Steering Committee

Ashwin Gumaste (Chair of the Steering Committee)
J.R. Isaac Chair
Dept of CSE, IIT Bombay

Brief Bio: Ashwin Gumaste is currently the James R. Isaac Chair and faculty member in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. He was a Visiting Scientist with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, USA in the Research Laboratory for Electronics from 2008 to 2010. He was previously with Fujitsu Laboratories (USA) Inc in the Photonics Networking Laboratory (2001-05). He has also worked in Fujitsu Network Communications R&D (in Richardson TX) and prior to that with Cisco Systems in the Optical Networking Group (ONG). His work on light-trails has been widely refered, deployed and recognized by both industry and academia. His recent work on the high-speed indigenous router has been adopted by tier-1 service providers and also resulted in the largest ever acquisition between any IIT and the industry. Ashwin has 20 granted US patents and over 30 pending patent applications. Ashwin has published about 120 papers in refered conferences and journals. He has also authored three books in broadband networks called DWDM Network Designs and Engineering Solutions (a networking bestseller), First-Mile Access Networks and Enabling Technologies and Broadband Services: User Needs, Business Models and Technologies for John Wiley. Owing to his many research achievements and contributions, Ashwin was awarded the Government of India’s DAE-SRC Outstanding Research Investigator Award in 2010 as well as the Indian National Academy of Engineering’s (INAE) Young Engineer Award (2010). He has served Program Chair, Co-chair, Publicity chair and workshop chair for IEEE conferences and as Program Committee member for IEEE ICC, Globecom, OFC, ICCCN, Gridnets etc. Ashwin is also a guest editor for IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE Network and the founding Editor of the IEEE ComSoc ONTC’s newsletter Prism. He is the Chair of the IEEE Communication Society's Technical Committee on High Speed Networks (TCHSN) 2011-2013. He has been with IIT Bombay since 2005 where he convenes the Gigabit Networking Laboratory (GNL): www.cse.iitb.ac.in/gnl. The Gigabit Networking Laboratory has secured over 8 million USD in funding since its inception and has been involved in 4 major technology transfers to the industry. Ashwin can be reached through www.ashwin.name. 

Helmut Schink
Head of Standards Wireline, Service Delivery and Media
Nokia Siemens Networks (NSN), Germany

Brief Bio:Helmut Schink is the Head of Standards Wireline, Service Delivery and Media, responsible for standardization and regulation. He is also vice-chair of ITU-T SG 15. His previous engagements include Vice-chair of ITU-T SG 13, VC of the open IPTV Forum, member of the board of the IPSphere Forum, member of the Board of the Telemanagement Forum, Member of the board of directors of ICANN and chair of ETSI project TIPHON on IP Telephony.

Over 25 years in business, especially public communication networks, holding various technical and management functions marketing, like strategic product planning, business development and standardization,  Corporate management and in strategic business development, development of semiconductor processes for GaAs high speed and low noise devices and basic research in micro-analytics.

Studied Physics at Technical University of München and holds a Doctor degree in the area of micro-analytics and semiconductor physics.

P. S. Dhekne
Raja Ramanna Fellow, BARC
Consultant to PSA Office, Government of India

Brief Bio: P. S. Dhekne is Raja Ramanna Fellow; in Bhabha Atomic Research Center (BARC), Associate Director and a Scientific Consultant to Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government of India. He is a member of technical advisory committee for setting up National Knowledge Network (NKN). NKN is an initiative of Government of India to bring together all the stakeholders in Science, Technology, Higher Education, Research and Development, GRID Computing, e-governance with speeds scalable eventually up to the order of 10s of gigabits per second.

Rohan Nachane
General Manager
JDSU, India

Brief Bio: Rohan Nachane is presently General Manager (Sales) handling Key Telcos and Network Equipment Manufacturers for JDSU in India. Rohan Nachane leads a team handling Key Accounts and is personally based out of Mumbai. Rohan has been with JDSU since 2004 handling Key Accounts like Reliance, TATA, Bharti , NSN etc. Rohan has over 21 years of Telecommunications Test and Management experience in Sales management for wireless and wireline testing.

Upendra Manyam
Chief Technology Officer
Commtel Networks, India

Brief Bio: Head of Emerging technologies at Commtel Networks, Dr. Upendra has over the years become one of the mainstays of the company. His Doctorate and M.S in Fiber Optic Materials from Rutger University, USA are just a few feathers in his illustrious cap of life's achievement. After a B. Tech. in Ceramic Engineering from I.T.B.H.U, Varanasi and 15 years of experience in development and application of fiber optic technologies, his efforts are still concentrated to master the field of Optics through constant adoption of novel converged communications.

Prior to Commtel he worked at Nufern, on optical fiber design and processing also developing a unique dispersion managed high-data-rate fibers while at Corning Incorporated. Not resting on the laurels of 12 US Patents, several Research Papers to his credit and serving on the Fiber Optics Panel of the US National Science Foundation's SBIR program, he at Commtel is deeply involved in integrated network design and architecture related to DWDM, SDH/Sonet and Ethernet technologies over optical fibers. A thorough professional, he is a perfect mix of academic brilliance meeting real life application, an asset to any organization.

Madhukar Pitke
IEEE Life Fellow

Brief Bio: Pitke Madhukar Vishwanath has contributed to the development of computer electronics and telecommunications technology for over 40 years. He pioneered the development of a switching system for a mobile network that was forerunner to the current ad-hoc networks. As founder director of the Center for Development of Telematics - CDoT (1984) he guided the development of technology for central office switching systems in the late 80s. Over 50 million lines that were delivered that formed a significant portion of the Indian network around 2000. He directed the development of a large parallel processor using a unique SAMD architecture for weather research.

He has been keenly interested in education and training and has helped in setting up several educational and research institutes. This includes the Dept of Computer Science of the University of Mumbai. With support from UN agencies and the late Prof Abdus Salam (Nobel Laureate) at ICTP Trieste, he organized several workshops and projects during 1987-95 for training scientists and engineers in advanced communications technology around the world. He has been a speaker at numerous events organized by IEEE, ITU and other leading organizations. He has numerous publications and presentations in several leading professional journals and conferences. He worked in visiting capacity at the University of Pisa, the Max Planck Institute in Munich and the Carnegie Mellon University at Pittsburgh. He was an Adjunct Professor at the International Institute of Information Technology (IIIT) Bangalore.

He is a Life Fellow of the IEEE, the Indian Academy of Sciences and the Institution of Electronics and Telecommunication Engineers and is closely associated with the Bombay Center of IEEE. His current activities include development of low cost wireless ICT solutions and assisting young entrepreneurs.

Vishal Sharma
Principal Technologist
Metanoia, Inc.

Brief Bio:Vishal Sharma is Principal Technologist at Metanoia, Inc., a niche Bay-area firm providing deep-dive technical expertise to clients in telecom network- and systems-design and strategy. Metanoia, Inc. has helped players across the telecom ecosystem (spanning chip/semi-conductor companies, system vendors, operators/carriers, technology houses, and telecom software and tool companies) solve complex problems by providing services in technology strategy, architecture & design trade-offs, product development, hardware/software architecture, & competence building.

Vishal is a seasoned international technologist, telecom industry expert, and entrepreneur with 20 years of experience spanning consulting, industry, academia, labs., and research. He is currently leading an industry initiative that is focusing on how to lower carriers' total cost of ownership (TCO) through better assessment and optimization of a carrier's business models, operations, networks, and technology.

He serves on the Scientific Committee of the MPLS & Ethernet World Congress, on the Advisory Board of Carriers World Asia, and on the Committees of FutureNet, iPOP, and a number of international conferences. He has been a Guest Editor of 4 Feature Topic Issues of the IEEE Communications Magazine. He earned his B. Tech (EE) from IIT Kanpur, and MS (Signals & Systems), MS (Computer Engineering), and Ph.D. (ECE), from UC Santa Barbara.