Dr. Weihua Zhuang
Professor, PhD, FIEEE, PEng, Tier I (Senior) Canada Research Chair

Title: Vehicular Networking: Challenges and Opportunities

Abstract
Vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs) aim at providing communications among vehicles, and between vehicles and nearby roadside equipment, with very limited or no infrastructure support. VANETs are envisioned to be a cornerstone for road safety, intelligent transportation, mobile Internet access, and many location dependent commercial applications. The growing importance of inter-vehicular communications has been recognized by governments, academia, and industry. In comparison with general-purpose mobile ad hoc networks, VANETs have unique features that provide opportunities for optimizations, but also have complex aspects that challenge the system design and implementation, such as very fast network topology changes due to high vehicle speed. This presentation will provide an overview of vehicular communication networks, discuss research challenges and open issue, and provide some solutions to resource allocation, network control, and service provisioning in VANETs.

Biography:
Weihua Zhuang received the B.Sc. and M.Sc. degrees from Dalian Maritime University, China, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of New Brunswick, Canada, all in electrical engineering. In October 1993, she joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Waterloo, Canada, as an Assistant Professor. She was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor with tenure in July 1997, and then to Full Professor in July 2002. Since May 2010, she has been a Tier I (Senior) Canada Research Chair in wireless communication networks. Her current research focuses on resource allocation and QoS provisioning in wireless networks. She is a co-author of the textbook Wireless Communications and Networking, which has been published by Prentice Hall since 2003, and has been translated to Chinese and published by the Publishing House of Electronics Industry in China since 2004. Dr. Zhuang is a co-recipient of the Best Paper Awards from IEEE VTC-Fall 2010, IEEE WCNC 2007 and 2010, IEEE ICC 2007, and the International Conference on Heterogeneous Networking for Quality, Reliability, Security and Robustness (QShine) 2007 and 2008. She received the Outstanding Performance Award in 2005, 2006, and 2008 from the University of Waterloo for outstanding achievements in teaching, research, and service, and the Premier's Research Excellence Award in 2001 from the Ontario Government for demonstrated excellence of scientific and academic contributions. Dr. Zhuang is the Editor-in-Chief of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, and an Editor of EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, International Journal of Sensor Networks, and the ETRI Journal. She was an editor of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (2005-2009). She is the TPC Co-Chair for Wireless Networks Symposium of IEEE Globecom 2008, Cross Layer Designs and Protocols Symposium of Int. Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC) 2007 and 2006, and the ACM Workshop on Wireless Multimedia Networking and Performance Modeling (WMuNeP) 2005. She is a Fellow of IEEE and an IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer. Dr. Zhuang is a licensed Professional Engineer in the Province of Ontario, Canada. She is the Chair of the Vehicular Technology Chapter, IEEE Kitchener-Waterloo Section.

Dr. Pierre Boucher
Director, Research, Ericsson Canada Inc.

Title: Towards 50 Billion Devices: A Sustainable Evolution of Mobile Networks

Abstract:
Mobile networks are evolving rapidly and will be moving from connecting people to connecting things. This poses some research challenges in terms of network efficiency but also in terms of the use of these new kinds of networks on our daily lives.

Biography:
Pierre Boucher is Director for Research at Ericsson's R&D center in Montreal. He is responsible for research activities on broadband systems and networks for the R&D center's collaborative research and innovation projects with universities and institutions. Areas covered by his group include next generation networks, service architectures and advanced radio applications. His interests are in the application of networked multimedia technologies like IMS in sectors such as healthcare and entertainment. Pierre is also chairman of Prompt, a research promotion organization. He represents Ericsson on various boards promoting research and innovation in the telecommunications sector and in the community. such as CATA, ADRIQ and TechnoMontreal. Prior to his 15 years at Ericsson, Pierre worked for Rogers in Network Research with a focus on OSS systems.