Jean Armstrong (Co-Chair)
Dr. Jean Armstrong (M’90–SM’06–F’15) was born in Scotland. She received the B.Sc. (First Class Honours) degree in electrical engineering from the University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, U.K., and the M.Sc. degree in digital techniques from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, U.K. She is a Professor at Monash University, Melbourne, Victoria, Australia, where she leads a research group working on topics including optical wireless, radio frequency and optical fiber communications. She has published numerous papers including over 70 on aspects of OFDM for wireless and optical communications and has six commercialized patents. During her career, she has received numerous awards including a Carolyn Haslett Memorial Scholarship, a Zonta Amelia Earhart Fellowship, the Peter Doherty prize for the best commercialization opportunity in Australia (joint winner), induction into the Victorian Honour Roll of Women, the 2014 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award, and the 2016 IET Mountbatten Medal. She is a Fellow of the IEEE and IEAust. She has served on the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts and the ARC Research Evaluation Committee. She is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Optical Communications and Networking.


Steve Hranilovic(Co-Chair)
Dr. Steve Hranilovic (S'94-M'03-SM'07) received the B.A.Sc. degree with honours in electrical engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada in 1997 and M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Toronto, Canada in 1999 and 2003 respectively. He is currently a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. During 2010-2011 he spent his research leave as Senior Member, Technical Staff in Advanced Technology for Research in Motion, Waterloo, Canada. His research interests are in the areas of free-space and wired optical communications, digital communication algorithms, and electronic and photonic implementation of coding and communication algorithms. He is the author of the book Wireless Optical Communications Systems (New York:Springer, 2004). Dr. Hranilovic is a licensed Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario and was awarded the Government of Ontario Early Researcher Award in 2006. He currently serves as an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Communications in the area of Optical Wireless Communications as well as the IEEE/OSA Journal of Optical Communications and Networking in the area of Free-Space Optics.


Takaya Yamazato(Co-Chair)
Dr. Takaya Yamazato (S’91–M’93) is a professor at the Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Nagoya University, Japan. He received a Ph.D. from the Department of Electrical Engineering, Keio University, Yokohama, Japan, in 1993. From 1993 to 1998, he was an Assistant Professor at the Department of Information Electronics, Nagoya University, Japan. From 1997 to 1998, he was a visiting researcher at the Research Group for RF Communications, University of Kaiserslautern, German. In 1998, he gave a half-day tutorial entitled “Introduction to CDMA ALOHA” at Globecom held in Sydney, Australia. Since then, he has been serving as a TPC member of Globecom and ICC. In 2006, he received the IEEE Communication Society’s Best Tutorial Paper Award. He served as the co-chair of the Wireless Communication Symposia of ICC 2009 and was the co-chair of Selected Areas in Communication Symposia of ICC 2011. From 2008 to 2010, he served as the chair of the Satellite and Space Communication Technical Committee. In 2011, he gave a half-day tutorial entitled “Visible Light Communication” at ICC 2011 held in Kyoto, Japan. He currently serves as the Director of Asia-Pacific Board, IEEE Communication Society. His research interests include visible light communication (VLC), intelligent transport system (ITS), stochastic resonance (SR), and open educational resources (OER).