Speakers

Prof. Paolo Rocca,
IEEE Fellow, ELEDIA@UniTN, University of Trento, Italy

Title of the Talk: ‘Building’ Smart EM Environments for Future Wireless Communication Systems Through AI.

Biography: Paolo Rocca (IEEE Fellow 2023) received the MS degree in Telecommunications Engineering (summa cum laude) in 2005 and the PhD Degree in Information and Communication Technologies in 2008 from the University of Trento, Italy. He is currently Associate Professor at the Department of Civil, Environmental, and Mechanical Engineering (University of Trento), Huashan Scholar Chair Professor at the Xidian University, Xi’an, China, and a member of the ELEDIA Research Center. Moreover, he is Member of the Big Data and AI Working Group for the Committee on Engineering for Innovative Technologies (CEIT) of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO). Prof. Rocca received the National Scientific Qualification for the position of Full Professor in Italy and France in April 2017 and January 2020, respectively. Prof. Rocca is author/co-author of 5 book chapters, 170 journal papers, and more than 300 conference papers. He has been a visiting Ph.D. student at the Pennsylvania State University (USA), at the University Mediterranea of Reggio Calabria (Italy), and a visiting researcher at the Laboratoire des Signaux et Systèmes (L2S@ Supèlec, France) in 2012 and 2013. Moreover, he has been an Invited Professor at the University of Paris Sud (France) in 2015 and at the University of Rennes 1 (France) in 2017. Prof. Rocca has been awarded from the IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society and the Italy Section with the best PhD thesis award IEEE-GRS Central Italy Chapter. His main interests are in the framework of artificial intelligence techniques as applied to electromagnetics, antenna array synthesis and analysis, electromagnetic inverse scattering, and quantum computing for electromagnetic engineering. He served as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters (2011-2016), the Microwave an Optical Technology Letters (2019-2020) and serves as an Associate Editor of the IEEE Antennas and Propagation Magazine (since 2020), and of Engineering (since 2020)

Debatosh Guha, IEEE Fellow
Professor, Institute of Radio Physics & Electronics,
University of Calcutta.

Title of the Talk: Creativity and Innovation: Challenges in Scientific Research

Biography: Debatosh Guha is a Professor of the Institute of Radio Physics and Electronics, University of Calcutta, India and formerly HAL Chair Professor of the Indian Institute of Technology Kharagpur. He is Abdul Kalam Technology Innovation National Fellow.

He received the B.Tech and M.Tech degrees from the University of Calcutta in 1987 and 1989, respectively and started his career as an Engineer in Webel Telecommunication Industries Limited. After graduating with a Ph.D. in microwave engineering from Calcutta University, he joined the same University as an Assistant Professor in 1994.

He has researched in developing microstrip and dielectric resonator antenna technologies. Defected Ground Structure (DGS) -integrated antenna is one of his major areas of contribution. He has published over 200 papers in top Journals and Conferences along with a book on ‘Microstrip and Printed Antennas’ from Wiley, UK, 2011. He developed wireless base-station antennas for a North American industry, which have been a commercial product (Z1900) since 2007.

Professor Guha is Fellow of IEEE , Indian Academy of Sciences (IASc), Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE), The National Academy of Sciences, Indian (NASI), and West Bengal Academy of Science and Technology (WAST). He is a recipient of some notable awards which include IETE Ram Lal Wadhwa Award (New Delhi 2016), IEEE AP-S Raj Mittra Travel Grant Award (Chicago 2012); URSI Young Scientist Award (Lille, Franc1996).

He is now a Vice-President of West Bengal Academy of Science and and Technology and Commission-B Chair in the Indian National Committee for URSI. He served IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters as an Associate Editor (2015-2019) and now he is an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on  Antennas and Propagation. He is a Section Editor of INAE Letters. He has served IEEE Kolkata Section as the Chair (2013-2014); IEEE AP-MTT Kolkata Chapter as the Founding Chair (2004) and Chair (2010-2011). He conceptualized and initiated two IEEE sponsored flagship conferences in India: IEEE Applied Electromagnetics Conference AEMC (biennial) in 2007 and IEEE Indian Antenna Week IAW (annual) in 2010 and finally has given leadership to merge them to form ‘Indian Conference on Antennas and Propagation’ since 2018.

His current research interests include Defected Ground Structure (DGS) for advanced antenna design, Dielectric Resonator Antennas with unconventional modes and feeding structures, improving cross-polarization issues of printend antenna and arrays, theory and design of resonance gain antenna for pattern synthesis and advanced feed designs.

Professor Ganapati Panda
FNAE, FNASc, FIET(UK)

Title of the Talk: Recent Advances in Signal Processing and Communication.

Biography : Professor Ganapati Panda is currently working as a Professor and Research Advisor at C V Raman Global University-Odisha, Bhubaneswar, India. Professor Panda served as the Deputy Director, Dean (Academic Affairs), and Head, School of Electrical Sciences at the Indian Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar. He was also Dean (Administration), Head of Electronics and Communication Engineering at the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela. He was a member of the Board of Governors of IIT Bhubaneswar and NIT Rourkela. Dr. Panda also served as Director of the National Institute of Technology, Jamshedpur. He worked for 48 years in teaching and research in leading technical institutions in India. He did his Post-Doctoral research work at the University of Edinburgh, UK (1984-86), and Ph. D. (1981) from IIT, Kharagpur in Digital Signal Processing. He has guided 42 Ph.Ds in the field of Signal Processing, Communication, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning. He has published more than 380 research papers in various referred Journals and Conferences with 12929 citations, h-index of 53, and i10-index of 197 as of 5 th Sept 2023. Ten more Ph.D. students are continuing their Ph.D. work under his active guidance.

He has successfully completed a number of research projects from various funding agencies in India and other countries. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Engineering, India (FNAE) and a Fellow of the National Academy of Science, India (FNASc) for his significant research contribution to signal processing and machine learning. He has received Samanta Chandra Sekhar Award (1993), Biju Patnaik Award (2012), INAE-Outstanding Teacher Award (2017), AICTE-INAE Distinguished Visiting Professorship (2019-20), and AICTE- Margadarshak (2019-20), Life Time Achievement Award – Ravenshaw University (2021), listed under Top 2% Scientist of the world from the Stanford University in the area of AI&ML (2021,2022) for significant contribution to engineering, education, and research. His name is included in the Technology Advisory Board of the Centre for Development of Telematics (C-DOT), Govt. of India in March 2022. Prof. Panda is listed as one of the World’s Best Computer Science Scientist in India by the Microsoft Academic Graph in the year 2022 with a national rank of 33. He is a Senior Member of IEEE, Fellow of IET, Fellow of IETE, Fellow of IE, Life Member of CSI, Life Member of ISTE, and a Life Member of System Society. He is a regular reviewer of many international journals. He has chaired and delivered keynote addresses at many international conferences in India and abroad. His research interests are in the areas of Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, Digital Signal Processing, Digital Communication, and Intelligent Instrumentation.

Arumugam Nallanathan
Professor of Wireless Communications
Head of Communication Systems Research (CSR) Group
School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science
Queen Mary University of London, United Kingdom

Web: http://www.eecs.qmul.ac.uk/~nalla/

Title of Keynote Address: Dynamic Massive Access Optimization in Cellular IoT Networks

Biography: Arumugam Nallanathan is Professor of Wireless Communications and the founding head of the Communication Systems Research (CSR) group in the School of Electronic Engineering and Computer Science at Queen Mary University of London since September 2017. He was with the Department of Informatics at King’s College London from December 2007 to August 2017, where he was Professor of Wireless Communications from April 2013 to August 2017 and a Visiting Professor from September 2017. He was an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore from August 2000 to December 2007. His research interests include Beyond 5G Wireless Networks, Internet of Things (IoT) and Molecular Communications. He published nearly 500 technical papers in scientific journals and international conferences. He is a co-recipient of the Best Paper Awards presented at the IEEE International Conference on Communications 2016 (ICC’2016), IEEE Global Communications Conference 2017 (GLOBECOM’2017) and IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference 2017 (VTC’2017).

He is an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications. He was an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (2006-2011), IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (2006-2017), IEEE Wireless Communications Letters and IEEE Signal Processing Letters. He served as the Chair for the Signal Processing and Communication Electronics Technical Committee of IEEE Communications Society and Technical Program Chair and member of Technical Program Committees in numerous IEEE conferences. He received the IEEE Communications Society SPCE outstanding service award 2012 and IEEE Communications Society RCC outstanding service award 2014. He has been selected as a Web of Science (ISI) Highly Cited Researcher in 2016. He is an IEEE Fellow and IEEE Distinguished Lecturer.

Prof. Amalendu Patnaik, Professor, Electronics & Communication
Engineering Dept, IIT Roorkee.

Title of the Topic: Metaheuristics in Antenna Engineering: why and how ?

Biography : Amalendu Patnaik (Senior Member, IEEE) received the Ph.D. degree in electronics from Berhampur University, Berhampur, India, in 2003. From 2004 to 2005, he was the Visiting Scientist with The University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM, USA. He is currently a Professor with the Department of Electronics and Communication Engineering, IIT Roorkee, Roorkee, India. He is an author/coauthor of over 130 peer-reviewed papers in international journals and conferences. He has coauthored one book on Compact Antennas for High Data Rate Communication: Ultra-wideband (UWB) and Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (MIMO) Technology (Springer) and one book chapter on Neural Networks for Antennas in Modern Antenna Handbook (Wiley). His research interests include antenna array signal processing, the application of soft-computing techniques in electromagnetics, computer-aided-design (CAD) for patch antennas, electromagnetic interference (EMI), and electromagnetic compatibility (EMC).

Dr. Patnaik is a Life Member of the Indian Society for Technical Education (ISTE). He was a recipient of the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineer (IETE) Sir J. C. Bose Award in 2000, the International Union of Radio Science (URSI) Young Scientist Award in 2005, and the BOYSCAST Fellowship from the Department of Science and Technology, Government of India, from 2004 to 2005. He was the IEEE AP-S Region-10 Distinguished Speaker from 2015 to 2016. He serves as an Editorial Board Member for the International Journal of RF and Microwave Computer Aided Engineering, Wiley. He was the Chairperson of the IEEE Roorkee Subsection from 2015 to 2017.

Dr. Hemant Rath

Title of the talk : Moving Towards 6G : Transformation and Realization.

Abstract : The emerging 6G Communication has the potential to bring disruptions in the society. It has the ability to bring plethora of new applications and services. The world is going to witness several challages while transforming from the current setup to the new setup. In this talk, we plan to discuss the journey of 6G, emerging technologies which will be driving 6G, transformation activities to realize the new emerging applications and solutions, and the Industry view on this.

Biography: Dr. Hemant Rath is a Senior Member of IEEE, holds MTech and Ph.D. in Communication Engg. from IIT Bombay, and BE in EL&TCE from VSSUT Burla, Odisha. He has more than 25 years of experience in academics, research, and industry. At present, Hemant is a Principal Scientist at TCS Research Bhubaneswar. His research interests include NextGen Network Design, Software Defined Networks, Industrial Applications, QoS in Networks, Network Security, etc. He has authored more than 100 research papers, co-authored a book, delivered several talks and keynotes, and has more than 75 granted patents in the broad areas of communication and networking. Hemant has received several awards including the Distinguished Engineer Award in TCS. He is active in national and international standardization (IoT -ITU-T, GISFI, TSDSI, IEEE) in the areas of networking and communications. Hemant also serves as a Governing Body member of SUIIIT, Burla, and BoS member in several colleges and universities in India. He is also teaching at IIT Bhubaneswar (School of Electrical Sciences) as an Adjunct Faculty since July

Dr. Debiprasad Das,
IMMT, Bhubaneswar

Topic: Active Noise Control.

Biography: Dr. Debi Prasad Das received the B.Sc. (Hons.) degree in physics from Utkal University, India, in 1996, the M.Sc. degree in Electronics from Sambalpur University, India, in 1998, and the Ph.D. degree in electronics and instrumentation engineering from the National Institute of Technology (NIT), Rourkela, India, in 2004. From 2003 to 2004, he was an Assistant Professor and the Head of the Department of Electronics, Silicon Institute of Technology, Bhubaneswar. From 2004 to 2005, he was a Postdoctoral Research Associate with the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, India. In April 2005, he joined the Central Electronics Engineering Research Institute (CEERI), Pilani, India, as a Scientist. After working there for three years, he was transferred to the Process Engineering and Instrumentation Department, CSIR-Institute of Minerals and Materials Technology, Bhubaneswar, where he has been working as Scientist (2008-2011) and Senior Scientist (2011-2015). Presently he is a Principal Scientist and Head of Process Engineering Department at CSIR-IMMT, Bhubaneswar.

He is also holding an honorary position of Associate Professor of AcSIR in the faculty of Engineering Sciences. He was a guest faculty at IIT Bhubaneswar in Spring Semester 2012.

During 2010-2011 he visited the University of Adelaide, Australia for postdoctoral research in the area of active noise control. He also visited RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia as a postdoctoral research fellow for working in audio signal processing.

He has completed guidance of Six PhDs and four are continuing. He is one of the key technology developer for Eye-On-Pellet and Expert-Eye-On-Pellet which are being used in Indian Steel Industries for monitoring and control of pelletization process.

His research interests include active noise control, signal processing, adaptive signal processing, computationally efficient and hardware-suitable algorithms, microcontroller-based system development, signal and image processing applications for the mineral industry, instrumentation, plasma spectroscopy, Machine learning, Big-Data analysis, IoT and cyber-physical systems.

Dr. Das was a recipient of the Orissa Young Scientists Award (2004) by Govt. of Orissa, India, CSIR Young Scientist Award (2009), by CSIR, India and BOYSCAST Fellowship (2009-10) by DST, Govt. of India, NI Engineering Impact Award 2014 (Runners-up) and AICTE-INAE Distinguished Visiting Professorship-2018. He is also selected as a Mentor of Change for Atal Tinkering Lab in 2018 by Niti Ayog, Govt. of India.

Subhransu Ranjan Samantaray,
IIT Bhubaneswar

Title of the Talk: Advanced Signal Processing Application to Smart Grid.

Biography: Dr. Subhransu Ranjan Samantaray received B. Tech from UCE Burla, PhD from NIT Rourkela and Post-Doctoral Studies from McGill University, Canada. Currently, he holds the position of Associate Professor in the School of Electrical Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, India. He has visited the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McGill University, Canada and Department of Automation and Electrical Engineering, AALTO University, Finland as Visiting Professor. He has more than 22 years of experience including Industry and Academia. His major research interests include PMU and wide area measurement, intelligent protection for transmission systems including FACTs, Micro-grid protection including distributed generation, Micro-grid planning, Wide-area based dynamic security assessment in large power networks and Smart-Grid Technologies. With 119 peer reviewed international journals and 63 conference proceedings, his research appeared in top power engineering journals such as IEEE Transactions, IET Proceedings and Elsevier etc. The research outcomes have been cited more than 5934 with h-index of 42. His research credentials brought several recognitions including Director’s Commendation for Outstanding Research-2021, IEEE PES Chapter Outstanding Engineer Award-2020, NASI-SCOPUS Young Scientists Awards-2015, IEEE PES Technical Committee Prize Paper Award-2012, Samanta Chandra Sekhar Award, Odisha Bigyana Acadmey-2010, Young Engineers Award-IEI (Institute of Engineers, India) -2009, Innovative Doctoral Thesis Award-Indian National Academy of Engineering (INAE) -2008, Young Scientists Award, Odisha Bigyana Acadmey, Dept. of Science and Technology, Govt. of Odisha) -2007 etc. He is an Associate Editor of IEEE Systems Journal, past Editor of IEEE Transactions on Smart Grid, IEEE Transactions on Power Delivery, Associate Editor, IET, Generation, Transmission & Distribution, Member, IEEE Power Systems Stability SubCommittee, Guest Editor, IEEE Sensor Journal. He is a Member, National Academy of Sciences India (NASI), Senior Member, IEEE and Fellow, IET

Dr. Ajit Kumar Panda

Title of the talk: Role of Microwave Engineering, DSP and Communication Technology in a 5G Systems

Biography: Dr. Ajit Kumar Panda, a BOYSCAST fellow at University of Michigan at USA and an ICTP Regular Associate Awardee works in academic for around 25 years before jumping to own start-up and ultimately to set up a unit of an Indian OEM VVDN Technologies where he is now working as Vice President, Engineering RF. He is responsible to have 500 engineers in VVDN Bhubaneswar Center in the domain of 5G, Wi-Fi, IoT, Vision, Automotive and cloud and is responsible for the RF part across all Business Unit and across all locations of VVDN.

He is a Distinguished Lecturer of IEEE Electron Device Society, currently one of the SRC vice- Chair of IEEE EDS and is a IEEE Senior Member. Have published more than 100 Research Papers in SCI journals and have guided 16 students for PhD.

India lunches 5G before a year and now more than 9000 towers have 5G BTS in Odisha. Development of this base station needs a knowledge of Microwave/RF engineering, Communication Techniques and DSPs in addition to RTL and Software. Thus, the aim of the lecture is to highlight the scope of these topics in industry fot researchers and academician to reduce the gap between Industry and Academy.

Dr. Kailash Chandra Ray
IIT Patna.

Title of Talk: Light Weight Edge Computing System: Present & Future.

Biography : Dr. Kailash Chandra Ray received the B.E. degree in Electrical Engineering from the Orissa Engineering College, Bhubaneswar, India, in 1997, the M. Tech. degree in Electrical Engineering from NIT, Jamshedpur, India, in 2000, and the Ph.D. degree in Electronics and Electrical Communication Engineering from IIT Kharagpur, India, in 2009. He was a Technical Member Staff (Design Engineer) with CMOS Chips, Bangalore, India, during 2001–2003. He also served as a Lecturer with IIIT Allahabad, India, from 2008 to 2010. He was an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute Technology Patna, India, from 2010 to 2018, where he has been an Associate Professor since 2018. His research interests include very largescale integration (VLSI) architectural design, VLSI signal processing, digital VLSI design, hardware design methodologies, FPGA based system design, CORDIC, and embedded system..

Dr. Jagannath Malik,
IIT Patna,

Title of the talk: EM-based sensors for continuous glucose monitoring systems.

Biography: Dr. Jagannath Malik obtained Integrated B. Tech & M. Tech, and Ph.D. degrees from Indian Institute of Technology Roorkee (IIT Roorkee) in 2011 and 2016 respectively. Dr. Malik received University Research Scientist (URS) fellowship from Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology (UNIST), Republic of Korea for his postdoctoral research. Dr. Malik led the Antenna R&D team in university incubated start-up company for the development of state-of-the-art antenna solutions for enabling communications in RF shielded environments and marine ships. He received Korean Patent on the technology that led to commercialization. He is the founding member and the Team Lead, sensor development at SB-Solutions Inc. Seoul, South Korea where he designed EM-based biosensors for biomedical and healthcare applications. His research paper on electromagnetic based glucose sensor has been covered as Featured Article in Transactions on Biomedical Engineering, IEEE.

Dr. Malik received Young Scientist Award from International Union of Radio Science
(URSI) in 2015. He also received Young Scientist Award from Uttarakhand State Council for Science and Technology in 2012. Dr. Malik has authored/ co-authored more than 20 international journal papers, and 30 conferences papers. Dr. Malik is a regular reviewer of IEEE Antennas and Wireless Propagation Letters, IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation, IET Microwaves, Antennas and Propagation, and the International Journal of Electronics and Communications Elsevier. His current research interests include multifunctional metamaterials, wearable antennas,intelligent surfaces for 5G+/6G, electromagnetic based non- invasive bio-sensors, and frequency selective surfaces.