Future Communications at the Edge

Julie McCann Prof

Professor of Computer Systems, Co-Director of the School of Convergence Science in Space, Security and Telecoms, Director of the national CHEDDAR communications research hub., Imperial College London

Julie A. McCann is a Professor of Computer Systems with Imperial College London and is currently Co-Director of the School of Convergence Science in Space, Security and Telecoms and Director of the national CHEDDAR communications research hub. Formerly Vice Dean Research in the Faculty of Engineering, she has published extensively on decentralized and self-organizing scalable algorithms and protocols for Wireless/RF Sensor-based systems, Internet of Things, and Cyber-physical systems. She leads the Adaptive Emergent Systems Engineering Research (AESE) research group, and between 2015-2022 was the Deputy Director of PETRAS IoT Cybersecurity Hub, Critical Ecosystems Lead for the Alan Turing Institute, and Imperial PI on the EPSRC programme grant Science for Sensor Systems Software. She has a number of international research collaborations including Singapore NRF funded Eco-Cities (until March 2024 she had a sub-lab in Singapore with I2R and HDB), between 2012-2017 directed the Intel Collaborative Research Institute (ICRI) for Sustainable Cities, and NEC Japan on smart communications technologies, as well as other projects though EU FP7/H2020 programmes. McCann is an elected Member of the Council of Computer Science Professors and Heads of Computing, and was elected to the membership committee of the UKCRC, she holds the 2018 UKRI Suffrage Science Award for Computing and Mathematics, President’s Medal for Research Excellence 2020, and is a Fellow of the BCS and Chartered Engineer.

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Professor David Grace

University of York

David Grace received his PhD from University of York in 1999, with the subject of his thesis being ‘Distributed Dynamic Channel Assignment for the Wireless Environment’. He has been a member of staff at the University since 1994 and he is now Professor (Research). He leads the Communication Technologies Discovery Theme and Challenging Environments Translational Theme within School of Physics, Engineering and Technology. He is also Director of the Centre for High Altitude Platform Applications and pillar lead for Advanced Communications within Institute for Safe Autonomy.  Current research interests include non-terrestrial networks, aerial platform-based communications, application of artificial intelligence to wireless communications; 6G system architectures; dynamic spectrum access and interference management. He is currently leads the EPSRC HiQ project, developing quantum key distribution via high altitude platforms. He is a recent lead investigator on H2020 MCSA SPOTLIGHT, UK Government funded MANY, dealing with 5G trials in rural areas. He was technical lead on the 14-partner FP6 CAPANINA project that dealt with broadband communications from high altitude platforms. He is an author of over 280 papers, and author/editor of 2 books. He is the former chair of IEEE Technical Committee on Cognitive Networks for the period 2013/4. He is a founding member of the IEEE Technical Committee on Green Communications and Computing. From 2014-8 he was a non-executive director of Stratospheric Platforms Ltd. In 2000, he jointly founded SkyLARC Technologies Ltd, and was one of its directors.

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Nick Hunn

CTO, Wi-Fore

For the past thirty years Nick has been closely involved with short range wireless and communications, designing technology that helps to bring mobility to products, particularly in the areas of telematics, M2M, IoT, wearables, smart energy and mobile health. He is closely involved with the Bluetooth SIG, the Continua Alliance and other medical and wireless standards bodies. He is the author of 'The Essentials of Short Range Wireless' - a book attempting to explain the application of wireless technology to product developers.

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Professor Tim O'Farrell

School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, University of Sheffield

I received my BSc degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Birmingham and my MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Manchester.

I am the Chair Professor in Wireless Communication at the University of Sheffield and I am a Fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering (FREng).

In the field of wireless communications, I have made significant contributions to waveform and energy-efficiency design for radio access networks (RANs) and I have translated significant research into industry through standards, products, and practices.

My research is focused on wireless communications systems, specialising in radio systems engineering, physical layer signal processing, and energy-efficient (EE) wireless networking.

As Co-Founder and CTO of Supergold Communication Limited, I accomplished strategic breakthroughs in determining the IEEE802.11g Wi-Fi standard. Also, I have developed standardised practices for measuring EE in RANs and produced software-tools for modelling RAN performance.

I have led 27 major research projects with a total research spend of approximately £29M. I led the UK Research Strategy Community Organisation in Communications, Mobile Computing and Networking within the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council portfolio (CommNet II, EP/N007824/1) and currently, I am the director of the UKRI National 6G Radio Systems Facility (EP/X030016/1).

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Dr Syed Ali Raza Zaidi

Associate Professor of Communication and Sensing, , School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University of Leeds

Syed Ali Raza Zaidi Member, IEEE is an Associate Professor at the University of Leeds in the broad area of Communication and Sensing for Robotics and Autonomous Systems. He co-leads the UK’s Department for Science, Innovation and Technology (DSIT) and UKRI-funded Future Communications Hub for Empowering Distributed Cloud Computing Applications and Research (CHEDDAR), which has received £16 million in research funding. He also leads the Emergent Compute Pillar within the CHEDDAR work programme, as well as DSIT- and AISI-funded initiatives on agentic AI for cloud-native telecommunications. Earlier, from 2013 to 2015, he was associated with the SPCOM research group, working on a US ARL-funded project in Network Science. From 2011 to 2013, he was a research associate at the International University of Rabat. He was also a visiting research scientist at Qatar Innovations and Mobility Centre from October to December 2013, where he worked on the QNRF-funded project QSON. He completed his doctoral degree at the School of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, where he was awarded the G. W. and F. W. Carter Prize for best thesis and best research paper. He has published over 90 papers in leading IEEE conferences and journals. From 2014 to 2015, he served as an editor of IEEE Communication Letters and as the lead guest editor for the IET Signal Processing Journal’s Special Issue on Signal Processing for Large-Scale 5G Wireless Networks. He has also served as lead editor for the IEEE Communications Magazine Feature Topic on Communication Technologies for Robotics and Autonomous Systems and for the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC) Special Issue on Design and Analysis of Communication Interfaces for Industry 4.0. He is also an editor for the IET Access, Fronthaul, and Backhaul book series, and is currently an Associate Technical Editor for IEEE Communications Magazine. He is also the Industrial Sponsorship and Programme Chair for ICC 2026. He has been awarded grants from COST IC0902, the Royal Academy of Engineering, EPSRC, Horizon Europe, and DAAD (totalling approximately £5.5 million) to promote his research outputs. He has also been an invited keynote speaker and panellist at various leading international conferences and workshops. His current research interests include Generative AI for cloud-native telecommunications, as well as the modelling, analysis, and design of large-scale connected intelligent systems.

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