Franco Callegati received his Master and PhD in Electrical Engineering in 1989 and 1992 from the University of Bologna, Italy. He joined the University of Bologna as assistant professor in 1995 and since 2001 he has been serving as associate professor. Since 2013 he is Director of the Center for industrial research in ICT of the University of Bologna. He was research scientist at the Teletraffic Research Centre of the University of Adelaide, Australia, in 1993, at Fondazione U. Bordoni, (Italy) in 1994 and at the University of Texas at Dallas (USA) in 1998. His research interests are in the field of teletraffic modeling and performance evaluation of telecommunication networks. He worked in the field of all optical networking investigating optical burst and packet switching, participating in several research projects funded by the EU, such as ACTS KEOPS, IST DAVID and the networks of excellence e-photon/ONe, e-Photon/ONe+ and BONE, often coordinating work packages and activities. More recently he focused on automation issues of the network control plane, starting with very early applications to GMPLS for optical networks and now on focusing on applications of SDN for dynamic NFV in edge networks. He has been teaching undergraduate and graduate courses on Networking at the University of Bologna since 1994. He also taught the course of “Teletraffic Theory” at the University of Dallas (Texas) in 1998 and was invited to give seminars in Universities abroad. He served as General Chair for the 14th Conference on Optical Network Design and Modeling in 2011 and as TPC member in main telecommunication conferences such as IEEE Globecom and IEEE ICC. He co-edited and contributed to the book “Enabling Optical Internet with Advanced Network Technologies" published by Springer in 2009. He is senior member of the IEEE. He is currently co-chairing the Education committee of the IEEE SDN initiative.Walter Cerroni obtained the Ph.D. inElectrical and Computer Engineering in July 2003 from the University of Bologna, Italy. In 1999 he was a Junior Researcher with Alcatel, Dallas, Texas, USA. From May 2003 to April 2005 he was a Research Associate at the National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications (CNIT), Italy. Since April 2005, he is an Assistant Professor of Communication Networks at the University of Bologna, Italy. In 2008 he was a visiting Assistant Professor at the School of Information Sciences, University of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA. His most recent research interests include: design, implementation and performance evaluation of virtual network function chaining in cloud computing platforms (e.g. OpenStack); modeling and design of inter-and intra-data center interconnection networks for cloud computing infrastructures; design of programmable, software-defined hybrid optical network architectures; performance evaluation of dynamic spectrum allocation techniques in flexible optical networks.Walter Cerroni has been involved in several research projects, at both national (e.g., FIRB GRID.IT, PRIN SFINGI) and international (e.g., IST-DAVID, FP7 e-Photon/ONe, FP7 BONE, EIT ICT Labs) levels. He has co-authored about 100 articles published in international journals, magazines and conference proceedings. He is currently serving as Co-Chair of the Optical Networks and Systems Symposium at IEEE ICC 2016, and has served as Publication Chair for ONDM 2011 and SDN4FNS 2013, technically co-sponsored by IEEE Communications Society. He also served as a Technical Program Committee member for several international conferences, including IEEE Globecom, IEEE ICC, IEEE HPSR, IEEE FIE, ONDM. He co-authored the book “Hands on networking”, published in 2009 by Cambridge University Press, and one of the very few textbooks in computer networking that give special attention to practical exercises on open-source platforms.Carla Raffaelli, PhD, graduated at the University of Bologna in 1985, summa cum Laude. In 1990 She obtained her PhD in Electronic and Computer Engineering. Since 2004 she is Associate Professor with expertise in Telecommunication Networks. She authored many scientific papers in outstanding conferences and journals. She regularly serves as a reviewer for scientific journals and participate as a member of Technical Program Committees of most important conferences in her field of expertise. She participated, also with coordinating roles, in important National and European scientific projects. Main research topics are: Modeling of network functions and equipments, Multi-service networks, Optical networks, Data Center networks, and, recently, 5G networking. She is Director of the Second cycle degree in Telecommunications Engineering.
