Javier Hernandez Fernandez specializes in the area of technology innovation and brings over twenty years of practical experience in overseeing the design and delivery of R&D initiatives on behalf of multi-national companies in the field of IT, telecom, and utilities. He currently manages research and technical consulting projects as part of the Innovation team of Iberdrola, working in the smart grid, renewables, and energy efficiency domains.In addition to a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Ottawa, Javier holds two Masters degrees in Energy Management from the University of Zaragoza and Project Management from the University San Pablo CEU/IEP and a PhD. in Computer Science & Engineering from HBKU. Aymen Omri received the engineering degree in Telecommunications from The Tunisian Aviation Academy EABA, in 2007, and the M.Res. and Ph.D. degrees in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) from the Engineering National School of Tunis (ENIT)/Tunis El Manar University, in 2009 and 2012, respectively. From 2012 to 2017, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Electrical Engineering (EE) Department, Qatar University. From 2018 to 2019, he was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University in Qatar. He is currently a Research Scientist at Iberdrola Innovation Middle East / Qatar Science & Technology Park. His research interests include modeling, design, and performance analysis of communication systems. In particular, he has an interest in: 5-G NR Systems, Device to Device Communication Systems, Wireless/Wired Emulation and Experimentation Platforms, and Power Line Communication (PLC) Systems.Roberto Di Pietro, IEEE Fellow, ACM Distinguished Scientist, Member of Academia Europaea, is a Full Professor in Computer Science with the KAUST-CEMSE, Saudi Arabia. Previously, he was Professor in Cybersecurity and founder of the CRI-Lab at HBKU-CES, Doha-Qatar.Before moving to the Middle East, he was in the capacity of Global Head Security Research at Nokia Bell Labs (Paris-France), and Associate Professor (with tenure) of Computer Science at University of Padova, Italy. He has been working in the security field for 25+ years, leading both technology-oriented and research-focused teams in the private sector, government, and academia (MoD, United Nations HQ, EUROJUST, IAEA, WIPO). His main research interests include AI driven cybersecurity, security and privacy for distributed systems (e.g. Blockchain technology, Cloud, IoT, OSNs), virtualization security, applied cryptography, and data science. He has published hundreds of scientific articles on the cited topics, co-authored four books, and registered tens of patents and patents applications. Other than being involved in M&A of start-ups —and having founded one (exited)—, he is in the Board of research centers and start-ups. In 2011-2012 he was awarded a Chair of Excellence from UniversityCarlos III, Madrid. In 2020 he received the JeanClaude Laprie Award for having significantly influenced the theory and practice of Dependable Computing. In 2022 he was awarded the Individual Innovation Award from HBKU. He is consistently ranked among the 2% top world scientists since this ranking existed.
