Biographical note

Professor Abhay Karandikar is currently the Director, Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Kanpur, India (on leave from IIT Bombay). Before joining IIT Kanpur as the Director in April 2018, he served as the Institute Chair Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at IIT Bombay. He also served as the Dean (Faculty Affairs) at IIT Bombay from February 2017 to April 2018. He was the Head of the Electrical Engineering Department from January 2012 to January 2015. He spearheaded a national effort in setting up Telecom Standards Development Society of India (TSDSI), India’s standards body for telecom with participation of all stakeholders. Prof Karandikar is the founding member and the ex-Chairman of TSDSI. Prof Karandikar is also a Member (part-time) of Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI). Pranav Jha has 25 years of research and development experience in communication and networking technologies with expertise in system architecture and design, network architectures, communication protocols and resource management algorithms. He is an active participant in the development of technical standards in the areas of fifth generation mobile communication networks (5G) and SDN and currently chairs two IEEE working groups, namely “SDN based Middleware for Control and Management of Networks”, IEEE P1930.1 and “Frugal 5G Networks”, IEEE P2061. He is currently working with IIT Bombay, Mumbai, India as a Scientist where he focusses on research programs under the broad umbrella of wireless communication networks, with emphasis on SDN and NFV based architectures for Wireless Networks, Public Safety Communication Networks and Rural Broadband Communication. Pranav has multiple patents issued and pending, contribution to IEEE and 3GPP standards and research papers in international conferences in these areas.