Ashwin Gumaste (Chair of the Steering Committee)
Institute Chair Associate Professor,
Dept of CSE, IIT Bombay

Brief Bio: Ashwin Gumaste is currently the Institute Chair Associate Professor in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Bombay. From 2008-2012 he was also the J. R. Isaac Chair Assistant Professor. 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) and has been a consultant to Nokia Siemens Networks, Munich working on Next Gen access standards. His work on light-trails has been widely referred, deployed and recognized by both industry and academia.

His recent work on Omnipresent Ethernet has been adopted by tier-1 service providers and also resulted in the largest ever acquisition between any IIT and the industry. This has led to a family of transport products. Ashwin has 20 granted US patents and over 30 pending patent applications.

Ashwin has published about 150 papers in referred 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 was also the recipient of the Vikram Sarabhai Research Award in 2012. Ashwin was the IBM Faculty Award winner for the year 2012.

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 11 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.

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.