Featured Speakers

Mr. Marlan Macklin is the Deputy Principal Director for FutureG within the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering (OUSW(R&E)). The FutureG Office guides U.S. Department of War (DoW) research, funding, and execution of programs that develop capabilities leveraging 5G and future generation wireless technologies. In his current position, Mr. Macklin is responsible for ensuring the office’s strategic alignment, providing program execution oversight, and overseeing budget execution.

Prior to joining OUSW(R&E), Mr. Macklin served in the U.S. Mission to NATO as Chief of the Communications & Electronics Division and Deputy to the Director for Armaments, Communications & Electronics. The directorate provided technical and political-military advice
to the U.S. Ambassador to NATO, the Secretary of Defense Representative in Europe, and DoW leadership for equities including acquisition, C3, innovation, and emerging technologies.

Mr. Macklin served as a Country Programs Manager in the International Cooperation Directorate of the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition and Sustainment (OUSW(A&S)) and former Office of the Under Secretary of War for Acquisition, Technology
& Logistics. He worked closely with DoW, interagency, defense industry, and foreign governments to advance complex cooperative acquisition programs, negotiate international research and development agreements, and address Congressional reporting requirements for activities with allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific and Middle East. During the pandemic, Mr. Macklin served as the OUSW(A&S) representative on the Secretary of Defense’s COVID-19 Task Force supporting DoW’s contributions to domestic and international COVID-19 response activities.

During his time in the Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Defense Exports & Cooperation, Mr. Macklin oversaw and advised on international security cooperation activities including Foreign Military Sales, security assistance policy, armaments cooperation, and defense technology transfers. Throughout his career, he held positions in other U.S. Army acquisition organizations including the Program Executive Office for Command, Control, Communications-Tactical; the Communications-Electronics Command Life Cycle Management Command; and the Army Materiel Command.

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.

Anita Döhler has extensive international experience in various business areas including senior management positions with mobile network operators, vendors, and consulting firms. From 2016 until 2020, she held senior management positions at Accenture Industry X.0. Prior to joining Accenture, she worked at Vodafone Group for 16 years, before at E-Plus and Philips, among others. Anita holds a Dipl.-Ing. degree in Telecommunication Engineering as well as an Executive MBA degree. Furthermore, she is a Systemic Business Coach. Anita is passionate about driving technology innovation for the benefit of humans and societies and supporting the world’s leading operators, vendors, and research institutes as CEO of the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) Alliance.  

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. 

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.

Hui DENG joined China Mobile Research in 2007 and acted as CTO of the network department, later he joined Huawei in 2016, and is serving as the Chief Standard &Open source engineer of Mobile Core Network/IMS/NFV/Cloud&AI Native which cover multiple standard organizations (3GPP/ETSI/GSMA )and open source projects in Linux Foundation. He has been elected as the Vice Chair of ETSI NFV ISG since 2019. He founded OPEN-O project and act as 1st board of chairman in Linux foundation which later evolved in to ONAP in Linux foundation. He also co-chaired IETF MIF working group between 2009-2016.

Ranny is in charge of driving technical innovation further, 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. He provided leadership and guidance for engineering teams across Samsung who were actively contributing to open source projects such as ONAP, CNCF, ROS, and Matter (CHIP).