Education Track

Young Engineer & Scientist Initiative (i-YES) Education & Training Track

Wednesday, 24 May Afternoon (14:00 – 15:30 and 16:00 – 17:30)
 Room 241

 

Organizers

  • Periklis Chatzimisios (Alexander TEI of Thessaloniki, Greece & Bournemouth University, UK)
  • Mike Devetsikiotis (The University of New Mexico, USA)

Motivation and Background

The Education Track organized by the IEEE Communication Society Education and Training Board (ESB) will feature a Hands-on Demo Session by National Instruments entitled "SDR Hands-On: FPGA Prototyping with Over-the-Air Signals" and a Panel entitled "Exploring Excited Career Paths for Young Engineers & Scientists".

Organizers’ CVs

Periklis Chatzimisios (SMIEEE) serves as an Associate Professor, the Director of the Computing Systems, Security and Networks (CSSN) Research Lab and a Division Head in the Department of Informatics at the Alexander TEI of Thessaloniki (ATEITHE), Greece. Currently, he is a Visiting Fellow in the Faculty of Science & Technology, at Bournemouth University, UK. In the past, he has been a Visiting Academic/Researcher in University of Toronto (Canada) and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA). Dr. Chatzimisios is/has been involved in several standardization and IEEE activities serving as a Member of the Standards Development Board for the IEEE Communication Society (ComSoc), Member of the IEEE ComSoc Standards Program Development Board, Member of IEEE ComSoC Education & Training Board, Vice Chair of the Emerging Technical Subcommittee on Big Data (TSCBD) and Secretary of the IEEE ComSoc Technical Committee in Information Infrastructure and Networking (TCIIN). Dr. Chatzimisios is the editor/author of 8 books and more than 110 peer-reviewed papers and book chapters. Dr. Chatzimisios received his Ph.D. from Bournemouth University, UK (2005) and his B.Sc. from ATEITHE, Greece (2000).
 
Mike Devetsikiotis is Professor and the Chair in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of New Mexico, USA. He received the Dipl.-Ing. degree from the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1988,and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from North Carolina  (NC)  State  University,  Raleigh,  in 1990 and 1993, respectively, all in electrical engineering. In 1993, he joined the Broadband Networks Laboratory, Carleton University, Ottawa, Canada, as a Post-Doctoral Fellow. He later became an Adjunct Research Professor with the Department of Systems and Computer Engineering, Carleton University, in 1995, an Assistant Professor in 1996, and an Associate Professor in 1999. He joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, NC State University, as an Associate Professor, in 2000, and became a Professor in 2006. He is currently a member of the Eta Kappa Nu Honor Society, the Sigma Xi Honor Society, and the Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. He served as the Chairman of the IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee Communication Systems Integration and Modeling, and a member of the ComSoc Education Board.
 

Session 1: 14:00 - 15:30

Hands-on Demo Session: "SDR Hands-On: FPGA Prototyping with Over-the-Air Signals"
In this hands-on session, conducted by National Instruments (NI), attendees (mainly young researchers and members of ComSoc) will be involved in demos or other demonstrations. Participants will be provided with laptops and software defined radios (SDR) to build an FM receiver and a real-time FPGA-based LTE link that transmits video signals between base station and user equipment (UE). Attendees will also learn how other industry leaders have leveraged the NI platform to conduct LTE/WiFi coexistence experiments; break world-records in spectral efficiency with Massive MIMO; experiment with MAC-layer algorithms; and implement real-time, over-the-air mmWave testbeds.  Come and learn how to use LabVIEW Communications and NI SDR hardware to go beyond desktop simulations and to rapidly prototype real-time, over-the-air wireless communication systems. 
The administrator of the Hands-on Session is Rahul Brito, National Instruments, Austin, USA.
 
Speaker’s CV: Rahul Brito serves as Product Manager for LabVIEW Communications, defining new software features to help researchers smoothly implement real-time wireless prototypes on processors and FPGAs. He holds a B.S. from the University of Washington in Seattle.

Session 2: 16:00 – 17:30

Panel: "Exploring Excited Career Paths for Young Engineers & Scientists"
Panelists:
  • Kathy Grise, Program Director, IEEE Big Data Initiative, USA
  • Alexander Gelman, Chair of IEEE CSPDB, IEEE Communications Society, USA
  • Jorge Pereira, Principal Scientific Officer, European Commission, Belgium
  • Lazaros Gkatzikis, Senior Research Engineer, Huawei France Research Center, France
  • Georgios Z. Papadopoulos, Associate Professor, Telecom Bretagne, IMT Atlantique, France
Abstract: This panel will have speakers from industry and academia as well as young engineers and scientists. The main purpose of the panel is to inspire the participants (Ph.D. students and IEEE Young Professionals) by interacting with professionals and involve them in various IEEE volunteer, educational and standardization activities. The panel discussion will mainly focus on the following topics:
  • IEEE Future Directions and Initiatives for Young Engineers & Scientists
  • Involvement of Young Researchers with Standardization Activities
  • Early Career Funding Opportunities from the European Commission
  • Industry Talks to Young Engineers & Scientists
  • The Long Journey through PhD and Research
Questions to be addressed:
  • What are the volunteer opportunities for young engineers & scientists within IEEE?
  • How to get involved with standardization activities if you are a young researcher?
  • Are there any funding opportunities from the European Commission for young researchers?
  • How industry can help young engineers & scientists to build a successful career?
  • How young people can overcome the problems during their PhD and research journey?
Panelists’ CVs:
Kathy Grise, IEEE Future Directions Program Director, works directly with IEEE volunteers and consultants in support of new initiatives. Grise is staff program manager for the IEEE Cloud Computing Initiative as well as the IEEE Technology Navigator. Prior to joining IEEE, Ms. Grise held numerous positions at IBM, most recently as senior engineering manager for process design kit enablement in the IBM Semiconductor Research and Development Center.
 
Alexander D. Gelman received M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the City University of New York. Presently he is CTO of NETovations consulting group that supports industry in competitive research and intellectual property management in areas of communications and networking. Alex has numerous publications and several patents. Alex initiated several standardization projects and the ComSoc Standards Board, served as ComSoc Director of Standards. Alex served on IEEE-SA BoG and on Standards Board and its New Standards, Standards Review, Patents and Industry Connections committees. Alex is a recipient of MMC TC Distinguished Service award, ComSoc Donald W. McLellan Meritorious Service Award and IEEE-SA Standards Medallion.
 
Jorge Pereira obtained his Engineering and M.Sc. degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Instituto Superior Tecnico, Lisbon Technical University in 1983 and 1987 respectively. He completed his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering-Systems at the University of Southern California, in 1993. He worked at GTE Laboratories, Waltham, MA from 1993 to 1996, in the areas of Wireless Data and Intelligent Transportation Systems. He has been working in the European Commission since 1996 and, currently, is Principal Scientific Officer at the European Commission in DG Communications Networks, Content and Technology in the area of Connectivity/Networking, including 5G and beyond.
 
Lazaros Gkatzikis is a Senior Research Engineer at the Huawei France Research Center. Since 2015, his main activity has been the design and implementation of optimization-based algorithms for Huawei SDN and NFV products. Currently, he is actively involved in the design of Core Network Slicing prototype architectures. Previously, he held research-related positions at KTH Royal Institute of Technology (Sweden), Technicolor (France), CERTH-ITI and University of Thessaly (Greece). His research interests include network optimization, game theory, and performance analysis. He received his Ph.D. degree in computer engineering and communications from the University of Thessaly, Volos, Greece.
 
Georgios Z. Papadopoulos is an Associate Professor at the Telecom Bretagne, IMT Atlantique in Rennes, France. Prior to joining IMT Atlantique, he was a Research Associate at the University of Bristol and a Postdoctoral Researcher Engineer at the University of Strasbourg. He received a Ph.D. degree in Computer Science in 2015 from the University of Strasbourg (France), a M.Sc. in Telematics Engineering from University Carlos III of Madrid (Spain) in 2012 and a B.Sc. in Computer Science from Alexander T.E.I. of Thessaloniki (Greece) in 2011. He received a Best Paper Award at IFIP Med-Hoc-Net’14 and was nominated for Best Student Paper Award at IEEE Sensors’14.