IEEE Summit on Communications Futures
18 January 2020 // Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Program

IEEE Summit on Communications Futures

Coral 2 Ballroom, 6th Floor, Mid-pacific Conference Center of the Hilton Hawaiian Village

 

 

 

 

Time Speaker Name Talk Title
08:30-08:45 Dr. Doug Zuckerman, IEEE Future Directions (USA) Opening Remarks

This session will include an overview of the ComFutures 2020 program, background on the summit series, recognition of the event sponsors and invitation to join in their activities. It will also describe logistics for the day’s event.

Session 1: Lighting the Future  Session 1: Lighting the Future
08:45-09:20 Mr. Dmitriy Kovsh, Senior Director of System Design and Product Management, Subcom (USA) Subsea Communications –

This presentation will explore how operators and equipment providers are incorporating improvements in optical performance and spectral density to improve the efficiency of the subsea fiber they are installing and maintaining. It will address design methodology, “Open Cable,” and enabling technologies. View presentation (PDF).

09:20-09:55 Mr. Loukas Paraschis, Senior Director, Infinera Cloud Transport (USA) Optical Networking – 

This presentation will address the impact on optical networks of the explosive growth of cloud-based applications that has been the biggest revolution in networking since the proliferation of the Internet more than 20 years ago. It will also address how new applications that are driving cloud-based transport networks. View presentation (PDF).

9:55-10:10 Coffee Break
Session 2: Earth, Wind, and Fire 
10:10-10:45 Prof. Jason Yi-Bing Lin, Winbond Chair Professor, National Chiao Tung University (Taiwan) Smart Agriculture Networks – 

Agriculture is constantly under pressure to improve yields, lower costs, and minimize environmental side effects. This presentation will explore how smart Internet of Things (IoT) networking and sensor technologies will impact the agriculture supply chain and help create next generation agriculture. View presentation (PDF).

10:45-11:20 Mr. Robert Shapiro, Chief Technology Officer, Intelligent Building Technology, Inc. (USA) Public Safety Networks and Critical Communications –

Public Safety is a key application for modern networking and communications. Recent technical developments are allowing Public Safety networks to be much more flexible, responsive, and technically sophisticated without jeopardizing their usefulness in emergency situations. This presentation will discuss some of these emerging technical developments. View presentation (PDF).

Session 3: Man and Machine 
11:20-11:55 Dr. Tao Zhang, National Institute of Standards and Technology  (USA) AI in Fog Computing and Networking –

Service and Application architectures that require all data to be sent to the cloud for processing will choke in the Yotta-byte era. This presentation will discuss how Fog/Edge architectures using Artificial Intelligence provide a way for service providers to use their edge and distribution networks to process data in a way that lowers latency and improves efficiencies. View presentation (PDF).

11:55-12:30 Prof. Raouf Boutaba, Professor and Associate Dean, University of Waterloo (Canada) Network Management and AI –

It is often said that networks are getting smarter, but what does that really mean? What new technologies are available that help an operator monitor, manage, and resolve issues with their network? Can AI achieve these goals with no or minimal human intervention? This presentation looks at what technologies are available today, and what future capabilities might become available. View presentation (PDF).

12:30-1:30 Lunch
Session 4: Money isn’t Everything
1:30-2:05 Mr. Sichao Yang, Co-Founder and CEO, Nakamoto & Turing Labs (USA) Internet Economy and Blockchain –

Just as the protocols underlying the Internet, such as TCP/IP, revolutionized connectivity, there are some who speculate that Blockchain technology will revolutionize transactions. This presentation will discuss the economic, security, and privacy implications of the adoption of blockchain technology. View presentation (PDF).

2:05-2:40 Prof. Ali G. Hessami, Innovation and R&D Director, Vega Systems Ltd. (UK) Technology Ethics Standardization –

The combination of the Internet and artificial intelligence (AI) has created some dilemmas for the engineers who design this technology as well as the service providers who deploy it. In response to this, the IEEE has pioneered a new series of standards on the Ethics for Autonomous and Intelligent systems. This presentation will introduce this work and how to participate in this ongoing stream of work. View presentation (PDF).

2:40-3:00 Coffee Break
3:00-4:30 Panelists:

PANEL – Vision Meets Reality: Roadmapping Telecom Technology

Where do we go from here? This eternal question is in the mind of telecom executives everywhere because the answer has large implications for CapEx, OpEx, and almost everything else. The IEEE has started a series of technology roadmaps that outline the future directions that telecom technologies are likely to take. This panel will discuss the content and some implications of those roadmaps. View presentations (PDF) from Mehmet Ulema, Nigel Bayliff, Rose Hu, Narendra Mangra, Matt Miller and Robert Pepper.

4:30-4:45 Dr. Doug Zuckerman, IEEE Future Directions (USA) Closing Session

This session will summarize the key “takeaways” from the day’s sessions and invite participation in the next ComFutures summit.

*Program and speakers subject to change