computing and held the Conexant-Broadcom Endowed Chair during 2002- 2010. His past accomplishments include invention of the 56K modems, characterization of wavelength conversion gain in Wavelength Division Multiplexed (WDM) systems, and diversity coding, a technique for link failure recovery in communication networks employing erasure coding in 1990, prior to the publication of the first papers on network coding. During 2000-2001, he served as the founding chair of the IEEE-ISTO Broadband Wireless Internet Forum (BWIF), an industry standards organization which developed and built a broadband wireless system employing Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and a Medium Access Control (MAC) algorithm that provides Quality-of-Service (QoS) guarantees. This system is the precursor of today’s Fourth Generation (4G) cellular wireless systems such as WiMAX, LTE, and LTEAdvanced. From 1993 until 2014 Dr. Ayanoglu was an Editor, and since January 2014 is a Senior Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Communications. He served as the Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Communications from 2004 to 2008 and the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications-Series on Green Communications and Networking, from 2014 to 2016. He was the Founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking, from 2016 to 2020. From 1990 to 2002, he served on the Executive Committee of the IEEE Communications Society Communication Theory Committee, and from 1999 to 2001, was its Chair. Dr. Ayanoglu is the recipient of the IEEE Communications Society Stephen O. Rice Prize Paper Award in 1995 and the IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award in 1997. He received the IEEE Communications Society Joseph LoCicero Award in 2023. He has been an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer since 2022. He is an IEEE Fellow.

Azzedine Boukerche (IEEE/CAE/EIC/AAAS/AAIA Fellow)
Distinguished University Professor, University of Ottawa, Canada

Title: Leveraging Urban Computing with Smart Internet of Drones for Smart and Sustainable Megacities
Time: 11:30am-12:0pm, Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Abstract:
Urban computing (UC) is an interdisciplinary field that seeks to improve people’s lives in urban areas. To achieve this objective, UC collects and analyzes data from several sources. In recent years, the Internet of Drones (IoD) has received significant attention from the academia community and has emerged as a potential data source for UC applications. The goal of this talk is to examine how IoD can connect and leverage UC in variety of applications which include: public safety and security, environment, traffic improvement, drone-assisted networks, just to mention a few. In this context, data acquired by IoD can fill gaps in data collected from other sources and provide new data for UC considering the aerial view of drones. Thus, we shall first introduce the relationship between the concepts of UC and IoD, and then discuss our proposed general framework considering the perspective of IoD for UC followed by design guidelines of the Internet of drones’ location privacy protocols. Last but not least, we shall discuss some key challenges in this emerging area.

Biography:
Azzedine Boukerche is a Distinguished University Professor and holds a Senior Canada Research Chair Tier-1 position at the University of Ottawa, Canada. He is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, and Fellow of American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association. He is the founding director of the PARADISE Research Laboratory, and DIVA Strategic Research Network at the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (EECS), Ottawa. Prior to this, he held a faculty position at the University of North Texas, and he was a senior scientist at the Simulation Sciences Division, Metron Corp., San Diego. He spent a year at the JPL/NASA California Institute of Technology, where he contributed to a project centered on specification and verification of the software used to control interplanetary spacecraft operated by JPL/NASA Laboratory. His current research interests include Intelligent transportation, Connected and Autonomous vehicles, IoT, Wireless sensor networks, wireless networks, wireless multimedia, performance evaluation and modeling of large-scale distributed systems, distributed and urban computing, and distributed and parallel simulation. He has published several research papers in these areas, and he received about 18 Best research paper awards. He has been serving as an Associate Editor of several journals, ACM Computing Surveys, IEEE Transactions on Distributed Systems, IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, IEEE TVT, Elsevier Ad-Hoc Networks, Wiley International Journal of Wireless Communication and Mobile Computing, Wiley Security and Communication Network Journal, Elsevier Pervasive and Mobile Computing Journal, IEEE Wireless Communication Magazine, and Elsevier Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing. He was the recipient of the Premier of Ontario Research Excellence Award, Ontario Distinguished Researcher Award, Glinski Research Excellence Award, IEEE CS Golden Core Award, IEEE Canada Gotlieb Medal Award, IEEE ComSoc Exceptional Leadership Award, IEEE TCPP Exceptional Technical and Leadership Award, and IEEE ComSoft Exceptional Technical Achievement Award, and the IEEE ComSoc IoT AHSN Technical Achievement Award. He served as the General Chair for numerous IEEE/ACM sponsored International Conference, He is a Steering Committee chair for the IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing, and several IEEE/ACM conferences. He has served as Vice Chair of the IEEE CS Fellow Committee, and the IEEE VT Fellow Committee. He also served on the Hiring committee for EiC for ACM Computing Surveys, and IEEE Transactions on Sustainable Computing. He was the past EiC for ACM-ICPS.

Danijela Cabric (IEEE Fellow)
Professor, University of California, Los Angeles, USA

Title: AI/ML role in advancing 6G and a few examples
Time: 4:00pm-4:30pm, Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Abstract:
In this talk will discuss AI/ML approaches to overcoming challenges in latency, mobility, and reliability, which are critical for next generation 6G connectivity. We will present novel applications and development of AI/ML tools in physical layer signal processing for large antenna arrays, and network level fast spatial prediction, spectrum sharing, positioning and security. The discussion will highlight improvements in computational complexity, latency and reliability compared to traditional approaches and demonstrate how AI/ML can further significantly enhance network intelligence, positioning, and interference mitigation. Challenges in scalability, cost, and standardization will also be addressed, setting a pathway for future research and development.

Biography:
Danijela Cabric is a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at the University of California, Los Angeles. She received M.S. from the University of California, Los Angeles in 2001 and Ph.D. from University of California, Berkeley in 2007, both in Electrical Engineering. In 2008, she joined UCLA as an Assistant Professor, where she heads Cognitive Reconfigurable Embedded Systems lab. Her current research projects include novel radio architectures, signal processing, communications, machine learning and networking techniques for spectrum sharing, 5G millimeter- wave, massive MIMO and IoT systems. Prof. Cabric was a recipient of the Samueli Fellowship in 2008, the Okawa Foundation Research Grant in 2009, Hellman Fellowship in 2012 and the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award in 2012, and the Qualcomm Faculty Award in 2020 and 2021. Prof. Cabric is an IEEE Fellow.

Min Chen
Professor, University of Washington Bothell (UW Bothell), USA

Title: Perceptual Scale and Toolset for Endangered Language Documentation and Application
Time: 10:30am-11:00am, Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Abstract:
Nearly half of the world languages are endangered and need to be documented, analyzed, and revitalized. The work is especially challenging on the endangered pitch accent languages whose words with same characters can convey different meanings when changing in pitch. In this talk, we present a new form of audio analysis called MeT perceptual scale to capture perceived pitch changes. We also demo a consolidated platform called MeTILDA (Melodic Transcription in Language Documentation and Analysis) that hosts various linguistic tools on the cloud to enable collaboration, data-sharing, and data reuse for endangered language research and education.

Biography:
Dr. Min Chen is a Professor in Computing and Software Systems Division, School of STEM at University of Washington Bothell (UW Bothell). Prior to coming to UW Bothell, she was an Associate Professor at the Department of Computer Science, University of Montana. Her research interests include multimedia big data analytics, multimedia data mining, machine learning, and their applications on interdisciplinary projects. She received the Best Demo Award from the 2021 IEEE International Conference on Multimedia Information Processing and Retrieval, the Best Paper Award from the 15th IEEE International Conference on Information Reuse and Integration, and 2015 IGI Global Annual Excellence in Research Journal Award. Dr. Chen is currently serving as the Chair of the IEEE Computer Society Technical Community on Multimedia Computing, and the Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia and International Journal of Multimedia Data Engineering and Management. She was the TPC co-chair for 9 international conferences/symposiums/workshops, a steering committee member in 2 international conferences, and a key organizer for another 12 international conferences.

Yu Cheng (IEEE Fellow)
Professor, Illinois Institute of Technology, USA

Title: Optimizing the Age of Information in CSMA Networks – Practical Approaches and Innovations
Time: 10:30am-11:00am, Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Abstract:
With the proliferation of real-time applications, ensuring the freshness of information, as captured by the Age of Information (AoI) metric, is crucial for effective quality of experience. This talk shares our latest research on optimizing AoI in practical carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) networks, extensively adopted by Internet of Things (IoT) applications. We will begin by introducing the AoI optimization challenge within distributed CSMA networks, highlighting key limitations in existing methodologies. We then discuss two categories of newly proposed AoI analysis techniques. One integrates a large-buffer AoI queueing analysis with an innovative deep learning (DL) facilitated medium access control analysis to achieve an accurate AoI analytical framework for a tagged node sharing channel with heterogenous background nodes. The other develops a new stochastic hybrid systems (SHS)-based analytical models to enable accurate AoI analysis and optimization in real-time scenarios, where the tagged node adopts a small buffer. Our methods are generally applicable to different protocols in the CSMA family involving only off-the-shelf devices.

Biography:
Yu Cheng received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1995 and 1998, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, ON, Canada, in 2003. He is currently a Full Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago, IL, USA. His current research interests include wireless network performance analysis, machine learning, age of information, and network security. Dr. Cheng was a recipient of the Best Paper Award at QShine 2007, the IEEE ICC 2011, the Runner-Up Best Paper Award at ACM MobiHoc 2014, the National Science Foundation CAREER Award in 2011, and the IIT Sigma Xi Research Award in the Junior Faculty Division in 2013. He has served as several Symposium Co-Chairs for IEEE ICC and IEEE GLOBECOM, and the Technical Program Committee Co-Chair for WASA 2011 and ICNC 2015. He was a founding Vice Chair of the IEEE ComSoc Technical Subcommittee on Green Communications and Computing. He is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, and IEEE Wireless Communications. He was an IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer from 2016 to 2017. He was elevated to IEEE Fellow in 2024.

Xinwen Fu
Professor, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA

Title: Building Automation System Security
Time: 11:00am-11:30am, Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Abstract:
Building Automation Systems (BASs) are seeing increased usage in modern society due to the plethora of benefits they provide such as automation for climate control, HVAC systems, entry systems, and lighting controls. Many BASs in use are outdated and suffer from numerous vulnerabilities that stem from the design of the underlying BAS protocol. In this talk, we provide a comprehensive, up-to-date survey on BASs and attacks against seven BAS protocols including BACnet, EnOcean, KNX, LonWorks, Modbus, ZigBee, and Z-Wave. Holistic studies of secure BAS protocols will also be presented, covering BACnet Secure Connect, KNX Data Secure, KNX/IP Secure, ModBus/TCP Security, EnOcean High Security and Z-Wave Plus. LonWorks and ZigBee do not have security extensions. We point out how these security protocols improve the security of the BAS and what issues remain. A case study is provided which describes a real-world BAS and showcases its vulnerabilities as well as recommendations for improving the security of it. We seek to raise awareness to those in academia and industry as well as highlight open problems within BAS security.

Biography:
Dr. Xinwen Fu is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science, University of Massachusetts Lowell. He was a tenured Associate Professor at University of Central Florida. His current research interests are in computer and network security and privacy. Dr. Fu has published at prestigious conferences including the four top computer security conferences (Oakland, CCS, USENIX Security and NDSS), and journals such as ACM/IEEE Transactions on Networking (ToN) and IEEE Transactions on Dependable and Secure Computing (TDSC). He spoke at various technical security conferences including Black Hat. His research was reported by various Media including CNN, Wired, Huffington Post, Forbes, Yahoo, MIT Technology Review, PC Magazine and aired on CNN Domestic and International and the State Science and Education Channel of China (CCTV 10).

Anders Høst-Madsen (IEEE Fellow)
Professor, University of Hawaii at Manoa, USA

Title: Fundamental tradeoffs between delay and energy in wireless communications
Time: 11:30am-12:00pm, Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Abstract:
Energy consumption has become of increasing importance by the transition in communications to mobile devices with limited battery capacity. At the same time, delay needs to be carefully controlled due to the need to support the proliferation of time-sensitive services, such as video. Low latency communications is also one of the main promises of 5G and 6G communications.

In this talk we will discuss the fundamental tradeoffs between delay and energy from an information theory perspective, while including practical constraints affecting wireless communications. In order to analyze delay from an information theory perspective, it is necessary to use finite blocklength information theory. In the first part of the talk we will discuss how this fundamentally affects streaming data in single user systems. We will then involve realistic hardware models and analyze how different aspects of hardware affects this tradeoff, in particular if communications should be bursty or continuous. We will next expand to unsourced multiple access systems (UMAC). Finally, we will discuss deep reinforcement learning for delay minimization.

Biography:
He received the M.Sc. degree in engineering in 1990 and the Ph.D. degree in mathematics in 1993, both from the Technical University of Denmark. From 1993 to 1996 he was with Dantec Measurement Technology A/S, Copenhagen, Denmark, from 1996 to 1998 he was an assistant professor at Gwangju Institute of Science and Technology (GIST), Gwangju, Korea, and from 1998 to 2000 an assistant professor at Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada, and a staff scientist at TRLabs, Calgary. Since 2001 he has been with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Hawaii at Manoa, Honolulu, since 2009 as professor. He was a visiting professor at Seoul National University in 2017 and at Shenzhen Research Institute of Big Data (SRIBD) in 2018 and 2019. He was a founder and CTO (2007-2008) of Kai Medical, Inc., which is making equipment for non-contact heart monitoring. His research interests are in statistical signal processing, data science, information theory, quantum information theory, and wireless communications, including ad-hoc networks, cooperative diversity, wireless sensor networks, heart monitoring, marine mammal signal processing, big data, and learning theory. He has served as Editor for Multiuser Communications for the IEEE Transactions on Communications and as Associate Editor for Detection and Estimation for the IEEE Transactions on Information Theory. He was general co-chair of ISITA 2012 and IEEE ISIT 2014. He received the Eurasip Journal of Wireless Communications and Networks (JWCN) best paper award in 2006, the College of Engineering Faculty Research Award in 2019, and has more than 7000 citations on Google Scholar. He is a Fellow of IEEE.

Chin-Tser Huang
Professor, University of South Carolina, USA

Title: Cryptographic Shuffling for Enhancing Relational Database Security
Time: 11:30am-12:00pm, Thursday, February 20, 2025

Abstract:
Database security holds paramount importance as it safeguards an organization’s most valuable assets: data. In an age marked by escalating cyber threats, protecting sensitive information stored in databases is essential to preserve trust, prevent financial losses, and maintain legal compliance. In this talk, we introduce a paradigm of cryptographic secure shuffling algorithm designed to enhance relational database security. Encryption algorithms have long served as a means of safeguarding sensitive and proprietary data. However, our shuffling algorithm offers distinct advantages over the encryption methods: Firstly, the shuffling algorithm preserves the original data form and introduces deception, reducing the time to detect the data leak. Secondly, shuffling can complement encryption, offering an additional layer of data protection. We also talk about the pathway on improving the effectiveness and efficiency of the shuffling algorithm including the improvement on shuffling algorithm, and the adoption of hardware acceleration. The comprehensive security analyses have demonstrated the cryptographic robustness of the proposed shuffling algorithm with acceptable performance overhead.

Biography:
Dr. Chin-Tser Huang is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at University of South Carolina at Columbia. He received the B.S. degree in Computer Science and Information Engineering from National Taiwan University, Taipei, Taiwan, in 1993, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Sciences from The University of Texas at Austin in 1998 and 2003, respectively. His research interests include network security, network protocol design and verification, and distributed systems. He is the director of the Secure Protocol Implementation and Development (SPID) Laboratory at the University of South Carolina. He is the author (along with Mohamed Gouda) of the book “Hop Integrity in the Internet,” published by Springer in 2005. His research has been funded by DARPA, AFOSR, AFRL, NSF, NEH, and USDOT. He is an NRC Research Associate in 2020, and a recipient of the USAF Summer Faculty Fellowship Award and of the AFRL Visiting Faculty Research Program Award in 2008-2023. He is a Senior Member of IEEE and ACM.

Ping Ji
Professor, City University of New York, USA

Invited Talk Title: Challenges of Network Forensics
Time: 5:00pm-5:30pm, Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Abstract:
In the digital era, we are all used to access the “Internet” easily through many types of devices at almost any time. The world of “Apps” has grown from only supporting web browsers and emails to the current gigantic platform supporting over 8.9 million of apps on billions of digital devices globally. However, the balance between user anonymity (data privacy) and accountability has become increasingly complex. The rapid adoption of AI-driven tools in fundamental computer network designs has further exacerbated the challenges faced in Network Forensics. Conducting forensic analyses to trace the origins of network activity has become an increasingly daunting task. In this talk, we will delve into the challenges of Network Forensics through the lens of Internet architecture and design, while also exploring potential future research directions in this critical field.ts in geometry super-resolution, attributes deblocking and super-resolving, and dynamic point cloud sequence compression.

Biography:
Dr. Ping Ji received her B.Sc. degree in Computer Science and Technology from Tsinghua University (Beijing, China), and her Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Since graduated from UMass Amherst in year 2003, Dr. Ji has been working in the City University of New York, and received her Tenure and Full Professor title in Mathematics and Computer Science of John Jay College of Criminal Justice within 7 years after joined CUNY. Currently, at the City University of New York, Dr. Ji also serves as the Executive Officer of the Computer Science PhD Program and the Director of the Data Science Master’s Program at CUNY’s Graduate Center. Throughout her 21 years career at CUNY, Dr. Ji has pioneered many initiatives on both academic and administration sides. Dr. Ji is a founding faculty and a key contributor of John Jay College’s Digital Forensics Master’s program, and the founding director of CUNY Graduate Center’s Master’s program in Data Science.

Dr. Ji's research interests include Network Measurements and Data Analysis, Security Monitoring Strategies for Computer & Wireless Networks, Network Security, Mobile Networks, and Internet of Things (IoT). Her work has been published in well recognized professional journals and conference proceedings including IEEE/ACM Transaction on Networking (ToN), ACM SigComm, ACM SigKDD, Performance Evaluation, etc. Dr. Ji is the recipient of a number of research fundings and awards from the National Science Foundation and other government agencies and is CUNY’s leading PI of a $3.2 million award from Google for Cybersecurity research and education. She created the First Annual ACM Northeast Digital Forensics Exchange, and has been a program committee member for numerous computer networking conferences, and a guest editor for a number of professional journals. Dr. Ji’s current research is funded by Google and NSF.

Sung-Ju Lee (IEEE Fellow)
School of Computing at KAIST, Korea

Title: Federated Learning in Mental Health: Unlocking Linguistic Insights on Mobile Devices
Time: 5:30pm-6:00pm, Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Abstract:
Psychiatrists diagnose mental disorders via the linguistic use of patients. Still, due to data privacy, existing passive mental health monitoring systems use alternative features such as activity, app usage, and location via mobile devices. We propose FedTherapist, a mobile mental health monitoring system that utilizes continuous speech and keyboard input in a privacy-preserving fashion via federated learning. We explore multiple model designs by comparing their performance and overhead for FedTherapist to overcome the complex nature of on-device language model training on smartphones. We further propose a Context-Aware Language Learning (CALL) methodology to effectively utilize smartphones’ large and noisy text for mental health signal sensing. Our evaluation of the prediction of self-reported depression, stress, anxiety, and mood from 46 participants shows higher accuracy of FedTherapist compared with the performance with non-language features, achieving 0.15 AUROC improvement and 8.21% MAE reduction.

Biography:
Sung-Ju Lee earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in 2000. Following his doctoral studies, he started his industry career at the Hewlett-Packard Company, serving as a Principal Research Scientist and Distinguished Mobility Architect. Subsequently, he held the position of Principal Member of Technical Staff at the CTO Office of Narus, Inc. (now part of Symantec). In 2015, Dr. Lee transitioned to KAIST, where he currently holds the KAIST Endowed Chair Professorship. His research spans the area of mobile computing, wireless networking, ubiquitous sensing, mobile AI, network security, and human-computer interactions. Dr. Lee received the HP CEO Innovation Award in 2010 for his pivotal role in bringing innovative products to market. He has also been honored with prestigious awards, including the test-of-time paper award at ACM WiNTECH 2016, the best paper awards at IEEE ICDCS 2015 and ACM CSCW 2021, and the methods recognition award at ACM CSCW 2021. Additionally, he received the Technology Innovations Award from KAIST. Dr. Lee's leadership in the academic community is exemplified by his roles as General Chair of ACM MobiCom 2014 and co-TPC Chair of IEEE INFOCOM 2016 and ACM MobiCom 2021. He is an IEEE Fellow and an ACM Distinguished Scientist.

Victor Leung (IEEE/RSC/EIC/CAE Fellow)
Professor, University of British Columbia, Canada

Invited Talk Title: Collaborative Fault Diagnosis with Decentralized Knowledge Inference in Industrial Internet of Things
Time: 10:30am-11:00am, Thursday, February 20, 2025

Abstract:
The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) interconnects advanced sensors and devices to enhance decision-making and automate industrial operations, particularly in high-risk environments. However, these interconnected systems face vulnerabilities from component malfunctions and cyber-physical attacks, necessitating robust fault diagnosis mechanisms. Given the complexity of modern IIoT architectures with subsystems managed by diverse stakeholders, knowledge sharing—such as root causes and recovery actions—can significantly improve fault diagnosis efficiency. Thus, we propose a decentralized knowledge inference framework to enable such collaborative fault diagnosis. Each subsystem in a complex IIoT system maintains its fault knowledge in a Knowledge Bases (KB) represented as a knowledge graph, which feeds into a neural reasoning model for collaborative sharing. Furthermore, we leverage blockchain technology to ensure secure and trustworthy knowledge sharing, while an incentive mechanism promotes timely and accurate contributions from stakeholders. Evaluations show that our framework improves reasoning accuracy and reduces training effort. Additionally, insights into incentive schemes highlight strategies for optimizing collaboration in IIoT systems.

Biography:
Victor C. M. Leung is a Distinguished Professor of Computer Science and Software Engineering at Shenzhen University. He is also an Emeritus Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and director of the Wireless Networks and Mobile Systems Laboratory at the University of British Columbia (UBC), where he was the inaugural holder of the TELUS Mobility Research Chair before his retirement in 2019. His research is in the broad areas of wireless networks and mobile systems, in which he has co-authored a large number of refereed journal/conference papers and book chapters, and is named in the current Clarivate Analytics list of “Highly Cited Researchers”. Dr. Leung is serving on the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking, IEEE Transactions on Cloud Computing, IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems, IEEE Access, and several other journals. He received the IEEE Vancouver Section Centennial Award, the 2011 UBC Killam Research Prize, the 2017 Canadian Award for Telecommunications Research, the 2018 IEEE TCGCC Distinguished Technical Achievement Recognition Award, and the 2018 MSWiM Reginald Fessenden Award. He co-authored papers that won the 2017 IEEE ComSoc Fred W. Ellersick Prize, the 2017 IEEE Systems Journal Best Paper Award, the 2018 IEEE CSIM Best Journal Paper Award, and the 2019 IEEE TCGCC Best Journal Paper Award. He is a Life Fellow of IEEE, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Academy of Science), the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and the Engineering Institute of Canada.

Zhu Li
Professor, University of Missouri, Kansas City, USA

Invited Talk Title: Point Cloud Compression, Super-Resolving and Deblocking
Time: 5:00pm-5:30pm, Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Abstract:
Due to the increased popularity of augmented and virtual reality experiences, as well as 3D sensing for auto-driving, the interest in capturing high resolution real-world point clouds has grown significantly in recent years. Point cloud is a new class of signal that is non-uniform and sparse and this present unique challenges to the signal processing, compression and learning problems. In this talk, we present our multi-scale sparse convolutional learning and Graph Frourier Transform (GFT) based framework for large scale point cloud processing, with applications to the geometry and attributes super-resolution, and dynamic point cloud compression with latent space compensation. The architecture is memory efficient and can learn deep networks to handle large scale point cloud in real world applications. Initial results demonstrated that this framework achieved new state of the art results in geometry super-resolution, attributes deblocking and super-resolving, and dynamic point cloud sequence compression.

Biography:
Zhu Li is a professor with the Dept of Computer Science & Electrical Engineering, University of Missouri, Kansas City(UMKC), and the director of NSF I/UCRC Center for Big Learning (CBL) at UMKC. He received his PhD in Electrical & Computer Engineering from Northwestern University in 2004. He was the AFRL summer faculty at the UAV Research Center, US Air Force Academy (USAFA), 2016-18, 2020-24. He was Senior Staff Researcher with the Samsung Research America's Multimedia Standards Research Lab in Richardson, TX, 2012-2015, Senior Staff Researcher with FutureWei (Huawei) Technology's Media Lab in Bridgewater, NJ, 2010~2012, Assistant Professor with the Dept of Computing, the Hong Kong Polytechnic University from 2008 to 2010, and a Principal Staff Research Engineer with the Multimedia Research Lab (MRL), Motorola Labs, from 2000 to 2008. His research interests include point cloud and light field compression, graph signal processing and deep learning in the next gen visual compression, remote sensing, image processing and understanding. He has 50+ issued or pending patents, 200+ publications in book chapters, journals, and conferences in these areas. He is an IEEE senior member, Associate Editor-in-Chief for IEEE Trans on Circuits & System for Video Tech, 2020~23, Associate Editor for IEEE Trans on Image Processing(2020~), IEEE Trans.on Multimedia (2015-18), IEEE Trans on Circuits & System for Video Technology(2016-19). He is the Chair of the IEEE Visual Signal Processing & Communication (VSPC) Tech Committee. He received the Best Paper Runner-up Award at the Perception Beyond Visual Spectrum (PBVS) grand challenge at CVPR 2023, Best Paper Award at IEEE Int'l Conf on Multimedia & Expo (ICME), Toronto, 2006, and IEEE Int'l Conf on Image Processing (ICIP), San Antonio, 2007.

Jianquan Liu
Director & Senior Principal Researcher, NEC Corporation, Japan

Invited Talk Title: An Industry Perspective: Video Analytics meets Generative AI
Time: 5:00pm-5:30pm, Thursday, February 20, 2025

Abstract:
In this talk, Dr. Jianquan Liu presents an industry perspective on the convergence of video analytics and generative AI. The talk begins with an overview of video analytics, covering advancements in action recognition, object tracking, human-object interactions, scene recognition, and behavioral pattern analysis. These technologies enable efficient extraction, retrieval, visualization, and summarization of video content. The presentation then explores the impact of generative AI, particularly large language models (LLMs), on video understanding. It discusses how LLMs enhance object recognition, semantic segmentation, action recognition, captioning, visual question answering, and storytelling. Dr. Liu provides industry case studies to illustrate these applications while also addressing limitations and challenges. The talk introduces NEC's narrative summarization framework, designed to tackle key challenges in video analytics. It concludes with a demonstration of "Video with LLM" technology, showcasing its practical application in automating traffic accident investigation reports. This presentation offers valuable insights into the current state and future potential of AI-driven video intelligence, bridging the gap between technical innovation and practical application for both industry professionals and general audiences.

Biography:
Jianquan Liu is currently the Director and Head of Video Insights Discovery Research Group at the Visual Intelligence Research Laboratories of NEC Corporation, working on the topics of multimedia data processing. He is also a Visiting Professor at Nagoya University and an Adjunct Professor at Hosei University, Japan. Prior to NEC, he was a development engineer in Tencent Inc. from 2005 to 2006, and was a visiting researcher at the Chinese University of Hong Kong in 2010. His research interests include high-dimensional similarity search, multimedia databases, web data mining and information retrieval, cloud storage and computing, and social network analysis. He has published 80+ papers at major international/domestic conferences and journals, received 30+ international/domestic awards, and filed 100+ PCT patents. He also successfully transformed these technological contributions into commercial products in the industry. Currently, he is/was serving as the Industry Co-chair of IEEE ICIP 2023, 2025 and ACM MM 2023, 2024, 2025; the General Co-chair of IEEE MIPR 2021; the PC Co-chair of IEEE IRI 2022, ICME 2020, AIVR 2019, BigMM 2019, ISM 2018, ICSC 2018, ISM 2017, ICSC 2017, IRC 2017, and BigMM 2016; the Workshop Co-chair of IEEE AKIE 2018 and ICSC 2016; the Demo Co-chair of IEEE MIPR 2019 and MIPR 2018. He is a senior member of ACM, IEEE, and IPSJ, and a member of IEICE, APSIPA and the Database Society of Japan (DBSJ), a member of expert committee for IEICE Mathematical Systems Science and its Applications (2017-), and IEICE Data Engineering (2015-2021), and an associate editor of IEEE TMM (2023-), ACM TOMM (2022-), EURASIP JIVP (2023-), IEEE MultiMedia Magazine (2019-2022), ITE Transaction on Media Technology and Applications (2021-), APSIPA Transactions on Signal and Information Processing (2022-), and the Journal of Information Processing (2017-2021). Dr. Liu received the M.E. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Tsukuba, Japan.

Thomas Magedanz
Professor, Technische Universität Berlin, Germany

Invited Talk Title: Getting your hands on 6G – Emerging 6G Research Infrastructure and Toolkits for enabling an Open 6G for all
Time: 4:30pm-5:00pm, Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Abstract:
This talk is focusing on how to establish 6G-ready testbeds for enabling early and reasonable hands on 6G research and development around the globe. It will motivate key drivers for a realistic 6G and outline the current international state of play in building up 6G-ready testbeds and introduces the related new “OPEN research infrastructures and toolkits for 6G (OpenRIT 6G)” initiative (https://openrit-6g.org/) trying to create a platform for the exchange of ideas, concepts, experiences, and related toolkits to build a foundation for a 6G for all!

The talk will also outline as examples the development roadmap for the Fraunhofer FOKUS Open5GCore toolkit (www.open5GCore.org) for enabling upcoming 6G-ready testbeds but also introduces the radically new FOKUS Open 6G Core (https://www.open6gcore.org/). In addition we will introduce the TU Berlin driven open source initiative “Open6Gnet.org” (www.open6Gnet.org). All these toolkits are forming an important foundation in current German and European 6G flagship projects, such as the BMBF Open6GHub (https://www.open6ghub.de/en/) and European 6G-Sandbox Project (https://6g-sandbox.eu/).

On the background: 6G is targeted for global deployment in 2030 and global 6G research is in full swing in order to develop the needed experts and technologies around the globe. After four years of international 6G research it becomes clearer what 6G might be. This talk will focus on the 6G architecture and the software side as it seems very likely, that 6G will become an optimized 5G, thus it might be a rather evolutionary than revolutionary architecture. The reason behind is that in regard to massive 5G rollouts it will be very unlikely to replace these new global deployments by another new infrastructure, particularly as sustainability is one of the most important key 6G drivers. Thus looking at the progressing virtualization and disaggregation of 5G networks, also driven by OpenRAN principles and related open source 5G RAN and CORE initiatives, we are might be heading towards real multivendor, open 6G network infrastructures.

In addition, we see the number of private 5G networks globally rising and thus we assume that 6G might become a vivid mix of highly dynamic federated and interconnected public and very private 5G and 6G networks. This 6G network environment will have to fulfill what 5G promised, the enablement of many different vertical application domains and enablement of different business models. Thus each of these - maybe federated – networks has to be highly customized and integrated into the application context to do “the job”. This means the overall technology complexity is dramatically increasing and the networking research community has to integrate with the various vertical application communities. Following the “seeing is believing” or “demo or die” principles, we believe we need sooner than later reasonable 6G-ready testbeds, which realistically might start their life´s as 5G evolution labs.

These advancements place substantial demands on research and development infrastructures globally, particularly for various 6G research initiatives. International collaboration is becoming increasingly crucial for the early harmonization of ideas, concepts, architectures, and related protocols and interfaces. This collaboration is essential for the efficient standardization of mobile networks for 5G Advanced and 6G. Moreover, the emphasis on open, vendor-neutral technology and application testbeds, along with supporting software toolkits, is key to education and skill development. This focus is evident in different regional research centers, which aim to foster local ecosystem development. There is also a growing interest in small-scale, portable testbeds that allow students to engage with the latest networking technologies in their own environments. This approach is particularly important for developing countries to align with the 6G vision of creating a 6G network for everyone and to support the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (UN SDGs).

Biography:
Thomas Magedanz (PhD) has been professor at the Technische Universität Berlin, Germany, leading the chair for next generation networks (www.tu.berlin/en/av) since 2004. In addition, since 2003 he has been Director of the Business Unit Software-based Networks (NGNI) at the Fraunhofer Institute for Open Communication Systems FOKUS (www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/ngni) in Berlin.

For more than 35 years Prof. Magedanz has been a globally recognized ICT expert, working in the convergence field of telecommunications, Internet and information technologies, understanding both the technology domains and the international market demands. He is an open networking pioneer and the creator of many open technology testbeds and related software toolkits such as the Fraunhofer 5G Playground (www.5G-Playground.org) which is based on the Open5GCore software toolkit (www.open5Gcore.org). Since 2022, he is coordinating the German national flagship project CampusOS (www.Campus-OS.io), which aims to buildup an ecosystem for open industrial campus networks.

His current research is targeting the 5G evolution to 6G, including Core-RAN integration (including Open RAN integration), Satellite/Non-terrestrial Networks and 5G/6G integration, as well as AI/ML based 5G/6G network control and management. In this context he is acting as principal investigator in the German BMBF Open6GHub (https://www.open6ghub.de/en/) and BMBF 6G-RIC (https://6g-ric.de/) flagship projects, investigating in new organic 6G networking concepts, which have resulted in the development of the first 6G core network prototype (https://www.open6gcore.org/).

Since 2023 he also leading a new international Open Research Infrastructures and Toolkits for 6G initiative (https://openrit-6g.org/), which should enable 5G and 6G researchers around the globe to build an open 6G for all.

For more details and a longer version look here: https://www.fokus.fraunhofer.de/usr/magedanz

Shiwen Mao (IEEE Fellow)
Professor and Earle C. Williams Eminent Scholar, Auburn University, USA

Invited Talk Title: Generative AI for 3D Human Pose Completion Under RFID Sensing Constraints
Time: 4:30pm-5:00pm, Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Abstract:
Collecting paired Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) data and corresponding 3D human pose data is challenging due to practical limitations, such as the discomfort of wearing numerous RFID tags and the inconvenience of timestamp synchronization between RFID and camera data. We propose a novel framework that leverages latent diffusion transformers to generate high-quality, diverse RFID sensing data across multiple classes. This synthetic data augments limited datasets, enabling the training of a subject-adaptive transformer-based kinematics predictor to estimate 3D poses with temporal smoothness from RFID data. Additionally, we introduce a latent diffusion transformer with cross-attention conditioning to accurately infer missing joints in skeletal poses, completing full 25-joint configurations from partial 12-joint inputs. This is the first method to detect 20+ distinct skeletal joints using the Generative-AI technology for any wireless sensing-based continuous 3D human pose estimation (HPE) task. The application is particularly important for RFID-based systems, which typically capture limited joint information due to RFID sensing constraints. Our approach can extend the applicability of wireless-based pose estimation in scenarios where collecting extensive paired datasets is impractical and achieving more fine-grained joint information is infeasible, such as pedestrian and health monitoring in occluded environments.

Biography:
Shiwen Mao is a Professor and Earle C. Williams Eminent Scholar and Director of the Wireless Engineering Research and Education Center at Auburn University. Dr. Mao's research interest includes wireless networks, multimedia communications, and smart grid. He is the editor-in-chief of IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, a member-at-large on the Board of Governors of IEEE Communications Society, and Vice President of Technical Activities of IEEE Council on Radio Frequency Identification (CRFID). He received the IEEE ComSoc MMTC Outstanding Researcher Award in 2023, the SEC 2023 Faculty Achievement Award for Auburn, the IEEE ComSoc TC-CSR Distinguished Technical Achievement Award in 2019, the Auburn University Creative Research & Scholarship Award in 2018, the NSF CAREER Award in 2010, and several service awards from IEEE ComSoc. He is a co-recipient of the 2022 Best Journal Paper Award of IEEE ComSoc eHealth Technical Committee, the 2021 Best Paper Award of Elsevier/KeAi Digital Communications and Networks Journal, the 2021 IEEE Internet of Things Journal Best Paper Award, the 2021 IEEE Communications Society Outstanding Paper Award, the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society 2020 Jack Neubauer Memorial Award, the 2018 Best Journal Paper Award and the 2017 Best Conference Paper Award from IEEE ComSoc MMTC, and the 2004 IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Prize in the Field of Communications Systems. He is a co-recipient of the Best Paper/Demo Awards of 12 conferences. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.

Jelena Misic (IEEE Fellow)
Professor, Ryerson University, Canada

Invited Talk Title: Scalable quantum based solutions for Blockchain Systems
Time: 11:00am-11:30am, Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Abstract:
We propose a scalable quantum architectures which can improve operation of Blockchain systems. We focus on permissioned blockchains with consensus derived from Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT). We propose multipartite entanglement quantum architectures that can perform PBFT. Further we develop quantum systems and algorithms that can support Proof of Stake (PoS) voting as well as voter election and voting in delegated Proof of Stake systems. Validating nodes within a cluster hold qubits entangled in multipartite structures. Due to maximally connected entanglement they jointly perform voting and calculate voting results. We propose algorithms that can track voter’s behavior and detect collusion and voting centralization problem.

Biography:
Jelena Misic is a Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Ryerson University, Canada. She received her PhD in Computer Engineering from University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 1993. She is an internationally recognized expert in the area of IoT, blockchain, wireless networking and network security, where she has authored or co-authored four books, 155+ journal papers, 24 book chapters, and 215+ conference papers. She has chaired more than a dozen major international events and guest-edited more than a dozen special issues of various journals. She serves on the editorial boards of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, IEEE Internet of Things Journal, IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing, IEEE Network, ACM Computing Surveys and Ad Hoc Networks journal (published by Elsevier). She is an IEEE Fellow, ACM member and serves as IEEE VTS distinguished lecturer.

Panos Nasiopoulos (IEEE/CAE Fellow)
TELUS Mobility Research Chair Professor, University of British Columbia, Canada

Invited Talk Title: Advancing Display Technology: Objective Metrics for Flicker Assessment in Variable Refresh Rate Displays
Time: 10:00am-10:30am, Thursday, February 20, 2025

Abstract:
In this talk, we address the widespread issue of traffic congestion in metropolitan areas, highlighting its negative impacts such as delays, heightened fuel consumption, environmental pollution, and diminished quality of life. The focus shifts to a detailed examination of an innovative real-time street parking detection and localization system. Tailored for both human-driven and autonomous vehicles, this system aims to offer a holistic solution to the complexities associated with urban traffic congestion.

Biography:
Panos Nasiopoulos (Fellow, IEEE) earned his Bachelor’s degree in physics from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, and his Bachelor’s, Master’s, and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the University of British Columbia (UBC), Canada. He is a professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the former Director of the Institute for Computing, Information and Cognitive Systems and the Master of Software Systems at UBC. Before joining UBC, he was the President of Daikin Comtec US (co-founder of DVD) and Executive Vice President of Sonic Solutions. His research interests are primarily in the area of digital media, image and video processing, visual information capture and delivery, and artificial intelligence in digital media with focus on entertainment, security, autonomous driving, smart cities and health. He is the author or co-author of more than 350 research publications, and holds several patents. Dr. Nasiopoulos is a registered member of the Association of Professional Engineers and Geoscientists of British Columbia (APEGBC), Canada. He is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and has been an active member of the Standards Council of Canada, MPEG, and IEEE.

Eiji Oki (IEEE/IEICE Fellow)
Professor, Kyoto University, Japan

Invited Talk Title: Expanding Optical-Circuit-Switching Multi-Stage Networks to Ensure Admissible Blocking Probability in Data Centers
Time: 10:00am-10:30am, Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Abstract:
Future data centers are expected to integrate cutting-edge circuit switching technologies, particularly optical switching, providing superior transmission capacity and energy efficiency. A Clos network represents a multi-stage switching architecture featuring hierarchically connected switches. Its design is favored in data centers because it scales efficiently. Balancing the switching network size with the quality of an acceptable connection request presents a trade-off. It is crucial to tackle design challenges that aim to increase the switching network size while maintaining a specified admissible blocking probability. This paper presents the models for designing three-stage folded-type Clos networks, expanded from two-stage ones, with a blocking probability guarantee to maximize the switching network size. It considers both types of expanding: the input and output layer and the intermediate layer. We compare the performances of different models. Expanding the input-output layer effectively increases the switching network size, whereas expanding the intermediate layer does not.

Biography:
Eiji Oki is a Professor at Kyoto University, Kyoto, Japan. He received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in instrumentation engineering and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, in 1991, 1993, and 1999, respectively. He was with Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) Laboratories, Tokyo, from 1993 to 2008, and The University of Electro-Communications, Tokyo, from 2008 to 2017. From 2000 to 2001, he was a Visiting Scholar at Polytechnic University, Brooklyn, New York. His research interests include routing, switching, protocols, optimization, and traffic engineering in communication and information networks. He is an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer from 2024 to 2025.

Björn Ottersten (IEEE/EURASIP/AAIA Fellow)
Professor, University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Invited Talk Title: Low-Earth orbit satellite constellations towards global communication network connectivity
Time: 10:00am-10:30am, Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Abstract:
The satellite communications sector is experiencing a revolution pushed by the unprecedented deployment of satellites in low-Earth orbit (LEO) constellations for connectivity solutions. Lower launch costs have encouraged private ventures to deploy broadband LEO networks targeting market opportunities like internet services for remote or under-served areas, mobile connectivity, governmental services, and communication services for emergency response and disaster relief. However, LEO satellite operators face several technical challenges which need to be addressed to unleash the full potential of this promising technology. We discuss broad trends that are changing the design of satellite communication networks fundamentally and the challenges to establish a LEO-based extension to current 5G and coming 6G cellular networks. Specifically, signal processing advances will be addressed with focus on multi-antenna transmit precoding techniques to improve coverage and spectral/energy efficiency, as well as link reliability and security. Recent activities related to standardization, experimental validations and demonstrations will also be presented.

Biography:
Björn Ottersten received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University, Stanford, CA, USA, in 1990. He has held research positions at Linköping University, Stanford University, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, and the University of Luxembourg. He has served as Director of Research with ArrayComm, Inc., a start-up in San Jose, CA, USA, based on his patented technology. He is Professor of signal processing with the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden and the founding Director for the Interdisciplinary Centre for Security, Reliability and Trust, University of Luxembourg. He is a recipient of the IEEE Fourier Technical Field Award, the IEEE Signal Processing Society Technical Achievement Award, the EURASIP Group Technical Achievement Award, and the European Research Council (ERC) advanced research grant twice. He has authored journal papers that received the IEEE Signal Processing Society Best Paper Award in 1993, 2001, 2006, 2013, and 2019, and 9 IEEE conference papers best paper awards. He has been a board member of IEEE Signal Processing Society, the Swedish Research Council and currently serves of the boards of EURASIP and the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research as well as on the ERC Scientific Council. Dr. Ottersten has served on several editorial boards and is a fellow of IEEE, EURASIP, and AAIA.

Ci Song (IEEE Fellow)
Professor, Tsinghua University, China

Invited Talk Title: Building a Digital Power Computer for Green 6G
Time: 5:00pm-5:30m, Tuesday, February 18, 2025

Abstract:
In the upcoming era of 6G, the number of base stations, edge computing nodes and data centers is believed to be multifold, imposing a serious challenge on the network deployment and operation, especially on its how to power 6G networks in a green and sustainable way. With ever-increasing penetration rate of renewable energy in power grids, the traditional analog ICT powering systems cannot meet rigorous requirements on power feeding systems posed by 6G network application scenarios. Thanks to the recent breakthrough of power electronics semiconductors, such as power MOSFET, SiC and GaN with their outstanding material properties, it becomes feasible to carry out digital power signal processing at high switching speed, high voltage, and feverish temperature. By building a new “digital power computer” using highly efficient low voltage power switches, traditional analog power feeding systems can be transformed into digital systems, turning into a new type of network devices. In this talk, we will propose and describe the basic concept of digital power computing and the system architecture of digital power computer. Results of experiments and real-world applications show the effectiveness and efficiency of digital power computer, which offering a promising disruptive path to sustainable power feeding for green 6G.

Biography:
Dr. Song Ci is a Professor with the Electrical Engineering Department, Tsinghua University, China. He is the Founding Director of the MOE-China Mobile Joint Laboratory on ICT-Energy, a Global Visiting Professor of Technical University of Munich, and the Founder and Chief Scientist of iBatteryCloud, a digital energy storage company. His current research interests include large-scale dynamic complex system modeling and optimization, digital energy processing and computing, energy Internet and sustainable ICT. He has authored more than 300 peer-reviewed articles in those areas. He is a Fellow of IEEE and a member of ACM. He has served as an Editor or a Guest Editor in many journals and served on TPCs of numerous international conferences.

Guan-Ming Su
Director of Research – Dolby Laboraties, USA

Invited Talk Title: Gaussian Splatting: State-of-The-Art and Future Trends
Time: 5:30pm-6:00pm, Thursday, February 20, 2025

Abstract:
The goal of talk is to provide a high-level overview of the latest development of 6DoF spatial experience using Gaussian Splatting, which has become a very promising volumetric video representation in the past two years. In this talk, we will first introduce the fundamentals of Gaussian Splatting, including attributes, construction, and rendering. Based on this background, we will examine more advanced Gaussian Splatting based representations, which include different additional attributes, to enrich different desired visual effects and features. The Gaussian Splatting attribute compression, rendering quality and training speed optimization, and signal processing for computer vision related tasks will be reviewed as well to cover the great potential and wide applications using Gaussian Splatting. At the end of this talk, we will present the latest international standardization efforts and highlight the future research treads.

Biography:
Guan-Ming Su received the Ph.D. degree from the University of Maryland, College Park. He is currently the Director of Research with the Dolby Laboratories, Sunnyvale, CA, USA. He is the inventor of more than 180 U.S./international patents and pending applications. He is one of the recipients of 2020 (72nd) Technology and Engineering Emmy Award and 2021 (73rd) Engineering Emmy Award Philo T. Farnsworth Award for the contribution to high dynamic range (HDR) and wide color gamut (WCG) video as Dolby Vision format. He was the Director of the review board and R-Letter in IEEE Multimedia Communications Technical Committee. He also served in multiple IEEE international conferences, such as the TPC Co-Chair in ICME 2021, the Industry Innovation Forum Chair in ICIP 2023, and the General Co-Chair in MIPR 2024 and 2025. He served as a VP for industrial relations and development in APSIPA, from 2018 to 2019. He has been serving as the Vice Chair for Conference in IEEE Technical Committee on Multimedia Computing (TCMC), since 2021. He served as an Associate Editor for Asia Pacific Signal and Information Processing Association (APSIPA) Transactions on Signal and Information Processing, and IEEE MultiMedia Magazine.

Dirk Slock (IEEE/EURASIP Fellow)
Professor, EURECOM, France

Invited Talk Title: SemiBlind Channel Estimation in Cell-Free Massive MIMO
Time: 10:30am-11:00am, Thursday, February 20, 2025

Abstract:
We consider cell-free (CF) massive MIMO (MaMIMO) systems, which comprise a very large number of geographically distributed access points (APs) serving a smaller number of users. We exploit channel sparsity to tackle pilot contamination, which originates from the reuse of pilot sequences. Specifically, we consider semi-blind methods for channel estimation in the presence of unknown data to resolve the pilot contamination. This task is further aided by exploiting prior channel information in a Bayesian formulation. We develop Bayesian Maximum a Posteriori (MAP) and Minimum Mean Squared-Error (MMSE) channel estimators and we also provide various Cramer-Rao Bounds to characterize performance limits. One contribution is the derivation of an original type of Bayesian CRB for the semiblind problem at hand, in which a certain expectation operation is facilitated by the asymptotics of the large system dimensions considered here. Whereas Bayesian CRBs lead to fairly useless lose bounds, corresponding to unrealistic genie-aided scenarios, the proposed variation turns out to be quite tight as illustrated by performance comparisons with various estimation algorithms. In particular we develop various message passing type approximate MMSE estimation algorithms based on Expectation Propagation. In particular various complexity variations are considered and their effect on convergence speed and estimation performance, as also distributed implementations.

Biography:
Dirk T.M. Slock received an EE degree from Ghent University, Belgium in 1982. In 1984 he was awarded a Fulbright scholarship for Stanford University, USA, where he received the MSEE, MS in Statistics, and PhD in EE in 1986, 1989 and 1989 resp. While at Stanford, he developed new fast recursive least-squares algorithms for adaptive filtering. In 1989-91, he was a member of the research staff at the Philips Research Laboratory Belgium. In 1991, he joined EURECOM where he is now professor. At EURECOM, he teaches statistical signal processing (SSP) and signal processing techniques for wireless communications. He invented semi-blind channel estimation, the chip equalizer-correlator receiver used by 3G HSDPA mobile terminals, spatial multiplexing cyclic delay diversity (MIMO-CDD) now part of LTE, and his work led to the Single Antenna Interference Cancellation (SAIC) integrated in the GSM standard in 2006. Recent keywords are multi-cell multi-user (Massive) MIMO, imperfect CSIT, distributed resource allocation, variational and empirical Bayesian learning techniques, large random matrix analysis, audio source separation, location estimation and exploitation. He graduated about 40 PhD students, leading to an edited book and 500+ papers. In 1992 he received one best journal paper award from IEEE-SP and one from EURASIP. He is the coauthor of two IEEE Globecom'98, one IEEE SIU'04, one IEEE SPAWC'05, one IEEE WPNC’16 and one IEEE SPAWC’18 best student paper award, and a honorary mention (finalist in best student paper contest) at IEEE SSP'05, IWAENC'06, IEEE Asilomar'06 and IEEE ICASSP’17. He was an associate editor for the IEEE-SP Transactions in 1994-96 and the IEEE Signal Processing Letters in 2009-10. He was the General Chair of the IEEE-SP SPAWC'06 and IWAENC’14 workshops, and EUSIPCO’15. He cofounded the start-ups SigTone in 2000 (music signal processing products) and Nestwave in 2014 (Ultra Low-Power Indoor and Outdoor Mobile Positioning). He is a Fellow of IEEE and EURASIP. In 2018 he received the URSI France medal.

Emilio Calvanese Strinati (CEA Fellow)
Professor, CEA-LETI, MINATEC, France

Title: Challenges and Opportunities for Multi-User Semantic Communications
Time: 4:00pm-4:30pm, Thursday, February 20, 2025

Abstract:
In this talk we present our latest results on semantic communications. We consider a multi-user semantic communications system in which agents (transmitters and receivers) interact through the exchange of semantic messages to convey meanings. In this context, semantic languages are instrumental in structuring the construction and consolidation of knowledge, influencing conceptual representation and semantic extraction and interpretation. Yet, the crucial role of languages in semantic communications is often overlooked. When this is not the case, agent languages are assumed compatible and unambiguously interoperable, ignoring practical limitations that may arise due to language mismatching. This is the focus of this work. When agents use distinct languages, message interpretation is prone to semantic noise resulting from critical distortion introduced by semantic channels. To address this problem, this talk proposes a new semantic channel equalizer to counteract and limit the critical ambiguity in message interpretation. Our proposed solution models the mismatch of languages with measurable transformations over semantic representation spaces. We achieve this using optimal transport theory, where we model such transformations as transportation maps. Then, to recover at the receiver the meaning intended by the teacher we operate semantic equalization to compensate for the transformation introduced by the semantic channel, either before transmission and/or after the reception of semantic messages. We implement the proposed approach as an operation over a codebook of transformations specifically designed for successful communication. Numerical results show that the proposed semantic channel equalizer outperforms traditional approaches in terms of operational complexity and transmission accuracy.

Biography:
Dr. Emilio Calvanese Strinati obtained his Engineering Master degree in 2001 from the University of Rome ''La Sapienza'' and his Ph.D in Engineering Science in 2005 from Paris Telecom. He then started working at Motorola Labs in Paris in 2002. Then in 2006 he joint CEA LETI as a research engineer. From 2007, he becomes a PhD supervisor. From 2010 to 2012, he has been the co-chair of the wireless working group in GreenTouch Initiative, which deals with design of future energy efficient communication networks. From 2011 to 2016 he was the Smart Devices & Telecommunications strategic programs Director, then, until January 2020 he was the Smart Devices & Telecommunications Scientific and Innovation Director. Since February 2020 he is the Nanotechnologies and Wireless for 6G (New-6G) Program Director focusing on future 6G technologies. He is currently the coordinator of Horizon Europe projects 6G-GOALS (focused on semantic and goal oriented communications), 6G-DISAC (focused on distributed integrated communication and sensing) and EU-Korea 6G-ARROW (focused on AI enablers for 6G). He has published around 200 papers in journals, international conferences, and books chapters, and he has given more than 200 international invited talks, keynotes and tutorials. He is the main inventor of more than 100 patents. His current research interests are on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces, Semantic communications, Goal-oriented communications AI-native technologies in the contest of 6G.

Lee Swindlehurst (IEEE Fellow)
Nicolaos G. and Sue Curtis Alexopoulos Presidential Chair, Distinguished Professor, University of California, Irvine, USA

Title: Joint DOA and Parametric Near-Field Blockage Estimation
Time: 10:00am-10:30am, Thursday, February 20, 2025

Abstract:
The recent study of wireless systems with large antenna arrays operating at higher frequencies has led to the need for consideration of near-field blockages that partially occlude the array. Most work to date has modeled such blockages with shadow-based descriptions that provide limited information about the blockage and lead to unwieldy channel estimation algorithms. In this talk we discuss the use of simple diffraction-based parametric models for the blockages that provide additional information (e.g., the distance of the blockage from the array) and that provide a more concise representation that simplifies the channel estimation. In particular, we consider algorithms and performance bounds for joint direction-of-arrival (DOA) and blockage parameter estimation to demonstrate the potential of this approach.

Biography:
He received the B.S., summa cum laude, and M.S. degrees in Electrical Engineering from Brigham Young University, Provo, Utah, in 1985 and 1986, respectively, and the PhD degree in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1991. From 1986-1990, he was employed at ESL, Inc., of Sunnyvale, CA, where he was involved in the design of algorithms and architectures for several radar and sonar signal processing systems. He was on the faculty of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Brigham Young University from 1990–2007, where he was a Full Professor and served as Department Chair from 2003-2006. During 1996-1997, he held a joint appointment as a visiting scholar at both Uppsala University, Uppsala, Sweden, and at the Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. From 2006-07, he was the Vice President of Research for ArrayComm LLC in San Jose, California. After leaving ArrayComm in 2008, he began working at UC Irvine where he is currently the Assistant Dean.

Dr. Swindlehurst is a Fellow of the IEEE (2004) for contributions to the field of space-time signal processing for radar and wireless communications,[2] and a past Secretary of the IEEE Signal Processing Society. He is a former Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, and has served as a member of the Editorial Boards for the EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking and the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, and is a past Associate Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing. He was elected to the Tau Beta Pi society in 1985. He is a recipient of several paper awards: the 2000 IEEE W. R. G. Baker Prize Paper Award,[3] the 2006,[4] 2010,[5] and 2021 IEEE Signal Processing Society’s Best Paper Award, the 2006 IEEE Communications Society Stephen O. Rice Prize in the Field of Communication Theory,[6] and is co-author of a paper that received the IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award in 2001.[7]

Manos M. Tentzeris (IEEE Fellow)
Ken Byers Professor, Georgia Tech, USA

Invited Talk Title: Zero-Power Additively Manufactured FHE-Enabled Wireless/5G+ Ultrabroadband Modules for IoT, SmartAg, Industry 4.0 and Smart Cities Applications: from dream to reality
Time: 4:30pm-5:00pm, Thursday, February 20, 2025

Abstract:
In this talk, inkjet-/3D-printed antennas, interconnects, "smart" encapsulation and packages, RF electronics, RFIDs microfluidics and sensors fabricated on glass, PET, paper and other flexible substrates are introduced as a system-level solution for ultra-low-cost mass production of Millimeter-Wave Modules and Metasurfaces for Communication, Energy Harvesting and Sensing applications. Prof. Tentzeris will touch up the state- of-the-art area of fully-integrated printable FHE-Enabled broadband wireless modules covering characterization of 3D printed materials up to E-band, novel printable "ramp" interconnects and cavities for IC embedding as well as printable structures for self-monitoring and anti-counterfeiting packages. The presented approach could potentially set the foundation for the truly convergent flexible wireless sensor ad-hoc networks of the future with enhanced cognitive intelligence and "rugged" packaging. He will discuss issues concerning the power sources of "near-perpetual" RF modules, including SG-enabled wireless power grids as well as energy harvesting approaches involving thermal, EM, vibration and solar energy forms. The final step of the presentation will involve examples from shape-changing 4D-printed (origami) packages, reflectarrays and mmW wearable (e.g. biomonitoring) antennas and RF modules. Special attention will be paid on the integration of ultrabroadband (Gb/sec) inkjet-printed nanotechnology-based backscattering communication modules, opto-RF modules as well as miniaturized printable wireless (e.g.CNT) sensors for Internet of Things (IoT), SG and smart agriculture/biomonitoring applications. It has to be noted that the talk will review and present solutions for "5S Challenges" (Scalability, Sustainability, Speed, Security and Smartness) as well as future directions in the area of environmentally-friendly transient ("green") RF electronics and "smart-skin' conformal sensors as well as massively scalable "tile-by-tile" RFID-enabled autonomous reconfigurable intelligent surfaces.

Biography:
Professor Tentzeris was born and grew up in Piraeus, Greece. He graduated from Ionidios Model School of Piraeus in 1987 and he received the Diploma degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science (Magna Cum Laude) from the National Technical University in Athens, Greece, in 1992 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor in 1993 and 1998. He is currently a Professor with the School of ECE, Georgia Tech and he has published more than 550 papers in refereed Journals and Conference Proceedings, 4 books and 23 book chapters, while he is in the process of writing 1 book. He has served as the Head of the Electromagnetics Technical Interest Group of the School of ECE, Georgia Tech. Also, he has served as the Georgia Electronic Design Center Associate Director for RFID/Sensors research from 2006-2010 and as the GT-Packaging Research Center (NSF-ERC) Associate Director for RF research and the leader of the RF/Wireless Packaging Alliance from 2003-2006. Also, Dr. Tentzeris is the Head of the A.T.H.E.N.A. Research Group (20 students and researchers) and has established academic programs in 3D Printed RF electronics and modules, flexible electronics, origami and morphing electromagnetics, Highly Integrated/Multilayer Packaging for RF and Wireless Applications using ceramic and organic flexible materials, paper-based RFID's and sensors, inkjet-printed electronics, nanostructures for RF, wireless sensors, power scavenging and wireless power transfer, Microwave MEM's, SOP-integrated (UWB, mutliband, conformal) antennas and Adaptive Numerical Electromagnetics (FDTD, MultiResolution Algorithms). He was the 1999 Technical Program Co-Chair of the 54th ARFTG Conference and he is currently a member of the technical program committees of IEEE-IMS, IEEE-AP and IEEE-ECTC Symposia. He was the TPC Chair for the IMS 2008 Conference and the Co-Chair of the ACES 2009 Symposium. He was the Chairman for the 2005 IEEE CEM-TD Workshop. He was the Chair of IEEE-CPMT TC16 (RF Subcommittee) and he was the Chair of IEEE MTT/AP Atlanta Sections for 2003. He is a Fellow of IEEE, a member of MTT-15 Committee, an Associate Member of European Microwave Association (EuMA), a Fellow of the Electromagnetics Academy, and a member of Commission D, URSI and of the the Technical Chamber of Greece. He is the Founder and Chair of the newly formed IEEE MTT-S TC-24 (RFID Technologies). He is one of the IEEE C-RFID DIstinguished Lecturers and he has served as one IEEE MTT-Distinguished Microwave Lecturers (DML) from 2010-2012.

Haohong Wang
General Manager, TCL Research America, USA

Title: Redefining Filmmaking: The Power of AI and Digital Transformation
Time: 11:00am-11:30am, Thursday, February 20, 2025

Abstract:
In the dynamic world of filmmaking, the fusion of AI and digital transformation is unlocking unprecedented creative possibilities. This talk will first examine how AI-driven tools are transforming traditional filmmaking workflows, then demonstrate how digitization can elevate both directability and visual quality in AI-assisted production. By integrating these technologies, filmmakers can streamline processes, enhance collaboration, and democratize access to cutting-edge production resources. Through real-world examples of AI-powered storytelling and digital content creation, we will explore how these innovations are redefining the industry. Join us to discover how AI is not just a tool, but a catalyst for a new era in filmmaking, empowering creators, and reshaping cinematic experiences.

Biography: Haohong Wang leads TCL's AI research, strategic partnerships, content development, and streaming services in North America. He is the founder of TCLtv+ and the visionary behind the TCL FILM MACHINE program, the world’s first accelerator for AI filmmaking. Recognized as one of the "Top 20 Transformative Triumphs in Home Entertainment" by Media Player News in 2024, the program has redefined the industry. As a pioneer in AI filmmaking, Dr. Wang has served as Executive Producer on eight groundbreaking generative AI films, which have earned accolades like Best AI Film, Best AI Short, and Best AI Animation at international AI film festivals. Before joining TCL, Dr. Wang held leadership and technical roles at AT&T, Qualcomm, Marvell, and Cisco. His contributions to the field have garnered numerous honors, including the IEEE MMTC Distinguished Service Award, the APSIPA Industrial Distinguished Leader Award, and the Red Dot Winner Award. A prolific scholar and innovator, Dr. Wang has co-authored five books, published over 100 papers, and held more than 160 patents. He was the Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Communications and served in the Steering Committee of IEEE Transactions on Multimedia. He has chaired the IEEE ICME Steering Committee, the IEEE Multimedia Communications Technical Committee, and IEEE Technical Committee on Human Perception & Multimedia. He was the General Chair of ACM Multimedia 2017, and IEEE ICME 2011, and the TPC Chair of IEEE Globecom 2010. Dr. Wang earned his Ph.D. from Northwestern University in Evanston, USA, and is widely recognized as an industry leader and distinguished scholar.

Jie Wang
Professor, University of Massachusetts Lowell, USA

Title: AI Assisted Academic Writing and Paper Reviewing
Time: 10:30am-11:00am, Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Abstract:
We present and demonstrate an AI-powered paper editing system and paper review system. The paper editing system is designed to assist PhD students and researchers in writing and editing research papers, while the paper review system enhances the peer-review process for academic publications. Both systems are built by our team on AI-Oracle Machines for Intelligent Computing technology, which integrates advanced algorithms (including combinatorial, statistical, data mining, and machine-learning algorithms), deep mathematics (such as category theory and type theory), in-house trained non-neural and neural network models, and both fine-tuned and out-of-the-box pre-trained AI models. • Paper Editing System: This system learns and extracts the structure, writing style, and formatting style of a sample paper uploaded by the user. It allows users to input content in plain text for each section and provides AI-assisted editing, fine-tuning, restructuring, managing of figures and references, and formatting. The system coverts user inputs into a formatted paper in the specified LaTeX template, ready for submission to professional journals or conferences. • Paper Review System: Designed for editorial boards, conference program committees, and competition organizers, this system streamlines the review process by offering automated assessments of academic and competition papers.

Biography: Dr. Jie “Jed” Wang joined the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Lowell in 2001 as Full Professor, and chaired the department for 9 years from 2007 to 2016. He has been Director for greater China Partnership of the US-based Consortium for Mathematics an Its Applications (COMAP) since 2011. He was Assistant Professor of Computer Science and then Associate Professor of Computer Science at the University of North Carolina prior to joining UMass. He received a PhD in Computer Science from Boston University in 1990, an MS in Computer Science and a BS in Computational Mathematics both from Sun Yat-sen University in, respectively, 1984 and 1982. He has 30 years of teaching and research experience and has worked as a network security consultant in a national bank. His research interests include data modeling and applications, text mining and learning, text automation systems, machine learning, algorithms and combinatorial optimizations, medical computation, network security, and computational complexity theory. He has published over 180 journal and conference papers, 12 books, and 4 edited books. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, IBM, Intel, and other companies. He is active in professional service, including chairing conference program committees and organizing workshops, serving as journal editors and the editor-in-chief of a book series on mathematical and interdisciplinary modeling. He has graduated 18 PhD students and is currently directing 5 PhD students.

Naoaki Yamanaka (IEEE/IEICE Fellow)
Professor, Keio University, Japan

Invited Talk Title: Very-low-delay massive wavelength division multiplexed optical network using Newly structured hollow-core fiber and its application
Time: 11:30am-12:00pm, Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Abstract:
Newly structured fiber called Hollow-Core Fiber (HCF) had been equipped into the campus for ultra-low latency network. In Keio university open lab, we constructed HCF network among four building. HCF transfer the optical signal through the air core not glass core materials. Therefor, three main futures are achieved as follow: 1st is Ultra high-power transmission having 1000 times larger which can apply to energy transmission like power over fiver, PWoF. 2nd is very-low delay because of small refractive index of about 1. 3rd is optical transmission without degradation due to optical non-linearity which can apply to analog signal transmission for example radio over fiber, RoF. So that we propose massively-wavelength parallel optical paths with hollow-core fiber to realize the ultra-low latency path. We will use multi-band including S,C,L-Band etc. And using less-nonlinearity, more dense wavelength can be transmitted. Because we can use huge number of wavelength, so one user uses one wavelength without packet or flame multiplexing. So multiplexed delay can me neglected. This paper also describes other new futures such as power over fiber (PWoF) for IoT ONU and analogue radio over fiber (ARoF) for 5G signal extension tested in the Keio university future optical network open research center. These technologies will be key to a reliable and smart Beyond 5G society.

Biography:
Dr. Yamanaka graduated from Keio University, Japan where he received B.E., M.E., and Ph. D. degrees in engineering in 1981, 1983 and 1991, respectively. In 1983 he joined Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation's (NTT's) Communication Switching Laboratories, Tokyo, Japan. His research areas are Network Architecture in Optical Network, Cloud Computing, Smart Network, Communication Protocol, and Optical Switching System. He received best paper award from IEEE CPMT and IEICE. And several best conference paper award including IEEE Globecom. He was a director of Asia Pacific Board at IEEE Communications Society, and is now president of IEICE. He is an IEEE Fellow, an IEICE Fellow, IPSJ senior member and IEEJ member.

Qiang Ye
Dalhousie University, Canada

Title: Adversarial Attacks and Defences for Intrusion Detection Systems
Time: 11:30am-12:00pm, Thursday, February 20, 2025

Abstract:
Intrusion detection systems (IDSs) have become essential components of modern communication networks. The primary responsibility of an IDS is to monitor communication networks for malicious attacks or policy violations. Over the past years, machine learning (ML) and deep learning (DL) have been employed to construct effective IDSs. However, recent studies have shown that the reliability of ML/DL-based IDSs is questionable under adversarial attacks. In this talk, we will discuss the adversarial attacks that can be launched against IDSs and the defense strategies that can be employed to protect them from such attacks.

Biography:
Qiang Ye is a Professor in the Faculty of Computer Science at Dalhousie University, Canada. His current research interests lie in the area of communication networks in general. Specifically, he is interested in Wireless Networks, Internet of Things (IoT), Network Security, and Machine Learning. He has published a series of papers in top publication venues such as IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON), IEEE Transactions on Parallel and Distributed Systems (TPDS), IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (TWC), IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM), and ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoc). He has been the co-symposium chair for several tier-1 international conferences such as IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM ). He received a Ph.D. in Computing Science from the University of Alberta in 2007. His M. Engr. and B. Engr. in Computer Science and Technology are from Harbin Institute of Technology, P.R. China. He is a Senior Member of IEEE.

Andrea Zanella
Professor, University of Padova, Italy

Title: Goal-Oriented Communication and Control in Cyber-Physical Systems
Time: 11:00am-11:30am, Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Abstract:
This talk explores the field of goal-oriented communication in cyber-physical systems (CPS), where efficient transmission strategies prioritize task-relevant information to optimize control performance while minimizing channel use. The synergy between multi-agent learning and Partially Observable Markov Decision Processes (POMDPs) is highlighted as a powerful framework for coordinating communication and control. Key challenges, such as scalability, real-time adaptability, and heterogeneous environments, will be discussed, offering insights into the future of CPS communication and control.

Biography:
Andrea Zanella is Full Professor at the University of Padova. Prior to that he has been a visiting scholar at the University of California- Los Angeles, where he collaborated to Prof. Mario Gerla on the definition and modeling of Internet’s protocols. Prof. Zanella’s work focuses on innovative solutions that enhance the effectiveness of IT services. He is particularly interested in the intersection of technology and sustainability, exploring how ICT can be leveraged to improve urban environments and foster smarter, more connected communities. His contributions to the field have been recognized through 220+ publications in prestigious journals and conferences, and he actively collaborates with international research teams.

Michele Zorzi (IEEE Fellow)
Professor, University of Padova, Italy

Title: Performance Evaluation of IoT LoRa Networks on Mars Through ns-3 Simulations
Time: 11:00am-11:30am, Thursday, February 20, 2025

Abstract:
In recent years, there has been a significant surge of interest in Mars exploration, driven by the planet’s potential for human settlement and its proximity to Earth. In this paper, we explore the performance of the LoRaWAN technology on Mars, to study whether commercial off-the-shelf IoT products, designed and developed on Earth, can be deployed on the Martian surface. We use the ns-3 simulator to model various environmental conditions, primarily focusing on the Free Space Path Loss (FSPL) and the impact of Martian dust storms. Simulation results are given with respect to Earth, as a function of the distance, packet size, offered traffic, and the impact of Mars’ atmospheric perturbations. We show that LoRaWAN can be a viable communication solution on Mars, although the performance is heavily affected by the extreme Martian environment over long distances.

Biography:
Michele Zorzi received his Laurea and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Padova in 1990 and 1994, respectively. During academic year 1992/1993 he was on leave at the University of California San Diego (UCSD). After being affiliated with the Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Italy, the Center for Wireless Communications at UCSD, and the University of Ferrara, in November 2003 he joined the faculty of the Information Engineering Department of the University of Padova, where he is currently a professor. His present research interests include performance evaluation in mobile communications systems, random access in mobile radio networks, ad hoc and sensor networks and IoT, energy constrained communications protocols, 5G millimeter-wave cellular systems, and underwater communications and networking. He was Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Wireless Communications from 2003 to 2005, Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Communications from 2008 to 2011, and is currently the founding Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking. He was Guest Editor for several Special Issues in IEEE Personal Communications, IEEE Wireless Communications, IEEE Network, and IEEE JSAC. He served as a Member-at-Large in the Board of Governors of the IEEE Communications Society from 2009 to 2011, and as its Director of Education from 2014 to 2015. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.