Keynote Speakers

		Mohamed-Slim Alouini, King Abdullah University of Science and Technology, Saudi Arabia Homepage: https://www.kaust.edu.sa/en/study/faculty/mohamed-slim-alouini

Alouini is a Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST), Thuwal, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. He received his PhD in Electrical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), Pasadena, California, USA, in 1998. Alouini is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and Optica (formerly the Optical Society of America (OSA)). Other recognitions include his selection as Fellow of the African Academy of Science in 2018 and Member of the Academia Europaea in 2019. Over the last years, Alouini has been addressing the uneven global distribution, access to, and use of information and communication technologies by studying and developing (i) new generations of integrated space-air-ground networks as a solution to provide connectivity to far-flung, less-populated, and/or hard-to-reach areas and (ii) novel thrifty wireless networks to achieve digital inclusiveness for low-income neighborhoods.

		Julian Cheng, Great Bay University, China Fellow of CAE, EIC, IEEE, Optica Homepage: https://www.gbu.edu.cn/detail/article/1376

Julian Cheng received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada. He is now the founding Dean of the School of Computing and Information Technology at Great Bay University, Dongguan. Formerly, he was with the Faculty of Applied Science, The University of British Columbia, Canada, where he is also a Professor Emeritus. His research interests include robotics wireless Communications for civilian and defense applications, deep learning for wireless communications, optical wireless technology. Dr. Cheng has been a technical program committee member for many IEEE conferences and workshops. He co-chaired the 12th Canadian Workshop on Information Theory (CWIT 2011) in Kelowna, Canada. He also co-chaired the 2021 and 2024 Communication Theory Workshop. He served as an Area Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications (2018-2023). Previously, he was an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, and IEEE Communications Letters. He was a past Guest Editor for a special issue of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications on optical wireless communications. He also served as the President of the Canadian Society of Information Theory (2017-2021). From 2022 to 2023, he was a Visiting Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering at Stanford University. Dr. Cheng holds the Principal Research Chair (Tier-1) at UBC on Advanced Wireless Systems. He is also a Fellow of IEEE and a Fellow of Optica. In 2025, he was elected a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada (FEIC) and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering (FCAE).

		Nan Chi, Fudan Univerisity, China Homepage: http://www.it.fudan.edu.cn/En/Data/View/1784

Professor Nan Chi is with School of Information Science and Engineering, Fudan University, China. She received the BS degree and PhD degree in electrical engineering from Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China. She is the author or co-author of more than 300 papers and has been cited more than 12000 times. She has been awarded as The National Science Fund for Distinguished Young Scholars, the New Century Excellent Talents Awards from the Education Ministry of China, Shanghai Shu Guang scholarship. Her current research interests include optical packet/label switching, optical fiber communication and visible light communication. She is a fellow of the OSA.

		Majid Safari, The University of Edinburgh, UK Homepage: https://eng.ed.ac.uk/about/people/professor-majid-safari

Majid Safari is Professor of Optical and Wireless Communications and Deputy Head of the Institute for Imaging, Data and Communications (IDCOM) at the University of Edinburgh. He received his PhD in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada, in 2011. Prof Safari’s research focuses on the application of optics, information theory and signal processing to optical, wireless and quantum communications. He has received the Mitacs Fellowship (Canada) and prestigious research funding from the Leverhulme Trust and the EPSRC (UK), as well as support through the Horizon Europe programme. His contributions to optical wireless communications (OWC) have been recognised with Best Paper Awards at IEEE GLOBECOM 2022, IEEE ICC 2023 and IEEE WCNC 2025. Prof Safari has served as an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications (2019–2024) and IEEE Communications Letters (2015–2019). He has also co-chaired several OWC workshops, including the 4th Workshop on Optical Wireless Communication (2015) and the OWC workshops at IEEE WCNC 2023 and IEEE GLOBECOM 2024.

		Rajbhandari Sujan, University of Strathclyde, UK Homepage: https://www.strath.ac.uk/staff/rajbhandarisujandr/

Dr Sujan Rajbhandari is a reader at University of Strathclyde. He is a leading expert in optical wireless communication (OWC) with a research focus on OWC for the next generation of wireless networks. He has worked at world-leading universities and research groups (Northumbria, Oxford, Coventry, Bangor, and Strathclyde universities) and the leading industry in wireless communication (Huawei R&D centre, Sweden). He is also co-Ordinator for Horizon-Europe funded MSCA doctoral network on “Advanced Network Connectivity using Harmonious Optical and Radio Technologies”. He has co-authored over 200 scholarly articles with a citation of >10000 (Google Scholar). He is a keynote speaker and invited speaker for various international conferences and has served as an Associate Editors for IEEE Photonics Technology Letters, editor board member for MDPI, Wiley and Frontiers Journals.