Bio: Merouane Debbah entered the Ecole Normale Superieure Paris-Saclay (France) in 1996 where he received his M.Sc and Ph.D. degrees respectively. He worked for Motorola Labs (Saclay, France) from 1999-2002 and the Vienna Research Center for Telecommunications (Vienna, Austria) until 2003. From 2003 to 2007, he joined the Mobile Communications department of the Institut Eurecom (Sophia Antipolis, France) as an Assistant Professor.

Since 2007, he is a Full Professor at CentraleSupelec (Gif-sur-Yvette, France). From 2007 to 2014, he was the director of the Alcatel-Lucent Chair on Flexible Radio. Since 2014, he is Vice-President of the Huawei France R&D center and director of the Mathematical and Algorithmic Sciences Lab.

His research interests lie in fundamental mathematics, algorithms, statistics, information & communication sciences research. He is an Associate Editor in Chief of the journal Random Matrix: Theory and Applications and was an associate and senior area editor for IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing respectively in 2011-2013 and 2013-2014.

Merouane Debbah is a recipient of the ERC grant MORE (Advanced Mathematical Tools for Complex Network Engineering). He is a IEEE Fellow, a WWRF Fellow and a Membre emerite SEE. He has managed 8 EU projects and more than 24 national and international projects.

He received 19 best paper awards, among which the 2007 IEEE GLOBECOM best paper award, the Wi-Opt 2009 best paper award, the 2010 Newcom++ best paper award, the WUN CogCom Best Paper 2012 and 2013 Award, the 2014 WCNC best paper award, the 2015 ICC best paper award, the 2015 IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Prize, the 2015 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize, the 2016 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial paper award, the 2016 European Wireless Best Paper Award, the 2017 Eurasip Best Paper Award and the 2018 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award as well as the Valuetools 2007, Valuetools 2008, CrownCom2009, Valuetools 2012, SAM 2014 and 2017 IEEE Sweden VT-COM-IT Joint Chapter Best Student paper awards. He is the recipient of the Mario Boella award in 2005, the IEEE Glavieux Prize Award in 2011 and the Qualcomm Innovation Prize Award in 2012

Abstract: 5G is now! Targeted for 2020, 5G will take the eco-system to a whole new level. New applications, new business models and even new industries will spring up around 5G.

With 5G, we can expect our high speed connections to extend into our vehicles, into our things, with fewer interruptions and new ways of working or remote working starting to take off. If we look at some of the goals of 5G versus where we are today, we can see the gap that has to be bridged over the next few years. The goal of 1ms latency is nearly 50x better than current LTE systems.

In order to go from 100Mbps per user to 10Gbps, we need 100x the throughput per connection. The current 10,000 connections per square kilometer needs to increase to 1Million connections which is a 100x increase in density. Reliable communications today with LTE top can sustain 350km/h and we expect to bring that up by 1.5x to 500km/h.

Finally the current core networks and backhaul/front-haul are inflexible with wasted pools of bandwidth. The introduction of SDN/NFV will allow much better ability to chop up and virtualize the network resources for lower operational costs and capital costs and much greater flexibility. In this talk, we will briefly describe the core 5G technologies and provide a look at the actual worldwide deployment agenda.

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Bio: Professor Manu Haddad, FIET, FLSW, obtained a first degree in Electrical Engineering in 1985 from the Ecole National Polytechnique of Algiers, Algeria.
He obtained a Ph.D. degree in High Voltage Engineering in 1990 at Cardiff University. He then spent few years as a Postdoctoral Researcher working on National Grid and EPSRC funded projects. In 1995, he was appointed as a Lecturer in high voltage engineering at Cardiff University. In 2003, he was promoted to Senior Lecturer with responsibility for the high voltage and power research at Cardiff University.
In 2006, he was promoted to a personal chair in high voltage engineering and established the Advanced High Voltage Engineering Research Centre, growing to 5 academics, in addition to 6 externally-funded Research Associates and some 15 PhD students at any time. Since 2004, his high voltage research Centre was selected as one four University Centres funded by National Grid through a framework agreement to research into transmission networks and transients.

Professor Haddad has published an IET text book (power series 41) "Advances in High Voltage Engineering" and over 300 papers. Prof. Haddad, with colleagues and PhD students, has won 13 paper prizes, including prizes from IET/IEE (De Ferranti Premium) and international conferences. Over 30 researchers/PhD students have completed their research programmes under his supervision. His research interests in the power area are in lightning overvoltage protection, insulation systems, alternative gases to SF6, insulation coordination, earthing and safety of electrical systems. In 2011, he established a unique university research centre, the Morgan-Botti Lightning laboratory in collaboration with AIRBUS Group. The centre's research activities are currently focussed on protection of aircraft against lightning.

Professor Haddad is a member of several international technical working group (CIGRE), international conference committees, and Standards committees (BSI and IEC). He also sits on the technical / scientific advisory boards for two large industrial projects (National Grid and SuperGrid Institute in France). Professor Haddad has/had Visiting Professor positions in China, Malaysia and Japan.

Abstract: Aspects of lightning impact on aircraft
Carbon fibre reinforced composites (CFRP) materials are now rapidly replacing metallic materials in modern aircraft. These carbon composite materials are lighter and much stronger than aluminium. However, their electrical conductivity is poor and is highly directional.
On average, each commercial aircraft is hit by lightning once a year, and this is a challenge to ensure lightning protection of carbon composite aircraft. In addition to damage that can be caused to the structure of the aircraft and the skin composite panels, lightning can a real threat to aircraft fuel tanks that are located on the wings.

This presentation will give an overview of carbon composite materials and the lightning threat to aircraft. It will then examine laboratory and modelling characterisation techniques that help understand the lightning interaction phenomena with flat panels and T-joints representative of aircraft structures. Such understanding allows better lightning protection designs and safer carbon composite structures.

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Bio: Professor Chafiaa HAMITOUCHE is Professor in Signal and Image Processing at IMT Atlantique. She is the deputy director of the Laboratory of Medical Information Processing - LATIM, an INSERM (National Institute of Health and Medical Sciences) research unit. She received the Ph.D. degree in 1991 and the HDR in 2005, from the University of Rennes 1.

Her research interests include 3D medical image analysis, Biological shape modelling, multi-modality, morpho-functional modelling, 3D Navigation for personalised minimally invasive Orthopaedic Surgery, Augmented Reality, and smart orthopaedic implants for post-operative patient monitoring.

She has supervised more than 25 PhD students (3 have obtained the National best thesis award in the category "innovation") and co-authored more than 80 publications in scientific journals, conference proceedings, book chapters and co-inventor of five national or international patents.

She has coordinated several national and European projects. Recently, she was the national coordinator (10 French partners) for the European ITEA2 Mediate project, where 27 partners (11 research laboratories, 5 Large industrial groups and 11 SMEs) were involved. Mediate project obtained the ITEA Excellence Award in the category of "business impact" in 2015, and the EUREKA Innovation Award in 2018. She is co-founder of two companies OSTESYS (Optimized osteotomies) and IMASCAP (Augmented Shoulder Surgery) in 2009. She is Knight in the Order of Academic Palms.


Abstract: Some recent advances in minimally invasive Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery: From surgery optimisation to personalised smart implant
Advances in information and communication technologies are making a significant contribution to the medicine of the future, which will be Preventive, Predictive, Personalized and Participatory (P4 medicine). They offer healthcare professionals opportunities in terms of innovative medical devices and robust approaches to the processing and analysis of medical information. The impact on the care course is important since they bring solutions for a better prevention, improvement of the diagnosis, the therapeutic action and in the follow-up of the patient.

In the case of surgical therapeutic action, the aim is the development of a new generation of interventional environmentsfor patient-specific minimally invasive surgery, by integrating the concept of navigation, new localisation systems, efficient interventional imaging and robust multimodal information fusion.

In this presentation, we will givean overview of recent innovations in some orthopaedic surgery procedures. In parallel with the surgical gesture optimization (reduction of the incision, reduction of operating time, reduction of X-ray doses, gain in accuracy and safety), and in order to improve the follow-up of the patient (avoid post-operative complications and increase the longevity of the implants), a new generation of smart orthopaedic implantswill also be presented.

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Bio: Dr. Cherif Amirat is currently a member of the IEEE Inc. executive team and serves as its Chief Information Officer (CIO) with a responsibility to lead a global team of technology and engineering professionals. He led the implementation of multiple digital strategies including mobile and cloud first strategies and the establishment of a digital transformation roadmap that included automation, AI/digital assistant, digital workplace and continuous innovation through experimentation.

Prior to joining IEEE, Cherif was a Senior Director of Business Technology at Pfizer Inc. with responsibilities that included leading multiple teams across different continents and countries leveraging the latest technologies and social media to enable digital marketing programs. He has served as the regional business technology director for Africa and Middle East and led the health informatics IT for Pfizer global medical affairs and regulatory organizations. He also worked at AT&T Bell Laboratories as a Member of Technical Staff where he pioneered a modular approach to systems design. He is currently an adjunct professor at Rutgers University in New Jersey (USA) teaching the Information Technology Strategy course for graduate students.

Cherif is a graduate of INELEC (Algeria) with its first engineering class. He holds a Master’s degree and a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Stevens Institute of Technology, and an MBA from Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania. He serves on the advisory board of the Stevens Institute of Technology Alliance on Innovation and Leadership, and is a public speaker on digital transformation, innovation and strategic use of information technology to evolve and transform business models. Cherif is an IEEE Senior Member and a recipient of IEEE R1 Managerial Excellence in an Engineering Organization Award for visionary leadership in the development of information technology and management strategies for large organizations.
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Abstract: Innovation Roadmap
Innovation is the engine for economic growth. It is defined in different ways and pursued by many, yet few succeed in realizing the benefits and value creation. Establishing and driving innovation in organizations that are steeped in rigid processes, structures, guidelines, and predictability is never an easy task.

After all, innovation at the heart can be disruptive to those very things. While process and standardization is effective, and often essential to many elements of business, it can slow down and even kill innovation. The presentation will assess the current state of innovation and present a roadmap for establishing the right culture, structure, process and resources to enhance the likelihood of a successful innovation journey.

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