Joseph L. LoCicero was born on September 18, 1947 in the Borough of The Bronx, New York City, New York, USA. He received his academic training at the City College of New York (BSEE 1970 and MSEE 1971) and the City University of New York (Ph.D. 1977). He performed his doctoral thesis research under Donald L. Schilling. Upon receipt of his doctoral degree he joined Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) as a faculty member in what is now the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Department, where he served for over 30 years as Assistant Professor, Associate Professor, Professor, and Motorola Chair Professor, as well as undertaking the position of Acting Chair of the ECE Department for two years. He was one of the co-founders of the Wireless Network and Communications (WiNCom) Research Center.While at IIT, Dr. LoCicero worked on problems in signal processing and communications, focusing particularly in the areas of speech processing, video systems, and wireless communications. He specialized in low bit rate voice, computer generated holography for photonic switching, pitch detection, automatic speech recognition, and nonlinear power amplifiers, among other research topics. 

He authored more than ninety technical articles, three book chapters, and co-edited Tutorial in Modern Communications and the IEEE Press Book Television Technology Today. Dr. LoCicero was advisor to many doctoral students and several students who received the Master of Science in Electrical Engineering degree under his guidance.

Octavia A Dobre (Fellow, IEEE) is a Professor and Research Chair at Memorial University, Canada. She was a Royal Society Scholar, a Fulbright Scholar, and Visiting Professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Her research interests include technologies for beyond 5G, as well as optical and underwater communications. She published over 450 referred papers in these areas. Dr. Dobre serves as the Director of Journals of the Communications Society. She was the inaugural Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society and the EiC of the IEEE Communications Letters, as well as senior editor/editor/guest editor for numerous journals and magazines. She was the Technical Committee/Tutorial/Awards Chair at flagship conferences, and the inaugural Chair of the IEEE ComSoc Women in Communications Engineering Standing Committee. Dr. Dobre received various honors, such as Best Paper Awards at leading conferences, and was elected as member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, and Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering.