Professor Linda Doyle (Chair)
Linda Doyle is the Vice President/Dean of Research, and Professor of Engineering and the Arts at Trinity College, University of Dublin, where she is also a Fellow. She was the founding Director of CONNECT, a national research centre co-funded by both the Science Foundation Ireland and industry, which focuses on future networks and communications. Professor Doyle was also the Director of CTVR, Ireland’s national telecommunications research centre, which has since been succeeded by CONNECT. Her expertise is in the fields of wireless communications, cognitive radio, reconfigurable networks, spectrum management and creative arts practices. She has raised over €70 million in research funding in the past decade and has published widely in her field. Professor Doyle has a reputation as an advocate for change in spectrum management practices and has played a role in spectrum policy at both a national and international level. She is on the Board of the Festival of Curiosity a STEM outreach activity for children based on a city-centre yearly science festival. She is a judge in the BT Young Scientist, Ireland's premier science competition for school children. She is the Chair of the Board of the Douglas Hyde Gallery and sits on the Board of Pallas Project Studios.
Prof Mischa Dohler
Mischa Dohler is full Professor in Wireless Communications at King’s College London, driving cross-disciplinary research and innovation in technology, sciences and arts. He is a Fellow of the IEEE, the Royal Academy of Engineering, the Royal Society of Arts (RSA), the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET); and a Distinguished Member of Harvard Square Leaders Excellence. He is a serial entrepreneur; composer and pianist with five albums on Spotify/iTunes; and fluent in six languages. He acts as policy advisor on issues related to digital, skills and education. He has had ample coverage by national and international press and media.
He is a frequent keynote, panel and tutorial speaker, and has received numerous awards. He has pioneered several research fields, contributed to numerous wireless broadband, IoT/M2M and cyber security standards, holds a dozen patents, organised and chaired numerous conferences, was the Editor-in-Chief of two journals, has more than 200 highly-cited publications, and authored several books.
He was the Director of the Centre for Telecommunications Research at King’s from 2014-2018. He is theco-founder of the Smart Cities pioneering company Worldsensing, where he was the CTO from 2008-2014. He also worked as a Senior Researcher at Orange/France Telecom from 2005-2008.
David Harrison (ex-officio)
David is Director of Technology Strategy in Ofcom. He is responsible for leading Ofcom’s technical research programme and supporting Ofcom policy development across a wide range of areas including: white space and cognitive radio, unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum, radio switchover, network neutrality and next generation broadband access. David led the UHF Strategy project, which sought to identify the how to best balance the competing demands for UHF spectrum by different services including terrestrial broadcasting and mobile broadband. More recently he has been leading working on new approaches to spectrum sharing to increase the future supply of spectrum for mobile broadband and machine to machine applications.
Before joining Ofcom, David worked for the Independent Television Commission where he held the position of Deputy Director of Technology, and before that led the high frequency research and development activities in Thomson Multimedia based in Rennes.
David has published numerous technical papers on RF and high frequency engineering and holds 12 patents. David has a first class honours degree and PhD in Electrical and Electronic engineering. He can be contacted at david.mark.harrison@ofcom.org.uk.
Gavin Young
Gavin’s current role is as Head of the Fixed Access Centre of Excellence within Vodafone. He is responsible within Vodafone Group for the fixed broadband access strategy, architecture and deployment practises across the 17 countries where Vodafone currently has fixed access assets.
Gavin was previously Head of Strategy & Planning in Cable & Wireless Worldwide leading a team of architects responsible for the technology architecture and strategy. He had previously worked at Bulldog Communications (later acquired by C&W Worldwide) where he held a variety of responsibilities from product development through to network operations and CTO. Prior to that Gavin lead the Access Architecture & Design team at BT.
Gavin was a founding director of the Broadband Forum where he was overall Technical Chairman for twelve years. In addition he has been co-chair of the UK21CN consultation’s Broadband Group, chair of the UK NICC’s DSL Task Group and also vice-chair of the NICC Ethernet Access Task Group. Gavin also serves on the IET Communications Policy Panel, the Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Board (OSAB) and the Broadband Forum’s executive advisory board. Gavin is a member of the IEEE, Fellow of the IET and Distinguished Fellow of the Broadband Forum.
Greg Bensberg
Gregory Bensberg is the General Manager of Digital 3&4 Ltd, the UK’s main commercial public service DTT multiplex carrying ITV and Channel 4 services to over 98% of UK households. He is a leading authority on both the technical and regulatory aspects of digital broadcasting and has over 30 years’ experience as a regulator and digital broadcast engineer.
He has previously worked as a policy and technical expert for Ofcom, the UK government and the Independent Television Commission for over 20 years. He acted as a key technical and regulatory adviser to a number of Government Ministers between 2002 and 2003 whilst they were developing the UK government’s switchover policy. He was also responsible for leading Ofcom’s spectrum clearance programme (800 MHz and 2.6GHz) which enabled the UK’s 4G spectrum auction in 2013.
He developed and led the planning and licensing of the UK’s digital switchover programme (including its UHF spectrum strategy) and its adoption of the DVB-T2 standard and the launch of terrestrial HD services in 2009. He also led Ofcom’s Digital Dividend Review project in 2005/06, which laid out the process and principles for the eventual European digital dividend programme.
Gregory is a chartered engineer and holds an MBA and BSc. He joined the ITC in 1992 after spells working for Marconi, the IBA, Quantel and Thames Television.
He was awarded an MBE in 2014 for services to communications and media.
Niall Murphy
Niall is Founder and CEO of EVRYTHNG, an internet of things software company providing a digital identity on the Web for billions of consumer products. A computer scientist by training, Niall is a technologist, serial-entrepreneur and angel investor. With 25 years of experience in innovation and future thinking, Niall has built pioneering businesses in internet infrastructure, the mobile internet and web services. Prior to founding EVRYTHNG, Niall co-founded pan European WiFi network The Cloud, acquired by BSkyB in 2011. In the mid 90s he founded one of the first internet service providers in Africa, later acquired by UUnet. Niall co-founded scenario thinking consultancy The Digital Thinking Network in 1994. He has presented around the world, including at TED, was a co-author of the WiFi roaming framework adopted by the IETF, and has co-authored a number of patents.
Wassim Chourbaji
Wassim Chourbaji is Qualcomm’s Senior Vice President and Head of Government Affairs for Europe, the Middle East and Africa. He oversees Qualcomm’s public policy, regulatory affairs and senior government relations in the region. Mr Chourbaji leads a senior team dealing with innovation, technology, intellectual property, digital economy, spectrum, standardisation, data protection and antitrust policy. He has been appointed member of the Ofcom Spectrum Advisory Board and is also the Chairman of TechUK Communication Infrastructure Council. Mr Chourbaji studied engineering and mathematics.
Peter Pitsch
Peter Pitsch currently consults for Intel Corporation. Until May 2018, he was Associate General Counsel at Intel Corporation, specializing in communications policy matters.
Pitsch was the Chief of Staff to the Chairman of the FCC from 1987 to 1989 and Chief of Office of Plans and Policy from 1981 to 1987. From 1980 to 1981, Pitsch was a staff member of the Reagan Administration Transition Team.
Mr. Pitsch received a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago in 1973 and his J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center in 1976.
