WC-T - Key Persons
Dr. Irene Katzela is one of Canada's foremost authorities on Network Management of Broadband Integrated Networks. Dr. Katzela has over 17 years experience in the research and development of large scale, high-speed networks with emphasis in network management and control; emerging technologies and applications.
She is the co-owner of a successful Information Technology consulting firm that provides services in the areas of network management and operations; security and network infrastructure. From 1996-2000 Dr. Katzela was a full-time faculty member at the ECE department at the University of Toronto. She has also worked in some of the biggest research labs in North America including the T.J.Watson Research Center, NY and Bell Laboratories, NY. Dr. Katzela is the author of numerous scientific papers and a book in the area of networks and emerging technologies; and she is in the process of developing her latest book on network management. Dr. Katzela holds a PhD. from Columbia University in NY. A Masters of Science and a Masters of Philosophy from the same University and a Diploma in Electrical Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens, Greece.
Dr. Khalid Danok has a PhD in Electrical Engineering, Electromagnetics and RF propagation from St. Petersburg Technical University, Member of Professional Engineers Ontario P.Eng. His industry certifications include the widely recognized CCNA, CCAI, Cisco Wireless, VoIP and Security.
Dr. Danok has more than 18 years experience teaching various telecommunications and networking courses at the university and college level. Since 2003, Dr. Danok has been instructing IT and wireless courses at The School of Computer Technology at George Brown College, and coordinates IT programs. He also organizes the placement of IT students in local companies.
Dr. Danok is an active member of the GBC research community. He is leading research in areas like RFID, Wireless Networking, and VoIP technologies. Dr. Danok's industrial experience includes consulting and working with telecommunication and electronic manufacturing companies.
Job Titles:
- Professor of Computer Science at the University of Waterloo
Raouf Boutaba is a professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo (Canada) and a distinguished visiting professor at POSTECH (South Korea). He severed as a distinguished speaker of the IEEE Communications Society and the IEEE Computer Society. He is the founding chair of the IEEE Communications Society Technical Committee on Autonomic Communications. He is the founding Editor in Chief of the IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (2007-2010), on the advisory editorial board of the Journal of Network and Systems Management, and on the editorial board of the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, the IEEE Communication Surveys and Tutorials, the KICS/IEEE Journal of Communications and Networks, the International Journal on Network Management (ACM/Wiley), the Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing (Wiley) and the Journal on Internet Services and Applications (Springer). His research interests include resource and service management in networked systems. He has published extensively in these areas and received several journal and conference best paper awards such as the IEEE 2008 Fred W. Ellersick Prize Paper Award, the 2001 KICS/IEEE Journal on Communications and Networks Best Paper Award, the IM 2007 and 2009 and the CNSM 2010 Best Paper Awards among others. He also received several recognitions such as the Premier's Research Excellence Award, two Nortel research excellence Awards, a fellowship of the Faculty of Mathematics, a David R. Cheriton faculty fellowship, 2 outstanding performance awards at Waterloo and the NSERC discovery accelerator award. He has also received the IEEE Communications Society Hal Sobol Award and the IFIP Silver Core in 2007, the IEEE Communications Society Joe LociCero award and the IFIP/IEEE Dan Stokesbury award in 2009. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.management in wired and wireless networked systems with a current focus on network virtualization, cloud computing and smart grid environments.
Elvino S. Sousa received his B.A.Sc. in engineering science, and the M.A.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Toronto in 1980 and 1982 respectively, and his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from the University of Southern California in 1985. Since 1986 he has been with the department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto where he is now a Professor and the Jeff Skoll Professor in Computer Network Architecture. He has performed research in CDMA and wireless systems since 1983. His current interests are in the areas of broadband wireless systems, smart antenna systems, autonomous infrastructure wireless networks, cognitive radio, self configurable wireless networks, user deployed networks, and cognitive networks. He was the founder of wireless communications at the University of Toronto and is the director of the wireless lab, which has undertaken research in wireless systems for the past 24 years. He has been invited to give lectures and short courses on spread spectrum, CDMA, and wireless systems in many countries, and has been a consultant to industry and Governments internationally in the area of wireless systems. He was the technical program chair for PIMRC 95, vice-technical program chair for Globecom '99, Co-Technical Program Chair for WPMC 2010 and for PIMRC 2011, and has been involved in the technical program committee of numerous international conferences. He is a past chair of the IEEE Technical committee on Personal Communications. He has spent sabbatical leaves at Qualcomm and Sony CSL/ATL, where he was the holder of the Sony sabbatical chair. He has been awarded the Queen Elizabeth II Golden Jubilee Medal.
George Moon, M.Sc., P.Eng. has over thirty years of technical management and leadership experience in various international executive positions including his own startup company, Wild Leitz Switzerland, Prime Computer, Unisys Computer and MapInfo Corporation. In addition, Mr. Moon was responsible for building complex software systems throughout his career.
Mr. Moon has U.S. patents covering location based services for mobile devices and rapid retrieval for time sensitive data in emergency situations. Mr. Moon is a 2008 inventor of the year for Pitney Bowes, led a core of advanced developers and researchers through many of his years, and is a Fellow of Calumet College. Additionally he is recognized for his advanced contributions to extended relational database management by Empress Software Inc.
Mr. Moon provides insights only possible by living the experience. He is especially proud of how well many of his former colleagues are doing in the corporate world and his role in helping grow MapInfo Corporation as the Vice President of Engineering and finally Chief Technology Officer from $50 million to over $150 million.
Mr. Moon has presented lectures and workshops in numerous venues. Some include Calumet College at York University for faculty, undergraduate and graduate students; the graduate school in the Geomatics Department at Quebec University; various parts of the University of Guelph; numerous companies such as MapInfo, DMTI, Environics; the Arizona Technology Council; and various business leaders in Tucson, Arizona.
George has developed and managed numerous outsourcing and vendor services contracts in both the public and private sectors. As a senior manager, he was accountable for both negotiating for and managing the equipment and services that these relationships delivered, both as a customer and as a services vendor. He brings understanding of how to work with vendors and customers to meet the challenges of building and negotiating contracts that provide effective management and governance to ensure on-going support post-delivery. He lead technology services for Interac, Toronto East General Hospital, universities, a national service bureau, and managed a vendor's national support organization. He currently provides advisory services to organizations considering outsourcing or evaluating how to improve and refresh existing vendor relationships. He is also a Professor at George Brown College, and writes a column, "Action Item," for CIO Canada magazine, among a number of professional activities. A profile can be found at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/georgegorsline
Job Titles:
- Product Manager, Nokia Siemens Networks
With a career spanning more than 30 years in the Telecommunications industry, John Desmond has held positions in design, program management, marketing and product management, and always involved in bringing leading edge products to market. This has included more than 20 years focused on the evolving wireless market, from North America's first digital cellular system, through GSM to the latest WiMAX and LTE technologies. His current position is as Product Manager of Nokia Siemens Networks' advanced fourth generation LTE customer premise products.
He has served as a guest lecturer in wireless technologies and services at Ryerson Polytechnic University and the University of Toronto, and is a frequent speaker at broadband wireless industry events, including SuperComm, WCA, ABTA (Brazil) and others. Mr. Desmond holds BSc(EE) from Queen's University, and MEng (EE) degree from Carleton University in Ottawa, Canada.
Job Titles:
- Instructor
- President
- President of World Class - Telecommunications
Celia Desmond, President of World Class - Telecommunications, which provides training in telecommunications management, has lectured internationally on programs for success in today's changing environment. She recently completed a project converting the network of a major Canadian bank to an MPLS network. As a Director at Stentor Resource Center Inc., she was instrumental in establishing culture and new processes for service/product development and for project governance. She helped establish a development coaching program for employees, acting as a coach herself for Stentor and Bell Canada employees. She also coached project managers as they established a coaching network to build a new project management program for Stentor. At Bell Canada, Celia provided strategic direction to corporate planners, ran technology/service trials, standardized equipment, and provided technical and project management support to large business clients. She has held numerous senior management positions at IEEE including Project Director for Certification in Wireless Engineering Technology for IEEE, managing a team of over 100 people in 8 different development areas, Director and Secretary of IEEE, IEEE Vice President - Technical Activities, President of IEEE Communications Society. President of IEEE Canada, and Region 7 Director, Division III Director, Vice President Engineering Management Society, and IEEE Canada Foundation Board member and previous Donations Chair. Celia holds MSc. Engineering, B.Sc. Mathematics & Psychology, Ontario Teaching Certificate and PMP certification. Celia has taught kindergarten, high school, and university at Ryerson School of Business, Stevens Institute of Technology, and University of Toronto. She is author of Project Management for Telecommunications Managers (Springer). Her pocket book Project Management for Telecommunications Projects was published by Wiley in 2010.
Celia Desmond, president of World Class Telecommunications, with her team of technology/management professionals, offers a wide range of training packages in convenient module format that broadly cover both the management and engineering aspects of technology-driven industry. The selection of modules can be tailored to your needs. Please use the links above for information about consulting and training services.
Randy Park works with people and organizations to improve their decision making, perceive situations more accurately, and question their assumptions. Randy is an expert in improving how people think, make decisions, and collaborate. Randy holds a Bachelors in Physics and Masters in Engineering Physics. He worked designing world leading fiber optics products before his interest in how people think was sparked when he observed that even brilliant people sometimes do some not-so-brilliant things. Randy is the author of two books, and has spoken to thousands of people around the world in Government, industry, universities, and even in a prison. He is a member of IEEE and the System Dynamics Society.
Job Titles:
- Independent Management and Telecommunications Consultant
Stephen Kendall is an independent management and telecommunications consultant with experience in technical sales, management, HR and coaching.
Mr. Kendall has worked in Canada and internationally for over 30 years in Sales and Marketing and management in telecommunications and Information Technology. His experience includes direct sales and sales management, as well as sales support, sales and market planning and market management in engineering-oriented firms. Mr. Kendall has been accountable for business planning, operations and results for multi-million dollar sales and engineering teams including direct responsibility for funnel management. He was responsible for recruiting and running co-op and summer programs for engineers, IT specialists and business specialists for Bell Canada. He has also recruited, contracted and managed agents and other third party representatives as required in order to build sales, engineering, management and technical project teams. On the product side, has been responsible for introducing new technology-based products into new markets and for the behind-the-scenes product development and pricing. Mr. Kendall has successfully done market development and consulting in foreign as well as domestic Canadian markets.
He began his career in Sales with Bell Canada and progressed through positions in Marketing, Business Planning, Market Management and Human Resources, among others. He had assignments in the BCE group in Bell Canada International on overseas projects and in business development for Latin America. Mr. Kendall continued his business development work in Latin America with CGI International and subsequently - based in Colombia - with an IT consulting company and telecom billing reconciliation software vendor. He was responsible for sales and technical delivery to clients in the Americas north of the equator for LHS Systems, a large European telecom billing software company, and subsequently was Director Business Development for the Americas at Call Genie, a Canadian telecommunications technology company that provides Enhanced Voice Directory Services and Interactive local search by phone. He was most recently Director of Programs at Help Lesotho, a Canadian Non-governmental organization (NGO) that supports children and grandmothers in an impoverished country ravaged by HIV/AIDS. His role was to manage and direct aid programs; he also spent six months on the ground supporting the indigenous staff and coaching them in management processes.