Speaker 1: Prof. Arumugam Nallanathan 

Topic: Collaborative Federated Learning for  Wireless Communication

Biography:

Arumugam Nallanathan is Professor of Wireless Communications and the founding head of the Communication Systems Research (CSR) group in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London since September 2017. He was with the Department of Informatics at King’s College London from December 2007 to August 2017, where he was Professor of Wireless Communications from April 2013 to August 2017. He was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore from August 2000 to December 2007. His research interests include 6G Wireless Networks, Internet of Things (IoT) and Molecular Communications. He published more than 500 technical papers in scientific journals and international conferences. He is a co-recipient of the Best Paper Awards presented at the IEEE International Conference on Communications 2016 (ICC’2016), IEEE Global Communications Conference 2017 (GLOBECOM’2017) and IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference 2017 (VTC’2017). 

He is an Editor-at-Large for IEEE Transactions on Communications and a senior editor for IEEE Wireless Communications Letters. He was an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (2006-2011), IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (2006-2017), IEEE Signal Processing Letters and a Guest Editor for IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC). He served as the Chair for the Signal Processing and Computing for Communications (SPCC-TC) of IEEE Communications Society and Technical Program Chair and member of Technical Program Committees in numerous IEEE conferences. He received the IEEE Communications Society SPCE outstanding service award 2012 and IEEE Communications Society RCC outstanding service award 2014. He has been selected as a Web of Science (ISI) Highly Cited Researcher in 2016. He is an IEEE Fellow and IEEE Distinguished Lecturer.

Link to the personal profile: http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~nalla/
https://www.comsoc.org/arumugam-nallanathan

——————————————————————————————————————–

Speaker 2: Prof. Mathini Sellathurai 

Topic: Edge Cloud-Assisted Assistive Care

Biography:

Prof. Mathini Sellathurai is currently the Dean of the University for Science and Engineering and a Full Professor in Signal Processing with the Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, U.K and leading research in adaptive, cognitive and statistical signal processing techniques in a range of applications including Radar, Lidar, Sonar and RF networks, Network Coding, Cognitive Radio, MIMO signal processing, satellite communications and underwater communications. She has been active in the area of signal processing research for the past 15 years and has a strong international track record in multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) signal processing with applications in radar and wireless communications research. She was involved in signal processing for defence research as PI in the first phase of UDRC programme for work on Forward Looking RADAR and OFDM signal recognition/classification, and presently funded by DSTL through a National PhD studentship grant to work on Cognitive RADAR. She held defence signal processing research grants from industries QinetiQ and Wireless Fibre Systems to work on MIMO RADAR and underwater communications. Presently, she is interested in the DSTL technical challenges 8, 9, 16, 20, 29, 31 and 38.

Dr Sellathurai has 5 years of industrial research experience. She was with the Bell-Laboratories, New Jersey, USA, as a visiting researcher (2000); and with the Canadian (Government) Communications Research Centre, Ottawa Canada as a Senior Research Scientist (2001-2004). Since 2004 August, she has been with academia.  She also holds an honorary Adjunct/Associate Professorship at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada, and an Associate Editorship for the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing since 2009.

Link to the personal profile: https://researchportal.hw.ac.uk/en/persons/mathini-sellathurai

Speaker 3: Mr. Takanori Shiozawa

Topic: Electricity Policy in Japan

Biography:

Mr. Shiozawa is functioning as the Senior Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of the Institute of Energy Economics (IEEJ) in Japan since June 2022. Prior to his current appointment, he was an IEEJ councilor briefly. His career upon graduating from the University of Tokyo with Bachelors and Master’s degrees in Electrical Engineering, commenced as planning engineer at Chubu Electric power in 1988. Since then he has held positions as Manager in several divisions, General Manager in the divisions of corporate management, planning power system including renewable energy and hydro stations, business strategy planning, and overseas business at Chubu Electric power company. He has risen to the level of Executive Officer / General Manager of Corporate Planning and Strategy Division in 2019 and remained there till 2022. He has extensive experience in power industry and hold licenses as a first-grade chief electrical engineer and professional engineer in electrical engineering.

https://eneken.ieej.or.jp/en/about/executive.html

——————————————————————————————————————-

Speaker 4: Prof. Priyantha Wijayatunga 

Topic: Energy Markets: Present and Future Trends

Biography:

Dr Priyantha D.C. Wijayatunga is currently the Senior Director for ADB’s Energy Sector Office. He has over 30 years of professional experience including 14 years in ADB. He was the Director, South Asia Energy Division prior to assuming the current position in August 2021. Before joining ADB, he served as the founder Director General of the Public Utilities Commission of Sri Lanka and a Senior Professor of Electrical Engineering at the University of Moratuwa. He has extensively contributed in the areas of energy policy and regulation, energy planning and clean energy development.

Dr. Priyantha holds a Doctorate in Power Systems Economics from the Imperial College London had been a regular Academic Visitor at Imperial College London during the period 1993-1998.  He was the Chairman of the South Asia Forum for Infrastructure Regulators (SAFIR) in 2006/07 and was also a member of the Board of Directors of the Ceylon Electricity Board and Sri Lanka Sustainable Energy Authority.  He was an Advisory Board member of the Melbourne Energy Institute at the University of Melbourne during 2016-2019.

He is a Chartered Electrical Engineer, a Member of the Institute of Engineering Technology (IET), UK, Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineers Sri Lanka. He is a Past President of the Sri Lanka Energy Managers Association (SLEMA).

Link to the personal profile: https://www.adb.org/contact/wijayatunga-priyantha