DIA Members

Mohammed Al-Khalidi is a Senior Lecturer in Cyber Security with the Department of Computing and Mathematics, Manchester Metropolitan University, U.K. He has been awarded research funding by UKRI’s Global Challenges Research Fund and other government bodies focussing on AI Security and Network Security. He has also been involved in EU projects, including POINT (iP Over IcN – the betTer ip). His past assignments include Lecturer with the Department of Computer Science, Edge Hill University, and Research Officer with the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering, University of Essex, UK, where he also received his PhD degree. Prior to that, he worked in industry as a Senior Core Network Engineer at several leading mobile telecommunication companies. His research interests include AI security, IoT security, Mobile Computing, Cloud Computing, Ad-Hoc Networks, and Information Centric Networks.

Rabab Al-Zaidi received her Ph.D. from the University of Essex, UK. She is an Assistant Professor at the School of Science, Engineering and Environment at the University of Salford, UK, and a Visiting Fellow at the School of Computer Science and Electronic Engineering at the University of Essex. She also serves as an Academic Advisor for the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission. With over eighteen years of combined academic and industrial experience, she has held several academic roles and led collaborations with industry on next-generation communication systems and cybersecurity solutions. Dr. Al-Zaidi has a strong background in computer networking and telecommunications, with extensive experience in security, and performance optimisation of intelligent and distributed networked systems. Her work focuses on securing communications infrastructures and applying advanced security frameworks within modern digital ecosystems. Her research encompasses a broad range of security domains, including IoT security, AI security, Blockchain, Cloud Computing, Mobile Ad Hoc Networks, and FinTech Security.

Maya Ash is a strategic leader and currently the Managing Director and CEO at PlayBox Technology UK Limited, a company specializing in broadcast and media technology solutions. She is a technology entrepreneur, researcher and consultant with active professional engagement in Europe, particularly in the digital communications and broadcast software sectors. Her portfolio includes working with businesses in digital solution scaling, structuring research partnerships, and engaging with EU-funded innovation programmes. She contributes to the digital data-communications ecosystem through advisory, product strategy, and collaborative innovation in AI-orchestration for multimedia and critical-infrastructure platforms. She brings strategic insight into Agentic AI orchestration for multimedia and telecom infrastructures, backed by extensive experience connecting innovation with product marketisation.

Omar Benjumea currently works for Cylus, a pioneering company in cybersecurity solutions for the railway sector, and also as a teacher on rail cybersecurity for different universities in Spain. He contributes to the Railways working group giving real-world experience from Cylus’ projects on providing visibility and threat monitoring to rail operators globally. Cylus provides rail operators with a specialized cybersecurity solution to ensure service availability and safety. Combining deep rail and cybersecurity expertise Cylus has pioneered a platform for real-time asset visibility and threat detection across heterogeneous rail operating technology environments. With customers across the globe, Cylus leads with a comprehensive cybersecurity solution enabling compliance and reducing risks in the face of escalating cyberthreats.

Roland Bless is Associate Professor and senior researcher at the Institute of Telematics, chaired by Prof. Zitterbart. He studied Computer Science (Diplom-Informatik) at the University of Karlsruhe until 1996 and got his PhD (Dr.-Ing.) under supervision of Prof. Dr. Dr. h.c. mult. Gerhard Krüger in the area of Quality-of-Service-Management in 2002. In 2009 he finished his Habilitation at the Computer Science Department of Informatics at KIT. Since 1998 he is active in the IETF and gives lectures at KIT on “Next Generation Internet” and “Network Security”. Dr. Bless is a member of Gesellschaft für Informatik, ACM SIGCOMM, IEEE ComSoc, and ISOC performs reviews for journal articles and scientific papers.

Anders Dam Kofoed is the founder and CEO of Aer Networks, based in Denmark, a company focused on creating an open ecosystem for IoT where all actors can participate on equal terms. Anders works on an open Information-Centric Networking based protocol called Z-Mesh, used for Internet of Things. It is a open connectivity-platform, used to connect any app to any sensor. His work is intended to contribute to the internet being an open, de-centralized/distributed place which can serve as an open platform for vendors and consumers and communities.

Gorry Fairhurst is an Internet Engineer active in the standardisation and design of network protocols. He is a Professor at the University of Aberdeen and currently serves as an IETF Area Director. He has worked on Internet and transport protocols with a focus on protocol design, congestion control, and the transport API and contributed to projects in satellite Internet, IP multicast, IPv6 and wide area measurement for the Internet. University of Aberdeen, founded in 1495, is Scotland’s third oldest and the UK’s fifth oldest university, having a global presence in higher education.

Paris Flegkas is an Assistant Professor in the ECE Department of University of Thessaly. He has been involved in many Greek national and European research projects dealing with areas related to 5G Networks, information-centric future internet architectures following the publish/subscribe paradigm and self-, autonomic management of fixed and wireless networks. The ECE department has extensive experience in Datacom research with significant contributions within many EU research projects in 5G and 6G networks and their orchestration, Future Internet Architectures including Information-Centric Networking, Intent-Based Networking as well as related verticals such as CCAM, Rail, and Farm2Fork Agriculture.

Ted Hardie has been involved in protocol development and deployment for about thirty years, with a focus of work in the IETF. Within the IETF he has served as a working group chair and editor many times and has held the position of area director, the chair of the Internet Architecture Board, founding board member of the IETF LLC, and a member of the IETF trust.

After graduating from Ege University Computer Engineering, Hakan İnceoğlu completed his graduate studies in economics at Boğaziçi University. He has been working in the IT departments of various banking and telecom companies for more than 25 years, including 18 years as a manager. On 2010 he worked as CTO at ING Bank. Since 2020 he has been acting as CTO Executive Vice President at YAZ Bilgi Sistemleriin Turkey.

Safiqul Islam is an Associate Professor at Oslo Metropolitan University and University of Oslo, Norway. He received his Ph.D. from University of Oslo, advised by Professor Michael Welzl and Professor Stein Gjessing, with two best paper awards. He has published several articles in high-ranked conferences and journals and his Ph.D. work was also in the top 4 at the 2018 IEEE/IFIP Network Operations and Management Symposium. He actively participated in two EU projects (NEAT and RITE) and was technical lead of an international project (“TCP-in- UDP”) with Huawei, China. He is active in the IETF and IRTF where he co-authored two RFCs. He has also contributed to designing the test-cases and congestion control algorithms in the IETF RMCAT working group.

Luciano Masiero has around 40 years of experience as a Signalling engineer, particularly in the context of railway systems. He has been connected with initiatives like the System Pillar of Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking, which focuses on developing signalling system standards for the Single European Rail Area.

Cristel Pelsser is a Professor at UC Louvain in Belgium. She is an expert in computer networks and holds a chair in critical embedded systems, funded by Alstom and AISIN which operate in the rail and vehicular sectors, and by a consortium of Belgium companies. Her research spans multiple areas including BGP security and routing protocols, Internet measurement infrastructure, machine learning for network anomaly detection, and critical embedded systems for IoT applications. She actively contributes to developing next-generation tools for Internet monitoring, including advanced BGP data collection platforms and systems for detecting routing attacks. The applications considered in her research are among the verticals considered by the DIA.

Marco Paesani is a network consultant with an experience of over 30 years for several European telcos and also for government, aerospace and financial organizations. His expertise is in areas very much related to the DIA topics, such as IPv6, SRv6, MPLS, and security.

Jacek Rak is an Associate Professor and the Head of the Department of Computer Communications at Gdańsk University of Technology, PL. His primary interests, relevant to the DIA, include the resilience (especially disaster resilience) of communication networks and networked systems, which are essential components of critical infrastructure systems. He has been involved in multiple research projects related to the design of resilient communication systems. His experience of over twenty years related to the design and evaluation of resilient networked systems would enhance the work within the current and future DIA WGs where resilient communications is one of the fundamental issues.

Research Scientist with SINTEF, Norway, working on 5G/6G signal processing, autonomous systems and networks, machine learning & AI related research and projects. His PhD work focused on applying machine learning & AI algorithms for secure, energy-efficient, and resilient IoT at the Department of Informatics, University of Oslo (UiO).

Andy Reid has a long history in telecoms strategy and architecture and had a particular concern with modelling, including functional, financial, operational and performance modelling. Andy Reid retired from BT in 2023 after more than 40 years with the company. He is now undertaking a PhD at University of Bristol.

Miguel Rio is a Professor of Computer Networks in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. He did his undergraduate studies in University of Minho, Portugal and his PhD in the University of Kent, UK. His dissertation was in Quality of Service Multicast, a topic he still pursues. He was a post-doctoral at UCL where he researched programmable networks and congestion control. Since then he has helped to coordinate several projects both at the UK and EU level. He has made substantial contributions to network measurement, network routing and peer-to-peer networks.

Soumya Seth has over 17 years of experience across consulting, MNO and technology companies and has also worked with multiple customers in EU region. He has authored insights and whitepapers on topics such as private cellular networks and 5G opportunities, reflecting his role as a telecom SME (Subject Matter Expert) and product manager in Nagarro’s telecom business unit. Soumya brings to DIA valuable expertise, experience and understanding of both business and technological aspects. This would enable him to fulfil the different roles of an associate member: cross domain collaboration through speaking sessions and F2F meetings, assist in developing relevant use cases that would create the required business impact and more. As DIA aims to achieve its Europe 2030 vision of creating a sustainable society, telecommunications is going to be the underlying critical enabler.

Mohsen Shirali is a postdoctoral researcher at the Computing Science and Engineering Department (INGI) at UC Louvain (Belgium), with regular research activities within the EU. His interests lie in IoT, cybersecurity and privacy, data analytics and anomaly detection for cyber-physical systems, with concrete use cases in railway communication systems and in-vehicle networks. His current work involves designing data-driven anomaly detection pipelines for in-vehicle networks, with an emphasis on robustness. Through his work he can contribute to the DIA community and value chain by sharing ideas, designing and experimentally validating innovative solutions for secure and resilient communication and monitoring architectures for safety-critical CPS. His research interests are closely aligned with the DIA mission of advancing horizontal datacom technologies and applying them across vertical sectors such as transport and mobility. As an Associate Member, he will bring practical research experience at the intersection of secure networking, AI-based anomaly detection, and cyber-physical systems.

Peyman Teymoori is Professor of Computer Science at the University of  South‑Eastern Norway, where he leads research on next‑generation networking (RINA, 5G/6G, Wi‑Fi 6/7, IoT security). He has a demonstrable track‑record of significant R&D activities within the EEA. Through collaborations with Norwegian companies, EU Horizon consortia (e.g. PRISTINE) and standardisation bodies, he actively supports the datacom value‑chain. As an academic who bridges research, industry pilots and technology education, he represents interests that are highly relevant to the DIA. Peyman can contribute cutting‑edge expertise in programmable network architectures and AI‑driven performance optimisation—areas central to DIA’s purpose of “stimulating ICT innovation to meet vertical‑industry requirements and accelerating digital transformation”

Pascal Thubert has been actively involved in research, development and standardisation efforts on Internet mobility, cloud, and wireless technologies. Pascal co-authored two IETF routing protocols, RPL and RIFT. He co-chairs the SCHC WG that applies IETF protocols over low power wide area networking technologies. In his previous work, he specialized in IPv6 as applied to mobility and wireless devices and developed routers and switches microcode in Cisco’s core IPv6 product development group and CTAO groups. In parallel with his R&D missions, he has authored multiple IETF RFCs and draft standards dealing with IPv6, mobility and the Internet of Things, including work at NEMO, 6LoWPAN, 6lo, and ROLL.

Ehsan Tohidi is Head of Sustainable and Modular Networks (SMN) group at the Fraunhofer HHI institute in Germany. Through his work, he has been actively contributing to further developing wireless communication. He currently focuses on 6G-related research and development, more specific on the topic of network digital twin, focusing on delivering higher efficiency at lower cost.

Sebastian Troia is an Assistant Professor in Telecommunications at Politecnico di Milano, Italy. His research spans software-defined networking (SDN), network function virtualization (NFV), machine learning for telecom, and SD-WAN, all fundamental pillars in future data infrastructure design. He is actively involved in European and national R&D projects such as RESTART (Italian National project framework), Zero-Touch Optical Networks project, and H2020 Metro-Haul (European project concluded), which address challenges in automation, orchestration, and intelligent data plane management. He leads and contribute to multiple academic-industry collaborations, including with ADVA, Telefonica and TIM. His work aligns closely with DIA’s focus on cloud, edge, and data infrastructures.

Paolo Umiliacchi is the CEO at CNC Centro Nuova Comunicazione. He has been involved for many years in railway standardisation, particularly in the context of European rail interoperability and communication systems. He has acted as a consultant for harmonised standards and railway interoperability, working with organizations such as CENELEC, IEC and Ernst & Young. He has also been involved with the Shift2Rail initiative, a major European rail research and innovation program, where he served as a reporting expert. Shift2Rail focuses on advancing railway technologies and standardisation to improve interoperability and performance across European rail networks.

Michael Welzl is a full professor at the University of Oslo. He has been doing research on computer networks for more than 25 years, with a specific focus on the transport layer, congestion control and, more recently, energy efficiency. Michael is active in the IETF and IRTF, where he has chaired the Internet Congestion Control Research Group (ICCRG) for 11 years and led the effort to form the Transport Services (TAPS) Working Group which has published the API that applications should now use to communicate over the Internet.