Board of Directors
Officers
Dr. Alex Jinsung Choi
Principal Fellow, SoftBank Corp.’s Research Institute of Advanced Technology
Chair of the AI-RAN Alliance
Dr. Alex Jinsung Choi, a South Korean luminary in the global mobile telecommunications sector, boasts over three decades of industry experience. Currently, Dr. Choi is working at SoftBank Corp.’s Research Institute of Advanced Technology and continues to champion innovation at the intersection of AI, mobile technology, and network architecture. He is also currently the Chair of the AI-RAN Alliance. He is dedicated to advancing technology frontiers, crafting strategies that enhance both business and consumer experiences, and guiding the industry toward a more connected, intelligent, and open future.
Previous to his role at SoftBank, he worked for Deutsche Telekom AG as Group CTO for the first 4 years, and then as the leader of T-Labs for about 3 years. He was the founding chair of Telecom Infra Project (TIP) back in 2016-2017, and was the Chair of the O-RAN ALLIANCE in 2022-2024, steering the shift of radio access networks towards more open and intelligent frameworks. His career in leadership began at LG Electronics, where he notably served as the Head of the Mobile Core Technology Lab and the Next Generation Telecommunications Lab from 1998 to 2011. He later joined SK Telecom in South Korea as the CTO and Head of both the Corporate R&D Division and the Technology Strategy Office, where he spearheaded the development of pioneering ICT technologies, including 5G, AI/ML, cloud solutions, Software Defined RAN, and autonomous networks. He earned his MS/Ph.D. in Mobile Networks from the University of Southern California (USC) between 1993 and 1998. Prior to this, he completed a Bachelor of Engineering (BE) in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at Seoul National University from March 1983 to February 1987.
Dr. Ardavan Tehrani
Director of Engineering, Samsung Research
Vice Chair of the AI-RAN Alliance
Dr. Tehrani has over 20 years of experience in the wireless and telecom industries (e.g. LTE, Wi-Fi, UWB). He is currently a Director of Engineering at Samsung Research America (SRA) leading 6G-related activities in the U.S. As part of his role, Dr. Tehrani is representing SRA as Vice-chair of the Board at AI-RAN Alliance and is serving on the Board of US ITU Alliance. He is a member of FCC Technical Advisory Committee (TAC) and a Co-Chair of its AI/ML Softwarization sub-working group. He is also a member of FCC WRC Advisory Committee (WAC) and serves on the U.S. delegation to WRC and CITEL Prior to joining Samsung, Dr. Tehrani served in a number of technical leadership and executive roles at Meta Reality labs, ASSIA Inc., Axxerion and Atheros Comm. He holds MS and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University.
Soma Velayutham
GM, AI and Telecoms, NVIDIA
Secretary of the AI-RAN Alliance
Soma Velayutham is the Vice President, AI & Telecoms at NVIDIA, where he is responsible for developing and evangelizing AI into telecoms and wireless communications. He is a successful serial intrapreneur and product leader with more than 25 years in the software and high-tech industries. He has incubated and launched multiple software products globally for large corporations. He has 11 patents and the full product-lifecycle experience from R&D to GTM.
Mathias Riback
VP & Head of Advanced Technology U.S., Ericsson
Treasurer of the AI-RAN Alliance
Mathias Riback currently serves as the Head of Advanced Technology U.S. for Ericsson, representing the global Ericsson CTO office in Silicon Valley, California. Since joining the company in 2004, he has occupied numerous leadership roles across Research, Development, and Product Management. Prior to his present position, he led the Standards & Technology organization within the Networks division and was instrumental in launching Ericsson’s innovative product line for Cloud RAN. During his tenure at Ericsson Research, Mathias secured numerous patents in the field of telecommunications and has published several peer-reviewed scholarly articles. He holds a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the KTH Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm.
Directors
Satadal Bhattacharjee
Sr. Director, GTM, Infrastructure, ARM
Satadal Bhattacharjee spearheads business strategy and go-to-market initiatives for the Infrastructure line of business at Arm. With over 25 years of industry experience in Cloud/Hyperscale, Compute, and AI, he is a seasoned product executive. Before joining Arm, Satadal held various product leadership roles at Uber, AWS, Qualcomm, Broadcom, AMD, and LSI.
Satadal holds an MBA in Finance and a Bachelor’s degree in Electronics and Telecommunication Engineering, demonstrating his unique combination of business acumen and technical expertise. His extensive background underscores his significant contributions to the technology industry.
Jim Shea
Co-founder and CEO, DeepSig
Jim Shea is the CEO of DeepSig Inc., a startup that is harnessing the power of AI to radically improve the performance and security of 5G, IoT, and other wireless systems. He has over 30 years of commercial and defense industrial experience having been involved in two previous startups and experience managing large organizations. Jim received a BEE from Georgia Tech and an MSEE from The University of Illinois.
Shawn Hakl
VP of 5G Strategy, Microsoft
Ari Kynäslahti
Vice President of Strategy and Technology, CTO, Mobile Networks, Nokia
Mr. Ari Kynäslahti has a long career working at Nokia. He joined Nokia in the beginning of 1995. In Nokia and Nokia Siemens Networks, he has worked in many manager positions, for example as Head of Mobile Networks Product Management, Head of LTE Product Management, Head of Global Radio Sales and Head of WCDMA Product Management as well as multiple positions in R&D and Business Development.
In his current position as Vice President, Strategy & Technology, CTO, he is responsible for creating business, technology and partnership strategies for MN and contributing to Nokia-level strategy. He is also responsible for MN-level portfolio and investment management as well as roadmaps and product decisions for MN SoCs, the BTS platform, including RF platforms and baseband platforms, as well as defining and maintaining the product leadership plans in RF, BB, automation, AI/ML, ORAN/vRAN architecture and Private Wireless Networks. In addition to these, in his current position, he is managing the cooperation with key interface partners, i.e. R&D, sales, standardization, research, chipset vendors and device vendors.
Mr. Kynäslahti has an M.Sc in Radio Technology with two minors: Corporate Strategy & International Business and Economy from Helsinki University of Technology.
Tommaso Melodia
William L. Smith Professor, Northeastern University
Tommaso Melodia is the William Lincoln Smith Professor with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University in Boston. He received his Laurea (integrated BS and MS) from the University of Rome – La Sapienza and his Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, USA in 2007. He is an IEEE Fellow, an ACM Distinguished Member, and a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER award.
Prof. Melodia is the Founding Director of the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things, a research institute, think tank, and technology incubator in the areas of wireless, 5G/6G, networking, IoT, and applications of AI to systems. It counts over 150 researchers, faculty, and PhD students. Prof. Melodia is also the Director of Research for the PAWR Project Office, a $100M public-private partnership building testbeds for advanced wireless research throughout the United States. Prof. Melodia is the Director of Colosseum, the Open RAN Digital Twin and the world’s largest emulator of wireless systems. He received several best paper awards, including at IEEE Infocom 2022. Prof. Melodia is a frequent Keynote Speaker at prime IEEE and ACM events. He is the Editor in Chief for Computer Networks and a co-founder of the 6G Symposium, and served as the Technical Program Committee Chair for IEEE Infocom, and General Chair for ACM MobiHoc, among others. Prof. Melodia’s research on modeling, optimization, and experimental evaluation of wireless networked systems has been funded by many US government and industry entities, including the US National Science Foundation, DARPA, the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense, the Air Force Research Laboratory, NTIA/Department of Commerce, Office of Naval Research, and Army Research Laboratory, among others. His current research interests include Open RAN (open, programmable, and virtualized wireless systems), AI for inference and control in wireless systems, infrastructure and spectrum sharing for wireless systems.
John Saw
EVP and CTO, T-Mobile
John Saw, Ph.D., FCAE, is the Chief Technology Officer at T-Mobile, where he and his team of brilliant technologists are constantly looking for new and innovative ways to disrupt wireless and bring a little joy to customers’ lives.
John was previously the chief technology officer at Sprint, where he transformed its network performance and oversaw the company’s 5G rollout. John was also the chief technology officer at Clearwire before the company was acquired by Sprint in 2013. Long recognized as a pioneer in the 2.5 GHz band, he’s led the development of the 2.5 GHz band into one of the most valuable mid-band spectrums in the U.S. and one of the largest ecosystems in the world.
John has also held senior leadership roles developing and deploying wireless technologies at AT&T Wireless, Bell Northern Research, Netro Corp., and Nortel.
John earned a doctorate, master’s, and bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from McMaster University, Canada, and has six U.S. patents in wireless technologies. In 2017, the FCC chairman appointed him to the Broadband Deployment Advisory Committee. He is an elected Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and he serves on the board of directors for Spectrum Effect, a pioneer in RF spectrum analytics. John also serves on the advisory boards of the Global TDD Initiative (GTI) and the University of Washington, College of Engineering’s Advisory Board.
When John’s not working on network innovation, he enjoys golfing, skiing around pesky snowboarders, and hiking with his wife.
Dr. Akihiro Nakao
Professor, School of Engineering, The University of Tokyo
Received a B.S. (1991) in Physics, and an M.E. (1994) in Information Engineering from the University of Tokyo. After working at IBM, he received an M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science. from Princeton University. He became an associate professor in 2005 and a professor in 2014 at Interfaculty Initiative in Information Studies, Graduate School of Interdisciplinary Information Studies of the University of Tokyo.
He is now a professor at the School of Engineering, Graduate School of the University of Tokyo, serving as He has been a special adviser to the President of the University of Tokyo, Department head of System Innovations as well as Director of Collaborative Research Institute for NGCI, (Next-Generation Cyber Infrastructure). He has been elected to become the president of the Communication Society, IEICE, in 2024.
Specialized in ICT, he has been playing several important roles in the Japanese government, and at research societies.