6GNet 2022 Keynotes

Keynote #1 (Onsite)

Title: An Innovation Journey Into A 6G Future: Six Holistic Challenges To Solve Today

Abstract: In this keynote, I will lay out six important challenges we need to address to ensure a prosperous development of 6G and the underpinning ecosystem. I will leverage on some important trends to argue for these challenges to be addressed in a holistic manner. The keynote is a call-to-action for academia and industry to deliver on the 6G promise. 

Bio: Mischa Dohler is now Chief Architect in Ericsson Inc. in Silicon Valley, US.

He was Professor in Wireless Communications at King’s College London, driving cross-disciplinary research and innovation in technology, sciences and arts. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET); and a Distinguished Member of Harvard Square Leaders Excellence. He is a serial entrepreneur with 5 companies; composer & pianist with 5 albums on Spotify/iTunes; and fluent in several languages. He sits on the Spectrum Advisory Board of Ofcom, and acts as policy advisor on issues related to digital, skills and education. He has had ample coverage by national and international press and media. He is featured on Amazon Prime.

He is a frequent keynote, panel and tutorial speaker, and has received numerous awards. He has pioneered several research fields, contributed to numerous wireless broadband, IoT/M2M and cyber security standards, holds a dozen patents, organized and chaired numerous conferences, was the Editor-in-Chief of two journals, has more than 300 highly-cited publications, and authored several books. He is a Top-1% Cited Scientist across all science fields globally.

He was Professor at King’s from 2013-2021, and the Director of the Centre for Telecommunications Research from 2014-2018. He is the Cofounder of the Smart Cities pioneering company Worldsensing, where he was the CTO from 2008-2014. He also worked as a Senior Researcher at Orange/France Telecom from 2005-2008.

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Keynote #2 (Onsite)

Title: The 6G security challenges

Abstract: 6G will, like many new mobile communication technology, inherits from the previous releases and introduces in parallel new features. Taking this view, we will review the security challenges that arises in 6G, illustrating this with cryptographic and hardware-based security examples.

Bio: Before his current role, Benoît Jouffrey was Vice President for 5G, responsible for the definition of the 5G strategy and the coordination of 5G activities.
Prior to Thales’s acquisition of Gemalto, Benoît held several strategic positions, including VP, Connectivity and Embedded Solutions, and VP for machine-to-machine (M2M) value-added services.

He was also the Vice President, Strategy & Development for the Gemalto Telecom Business Unit, in charge of the telecom strategy and long-range plan, and has held various sales management positions at Gemplus previously. Prior to 1999, Benoît was with Credit Agricole Indosuez (formerly Banque Indosuez).

Bio: Dr. Bernhard Quendt holds engineering degrees from the University of Stuttgart and Télécom Paris (ENST), and completed a PhD at the Technical University of Munich, where he was awarded the Rohde & Schwarz Prize. Formerly Chief Technical Officer for Siemens Digital Industries, Dr. Bernhard Quendt joined the Siemens Communications division in 1999 before being appointed Vice President R&D for Siemens Rail Automation in 2005. In 2011 he took the responsibility for platform activities and R&D as Vice President for Siemens Industrial Automation Systems and since 2015, he held the position of the Chief Technical Officer at Siemens Digital Industries. Bernhard Quendt joined Thales in 2020 as Chief Technical Officer and Senior Vice President.

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Keynote #3 (Onsite)

Title: 6G needs to break Shannon’s limits : towards a theory of semantic information
Abstract: A theory of semantic information goes beyond the common Shannon paradigm of guaranteeing the correct reception of each single transmitted word, irrespective of the meaning conveyed by the word. The idea is that a communication between two agents has a goal to be accomplished. To define this goal, we need a specific language (in practice a formal one). To each proposition of this language is associated a desired meaning. What really matters is the impact that the correct reception/interpretation of the proposition is going to have on the goal accomplishment. To each proposition or concept, we need to associate a measure of semantic information. On the practical side, thanks to this formalization, we can consider a semantic communication as having two components: sentences or propositions in a given language and the semantic content of these propositions. But what makes this approach very efficient is that the semantic content has to be transmitted once and even partially in many cases as the destination may have some a priori knowledge. Only sentences in a given language have to be transmitted all the time. We may consider captioning a video as  an example of the huge compression rate that could be achieved. In this presentation, we will propose the notion of semantic spaces to measure the semantic content of concepts or propositions.

Bio: Jean-Claude Belfiore received the Diplôme d’ingénieur (Eng. degree) from Supelec in 1985, the doctorat (PhD) from Ecole Nationale Supérieure des Télécommunications (ENST Paris) in 1989 and the “Habilitation à diriger des Recherches” (HdR) from Université Pierre et Marie Curie (UPMC) in 2001. He was enrolled in Alcatel in 1985 and then in 1989 in ENST where he is now a full professor.

He is carrying out research at the “Laboratoire de Traitement et Communication de l’Information (LTCI), joint research laboratory between ENST and the “Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique” (CNRS), UMR 5141, where he is in charge of research activities in the fields of wireless communications, coding for wireless networks and space-time coding.

Jean-Claude Belfiore has made pioneering contributions on signal design for wireless communication systems, space-time coding, cooperative and multi-user communications. He is the co-inventor, with Ghaya Rekaya and Emanuele Viterbo, of the celebrated Golden Code.
He is author or co-author of more than 170 technical papers and communications and he has served as advisor for more than 30 Ph D. thesis.
Specialties: Wireless communications, Coding, Algebraic and arithmetic tools for Coding.

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Keynote #4 (Remote)

Title: European 6G Flagship Hexa-X update on 6G

Abstract: European 6G Flagship Hexa-X has been working since Jan 2021 with a strong participation from both industry and academia. The Hexa-X vision is to connect human, physical, and digital worlds with a fabric of 6G key enablers. This talk will present the latest results from Hexa-X, including updated use cases for 6G, initial E2E architecture, addressing sustainability needs as well as updated technical enablers on 6G radio and sensing, connected intelligence and addressing vertical industry needs. More on Hexa-X from https://hexa-x.eu/ .

Bio: Mikko Uusitalo is Head of Research Department Radio Systems Research Finland at Nokia Bell Labs Finland. Mikko is leading the European 6G Flagship project Hexa-X. He obtained a M.Sc. (Eng.) and Dr.Tech. in 1993 and 1997 and a B.Sc. (Economics) in 2003, all from predecessors of Aalto University.

Mikko has been at Nokia since 2000 with various roles, including Principal Researcher and Head of International Cooperation at Nokia Research. Mikko is a founding member of the CELTIC EUREKA and WWRF, the latter one he chaired for 2004-2006. Mikko is a WWRF Fellow. Mikko has more than 70 granted patents or patent families and roughly the same amount in the application phase.

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Keynote #5 (Remote)

Title: Considerations for the next G

Abstract: In this talk, Ankur reflects upon his learnings from building and operating cloud, edge, and access networks and poses some thought problems for the research community as it contributes to the next G.

Bio: Ankur Jain is Vice President of Engineering leading Google Cloud for Communication Service Providers, Distributed Cloud Edge and Immersive Stream.

Before this, Ankur was working in the tech office of the CEO on cross-Google strategic programs including 5G. He previously worked on Google’s connectivity and communication products including Fi, Loon, Station, Messages, Google Voice and CBRS-based networks. Before that he was instrumental in bringing software defined networking and disaggregation to Google’s edge network. He was one of the first engineers and later led Google’s content delivery network as it grew into the largest in the world, deployed by several hundreds operators globally.

Ankur holds a masters degree in computer science and engineering from University of Washington Seattle and a bachelors degree in the same from Indian Institute of Technology Delhi. He has a few dozen patents and conference papers filed/granted/published. His closest shot at stardom though was when he went to Los Angeles in 2013 as part of the team that collected the 65th Primetime Emmy Engineering Award for YouTube; and then in 2020 when he went to the White House for discussions on 5G, but he still remains happily at Google.

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Keynote #6 (Onsite)

Title: Cloud Native Security and Networking for Current and Future Mobile Communication Systems: Looking at a Zero-Trust Solution to Connecting Intelligence on Ground, Air and Space

Abstract: In this talk, I will first introduce the industry standard roadmap towards 6G, current network architecture and design principles, and how automation, virtualization and orchestration for disaggregated radio access networks are achieved; and I will highlight the related benefits. I will then present the most important aspects of cloud native security and networking for current and future virtualised mobile communication systems, the main security concerns, potential threat landscape and shared responsibility model. This is followed by a review of security standards, best practices, and measures (safeguards) to secure cloud native platforms: from virtualization layer, host, and cluster hardening to access control to Kubernetes resources, network policy, encryption of data at rest and in motion, security monitoring and observability, for detecting and responding to cyberthreats effectively. My speech concludes with a vision of 6G network – cloud native and secure by design – and how Rakuten Symphony contributes to realize that.

Bio: David Soldani received a Master of Science (M.Sc.) degree in Engineering with full marks and magna cum laude approbatur from the University of Florence, Italy, in 1994; and a Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) degree in Technology with distinction from Helsinki University of Technology, Finland, in 2006.

In 2014, 2016, and 2018 he was appointed Visiting Professor, Industry Professor, and Adjunct Professor at University of Surrey, UK, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia, and University of New South Wales (UNSW), respectively.

Dr. Soldani is currently at Rakuten Symphony serving as Chief Information and Security Officer (CISO), e2e, Global. Prior to that, he was Chief Technology and Cyber Security Officer (CTSO) within ASIA Pacific Region at Huawei; Head of 5G Technology, e2e, Global, at Nokia; and Head of Central Research Institute (CRI) and VP Strategic Research and Innovation in Europe, at Huawei European Research Centre (ERC). David can be reached online at https://www.linkedin.com/in/dr-david-soldani/

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Keynote #7 (Onsite)

Title: New 6G Challenges : The Time For Electromagnetic Field Awareness Has Come
Abstract: To support the continuous growth of the Internet traffic, each new generation of mobile network (3G, 4G, 5G) is improved with respect to the previous generation, in terms of spectral efficiency, capacity, and energy efficiency. However, each new generation also adds its own cost in terms of spectrum and energy consumption to the costs of all previous already deployed ones. Moreover, it adds its own contribution to the overall Electro-Magnetic Field (EMF) exposure. In most countries, national regulators define the EMF limits based on the guidelines published by the International Commission on Non-Ionizing Radiation Protection (ICNIRP). However, some countries or cities have adopted more stringent limits; sometimes ten times lower than the ICNIRP guidelines.More generally, ensuring arbitrarily low EMF exposure may potentially be requested in some areas, by customers, in the future. 6G, currently still at the Research stage, has the opportunity to be the first generation to take into account arbitrarily low EMF exposure in its design. We believe it is now the right time to explore disruptive approaches for transmitting more, with a better EMF exposure awareness.

Bio: Dr. Dinh-Thuy PHAN HUY is currently a research project manager in Orange Innovation/Networks entity. She received a degree in engineering from Supelec, in 2001, and the Ph.D. degree in electronics and telecommunications from the National Institute of Applied Sciences of Rennes, France, in 2015. In 2001, she joined France Telecom R&D (now Orange Innovation), Châtillon, France. She led the national French collaborative research projects TRIMARAN (2011-2014) and SpatialModulation (2016-2019).

She participated in the following 5G PPP projects: METIS, Fantastic 5G, mmMAGIC, and 5GCAR. She is co-inventor of more than 40 patents and the co-author of more than 40 papers. She is the recipient of several awards in France: “Prix Impact Economique des Rencontres du Numérique 2016” from the French National Research Agency, “Grand Prix de l’Electronique du General Ferrié 2018” from the French Society of Electricity, Electronics and Information and Communication Technologies and the “Prix Irène Joliot Curie 2018 – catégorie Femme-Recherche-Entreprise” from the French Ministry of Education and Research.

Her research interests include wireless communications and beamforming, time reversal, spatial modulation, backscattering and intelligent reconfigurable surfaces. She is involved in the EU Flagship project on 6G Hexa-x and leads the work package on sustainability and security in RISE-6G EU project on reconfigurable intelligent surfaces for 6G. She is a member of the Future Networks community of Orange Experts since 2012.