Elvino S. Sousa received his B.A.Sc. in engineering science, and the M.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto in 1980 and 1982 respectively, and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California in 1985. Since 1986 he has been with the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto where he is now a Professor and the Jeffrey Skoll Professor in Computer Network Architecture. His current interests are in the areas of autonomous infrastructure wireless networks, cognitive radio, self configurable wireless networks, and two-tier networks. He pioneered the area of wireless communications at the University of Toronto and is the director of the wireless lab, which has undertaken research in wireless systems for the past 28 years. He is the inventor of the autonomous infrastructure wireless network concept. He has been invited to give numerous lectures and short courses on spread spectrum, CDMA, and wireless systems in many countries, and has been a consultant to industry and Governments internationally in the area of wireless systems.  He was the technical program chair for PIMRC 95, vice-technical program chair for Globecom '99, Co-Technical Program Chair for WPMC 2010 and for PIMRC 2011, and has been involved in the technical program committee of numerous international conferences.  He has also been involved in various standardization and industry related wireless activities and currently is actively participating in NGMN as an advisor.  He is a past chair of the IEEE Technical committee on Personal Communications and has been elected IEEE Fellow. He has spent sabbatical leaves at Qualcomm and Sony CSL/ATL. He has been awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal.

Rudy Lauwereins is vice president of imec, which performs world-leading research and delivers industry-relevant technology solutions through global partnerships in nano-electronics, ICT, healthcare and energy. He is director of imec’s Smart Systems Technology Office, guiding the strategic research decisions in vision and telecommunication systems, and in (bio)medical and lifestyle electronics,. He also leads the imec Academy, coordinating all external and internal training curricula. He is a part-time Full Professor at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, Belgium, where he teaches Computer Architectures in the Master of Science in Elektrotechnical Engineering program.

Before joining imec in 2001, he held a tenure Professorship in the Faculty of Engineering at the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven since 1993. He had obtained a Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering in 1989.

Professor Lauwereins has authored and co-authored more than 380 publications in international journals, books and conference proceedings. He is a fellow of the IEEE.

Rahim Tafazolli is the Director of the Centre for Communications Systems Research (CCSR) and 5G Innovation Centre (5GIC), The University of Surrey in the UK.

He has published more than 500 research papers in refereed journals, international conferences and as invited speaker.

He is the editor of two books on “Technologies for Wireless Future” published by Wiley’s Vol.1 in 2004 and Vol.2 2006.

He is currently chairman of EU Net!Works Technology Platform Expert Group, board member of the UK Future Internet Strategy Group (UK-FISG).

He was appointed as Fellow of WWRF (Wireless World Research Forum) in April 2011, in recognition of his personal contribution to the wireless world. As well as heading one of Europe’s leading research groups.

Fumiyuki Adachi received the B.S. and Dr. Eng. degrees in electrical engineering from Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, in 1973 and 1984, respectively. In April 1973, he joined the Electrical Communications Laboratories of Nippon Telegraph & Telephone Corporation (now NTT) and conducted various researches on digital cellular mobile communications. From July 1992 to December 1999, he was with NTT Mobile Communications Network, Inc. (now NTT DoCoMo, Inc.), where he led a research group on Wideband CDMA for 3G systems. Since January 2000, he has been with Tohoku University, Sendai, Japan, where he is a Distinguished Professor at the Dept. of Communications Engineering, Graduate School of Engineering. His research interest includes wireless signal processing including wireless access, equalization, transmit/receive antenna diversity, adaptive transmission, and channel coding. He is an IEEE Fellow and an IEICE Fellow. He was a recipient of the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society Avant Garde Award 2000, IEICE Achievement Award 2002, Thomson Scientific Research Front Award 2004, Ericsson Telecommunications Award 2008, Telecom System Technology Award 2010, Prime Minister Invention Award 2010, and KDDI Foundation Excellent Research Award 2012.

Zhisheng Niu graduated from Beijing Jiaotong University, China, in 1985, and got his M.E. and D.E. degrees from Toyohashi University of Technology, Japan, in 1989 and 1992, respectively.  In 1992-94 he worked for Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd., Kawasaki, Japan, and joined with Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in 1994, where he is now a professor at the Department of Electronic Engineering. He is also a guest chair professor of Shandong University, China.  His major research interests include queueing theory, traffic engineering, mobile Internet, radio resource management of wireless networks, and green communication and networks. 

Dr. Niu has been an active volunteer for various academic societies, including Director for Conference Publications (2010-11), Director for Asia-Pacific Board (2008-09), and member of the Award Committee of IEEE Communication Society, Membership Development Coordinator (2009-10) of IEEE Region 10, Councilor of IEICE-Japan (2009-11), council member of Chinese Institute of Electronics (2006-11), and an editor of IEEE Wireless Communication Magazine (2009-2013).  He is now a distinguished lecturer (2012-15) and Chair of Emerging Technology Committee (2014-15) of IEEE Communication Society, member of the Fellow Nomination Committee of IEICE Communication Society (2013-14), standing committee member of Chinese Institute of Communications (2012-16), and associate editor-in-chief of IEEE/CIC joint publication “China Communications”. 

Dr. Niu received the Outstanding Young Researcher Award from Natural Science Foundation of China in 2009 and the Best Paper Award of IEEE ComSoc Asia-Pacific Board in 2013.  He also co-received the Best Paper Awards (with his colleagues) from the 13th, 15th and 19th Asia-Pacific Conference on Communication (APCC) in 2007, 2009, and 2013, respectively, International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP’13), and  the Best Student Paper Award (with his student) from the 25th International Teletraffic Congress (ITC25), 2013.  He is now the Chief Scientist of the National Basic Research Program (so called “973 Project”) of China on "Fundamental Research on the Energy and Resource Optimized Hyper-Cellular Mobile Communication System" (2012-2016), which is the first national project on green communications in China.  He is a fellow of both IEEE and IEICE