Appointed Officers

Treasurer - Khaled Letaief

Dr. Letaief received the B.S. with Distinction, M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Purdue University, W-Lafayette, Indiana, USA in 1984, 1986, and 1990, respectively. He is currently a Chair Professor and Head of the ECE Department at HKUST and Director of the Hong Kong Telecom Institute of Information Technology. He is an IEEE Fellow, a ComSoc Distinguished Lecturer, and is the recipient of the 2007 Communications Society Publications Exemplary Service Award. He consulted and gave invited keynotes talks all over the world, and has published over 350 technical papers and 8 patents.

He served as volunteer in many positions including: elected member of the IEEE ComSoc Board of Governors; Founding Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications; Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications - Wireless Series; Technical Program Co-Chair of ICCCAS’04; General Co-Chair of WCNC’07; Technical Program Co-Chair of ICC’08. Khaled was Chair of the Personal Communications Technical Committee; Chair of 2008 IEEE TA/MGA Visits Program; Chair of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications Steering Committee; and member of several IEEE committees (e.g., Recertification, Ontology, Technical Activity Council, Publications Board, Operating Committee, Fellow Evaluation Committee, and Asia-Pacific Board)

Parliamentarian - Len Cimini

Len Cimini received a Ph.D.  in Elec. Eng. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1982, and, worked at AT&T, first in Bell Labs and then AT&T Labs, for twenty years.  In 2002, he Dr. joined the University of Delaware as a Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department.  His research has concentrated on lightwave and wireless communications.  In these areas, he has published more than 140 journal and conference papers and has been awarded 21 US patents.  Dr. Cimini has been very active within the IEEE, and he was the founding Editor-in-Chief of the IEEE J-SAC: Wireless Communications Series.  Among other activities within ComSoc, he has served as the Chair of the Emerging Technologies Committee, the Director of On-Line Content, and two terms as a Member at-Large on the Board of Governors.   Currently, he is the ComSoc Vice President - Publications.  He was elected a Fellow of the IEEE in 2000 for contributions to the theory and practice of high-speed wireless communications.   In addition to two paper awards, in 2007, Len was given the James R. Evans Avant Garde Award from the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society for his pioneering work on OFDM for wireless communications.

Chief Information Officer  - Micha Avni

Senior Vice President (Retired), Mobixell networks Inc. Prior to joining Mobixell in 2000 was involved in forming Orange Israel (Partner Communications Ltd.) dealing with Value Added Services (1998 – 2000). Co-founded and co-managed Mobile Information Systems Ltd. (1994-1998), producing mobile Value Added Systems and Services for an international IP-based wireless operator. Served as the General Manager and Executive Director for the Canadian Transportation Development Centre (TDC), Montreal, Canada, following several earlier positions within the Centre (1984-2004). Between 1980 and 1983, M. Avni managed the Supervisory Control & Data Acquisition (SCADA) group of DGB/SNC consultants. Previous responsibilities included computer control systems engineering with ABBDL/Tecsult and Computerized Air Traffic Control systems with CAE Electronics Ltd, Montreal Micha Avni holds an MSc in Communications (1977) from Concordia University, Montreal and a BSc in Elec. Eng. (1968) from the Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.
A member of ComSoc continuously as of 1981 - a listed Volunteer Leader within the ComSoc Community Directory for most of these years. Between 2007-2009 was involved in initiating the RFID 5-year strategic plan leading into the formation of the Technical Committee (TC) on RFID (ComSoc is an active participant). Between 1993 to 1996 Mr. Avni served on the TAB Intelligent Transportation Systems committee where ComSoc was an active member.

Director - Journals - Sarah Kate Wilson

Sarah Kate Wilson received her A.B. in Mathematics from Bryn Mawr College in 1979 and her M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1987 and 1994, respectively. She has worked in both academia and industry as a professor and as a research and development engineer. Her academic experience includes positions in Sweden as well as the United States. Her current research interests are
in OFDM, wireless optical communications and scheduling.

She is currently an Assistant Professor  in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Santa Clara University. She has served as co-chair for the Signal Processing Symposium of ChinaCom 2008, the vice-chair of the Communications Theory Symposium  for GLOBECOM ‘05 and on the technical program committees for VTC, GLOBECOM, ISSTA, ICC and WCNC. She is also the founder and organizer of the Santa Clara OFDM workshop.  She has served as an associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Communications Letters, IEEE Transactions on Communications and the Journal of Communications & Networks. She is cur rently the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Com munications Letters.
 

Director-Magazines - Steve Gorshe

Steven Scott Gorshe received his B.S.E.E. from the University of Idaho (1979) and M.S.E.E. (1982) and Ph.D. (2002) from Oregon State University. His work has included a wide variety of hardware design, system architecture, and applied research for GTE, NEC America, and PMC-Sierra, where he is a Principal Engineer. He has been active in six telecommunications and datacom standards bodies, including ITU-T, with over 300 contributions, multiple technical editorships, and receiving two prestigious awards. He was elected an IEEE Fellow (2007) for invention and standardization of elements of optical transmission systems. He has 33 patents issued or pending, over 24 published papers, and is co-author of a book and three chapters.
His wide-ranging IEEE ComSoc activities include Director of Magazines; Communications Magazine EiC, AEiC, series and guest editor roles; Transmission, Access, and Optical Systems (TAOS) Technical Committee chair; Oregon Chapter chair; Awards Committee; and Strategic Planning Committee.
 

Director - Conference Development - Heinrich Stuttgen

Heinrich Stüttgen was a Fulbright scholar at the State University of New York at Buffalo (NY) from where he holds a Master of Science degree (1979). He obtained Diploma (1979) and Doctor of Science (1985) degrees in computer science from the University of Dortmund. In 1985 he joined the IBM Research and Development Laboratory in Germany, developing one of the first mainframe UNIX systems. In
1987 he moved to IBM’s European Networking Center at Heidelberg, where he researched protocols for high-speed networks and multimedia communications. In 1991 he was appointed manager of ENC's Broadband Multimedia Communication department. In this function he was responsible for various research, development, marketing and services projects. In July 1997 Heinrich joined NEC Europe Ltd. as founding manager of NEC’s Network Laboratories in Heidelberg. Since June 2007 he is Vice President of NEC Laboratories Europe, responsible for NEC’s network and IT related R&D activities in Europe. Heinrich has widely published in various scientific conferences, journals and books. He was a guest lecturer at Mannheim University in Computer Networks and has been project auditor and proposal evaluator for the European Commission in the ICT area. Heinrich is an IEEE Fellow and served as a Member at Large of the Board of Governors of the IEEE Communications Society 2004 to 2006. He was chair of ComSoc's Technical Committee on Communications Switching and Routing 2004 and 2005 and has been chair of ComSoc’s IEEE Globecom and ICC Technical Content Committee (GITC) 2005 - 2009. He is a technical editor for IEEE Communications Magazine. From 1998 to 2009 he served as vice-chair of the German Information Technology Society’s special interest group on communications and distributed systems (GI/ITG KuVS). Heinrich was general chair of the IEEE High Performance Switching and Routing Conference in Heidelberg in 2000. In 2009 he acted as Technical Program Vice-Chair of IEEE ICC 2009 in Dresden, one of the most successful ICC’s ever. In 2009 he received Comsoc’s Harold Sobol Award for Exemplary Services to Meeting and Conferences.

Director - Conference Operations - Merrily Hartmann

Merrily Hartmann retired from SBC Communications/AT&T in 2000 with 25 years of service. Her tenure with the company included positions with increasing responsibility in the areas of equipment engineering, network planning, long range technical planning, network mechanization, network sales support, corporate human resources, and global markets sales support. She started her career with Bell Telephone Laboratories (Indian Hill Laboratory, Naperville, Illinois). She currently is serving as a Member-at-Large and as the Director of Conference Operations (filling an unexpired term) on the ComSocBoard of Governors, and as a member of the IEEE Conference Publications Committee (since 2010).  She previously held the position of Director of Conference Operations from 2008 through 2011.  She has also served on the GIMS Committee (2006-2007), which is responsible for providing strategic guidance and management oversight of the Society’s flagship conferences ICC and GLOBECOM. She has served on numerous conference organizing committees: NTC 1982; IEEE GLOBECOM 1986, 1989, 1993, 2001, and 2004; and IEEE RFID 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012 and 2013. She received her B.S. degree in mathematics and computer sciences from the University of Illinois, Chicago.

Director - Conference Publications - Neelesh Mehta

Neelesh B. Mehta received his Bachelor of Technology degree in Electronics and Communications Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Madras in 1996, and his M.S. and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA in 1997 and 2001, respectively. He is now an Associate Professor in the Dept. of Electrical Communication Eng. in the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), Bangalore, India. Prior to joining IISc in 2007, he was a research scientist in the Wireless Systems Research group in AT&T Laboratories, Middletown, NJ, USA from 2001 to 2002, Broadcom Corp., Matawan, NJ, USA from 2002 to 2003, and Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL), Cambridge, MA, USA from 2003 to 2007.
His research interests encompass link adaptation, multiple access protocols, cellular system design and performance analysis, MIMO and antenna selection, energy harvesting networks, and cooperative communications. He was also actively involved in the Radio Access Network (RAN1) standardization activities in the third generation partnership project (3GPP) from 2003 to 2007. He has served as a TPC co-chair for WISARD 2010 and 2011 workshops, Communications track of the National Conference on Communications (NCC) 2011, tutorials track for SPCOM 2010, the Transmission Technologies track of VTC 2009 (Fall), and the Frontiers of Networking and Communications symposium of Chinacom 2008. He will serve as a co-chair for the Wireless Communications Symposium of ICC 2013. He has also served on TPCs of several IEEE conferences such as Globecom, ICC, VTC, and WCNC. He has co-authored 30 IEEE journal papers, 55 conference papers, and three book chapters. He is a co-inventor in 16 issued US patents. He was an Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications from 2008 to 2011. He is now an editor of the new IEEE Wireless Communications Letters journal. He is also an executive committee member of the IEEE Bangalore Section and the Bangalore chapter of the IEEE Signal Processing Society.

Director - Education - David Michelson

David G. Michelson received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the University of British Columbia in 1994. After serving as a member of a joint research team at AT&T Wireless Services and AT&T Labs - Research that developed the propagation and channel models upon which the development of WiMAX and LTE were ultimately based, he founded UBC’s Radio Science Laboratory where his research focuses on propagation modeling and antenna design for wide area, vehicular, industrial and satellite communications. He currently serves on the Board of Directors of Wavefront, Canada's National Centre of Excellence for the Commercialization of Wireless Technology, and as Chair of IEEE Canada's Industry Relations Committee.
Prof. Michelson has previously served ComSoc as Chair, Vancouver Chapter (1999-2007), North American Chapter Chairs Coordinator (2006-2007), Member, North American Region Board (2006-2007), Member, Membership Programs Development Board (2006-2007), Member, North American Membership Development Committee (2001-2002) and Coordinator, Distinguished Lecture Tours (2001-2002). In 2009, in recognition of his service to IEEE Vancouver Section and IEEE ComSoc, he received IEEE Canada's EF Glass Award. Under his leadership as Section Chair, IEEE Vancouver Section was recognized as IEEE's Outstanding Large Section in 2010.

Director - Online Content - Steve Gorshe

Steven Scott Gorshe received his B.S.E.E. from the University of Idaho (1979) and M.S.E.E. (1982) and Ph.D. (2002) from Oregon State University. His work has included a wide variety of hardware design, system architecture, and applied research for GTE, NEC America, and PMC-Sierra, where he is a Principal Engineer. He has been active in six telecommunications and datacom standards bodies, including ITU-T, with over 300 contributions, multiple technical editorships, and receiving two prestigious awards. He was elected an IEEE Fellow (2007) for invention and standardization of elements of optical transmission systems. He has 33 patents issued or pending, over 24 published papers, and is co-author of a book and three chapters.
His wide-ranging IEEE ComSoc activities include Director of Magazines; Communications Magazine EiC, AEiC, series and guest editor roles; Transmission, Access, and Optical Systems (TAOS) Technical Committee chair; Oregon Chapter chair; Awards Committee; and Strategic Planning Committee.
 

Director - Marketing & Industry Relations - Stan Moyer

Stanley L. Moyer is Executive Director and Strategic Research Program Manager in the Applied Research organization of Telcordia Technologies, where he has worked since 1990.  Recently, he has led research and business development activities related to mobile applications and services, digital content services, and home networking.  Stan received his M.E. degree in electrical engineering from the Stevens Institute of Technology, Hoboken, New Jersey, in 1990, his B.S. degree in engineering physics from the University of Maine in 1987, and received an M.B.A. in technology management from the University of Phoenix in 2004.

He is currently Treasurer of the IEEE Communications Society and was a Member-at-Large of the Board of Governors (2004-2006).  Stan was the founding chair (and now Vice Chair) of the steering committee for the IEEE Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC).  Stan was the inaugural editor of the IEEE Communications Magazine In-Home Networking Series, Multimedia Communications Technical Committee chair (2001-2003), ComSoc representative to IEEE Transactions on Multimedia (2002-2004), and member of the steering committee for the IEEE International Conference on Multimedia and Expo (ICME).  He was also Program Chair of ICC ‘01 and ICC ‘02 Next Generation Internet symposium, chair (1997-1999) and secretary (1995-1997) of the Communications Software Technical Committee, Vice Chair of the Enterprise Networking Technical Committee (1996-1998), and session organizer for many ICCs and IEEE GLOBECOMs.

Stan is also president (2005-present) of the OSGi Alliance, an industry consortium creating specifications for the networked delivery of managed services. Stan has been a board member of the OSGi Alliance since 2001.

Director - Membership Programs Development - Mehmet Ulema

Mehmet Ulema is a professor at Manhattan College, New York. Previously, he held management and technical positions in AT&T Bell Labs, Bellcore, Daewoo Telecom, and Hazeltine.
He has been an active member of IEEE and ComSoc for more than three decades now. He served as the Technical Program Chair of for the two premier ComSoc conferences: GLOBECOM 2009 and ICC 2006. He also served as the Technical program chair for a number of other conferences including the first IEEE Consumer Communications Networking Conference (CCNC) in 2004 and IEEE Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS) in 2002. He also served as the General Co-chair of NOMS in 2008. He served as the chair of ComSoc’s Information Infrastructure and Radio Communications Committees. More recently he was the Vice-chair of the Technical Activities Council, Chair of the Distinguished Lecturer Selection and the Humanitarian Communications Technology Committees. He has served on many other ComSoc committees including GITC, the On-Line Content Board, and the Meeting and Conferences Board.
He has numerous publications in various international conferences and journals. He has been on the editorial board of a number of journals including the IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, Elsevier Journal of Computer Networks, ACM/Springer Journal of Wireless Network, and the Springer Journal of Network and Services Management.
Mehmet received his MS and PhD from Polytechnic Institute of New York University in 1980, and BS and MS degrees from Istanbul Technical University in 1972.

Director - Asia/Pacific Region - Kwang Bok Lee

Kwang Bok Lee received his B.A.Sc. and M.Eng. degrees from the University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada, in 1982 and 1986, respectively, and his Ph.D. degree from McMaster University in Canada in 1990. He was with Motorola Canada from 1982 to 1985 and Motorola USA from 1990 to 1996. In March 1996, he joined the School of Electrical Engineering at Seoul National University. Currently, he is a Professor and Head of the School of Electrical Engineering. He was the director of the Institute of New Media and Communications from 2007 to 2009. He received the Best Teacher Award in both 2003 and 2006 from the college of engineering, Seoul National University. He received the ‘Contribution Award’ from Samsung in 2005, and ‘Korea Engineering Award’ from President of Korea in 2010. He has been a board member of Korea Information and Communication Society since 2005, and an IEEE fellow since 2011.

Director - Europe, Africa & Middle-East Region- Fambirai Takawira

Fambirai Takawira received his BSc(E&E Engineering) degree from Manchester University in 1981 and the Ph.D. degree in 1986 from Cambridge University, England. He recently joined the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa where he serves as the Head of the School of Electrical and Information Engineering. Prior to that he spent 19 years at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in Durban, South Africa where he held various posts including Dean of the Faculty of Engineering. Dr. Takawira has also held appointments at the University of Zimbabwe, the University of California San Diego, British Telecom Research Laboratories, and National University of Singapore. His research interests are in wireless communication systems and networks. Dr. Takawira is a past editor of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and he served as Executive Co-Chair of ICC 2010.

Director - Latin America Region - Pedro Aguilera

Pedro Aguilera receives his Electrical Engineer degree from Universidad de Chile in 1987. Currently, he is account manager of Value Added Services Platforms at Switch Comunicaciones Ltda., a systems integration company in Chile. During 1994-2001, he worked at Telefonica Mundo Chile as Chief-Engineer in the Network Development Division. Here he was in charge of the first Chilean private ISP implementation and interconection with the US internet backbone via fiber optic submarine cable; during 1984-1993 he was a network planning engineer at Technology Development Department of Telefonica Chile (formely Compania de Telefonos de Chile).Here, Pedro was member of ITU-T Study Group 11 as SS7 Signaling specialist, representing Telefonica Chile.
As ComSoc Chile Chapter chair, he has co-chaired over 15 IEEE technical conferences and organized 8 DLTs. Since 2007, Pedro is responsible for designing and maintenance of ComSoc Webpage Latin America Region.

Director - North America Region - Yigang Cai

Yigang Cai received his BS, MS and PhD degrees from Zhejiang University, China in 1982, 1984 and 1987 respectively. He is currently a Distinguished Member of Technical Staff at Alcatel-Lucent. He is a lead system engineer for Alcatel-Lucent application products and systems. His current research interests include Machine Type Communications (MTC) /Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications, Application Enabler (AE) and Service Composition Framework (SCF), and LTE/EPC policy and charging control (PCC). He authored and co-authored 3 scientific books and over 160 publications, over 60 in peer reviewed journals. He filed 200+ US patents and has 110+ patents granted worldwide. He is a recipient of three times Bell Labs Inventors Awards (2008, 2010 and 2011). He served as ComSoc Chicago chapter chair (2003-2006); ComSoc NA region Distinguished Lecturer Tour (DLT) coordinator (2009-2011); ComSoc Member Relationship Council (MRC) Distinguished Lecturer Tour (DLT) and Distinguished Speaker Program coordinator (2010-2011).

Director - Sister & Related Societies-  Roberto Saracco

Roberto Saracco is responsible for long-term research and scientific communications reporting directly to the Chief Technology Officer of Telecom Italia.

In 2001 he became director of the Future Centre, a research centre focusing on the economic impact of innovations in the telecommunications area. During 1999 and 2000, Roberto proposed and delivered a World Bank project in the InfoDev framework to speed entrepreneurship in Latin American countries, and prior, 1999 and 2000, he proposed and carried out a World Bank project in the InfoDev framework to foster entrepreneurship in Latin America countries.

Roberto chaired the Visionary Group (1996-1997) on Super Intelligent Networks to steer the cooperative research at the European Union (EU) level beyond the year 2000. He is currently part of the Visionary Book Project of the EU. In 1994 he launched the Marketing & Communications area in CSELT, ensuring dissemination of innovation.

In the eighties, Roberto led research in Telecommunications Management in CSELT, and actively participated in standardization activities at CCITT, in the area of formal description techniques. Prior this role, he was involved in software design for the first Italian SPC systems.

In addition to CCITT, Roberto has directly, and indirectly, participated in a number of international standardization organizations including OSI, ETSI and T1M1. His leadership includes chairing an EU-level group for planning, leading European research activities in the area of software technologies, and the EURESCOM group in designing the framework for European co-operation on TMN. He has led the EURESCOM group in information modeling for Pan European Services and Network Management. He is a senior member of IEEE where he has held several leading roles. Currently he is the Director of the Sister and Related Societies of COMSOC, a member of the Strategic Board of IEEE, and VP of the Italian Telecommunication Association (AICT).

On the FISTERA project http://fistera.jrc.es focused on steering research funding at the EU level, Roberto has the responsibility of forecasting technology trajectories for the next fifteen years in the area of information and communications technologies.  He is also a leader of the Council of Advisors http://www.thecouncils.com/, and has published over 100 papers in journals and magazines, six books – including “The Disappearance of Telecommunications,” which was published in the USA, and several articles in the scientific section of daily newspapers. He has also delivered speeches and keynotes at many international conferences.

At several stages in his career, Roberto has taught at Universities in Italy and around the world on the subject of Telecommunications, and most recently, on the New Economy. He currently lectures at the Turin Polytechnic on the aspects of multimedia and telecommunications.

Director - Standards Development -  Kevin W. Lu

Kevin Lu received the B.S. degree (1979) in control engineering from National Chiao Tung University, Taiwan, and the M.S. (1981) and D.Sc. (1984) degrees in systems science and mathematics from Washington University, St. Louis. He has worked over 27 years for Applied Research at Bellcore and Telcordia. He was Member of Technical Staff (1984–1995), Director of broadband access network engineering (1995–1999), Executive Director of integrated access and operations (1999–2003), and Chief Scientist of emerging technologies and services (2003–2011).
His experience includes the development of standards for interoperable connectivity between vehicles, infrastructure, and mobile devices. He is a member of the US Technical Advisory Group to ISO/TC 204 in Intelligent Transport Systems. He was Chair (2007–2010) of TIA TR-48 on Vehicular Telematics. He contributed to the ATIS Machine-to-Machine Focus Group and the 2011–2014 Strategic Plan for the USDOT ITS Standards Program. He has also participated in the SAE DSRC Technical Committee.
Kevin’s ComSoc services include Chair of the ComSoc/OFC Coordinating Committee (1993–1994), Chair of Optical Communications Committee’s Technical Program Subcommittee (1991–1994), and Secretary of Optical Communications Committee (1990–1991). He represented Optical Communications Committee at the ICC 1991 Technical Program Committee. He also served as Session Organizer and Chair for ICC (1994) and Globecom (1989, 1993, and 1994).

Director - Standardization Programs Development- Stephen F. Bush

Stephen F Bush (M’03–SM’03) received the B.S. degree in electrical and computer engineering from Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA, the M.S. degree in computer science from Cleveland State University, Cleveland, OH, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Kansas, Lawrence. He is the author of the first textbook on nanoscale networking, Nanoscale Communication Networks (Norwood, MA: Artech House, 2010). He coauthored a book on active network management, titled Active Networks and Active Network Management: A Proactive Management Framework (New York, NY: Kluwer Academic/Plenum Publishers, 2001). Dr. Bush is past chair of the IEEE Emerging Technical Subcommittee on Nanoscale, Molecular, and Quantum Networking. He is on the Steering Committee for the IEEE Smart Grid Vision Project and is Chair of the P1906.1 IEEE Recommended Practice for Nanoscale and Molecular Communication Framework Working Group and an IEEE Distinguished Lecturer on Smart Grid and Nanoscale Communication Networks. IEEE Activities Related to Standards (List in point form starting from most recent):
*) P1906.1 IEEE Recommended Practice for Nanoscale and Molecular Communication Framework Working Group
*) Smart Grid Vision 2030 Project Major Accomplishments in Previous Standards-related Volunteer Position and/or Standards Activities(s):
*) Established the working group for P1906.1 IEEE Recommended Practice for Nanoscale and Molecular Communication Framework.
*) Help organized and continues to participate in the Smart Grid Vision Project. Stephen is co-editor along with Sanjay Goel and David Bakken on a smart grid vision book to be published in 2012.