Advisory board
Established shortly after the project’s inception, the HORSE Advisory Board consists of renewed independent experts in telecommunication, networking, cybersecurity, privacy, AI and wireless technologies who provide their unique knowledge, critical thinking, and analysis with the aim of advancing the project and helping it to achieve its objectives.
More specifically, the members of the Advisory Board provide advice to the project consortium on its direction and the relevance of project results to policy, in addition to facilitating industry participation and exploitation strategies. All HORSE Advisory Board members have been appointed by the project Steering Committee based on their strong expertise and interest in the field and have signed the Collaboration Agreement.
Read more about the HORSE Advisory Board members below.
Dr. Elena Cipressi is a Global Solutions Architect in the AWS Telecom Business Unit, with a previous career in the IT/Telco field. In her current role, she is responsible for designing tailored solutions for ISP/CSP/Enterprises that want to take their first steps on AWS cloud – taking into account both technical & business requirements.
After completing her classical high school education, Elena graduated in Physics with a thesis on Quantum Computing and obtained a PhD in Information and Communication Technology from the University of Modena and Reggio Emilia
Dr. Akihiro Nakao is a professor at Department of Systems Innovation, Faculty of Engineering, The University of Tokyo. He received Ph.D. degree in Computer Science from Princeton University.
He has been teaching at the University of Tokyo since 2005, leading Nakao Research Laboratory pursuing research on next generation cyber infrastructure.
Prof. Christos Verikoukis is an Associate Professor with the University of Patras and a collaborating faculty member with ISI/ATH. He received his PhD from the Technical University of Catalonia (UPC) in 2000.
Dr. Christos h-index is 48 and his publications achieved a total of more than 10000 citations. He has published 162 journal papers and over 220 conference papers. He is also the co-author of 4 books, 20 chapters of different books and of 5 patents. Since 2004, he has supervised 25 Ph.D. students (18 PhD graduations) and 10 Post Docs researchers.
He received the best paper award of the Communication QoS, Reliability & Modelling Symposium (CQRM) symposium in the IEEE ICC 2011, ICC 2014 & ICC2020, of the Selected Areas in Communications Symposium in the IEEE GLOBECOM 2015, of the EUCNC 2016 conference, the EURASIP 2013 Best Paper Award for the Journal on Advances in Signal Processing and the Best Demo Award in IEEE CAMAD2018.He has delivered 14 tutorials in prestigious conferences such as IEEE ICC, IEEE Globecom and IEEE WCNC and more than 30 invited talks. Prof. Verikoukis has participated in more than 40 competitive projects while he has served as the Principal investigator in national projects in Greece and in Spain. He is currently coordinating 6 EC-funded projects in the area of 6G and he is involved in 3 more projects.
Dr. Melike Erol-Kantarci is a highly cited prolific researcher and an influential industry leader in AI in telecom. She is the Chief Cloud RAN AI\ML Data Scientist at Ericsson and Canada Research Chair in AI-enabled Next-Generation Wireless Networks and Full Professor at the University of Ottawa, Canada.
Throughout her 15+ years of career in communications, she has received numerous awards and recognitions from technical societies. Dr. Erol-Kantarci is the co-editor of three books on smart grids, smart cities and intelligent transportation. She has over 200+ peer-reviewed publications with citations over 8000 and h-index 43. She is a sought-after speaker with 70+ keynotes, plenary talks and tutorials around the globe both at industry events and academic conferences.
Dr. Erol-Kantarci serves on the editorial board of several IEEE transactions. She has acted as the general chair and the technical program chair for many international conferences and workshops. Most recently, she is General Co-Chairing the IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning for Communication and Networking 2024. She is also the Vice-chair of IEEE ComSoc emerging technologies initiative on Machine Learning for Communications. Her main research interests are AI-enabled wireless networks, 5G and 6G wireless communications, smart grid and Internet of Things. She is an IEEE Senior member and ACM Senior Member. She was an IEEE ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer between 2021 and 2023.