Keynote speaker
Prof. Merouane DEBBAH
Chief Researcher at Technology Innovation Institute of Abu Dhabi
Keynote speaker
Prof. Christian BARDON
President & CEO VotreCity Monaco
Title: 6G: What will it be?
Speaker: Prof. Merouane Debbah, Technology Innovation Institute, Abu Dhabi, UAE
Mérouane Debbah is Chief Researcher at the Technology Innovation Institute in Abu Dhabi. He is a Professor at Centralesupelec and an Adjunct Professor with the Department of Machine Learning at the Mohamed Bin Zayed University of Artificial Intelligence. He received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the Ecole Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, France. He was with Motorola Labs, Saclay, France, from 1999 to 2002, and also with the Vienna Research Center for Telecommunications, Vienna, Austria, until 2003. From 2003 to 2007, he was an Assistant Professor with the Mobile Communications Department, Institut Eurecom, Sophia Antipolis, France. In 2007, he was appointed Full Professor at CentraleSupelec, Gif-sur-Yvette, France. From 2007 to 2014, he was the Director of the Alcatel-Lucent Chair on Flexible Radio. From 2014 to 2021, he was Vice-President of the Huawei France Research Center. He was jointly the director of the Mathematical and Algorithmic Sciences Lab as well as the director of the Lagrange Mathematical and Computing Research Center. Since 2021, he is leading the AI & Digital Science Research centers at the Technology Innovation Institute. He has managed 8 EU projects and more than 24 national and international projects. His research interests lie in fundamental mathematics, algorithms, statistics, information, and communication sciences research. He is an IEEE Fellow, a WWRF Fellow, a Eurasip Fellow, an AAIA Fellow, an Institut Louis Bachelier Fellow and a Membre émérite SEE. He was a recipient of the ERC Grant MORE (Advanced Mathematical Tools for Complex Network Engineering) from 2012 to 2017. He was a recipient of the Mario Boella Award in 2005, the IEEE Glavieux Prize Award in 2011, the Qualcomm Innovation Prize Award in 2012, the 2019 IEEE Radio Communications Committee Technical Recognition Award and the 2020 SEE Blondel Medal. He received more than 20 best paper awards, among which the 2007 IEEE GLOBECOM Best Paper Award, the Wi-Opt 2009 Best Paper Award, the 2010 Newcom++ Best Paper Award, the WUN CogCom Best Paper 2012 and 2013 Award, the 2014 WCNC Best Paper Award, the 2015 ICC Best Paper Award, the 2015 IEEE Communications Society Leonard G. Abraham Prize, the 2015 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize, the 2016 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award, the 2016 European Wireless Best Paper Award, the 2017 Eurasip Best Paper Award, the 2018 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award, the 2019 IEEE Communications Society Young Author Best Paper Award, the 2021 Eurasip Best Paper Award, the 2021 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award, the 2022 IEEE Communications Society Outstanding Paper Award, the 2022 ICC Best paper Award as well as the Valuetools 2007, Valuetools 2008, CrownCom 2009, Valuetools 2012, SAM 2014, and 2017 IEEE Sweden VT-COM-IT Joint Chapter best student paper awards. He is an Associate Editor-in-Chief of the journal Random Matrix: Theory and Applications. He was an Associate Area Editor and Senior Area Editor of the IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON SIGNAL PROCESSING from 2011 to 2013 and from 2013 to 2014, respectively. From 2021 to 2022, he serves as an IEEE Signal Processing Society Distinguished Industry Speaker
Speaker: Prof. Christian Bardon, President and CEO VotreCity, Monaco
Christian Bardon worked for 20 years at IBM France and IBM Europe, his last position was at the headquarters of the European Management in Paris. He was then appointed Vice-President at Gemplus, the world leader in Smart Cards, based in Marseille (1 billion euros in turnover and more than 11,000 people) before taking over the management of Watchdata for Europe, the Middle East and Africa for 6 years (Chinese company, number 1 in Asia for SIM cards and connected objects and number 5 worldwide). He was the first European Manager of a Chinese company in France. In 2011, he was appointed Commercial Director for Northern Europe, Eastern Europe and Southern Europe at MCTel (Monaco) then Mr. Bardon founded and manages VotreCity Monaco, a territorial development agency which helps governments and cities to develop through the installation of new technologies, the circular economy and recycling. VotreCity also helps decision-makers select, install and integrate the best Smart City solutions (energy, water, waste, transport, tourism, education, health, agriculture, security, infrastructure, port, airports, mines, etc.). VotreCity has developed a "unique" business model which makes it possible to duplicate validated solutions allowing countries to develop rapidly across all their territories. VotreCity also has a department specialized in Cyber-security, and another in the development of Mobile applications (secure mobile payment, secure smart phone and mobile marketing, etc.) Meanwhile, Bardon was Consultant and Strategic Advisor for Hengbao (Beijing), Ubivelox (South Korea), ACS (Honk-Kong), NGSER (Ivory Coast), Digital People (Paris), and VIBE Smart Security International LLC (USA). Bardon was also a speaker at the International Smart Card Show in Paris in 2010 and 2013 on M2M (Machine to Machine) strategies and also at the Shanghai World Expo in the French pavilion to discuss his experience ofvcMulticultural management. He was also a speaker at the Smart City Conference in India (2016 and 2017), in South Korea (2016) then in 2017 at the Smart City fairs in New Delhi, Austin and Rio. In 2018, Bardon was a VIP speaker to lead 2 conferences at the first Smart city show in Africa (Smart Algiers) then in China (Tianjin and Dalian) concerning the deployment of 5G and 6G networks at country level.
