Advancing Open-RAN: Research, Standards, and Deployment

Amitabha Ghosh

Amitabha (Amitava) Ghosh (F’15) is a Nokia Fellow and Head, Radio Interface Group at Nokia Bell Labs. He joined Motorola in 1990 after receiving his Ph.D in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University, Dallas. Since joining Motorola he worked on multiple wireless technologies starting from IS-95, cdma-2000, 1xEV-DV/1XTREME, 1xEV-DO, UMTS, HSPA, 802.16e/WiMAX and 3GPP LTE. He has 60 issued patents, has written multiple book chapters and has authored numerous external and internal technical papers. He is currently working on 5G Evolution and 6G technologies. Recently, he was elected chair of the NextGA (an US 6G initiative) National Roadmap Working Group. His research interests are in the area of digital communications, signal processing and wireless communications.

Bryan Larish

Bryan Larish is the Chief Security Architect for Verizon’s networks leading a team that plans and architects the future security capabilities of Verizon’s networks. His team also develops artificial intelligence and machine learning capabilities that improve the performance of Verizon's wireless networks. Prior to joining Verizon, Bryan was CTO for enterprise networks at a U.S. Government agency. Bryan also worked in the Chief Engineer’s office at the U.S. Navy’s Space and Naval Warfare Systems Command (SPAWAR). Bryan holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a B.S.E. in electrical engineering from Arizona State University.

Ivan Seskar

Ivan Seskar is the Chief Technologist at WINLAB, Rutgers University responsible for experimental systems and prototyping projects. He is currently the program director for the COSMOS project responsible for the New York City NSF PAWR deployment, the PI for the NSF GENI Wireless project, and the PI for the NSF CloudLab deployment at Rutgers. He has also been the co-PI and project manager for all three phases of the NSF-supported ORBIT mid-scale testbed project at WINLAB, successfully leading technology development and operations since the testbed was released as a community resource in 2005. Ivan is a co-chair of the IEEE Future Networks Testbed Working Group, a Senior Member of the IEEE, a member of ACM and the co-founder and CTO of Upside Wireless Inc.

Vish Ponnampalam

Vish Ponnampalam is an Engineering Lead at Facebook Connectivity, working on access technologies which are aimed at bringing more people to a faster internet. Vish has extensive experience in wireless, spanning the entire tech stack, from signal processing to network automation. Prior to Facebook, he worked in the semiconductor and networking industries, in engineering roles spanning standardization, chip design and development of cloud-based network management systems. Vish holds 20+ granted patents and has contributed to multiple IEEE and 3GPP standards.

Ashutosh Dutta

Ashutosh Dutta  (F'20) is Senior Scientist and 5G Chief Strategist at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Labs. He also serves as Chair for Electrical and Computer Engineering for Engineering Professional Program at JHU. As a Technical Leader in 5G and security, Ashutosh has been serving as the founding Co-Chair for the IEEE Future Networks Initiative that focuses on 5G standardization, education, testbed, publications, and roadmap activities. Ashutosh is IEEE Communications Society's Distinguished Lecturer for 2017-2020 and as an ACM Distinguished Speaker (2020-2022). Ashutosh served as the Director of Industry Outreach for IEEE Communications Society from 2014-2019. He was the recipient of the prestigious 2009 IEEE MGA Leadership award and 2010 IEEE-USA professional leadership award.

Chih-Lin I

Chih-Lin I is CMCC Chief Scientist of Wireless Technologies. She received Ph.D. EE from Stanford University. She has won 2005 IEEE ComSoc Stephen Rice Prize, 2018 IEEE ComSoc Fred W. Ellersick Prize, the 7th IEEE Asia-Pacific Outstanding Paper Award, and 2015 IEEE Industrial Innovation Award for Leadership and Innovation in Next-Generation Cellular Wireless Networks. She is Chair of O-RAN Technical Steering Committee and an O-RAN Executive Committee Member, Chair of FuTURE 5G/6G SIG, Chair of WAIA (Wireless AI Alliance) Executive Committee, an Executive Board Member of GreenTouch, a Network Operator Council Founding Member of ETSI NFV, a Steering Board Member and Vice Chair of WWRF, etc.

Rajarajan Sivaraj

Dr. Rajarajan Sivaraj is currently Director for architecture and standards at Mavenir where he has been since Sept 2020. He has had an illustrious industrial and academic research career spanning over 12 years, where he has had multiple positions with AT&T labs, Microsoft Research, Intel Labs, NEC Labs, Broadcom, etc. He previously did his Ph.D. in Computer Science focusing on Radio Resource Management optimization problems for telecommunication systems from the University of California, Davis. He has had numerous publications and patents. His areas of interest include RAN optimization, new RAN architectures, analysis, and AI for RAN.

Brian Daly

As Assistant Vice President for Standards & Industry Alliances for AT&T, Brian oversees AT&T’s strategy and leadership in global industry standards. Brian is a technology visionary and thought leader with knowledge of the global standards industry landscape/leadership. Brian is on the Executive Committee of the National Spectrum Consortium and holds appointments to the FCC’s Technological Advisory Council (TAC) and Communications Reliability, Security, and Interoperability Council (CSRIC). Brian also is a member of the FBI’s Infragard partnership. Brian holds Board positions on the National Public Safety Communications Council (NPSTC) and the IEEE International Standards and Technology Organization (ISTO). 

Ian Wong

Dr. Ian Wong is Director of RF and Wireless Architecture at VIAVI. He serves on the O-RAN Alliance as co-chair of the Test and Integration Focus Group (TIFG), editor of the end-to-end test specification and contributor to the conformance and interoperability test specifications for open front haul. Previously, Dr. Wong led development of real-time end-to-end 5G wireless test and prototyping systems and managed 3GPP wireless standards and IP strategy at NI (National Instruments). He is a senior member of the IEEE and co-authored Resource Allocation for Multiuser Multicarrier Wireless Systems.

Scott Poretsky

Scott Poretsky is Ericsson North America’s Director for Security, Network Product Solutions. Scott is currently working in the areas of 5G security, Open RAN security, Cloud security, IoT security, Zero Trust, and Software Bill of Materials (SBOM). He has represented Ericsson in industry-government collaborative working groups including NSTAC, FCC CSRIC, and DHS CISA ICT SCRM. Scott is Ericsson’s voting member at the O-RAN Alliance’s Security Focus Group (SFG). Scott is co-author of “Security Considerations of Open RAN.” Scott is a Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP) and holds an MSEE from the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) and BSEE from the University of Vermont. He is an IEEE Senior Member and is Advisory Board Chair for the IEEE ComSoc's CQR technical committee.