Aarne is a Data & AI Senior Manager at Accenture with close to 20 years of experience in strategy consulting, software and ML engineering, technology leadership, and academic research. He specializes in natural language processing, large language models, and machine learning. Prior to joining Accenture, Aarne worked at Silo AI as a Lead AI Scientist and Head of R&D, developing LLMs and production-grade AI. He has also worked as the UK CTO and the global ML lead at Nordcloud, business strategy consulting director at Gartner, as a technology strategy consultant at Accenture, and product manager at Nokia. Aarne’s educational background includes a PhD in Language Technology from the University of Helsinki, an MSc in Computational Linguistics from King’s College London, and a BSc from the London School of Economics.

Aarno Pärssinen received the Doctor of Science degree in electrical engineering from the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, in 2000. In 1996, he was a Research Visitor at the University of California at Santa Barbara. From 2000 to 2011 he was with Nokia Research Center, Helsinki, Finland where he served as a member of Nokia CEO Technology Council from 2009 to 2011. From 2011 to 2013, he was at Renesas Mobile Corporation, Helsinki, Finland and then joined Broadcom, Helsinki, Finland as part of business acquisition until September 2014. Since September 2014 he has been with University of Oulu, Centre for Wireless Communications, Finland where he is currently a Professor. He leads Devices and Circuits research area in 6G flagship program financed by Academy of Finland. His research interests include wireless systems and transceiver architectures for wireless communications with special emphasis on the RF and analog integrated circuit and system design. He has authored and co-authored one book, two book chapters, more than 150 international journal and conference papers and holds several patents. He is also one of the original contributors to Bluetooth low energy extension, now called as BT LE. He served as a member of the technical program committee of Int. Solid-State Circuits Conference in 2007-2017, chairing the wireless subcommittee in 2014-2017.

Head of Policy & Regulation, Real Wireless & Chairman, UK-SPF

Dr. Abhaya Sumanasena PhD CEng SMIEEE MIET is a leader renowned for his strategic insight and hands-on expertise in addressing challenges related to spectrum, regulation and technology issues. Currently at the helm of Real Wireless’s Policy and Regulation practice, Abhaya also holds key positions, including being a member of the Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Board (OSAB) and Chairman of the UK Spectrum Policy Forum (UK SPF).

Abhaya’s leadership extends to guiding teams in technology strategy and policy development, spectrum auction support, and performing techno-economic and business case analyses for emerging technologies within national regulatory authorities, MNOs and vendors.

In his previous roles, Abhaya successfully delivered multi-million-pound strategic network capacity programs at Three UK and provided leadership in deploying the UK’s first HSDPA network. Abhaya also played an influential role in maintaining UK propositions and developing spectrum policies at Ofcom.

Akihiro Nakao received B.S. (1991) in Physics, M.E. (1994) in Information Engineering from the University of Tokyo. He was at IBM Yamato Laboratory, Tokyo Research Laboratory, and IBM Texas Austin from 1994 till 2005. He received M.S. (2001) and Ph.D. (2005) in Computer Science from Princeton University. He taught as an associate professor (2005-2014) and as a professor (2014-2021) in Applied Computer Science, at Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies, the University of Tokyo.

He has served as Vice Dean of the University of Tokyo’s Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies (2019-2021). In April 2021, he has moved to School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo (2021-present). Since April 2023, he has been serving as Head of Department of System Innovations, School of Engineering. He was appointed as an adviser to the President of the University of Tokyo (2019-2020) and has been a special adviser to the President of the University of Tokyo (2020-present). He is serving as Director, Collaborative Research Institute for NGCI, （Next-Generation Cyber Infrastructure）, the University of Tokyo (2021-present). He has been appointed as the first guest professor at the University of Oulu and its Faculty of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (ITEE) in September 2023.

For social services, he has been playing several important roles in Japanese government and also at research societies. He has also been appointed Chairman of the 5G Mobile Network Promotion Forum (5GMF) Network Architecture Committee by Japanese government. He has been appointed as Chairman of 5G/Beyond 5G committee, Space ICT Promotion Initiative Forum, International Committee, and Beyond 5G Promotion Consortium as well (2020-present). From 2020 to present, he is a chair and advisor of IEICE technical committee on network systems (NS) as well as a chair of IEICE technical committee on cross-field research association of super-intelligent networking (RISING). He has been elected to become the president of Communication Society, IEICE, in 2024.

Dr Alain Mourad has 20+ years of experience in wireless industrial R&D. He is currently a Senior Director at InterDigital and the Head of Future Wireless Europe Lab in London (UK) leading research on 5G evolution towards 6G. Prior to InterDigital, Alain was a Principal Standards Engineer at Samsung Electronics R&D (UK) and previously a Senior Engineer at Mitsubishi Electric R&D Centre Europe (France). Throughout his career, Alain has been active in the research and standardization of wireless systems (3GPP, IEEE802, DVB, ATSC, ETSI, IETF). Alain is a prolific inventor with over 50 issued patents and several additional patent applications. He received Samsung Electronics Inventor of the Year Award in 2012 and 2013, InterDigital Innovation Award in 2016, 2018 and 2020, 2018 Global Telecoms Award “Highly Commended” for “Advancing the road to 5G”, and the 2021 CSI Award “Highly Commended” for “Best 5G technology or service”.

Alan is the Principal Technologist at Macrometa. His career spans various technology leadership roles within the TMT sector in both technology Start-Ups and Multinationals, with a focus in the last 5 years on Edge Computing. In his spare time, he enjoys video gaming, playing the guitar and trying to teach mathematics to his 8-year-old

Aleksi Helakari is an experienced solutions architect leader with a strong technical background in Automation and DevOps within the EMEA region.

As a senior technical consultant with over 15 years’ experience and proven success within the telecommunications sector, including scientific and test & automation roles at Nokia, his innovative approach and focus on automation and transformation has helped to generate successful technical and business outcomes for customers.

Aleksi has worked with new and evolving technologies, involved in large scale transformation programs and implemented successful automation strategies with multiple Network Equipment Manufacturers and Service Providers enabling significant operational savings.

In his current role as Head of Technical Office, Aleksi is responsible for leading the EMEA Technical Subject Matter Expert team and is the technical authority in the EMEA region for customer specific solution architectures. He works closely with Spirent’s product and solution teams to ensure that portfolio development is aligned with customer needs and requirements and to assure that Spirent can deliver meaningful solutions and business outcomes to its customers.

Alicja Pitthan is a Senior Business Development and Innovation Manager at Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier. In her role, she assesses potential and drives the realization of growth opportunities in international wholesale.

Prior to joining Deutsche Telekom Global Carrier, Alicja worked in transformation and project management as an inhouse consultant and IT strategist. She is passionate about business transformation and culture change.

Dr. Angelos Goulianos is a terrestrial and satellite systems expert with over 15 years of experience in the field of wireless communications. He is part of the 5G Strategic Programme Line (SPL) team at European Space agency (ESA), Centre for Space Applications and Telecommunications (ECSAT). Angelos is driving and managing numerous activities in the field of Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) and their integration with terrestrial 5G deployments (TN). In addition, he is the technical lead of the ECSAT 5G/6G hub, a 5G SPL initiative to foster collaboration and innovation among terrestrial/satellite operators, vendors, and system integrators. He is following closely the Satellite Special Interest Group (SSIG) as well as the latest 3GPP standardization activities. His main research interests involve direct to device communications, NTN deployment architectures, standardized open interfaces for terrestrial and space systems, as well as service management and orchestration for TN/NTN, among others.

Prior to joining ESA, Angelos was with Real Wireless, Satellite Applications Catapult and University of Bristol (UK), where he was leading numerous R&D and commercial activities in satcom systems engineering, 5G/LTE system performance, OTA testing and OpenRAN. Angelos holds a PhD from University of Surrey, and he is the author of over 30 journal and conference papers in the field of wireless communications.

Mr Ari Kynäslahti has a long career working at Nokia. He joined Nokia in the beginning of 1995. In Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks he has worked in many manager positions, for example as Head of Mobile Networks Product Management, Head of LTE Product Management, Head of Global Radio Sales and Head of WCDMA Product Management as well as multiple positions in R&D and Business Development.

In his current position as Vice President Strategy & Technology, CTO he is responsible for creating business, technology and partnership strategies for MN and contributing to Nokia level strategy. He is also responsible for MN level portfolio and investment management as well as roadmaps and product decisions for MN SoC:s, BTS platform including RF platforms and baseband platforms and to define and maintain the product leadership plans in RF, BB, automation, AI/ML, ORAN/vRAN architecture and Private Wireless Networks. In addition to these, in his current position he is managing the co-operation with key interface partners, i.e. R&D, sales, standardization, research, chipset vendors and device vendors.

Mr Kynäslahti has M.Sc in Radio Technology with two minors: Corporate Strategy & international business and Economy from Helsinki University of Technology.

Professor Evans has BSC and PhD degrees from the University of Leeds, is a Fellow of the UK Royal Academy of Engineering and of the IET and senior member of IEEE and AIAA. From 1968 to 83 he was British Telecom lecturer to Reader at the University of Essex in Telecommunication systems. He was appointed to the Alec Harley Reeves chair of Information systems engineering at the University of Surrey in 1983 and was founder Director of the Centre for satellite engineering research and then the Centre for Communication Systems Research. He was also a founder Director of Surrey SatelliteTechnology Ltd. He was Dean of Engineering 99-01 and Pro-Vice Chancellor for research and Enterprise from 01-09. He now heads satellite communications research in the Institute for Communications Research and 5GIC at Surrey.

Bart Vanbrabant is responsible for the company’s product strategy and leads the innovation and development of our product portfolio. Bart has over 15 years of experience in managing and operating large-scale IT and network infrastructures. He holds a PhD in configuration management of distributed systems.

Chathura Sarathchandra is a senior staff researcher at InterDigital Labs Europe. He leads projects on system enablers for emerging technologies (such as Metaverse/XR) and he is the Innovation Manager of HEU 6G-XR project. CHathura is a senior member of IEEE. He also regularly participates in various pre-standardization and standardization activities.

He received his B.Sc. Hons. and Ph.D from the school of Computer Science & Electronic Engineering of the University of Essex, U.K., and he has been awarded the UEssex scholarship for pursuing his Ph.D. Chathura has worked on various private, national, E.U. and international projects. He has held several IEEE & ACM program committee memberships (e.g., ACM SIGCOMM, IEEE CloudCom, IFIP Networking). His current research interests fall within the general areas of wireless systems and mobile distributed systems.

Dale Seed is a Principal Engineer at InterDigital, Inc. where he leads projects focused on IoT research and development. He is also a member of Convida Wireless, a Joint Venture partnership between InterDigital and Sony focused on IoT Research and Development. With his 20+ years of experience, Dale has been active in product development, research and standards such as ETSI, oneM2M, 3GPP and IETF.

In this role, Dale and his team are focusing on research, innovation, prototyping and standardization of next-generation technologies such as Internet protocols, middleware services and interfaces between humans and machines. He is the (co-)author of numerous industry publications and a frequent speaker at industry events. Dale and his team actively engage in collaborations with industry-leading universities and institutions to explore next-generation technologies. Dale has held various standards leadership positions and currently serves as vice-chairman of the oneM2M Technical Plenary. He also holds 50+ granted patents in the fields of IoT and Internet protocols.

David heads the ETSI Committee Support Center (CSC) which is an International team of experts who provide comprehensive support to the numerous technical groups in ETSI. www.etsi.org

He has been active in the creation, launch and support of several key Industry Groups such as NFV, MEC, and ZSM, and is actively involved in attracting new technical standards development work into ETSI.

Previously he was involved with the “3rd Generation Partnership Project” (3GPP), supporting various core network groups and was also responsible for the launch and build of the initial M2M work in ETSI.

He has more than 25 years’ experience in the telecommunications sector, which includes 19 years of experience in standardization.

Dean Bubley (@disruptivedean) is the founder of Disruptive Analysis, an independent technology industry analyst and consulting firm based in London. He also jointly runs the Disruptive 6G initiative. An outspoken analyst & futurist with over 25 years’ experience, he specialises in mobile / telecoms fields, with an eye on the broader technological, governmental and societal contexts. He is one of the leading market observers and forecasters covering 5G, 6G, Wi-Fi, edge/cloud compute, enterprise private networks, IoT, new telecom business models, voice/video communications and broadband/spectrum policy.

He is known as a contrarian and visionary, often with challenging opinions that go against industry consensus. Speaking at over 30 conferences and other events per year, and quoted by publications such as The Economist, FT & Wall Street Journal, he is an authority and provocateur. He regularly appears in technology industry videos, podcasts and blogs.

His clients include many of the world’s leading telecom operators, vendors, regulators and industry associations, conducting advisory projects & internal workshop exercises. He also acts as associate director in charge of Network Futures research for STL Partners. He provides clients with advice and analytical opinion on topics such as emerging trend “myth-busting”, business model validation, technology innovation and go-to-market strategies, “addressable market sizing”, planning and due diligence.

Mr Bubley was formerly an equity analyst, covering communications stocks, with the UK arm of investment bank Robert W. Baird. Prior to that, he spent eight years at UK research firm Datamonitor, where he co-founded the company’s Technology business, managed the Internet & Networking area and custom consulting operations, with roles of Chief Analyst & Director of Consulting. He holds a BA in Physics from Keble College, Oxford University.