Madeline Cheah - Senior Consultant, Cambridge Consultants

Madeline is an experienced cybersecurity professional with more than 10 years’ experience in a range of sectors including in autonomous systems, computing, IoT, automotive and future mobility. Her technical background encompasses methods for cybersecurity and artificial intelligence assurance for complex, opaque, and autonomous systems and she has published a number of peer-reviewed papers in the area. She also has a demonstrated track record in leading research and innovation programs, bringing novel ideas from basic technology readiness levels right through to technological maturity.  This includes delivering on short-term technology transfer programs such as system integration, through to multi-year programs taking fundamental research into industry settings.

Madeline has a PhD in Automotive Cybersecurity, an MSc in Forensic Computing, a PgC in Higher Education Professional Practice and a BSc (Hons) in Biochemistry.

Aditya Deshpande

Dr Aditya Deshpande works as a security lead at ARM has 10+ years of embedded security experience in the automotive and the defence industry. Dr Aditya Deshpande has worked on various pilot projects introducing security into the product from concept to production and post development.  He has also previously worked in academia developing international security standards for vehicle electronics and published various conference and journal articles.

Richard Jacklin - Business Development - Commercial Lead, Plextek

Richard is the Commercial Lead for Plextek Services, helping customers design and produce highly innovative electronic, radar and radio communications enabled solutions. His career, now over 30 years, has included sales management, product management and engineering leadership in companies including Ericsson, Samsung, UL, Keysight, PPM and NI. He has presented and contributed to many forums including Cambridge Wireless, GSMA working groups, and Satellite Innovation Group. Richard graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a degree in Electronic Engineering, he was also awarded Chartered Engineer status and Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET).

Bob Oates - Associate Director, Cambridge Consultants

Bob Oates is a specialist in the interaction between safety and security for operational technology, critical infrastructure, and IoT devices. He works within the Engineering Assurance Team at Cambridge Consultants, ensuring that intelligent, AI-enabled systems are safe and secure. In addition to his academic background, Bob has over a decade of industrial experience working in the critical national infrastructure, defence, aerospace, nuclear, and maritime domains, including acting as the head of security for the development of the world’s first commercial remotely operated ship. He holds an Honorary Professorship in Safety and Security at De Montfort University.

Firas Sadek

Firas currently leads several strategic initiatives at Airbus in the industrial cybersecurity landscape, and is a Jury Member for the Industrial Cybersecurity Certification at Airbus Cybersecurity School. His international career extends over several industries with more than ten years of experience and exposure to different regulated environments. He has led multiple security missions including risk assessment and management, threat and vulnerability management, designing defensible security architectures, building and automating security operations centers, developing strategic cybersecurity programs, and leading cyber workforce capacity building.
Having spent most of his career in mission-critical environments, Firas advocates the trilogy addressing physical, operational and cyber aspects of security. As an active international speaker, Firas always emphasizes the pragmatic multi-dimensional security approach that he brings from real-world experience, always weighing the security cost against the risk reduction Return on Investment. He is GICSP and CISSP certified, and has been active through workshops and contributions influencing ICS security white papers.

Zahid Ghadialy - Principal Analyst & Consultant, 3G4G

Zahid is a technologist with a deep understanding of architecting world-class mobile products and solutions. With over 20 years of experience in the telecom industry in various roles, he has been an evangelist for mobile and wireless technologies. Over the years he has accumulated a vast following on his blogs and social networks with simple explainer posts and videos.

His 3G4G blogs are widely read where he looks at different aspects of mobile technology and especially 5G and 6G nowadays, including the architecture, deployments, use cases, applications, etc. His YouTube channel is also very popular where he explains many new features expected as part of 5G in the future. While his style and content is unique, he also references many industry publications and provides slides that are very useful to view online.

He is also very active on Twitter under his @3G4GUK brand helping disseminate the benefits of 5G and why 5G will be needed in the long run. He covers a very wide portfolio of 5G related information that is hard to find otherwise.

Until recently, Zahid was a Senior Director looking at Technology & Innovation Strategy in Parallel Wireless. As a brand ambassador, he represented the company in various Open RAN discussions and also created tutorials on Open RAN and O-RAN which are being used as reference for new starters on the topic.

Richard Jacklin - Business Development - Commercial Lead, Plextek

Richard is the Commercial Lead for Plextek Services, helping customers design and produce highly innovative electronic, radar and radio communications enabled solutions. His career, now over 30 years, has included sales management, product management and engineering leadership in companies including Ericsson, Samsung, UL, Keysight, PPM and NI. He has presented and contributed to many forums including Cambridge Wireless, GSMA working groups, and Satellite Innovation Group. Richard graduated from the University of Portsmouth with a degree in Electronic Engineering, he was also awarded Chartered Engineer status and Fellow of the Institute of Engineering and Technology (IET).

Bob Oates - Associate Director, Cambridge Consultants

Bob Oates is a specialist in the interaction between safety and security for operational technology, critical infrastructure, and IoT devices. He works within the Engineering Assurance Team at Cambridge Consultants, ensuring that intelligent, AI-enabled systems are safe and secure. In addition to his academic background, Bob has over a decade of industrial experience working in the critical national infrastructure, defence, aerospace, nuclear, and maritime domains, including acting as the head of security for the development of the world’s first commercial remotely operated ship. He holds an Honorary Professorship in Safety and Security at De Montfort University.

Yiru Zhong - None

Yiru is an M2M/IoT market veteran with an industry research background and practical deployment experience. She understands the complexity of new service launches and the investigative nature of enterprise adoption trends. In her analyst past, she has launched two successful M2M/IoT research programmes, changed leadership minds on focussing on security, and managed an IoT platform validation programme. Her current role utilises her industry and IoT technology knowledge to accelerate enterprise adoption. She represents Soracom in the UK to lead conversations with start-ups, SMBs and enterprises on how to use IoT for their business. She is passionate about resolving commercial practicalities of IoT deployment and mostly building a positive conversation around IoT security.