How do we put Europe to the forefront of 6G research and innovation?

Arturo Azcorra received his M.Sc. degree in Telecommunications Engineering from the Universidad Politecnica de Madrid (UPM) in 1986 and his PhD from the same university in 1989. In 1993, he obtained an MBA with honors from Instituto de Empresa.

He is the founder and current Director of the international research institute IMDEA Networks, with a double affiliation as Full Professor at University Carlos III of Madrid (UC3M). Since 2016 to date he is the Vice President of the 5TONIC Laboratory for the development of 5G Technologies.

He is a member of the European Academy of Sciences (Academia Europaea), an IEEE Senior Member and an ACM SIGCOMM Member. He has been visiting researcher at MIT and UC Berkeley, among other research institutions. Since 2015 to 2018 he was the Chairman of the Expert Advisory Board of "Networld 2020" European Technology Platform. Since 2015 to date he is a member of the Partnership Board of the European 5G PPP.

He has participated in and/or directed 58 research and technological development projects, from the first EU Framework Programme to the current H2020. Prof. Azcorra has coordinated the EU projects 5G-TRANSFORMER, 5G-CROSSHAUL, TRILOGY-2 and CARMEN, and the CONTENT, E-NEXT and E-NET European Networks of Excellence.

He has served as a Program Committee Member in many international conferences, including several editions of IEEE PROMS, IDMS, QofIS, ACM CoNEXT and IEEE INFOCOM. He is the founder of the ACM CoNEXT conference series and was the general chair of its first edition. He has published over 140 scientific papers in books, international magazines and conferences.

In addition to his scientific achievements, Dr. Azcorra has a relevant track record of research management. He was deputy Vicerrector of Academic Infrastructures at U. Carlos III from 2000 to 2007. He served as Director General for Technology Transfer and Corporate Development at the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation from 2009 to 2010, and then appointed Director General of CDTI (Spanish agency for industrial research) from 2010 to 2012.

Bernard Barani joined the European Commission in 1994 after 11 years as Communication engineer in industry on military optical systems and with the European Space Agency on advanced satcom programmes. He is currently Deputy head of unit in the CONNECT Directorate General of the European Commission where he leads the definition and implementation of the 5G Public Private Partnership launched in 2013 to support 5G European R&D and industrial deployment. Main field of activities covers strategic R&D planning and implementation including future beyond 5G systems, standardization, international cooperation, demonstration and pilot programmes, and the implementation of the 5G Action Plan launched in 2016 to support early 5G deployment in Europe. He is also vice chairman of the Steering committee of the EUCNC conference showcasing telecom research sponsored by the EU programmes. He has an engineering degree from the "Ecole National Supérieure des Télécommunications de Bretagne".

David has recently been named as the ETSI Director of New Technologies (NET), which involves tracking the latest ICT technology trends and relevant research projects in order to identify appropriate standards needs and opportunities for ETSI.

In addition, the NET team works on outreach initiatives towards the research and innovation communities, both in and outside of ETSI, as well as the landscaping of technology trends and engagement with key European research programs such as Horizon 2020 / Horizon Europe.

David has more than 25 years’ experience in the telecommunications sector, which includes 20 years of experience in ICT standardization.

Emmanuel Dotaro is the director of ICT and Security labs at Thales Secure Communications and Information Systems. He joined Thales in 2009 as director of innovation for C4I systems. Beside his current research and innovation management activity he is involved in various National and European ICT and Cybersecurity initiatives. He serves in both 5G IA and ECSO PPP’s associations boards as well as various Technical Committees or clusters of the digital ecosystem. His current areas of interests are network virtualization and softwarization, cloud brokering, security as a service, security policies enforcement in 5G and IoT systems as well as certification, detection, remediation related security topics.

Representative of the Software Networks Working Group at 5G IA, Head of Telecom and Media Market at Atos Research & Innovation, Atos Research & Innovation

Mr. Josep Martrat holds a Degree in Telecommunication Engineering from Polytechnic University of Catalonia (UPC). He is currently Market Manager of Telecom, Media and Edge Technology at Atos Research and Innovation. He works on the establishment of the innovation strategy for Atos’ portfolio around telecoms. His research activity includes study of Cloud technologies, network virtualization (SDN/NFV) and new vertical services. He coordinated research projects such as BonFIRE initiative about designing, building and operating a multi‐cloud facility for experimentation with hybrid clouds (public & private). He was elected member of the Steering Board of 5G Industry Association for the period 2013-2016. He has coordinated 5G SONATA / 5GTANGO projects about agile network service development and deployment on software networks that released a NFV-based SDK, a validation and verification (V&V) NFV catalogue and MANO service platform. He is currently coordinating Affordable5G initiative about creating an affordable solution targeting specific needs of private network roll-outs.