Featured Speakers

Dr. Alex Jinsung Choi, a South Korean luminary in the global mobile telecommunications sector, boasts over three decades of industry experience. Currently, Dr. Choi is working at SoftBank Corp.’s Research Institute of Advanced Technology and continues to champion innovation at the intersection of AI, mobile technology, and network architecture. He is also currently the Chair of the AI-RAN Alliance. He is dedicated to advancing technology frontiers, crafting strategies that enhance both business and consumer experiences, and guiding the industry towards a more connected, intelligent, and open future.

Dr. Junlan Feng, Chief Scientist at China Mobile, General Manager of AI and Intelligent Operation R&D Center. Dr. Feng has led R&D of China Mobile on artificial intelligence and big data since September 2013. She had been the architect of IBM Big Data from January 2013.1 to August 2013 and a principal researcher at AT&T Labs Research from August 2001 to January 2013. Dr. Feng received her Ph.D. on Speech Recognition in 2001 from Chinese Academy of Sciences. She is an IEEE senior member, an IEEE speech and language committee member and IEEE industry committee member. She is a reviewer for major data mining, speech, and natural language international conferences and journals. She has chaired and organized multiple conferences in these fields. Dr. Feng has over 50 professional publications and has been granted 33 U.S and international patents.

Sampada Basarkar is an Executive Director of Products and Platform Engineering in Vodafone Business. She is a senior executive with a passion for building high-performing teams and delivering results in complex and high-ambiguity environments. Focused on vision, execution, and operational excellence, Sampada has experience delivering large-scale, cross-functional, deadline-driven initiatives as well as iterative, growth, and experimentation initiatives. Throughout her 23 + years of managing software development and support, she has worked with a large subset of Fortune 500 companies and large enterprises. She is also passionate about helping women advance their careers and sponsors programs for their growth.

Masahisa Kawashima is currently leading NTT’s R&D of Innovative Optical and Wireless Network (IOWN) as the IOWN Technology Director. He is also serving as the Chair of the Technology Working Group at IOWN Global Forum. He has been working as a bridge between technologies and businesses since he joined NTT in 1994. His expertise includes high-speed networking, SDN, cloud/edge computing, AI, and data management. Nowadays, he is exploring innovative ways of making products/services cloud-native levering the evolution of optical communication and optoelectronics integration technologies. 

Erik is a co-founder and the CTO at edge orchestration company ZEDEDA, and he is an expert on architecting and implementing secure large scale software systems, with a deep understanding of the implications of the Internet on system design. Prior to co-founding ZEDEDA he was developing software at Arista Networks, architecting the evolution of core software as a Cisco Distinguished Engineer, and earlier had a long and varied career as a Distinguished Engineer at Sun Microsystems. Erik has been driving Internet standardization and architecture in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) and on the Internet Architecture Board (IAB), seeing the evolution of IoT protocols and the potential security impact on the Internet as a whole. Erik holds over 29 US patents, and has a Technical Licentiate degree from Uppsala University and a MS from Stanford University. For the past eight years Erik has focused specifically on security and safety for edge computing deployments, working with customers on product deployments while building solution approaches as part of the Linux Foundation’s Project EVE open source project. As part of this effort Erik has helped to build a robust and secure software system that addresses common needs at the distributed edge, such as avoiding firmware and software attacks in the field, ensuring security and environmental consistency with unsecured and flaky network connections, and for detecting and avoiding supply chain attacks.

Christoforos is a senior analyst who specializes in telco cloud and network automation. His main field of research is the implementation of orchestration and automation in telco networks.

Before joining Omdia, Christoforos worked as a network designer for BT, designing network monitoring systems for the mobile core network. Christoforos holds a Master of Engineering in Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Master of Science in Telecommunications with Business.

James leads Omdia’s service provider transformation team, which covers telco IT (operations support systems, business support systems, and analytics) and telco cloud & automation (software-defined networking, network function virtualization, etc.). James’ own research focuses on operations support systems, including service assurance, orchestration, order management, inventory management, network security, self-organizing networks, and radio access network intelligent control.

Before joining Omdia, James led Heavy Reading’s communications service provider IT & automation research service. James holds a Bachelor of Science and Master of Engineering in electrical and mechanical engineering from the University of Manchester, England. Earlier in his career, while working as a financial analyst, James passed the three exams required to obtain the Chartered Financial Analyst qualification. In addition, James has a Master of Science in electronic engineering from the University of Surrey, England.

Inderpreet is Omdia’s Senior Analyst for telco cloud. Her research focuses on communications service providers’ (CSP) adoption of cloud computing and relevant technologies across fixed and mobile network infrastructure. She tracks and monitors key providers across the network domain, including public cloud providers, which are enabling telco infrastructure migrations to cloud-native and virtualized platforms.

As a Director in STL’s consulting business Tilly has more than five years of experience leading growth projects for technology and telecoms firms. She heads up our research and consulting practice focused on edge and cloud computing and was nominated for Edge Computing Woman of the Year in 2022. Tilly has a BA from Oxford University and an MA from the University of Pennsylvania.

Hilary Carter oversees the development of decision-useful research projects and content programs that support open source as a paradigm for mass collaboration at scale. Together, the Research and Communications department broadens the understanding of the impact of open source software, open hardware, open standards, and open data for people, enterprises, governments, and society at large.

Hilary’s career began in financial services with experiences in corporate finance, research and analysis, and global private banking. Her career pivoted to digital technology, where she focused on mobile communications and digital media consulting. Before joining the Linux Foundation, Hilary led a global, syndicated research institute focused on blockchain technology.

She earned an MSc in Management from the London School of Economics.

Arpit Joshipura is an executive leader and open source software evangelist across carriers, cloud and enterprise IT – spanning networking, orchestrations, operating systems, security, AI, edge, hardware and silicon. He was recently voted among the Top 5 Movers and Shakers in the Telecom Industry. At the Linux Foundation, Arpit leads open source networking, orchestration & edge/IOT, including LF Networking projects (ONAP, OPNFV, ODL, FDIO, OvS, DPDK, OpenSwitch, Akraino/Edge/IOT, etc.) as well as major industry disruptions including VNFs to CNFs (Cloud Native Network functions), 5G, AI, etc.

Arpit brings 30 years of networking expertise and vision to The Linux Foundation, with both technical depth and business breadth. He has orchestrated and led major industry disruptions across enterprises, carriers, and cloud architectures, including IP, broadband, optical, mobile, routing, switching, L4-7, cloud, disaggregation, SDN/NFV, and open networking, and has been an early evangelist for open source. Arpit has served in CMO, VP, and Engineering roles within both startups and larger enterprises.

Ranny is in charge of driving technical innovation and creating opportunities for synergies among open source projects, and identifying emerging trends and projects. Ranny is a software veteran who has been focusing on pushing the envelope in open source innovation in recent years. Prior to joining the Linux Foundation Ranny was a director at Samsung Research America, leading the open source group, and a Principal Engineer at Nokia, where he innovated in Network Management and Orchestration.

Fatih E. Nar, known as “The Cloudified Turk,” has built a career solving complex challenges in various domains including telecom, entertainment , media and others. With experience at Google, Verizon Wireless, Canonical Ubuntu, Ericsson, and now Red Hat, he specializes in cloud-native and Data & AI-driven solutions for enterprises and service providers.

He holds an MSc in Information Technology and a BSc in Electronics Engineering, along with completed studies at MIT and ongoing professional education at Stanford. His work blends AI, cloud, and hyperscale computing to create practical, software-driven solutions.

Fatih is also a recognized writer, sharing insights through his Open xG HyperCore series on Medium and contributing to AI/ML projects on GitHub and Hugging Face. In 20205 Fatih has been elected as a subject matter expert on AI/ML within Linux Foundation Networking (LFN) organization to steer & lead AI initiatives.

When not working, he’s likely exploring new datasets and AI models, ctl’ing with k8s, or sneaking dad jokes into tech discussions.

Olaf Renner is working as a Senior Expert in Nokia Open Source Program Office and acts a chairman of the LFN Technical Advisory Council. Being in the telecommunications industry for 17+ years in various roles in research, standardization and open source his focus is on networking technologies where he has been involved in open source since the early days of network function virtualization, software defined networking and container networking in LFN and CNCF.

Michael Ma is a Principal Software Engineer Manager in Microsoft Azure Networking team, driving the effort of accelerating Azure network device update through container related technologies. Previously he worked in Microsoft, AliCloud and Databricks for 18 years, focusing on the cloud infrastructure areas.

Lingli Deng, is a director researcher of China Mobile Research Institute, whose major internal responsibilities include supporting top-level design and construction practice of China Mobile’s autonomous network vision, by industry standard formulation and open source collaboration such as VNF data plane acceleration, 4G NFV orchestration, 5G end-to-end slice orchestration, and autonomous network closed-loop management, as an active contributor to LFN projects (e.g. Anuket, ONAP, Nephio etc.).

Ciaran is a senior expert in Operations Support Systems (OSS) and programmable network architecture, and the chief architect for Ericsson’s network management portfolio with responsibility for architecture governance and evolution. He represents Ericsson on the Nephio TSC and is actively involved in promoting open source approaches within his domain.

Sebastian Zechlin is Head of OSS Architecture & Innovation at Deutsche Telekom. He is based in Bonn, Germany.

After graduating in Computer Science from the Technical University of Braunschweig, Sebastian has worked in the telecommunications industry for 15 years. At Deutsche Telekom, Sebastian has held several designer and architect roles in technical implementation projects ranging from access to voice via IMS. Most recently, he was senior architect for Operations Support Systems within the Technology Innovation department. Since 2018 Sebastian leads the OSS Architecture & Innovation department with a focus on Orchestration and SDN / NFV management. Sebastian has been actively involved in international standardization activities at ETSI, 3GPP and IETF.

Sreekanth Sasidharan is AVP & Unit Technology Officer for Network, Communication and Media engineering services at Infosys. In this charter, he heads the technology, architecture, innovation and open forum partnerships. He has over 25 years’ experience in telecom industry and had incubated many technologies for Infosys including SDN / NFV, 5G and Edge. Presently, he is focused in bringing AI first strategy for Networks. He is very passionate about open technologies and has working experience with forums like ONF, TIP , LFN and TMF. As an ardent thought leader, he has published 15+ point of views and papers in leading journals like IEEE, Nasscom and CIOL. He has innovated several solutions for Infosys in the areas of Automation, SDN , AI and has 4 granted patents and 5 in pipeline.

Peter Plak is an accomplished leader with over 20 years of experience in Networking Sales Engineering, currently overseeing the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg regions. Throughout his career, Peter has built a deep expertise in networking technologies, driving innovative solutions that enable businesses to modernize and scale their cloud infrastructures.

With a strong technical background and certifications across leading network vendors, cloud providers, and professional-level accreditation in SONiC, Peter brings a strategic approach to every project. His extensive experience includes working closely with large enterprises and cloud providers to design cutting-edge architectures that anticipate the exponential growth of data transport.

As a firm advocate for open networking, Peter believes in its transformative potential to create flexible, efficient, and future-proof systems. His leadership and technical knowledge ensure that his clients are well-prepared for the evolving challenges of modern networking. Outside of his professional life, Peter enjoys golf and snowboarding—activities that reflect his love for precision, strategy, and a spirit of adventure.

Jonne Soininen is Head of Software Industry Initiatives at Nokia in Helsinki. Prior to Nokia, he worked in different positions with Nokia, Nokia Siemens Networks, Renesas Mobile, and Broadcom and has an extensive history in telecommunications ranging over 15 years.

Jonne has a Master of Science in computer science from the University of Helsinki. He is currently pursuing his Ph.D. at the Aalto University in Finland.

Within the technical community, Jonne has been active in organizations such as 3rd Generation partnership project (3GPP), the Open Mobile Alliance (OMA), and the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF). In the IETF, Jonne has served as the Co-chair of IPv6 Operations (v6ops) and the Network-based Localized Mobility Management (netlmm) Working Groups, and as a member and the chair of the IETF Administrative Oversight Committee (IAOC). He has also served as the Vice-chair for the ISOC Advisory Council. Locally in Finland, Jonne has been active in the Finnish Internet Forum (FIF) – the Internet Governance Forum in Finland and as a member of the board of the local ISOC chapter.

Jonne has served on the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) board as the Technical Liaison Group (TLG) liaison in 2010 and since 2013 he is serving as the IETF liaison to the same board.

Silvia is Director of Software and Standards at ETSI, where she is responsible for Software Development Groups and open source initiatives in support of standardization. Among others, she has helped setup projects such as Open Source MANO, TeraFlowSDN, OpenSlice and OpenCAPIF.

Before that, she was Technical Expert in the ETSI Centre for Testing and Interoperability where she provided technical expertise on open source, interoperability testing and proofs of concept (PoC) to standardization groups working on network transformation (NFV, MEC, ZSM).

Prior to this position, Silvia was Lead Member of the Technical Staff at Ulticom, where she was responsible for the design and development of software based carrier grade solutions enabling mobile services. Before that, she worked in the domain of Operations Support Systems (OSS) and Network Management for HP and Thales.