Francesco Milazzo,Rear Admiral (UH) - Marina Militare, Commander of the Submarines - Head of the Submarine Department at the Navy General Staff, Italian Navy
WE2B-2 : Impact of the Fluctuations of Opto-Geometrical and Concentration of Erbium-doped Preforms on the Performances of Multi-Core Amplifiers for Next Generation Submarine Cables
Wet Plant Technologies for Transmission and Connectivity
TH1A-2 : Pipeline crossings for submarine cable builds: seeking better ways to negotiate these complex agreements and manage the associated business risks
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Nicole Starosielski / Second SubOptic Congress on Sustainability
Nicole Starosielski, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Nicole Starosielski is Professor of Film and Media at the University of California-Berkeley and a principal investigator on the Sustainable Subsea Networks, a project of the SubOptic Foundation, working to enhance the sustainability of subsea cable systems.
Emmanuel Danjou / Second SubOptic Congress on Sustainability
Emmanuel Danjou, Head of Business Development, Alcatel Submarine Networks
Emmanuel Danjou is currently Head of Business Development of Alcatel Submarine Networks.
During his 27-year career in the Telecommunications industry, Emmanuel has held several management positions in Industrialization, Projects, Sales & Marketing and Strategic Alliances & Partnership at...
René d'Avezac de Moran / Second SubOptic Congress on Sustainability
René d'Avezac de Moran, COO, OMS Group Sdn Bhd
René joined the OMS Group in 2023 as Telco group COO. René previously oversaw the global business development of services provided by Fugro to the subsea cable industry such as desktop studies and route surveys. René was employed by Fugro for over 20 years, he headed the offshore positioning...
Tim Stronge / Second SubOptic Congress on Sustainability
Tim Stronge, Vice President of Research, TeleGeography
Tim Stronge is Chief Research Officer at TeleGeography. His responsibilities span across many of our research practices including network infrastructure, bandwidth demand modeling, cross-border traffic flows, and telecom services pricing.
Hany Zaalouk / Second SubOptic Congress on Sustainability
Hany Zaalouk, Director international infrastructure management, Telecom Egypt
With over 25 years of experience, Zaalouk has served as TE international projects management Director since 2020, overseeing global Subsea projects for Telecom Egypt investments, network Implementation, and state of the art terrestrial infrastructure development within and outside Egypt.
From...
Eduardo Mateo is the Chief Strategy Officer of the Submarine Network Division at NEC, Tokyo. He leads technology strategy and network architecture activities since 2012. Prior to that, he held a research and development role at NEC Labs America in Princeton, NJ, where he conducted pioneering...
Jean-Francois Baget joined Alcatel Submarine Network in 1994 and has been involved in various technical functions in design, integration and engineering:
He is currently Technical Marketing Manager and Product Line Manager for submerged Equipment in ASN Product Strategy Group.From 2007 to 2019, he...
Qian Zhong joined Google in January 2023 as the Subsea Quality Lead where he is responsible for ensuring the quality of Google's subsea network. Prior to joining Google, Qian held various leadership roles in R&D, product line management, and sales at AT&T Bell Labs, Tyco Telecom, and...
Dmitriy Kovsh, Senior Director, System Design and Product Management, subcom
Dmitriy Kovsh received his PhD in Optics from CREOL, School of Optics, University of Central Florida. Since joining SubCom R&D Organization, Dmitriy has been a lead developer of simulation software tools to optimize undersea systems, studying technologies ranging from 10G direct detection and...
Willy George / Masterclass 2 - Network Security
Willy George, HOD Networks, Zain Omantel International (ZOI)
Willy George is Zain Omantel International’s Head of Department, Networks.Based in Muscat, Willy leads the engineering team responsible for ZOI’s global network infrastructure that includes submarine cable systems, terrestrial DWDM and IP transport infrastructure. Acting as a key technical advisor...
Patrick Scully / Masterclass 2 - Network Security
Patrick Scully, Chief Product Officer, Quantum Corridor
Patrick Scully, Chief Product Officer, Quantum CorridorPatrick Scully, P. Eng., MBA, has been involved in the research and development of optical networks for over 25 years. Over the last 15 years, he pioneered and oversaw the development and market introduction of several generations of industry...
Denise Wood is a trusted advisor to technology and communications companies, focusing on commercial and regulatory matters with a particular emphasis on subsea and terrestrial digital infrastructure and space and satellite issues. Her diverse clientele spans the technology and communications...
René d'Avezac de Moran / Masterclass 3 - Advances in Marine Operations and Maintenance
René d'Avezac de Moran, COO, OMS Group Sdn Bhd
René joined the OMS Group in 2023 as Telco group COO. René previously oversaw the global business development of services provided by Fugro to the subsea cable industry such as desktop studies and route surveys. René was employed by Fugro for over 20 years, he headed the offshore positioning...
Claire Boggis / Masterclass 3 - Advances in Marine Operations and Maintenance
Claire Boggis, Director, CLB Advisory Ltd
Claire has 36 years experience in the submarine telecommunications industry. She has spent much of her career at Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) where she was directly involved in managing all submarine telecom cable projects delivered around the world by ASN (and formerly STC) over a 29 year...
Tom Janssen-Manning / Masterclass 3 - Advances in Marine Operations and Maintenance
Tom Janssen-Manning, Global Lead Marine Strategy & Innovation, Google
Tom is part of the Operations Team in Google's Global Submarine Network business unit. As the Global Lead for Marine Strategy and Innovation, he is charged with leading engagement with partners and the industry to develop future marine strategies, including marine maintenance, and implementing...
Andy Palmer-Felgate / Masterclass 3 - Advances in Marine Operations and Maintenance
Andy Palmer-Felgate, Submarine Cable Engineer, Meta
Andy Palmer-Felgate is responsible for marine engineering and route planning of submarine cable systems at Meta and serves as Acting President of the North America Submarine Cable Association. Andy is also a Director and Executive Committee member of the International Submarine Cable Protection ...
Marc Stephens / Masterclass 4 - Transmission Technology for Subsea
Marc Stephens, Director System Engineering, Nokia
Marc is a Director of Systems Engineering at Nokia, a global leader in optical telecommunications. With a focus on subsea optical transmission and SLTE technology, he collaborates closely with Webscale subsea teams to help achieve their data transmission goals. Marc's optical communications...
Kim Roberts / Masterclass 4 - Transmission Technology for Subsea
Kim Roberts, VP, Wavelogic Science, Ciena
Kim Roberts has been a major force in the field of digital signal processing for optical transmission in developing the first coherent 40, 100, 400, 800, and 1600 Gb/s optical systems. Today Kim is Vice President at Ciena, leading an R&D team focused on pushing the optical boundaries even...
Mike Pan / Masterclass 4 - Transmission Technology for Subsea
Mike Pan, PLM, cisco
Mike Pan is a Senior Product Manager at Cisco, specializing in Optical Networking. With over two decades of experience in the optical telecommunications sector, Mike drives innovation and customer-focused solutions. His current role builds upon a distinguished tenure at Acacia Communications, where ...
Siddharth Varughese / Masterclass 4 - Transmission Technology for Subsea
Siddharth Varughese, Principal Optical Engineer, Nokia
Siddharth Varughese obtained his B.Tech in Electrical Engineering from Indian Institute of Technology Madras in 2015 and in 2020 was awarded a PhD in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology for his research on modelling impairments in high-speed optical communication systems and ...
Mike Clare / Masterclass 5 - Advances, Opportunities and Challenges in Sensing on Fibre-Optic Cables: A Forward Look
Mike Clare, Principal Researcher, National Oceanography Centre
Dr Mike Clare is a Principal Researcher in Ocean BioGeoscience at the National Oceanography Centre, UK. His research focuses on dynamic processes that operate in the deep sea, the influence of climate change and human activities on the seafloor, and assessing risks to seafloor infrastructure, which ...
Simon Webster / Masterclass 5 - Advances, Opportunities and Challenges in Sensing on Fibre-Optic Cables: A Forward Look
Simon Webster, Director, Submarine Networks EMEA, NEC Australia
Simon Webster is Director, Submarine Networks EMEA for NEC. He started in NEC’s cable business in 1998, and currently heads NEC’s business in EMEA for submarine cable networks and ocean observation systems. He is also a steering committee member of the UN ESCAP Sustainable Business Network task...
Isobel Yeo / Masterclass 5 - Advances, Opportunities and Challenges in Sensing on Fibre-Optic Cables: A Forward Look
Isobel Yeo, Senior Research Geoscientist, National Oceanography Centre
Isobel Yeo is a senior researcher in volcanology and geohazards at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, where her research focuses on understanding threats to coastal communities and seafloor infrastructure and application of novel technology to better understand hazards in the ocean. Her PhD was ...
Giuseppe Marra / Masterclass 5 - Advances, Opportunities and Challenges in Sensing on Fibre-Optic Cables: A Forward Look
Giuseppe Marra, Principle Scientist, National Physical Laboratory
Giuseppe Marra is a Principal Scientist in the Time and Frequency department. His specialist area of research expertise is optical frequency metrology, with a focus on dissemination of ultra-stable optical frequencies over optical fibre links, including for comparison of distantly located optical...
Mikael Mazur / Masterclass 5 - Advances, Opportunities and Challenges in Sensing on Fibre-Optic Cables: A Forward Look
Mikael Mazur, Member of Technical Staff, Nokia Bell Labs
Mikael Mazur received his PhD from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden in 2019. At Bell Labs, he develops real-time signal processing techniques for optical transmission and fiber sensing systems. His work puts particular emphasis on developing fiber sensing systems that are compatible with...
Katherine Edwards / Masterclass 5 - Advances, Opportunities and Challenges in Sensing on Fibre-Optic Cables: A Forward Look
Katherine Edwards is Senior Submarine Cable Investments Manager at Vodafone and has an extensive background in the subsea cable industry, particularly with a focus on operational aspects. She was formerly Operations Manage for Apollo Submarine Cable System and Director for Submarine Systems and...
Jan Petter Morten / Masterclass 5 - Advances, Opportunities and Challenges in Sensing on Fibre-Optic Cables: A Forward Look
Jan Petter Morten, Principal Engineer, Alcatel Submarine Networks
Jan Petter Morten is working as Principal Engineer in the R&D department the ASN Norway office in Trondheim. The focus for his work is on fiber sensing applications and signal processing. He received a PhD in theoretical physics in 2008 from NTNU, Norway. He has experience in geophysical...
Laure DUVERNAY / Masterclass 6 - Legal, Finance and Regulatory - The Dance of the Troublemakers
Laure DUVERNAY, Head of Financing and Treasury, Alcatel Submarine Networks
Currently the head of Financing and Treasury at Alcatel Submarine Network (ASN), Laure has more than 20 years of experience in the high tech and finance industries. She left the banking world in November 2015 to return to ASN where she had started her career in 1999. She is a Telecommunications...
Jonathan Dames / Masterclass 6 - Legal, Finance and Regulatory - The Dance of the Troublemakers
Jonathan Dames, Partner, CMS Cameron Mckenna Nabarro Olswang LLP
Jonathan is a Partner in CMS’s energy and infrastructure project financing practice. He has delivered solutions involving bank debt, bond issues (public and private placements), mezzanine financing, holdco financings and portfolio financing and worked on many deals involving IFIs and ECAs. He acts...
Stuart Blythe / Masterclass 6 - Legal, Finance and Regulatory - The Dance of the Troublemakers
Stuart Blythe, Partner, BAKER BOTTS (UK) LLP
Stuart Blythe is a partner with the international law firm, Baker Botts. He is dual U.S./English law qualified (having practiced both in London and New York) and advises on a wide range of corporate and commercial transactions in the technology and telecoms sectors. He has significant industry...
Jamie Merrett / Masterclass 6 - Legal, Finance and Regulatory - The Dance of the Troublemakers
Jamie Merrett is a seasoned Project Manager at Alcatel Submarine Networks, with over 34 years of experience in the submarine cable telecommunications industry. For the last 20 years he has been dedicated to obtaining cable system permits and environmental licences for global digital infrastructure...
Benoit Denis / Masterclass 6 - Legal, Finance and Regulatory - The Dance of the Troublemakers
Benoit Denis, Senior Economist Digital Infrastructure, European Investment Bank
Benoit is a Senior Investment Officer with the Corporate Finance and Global Activities Department at EIB Global. Benoit focusses on the corporate debt financing in the ICT sector sector (including submarine cables, satellites, telecom networks, datacenters, e-health). Prior to this role, he worked...
Pascal Pecci / SubOptic Working Group Updates - Network Element Naming
Pascal Pecci, Engineer, Meta
Pascal Pecci is a Global Optical Architect for Meta, overseeing the design, build, and operation of Open Cable submarine systems and introducing new optical technologies in the Meta global network. After 25 years within Alcatel working on terrestrial and subsea projects as a researcher, system...
Jean-pierre BLONDEL / SubOptic Working Group Updates - Network Element Naming
Jean-Pierre Blondel has started his career along with the advent of erbium optical amplification and worked on the early design of amplified transoceanic systems as well as on high power unrepeatered systems. He published regular, postdeadline and invited papers in major conferences. Then, after...
Richard Norris / SubOptic Working Group Updates - Spectrum Sharing
Richard Norris, Senior Director, Sales Engineering, Ciena
Richard Norris is Senior Director of Global Submarine System Engineering at Ciena with responsibility for submarine solution technical sales and development. He’s been in the telecom industry for over 30 years working for both vendors and operators. He was first involved in submarine networking in...
Valey Kamalov / SubOptic Working Group Updates - Environmental Sensing on Operational Submarine Cables
Valey Kamalov, Consultant, Valey Kamalov LLC
Valey is a founder of Kamalov LLC company dedicated to subsea environmental sensing and protection of submarine cables (since 2023). Valey discovered polarization based sensing with transcontinental submarine cables in January 2020, and has been devoted to optical fiber sensing technologies since...
Elaine Reed / SubOptic Working Group Updates - Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging (DIB)
Elaine Reed leads the Submarine Engineering team at Vodafone Group, ensuring technical and operational best practice in the deployment, operation and decommissioning of submarine cable systems for which Vodafone have responsibility.
Elaine joined Vodafone in April 2021, having spent the previous...
Stuart Blythe / SubOptic Members Meeting
Stuart Blythe, Partner, BAKER BOTTS (UK) LLP
Stuart Blythe is a partner with the international law firm, Baker Botts. He is dual U.S./English law qualified (having practiced both in London and New York) and advises on a wide range of corporate and commercial transactions in the technology and telecoms sectors. He has significant industry...
Alain BISTON / Host Sponsor Welcome
Alain BISTON, President & Chief Executive Officer, Alcatel Submarine Networks
Alain has been working for more than 25 years in telecoms, with Nortel, then Alcatel-Lucent / Nokia, holding management and leadership positions in R&D, Product Line, Industrial Operations, Sales & Marketing, Business Unit P&L accountability. At the helm of ASN since 2019, he brings his ...
Sandra Maximiano / Opening Ceremony
Sandra Maximiano, Chair of the Board of Directors of the National Communications Authority of the Republic of Portugal, ANACOM
Sandra Maximiano, Chairwoman of the Board of Directors of ANACOM since 15 December 2023, holds a PhD in Economics from the University of Amsterdam. She is an Associate Professor of Economics at ISEG - Higher Institute of Economics and Management of the University of Lisbon, where she is...
Dean Bubley / Keynote Speaker
Dean Bubley, Founder, Disruptive Analysis
Dean Bubley (@disruptivedean) is the founder of Disruptive Analysis, an independent technology industry analyst and consulting firm based in London. An outspoken analyst & futurist with over 25 years’ experience, he specialises in mobile / telecoms fields, with an eye on the broader...
Varun Deshpande / Chair Address
Varun Deshpande, Submarine Cable Engineer, Meta
A member of Meta's Subsea engineering team based in Singapore, supporting new build subsea projects and marine maintenance planning and operations. Area of coverage is Transpacific and Intra-Asia submarine systems. Technical marine program manager of multiple projects, partnering with other...
Adrian Jelffs / TU1B–1 : Enhancing Submarine Cable Surveys: Automated Route Planning and Real-Time Verification
Adrian Jelffs, Submarine Cable Group Manager, Makai Ocean Engineering Inc.
Adrian serves as the Submarine Cable Group Manager at Makai Ocean Engineering, overseeing the development of Makai’s cutting-edge software for submarine cable planning (MakaiPlan) and installation (MakaiLay). With over 28 years of experience in software development, electrical system design, and...
Lane Burdette / TU1C-1 : Shore things: a data-driven look at submarine cable landing stations
Lane Burdette, Senior Analyst, TeleGeography
Lane is a Senior Analyst at TeleGeography. She specializes in internet infrastructure with a focus on submarine cables, data centers, and security policy.
Yanpu Wang / TU1A-1 : A Simple GSNR Monitoring Method for Open Cable Systems
WangYanpu joined HMN in 2008. Since then, he has been working on the research of submarine cable transmission system in system integration laboratory. He engaged in the design and verification of large capacity and long distance submarine system solutions. In recent years, He is responsible for...
Benoit Kowalski, Global Subsea Architect, Nokia (CX Webscale Optics Architecture)
Dr Benoit Kowalski is a French-born scientist who started his professional carrier in 1995 at Alcatel Research in Emmanuel Desurvire’s lab to work on the introduction of EDFA and EDFFA amplifiers in optical networks. He moved on to the France Telecom research centre (CNET) for 3 years in the frame...
Luis Manuel Matias / TU1B–2 : Earthquake monitoring in the azores with distributed acoustic sensing
Luis Manuel Matias, Dr., 1Instituto Dom Luiz, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, 1749-016 Lisbon, Portugal
Luis Matias finished his PhD in 1996 in Physics (Geophysics) at the Lisbon University. He is since 2015 Associate Professor in the Geographic Engineering, Geophysics and Energy Department of FCUL.
The research activity has been conducted at the Instituto Dom Luiz, Associate Laboratory. The main...
Tony Frisch / TU1C-2 : Repeater monitoring and fault location
Tony Frisch, CTO, Xtera
Tony started work at British Telecom’s Research Lab (BTRL). A move to Alcatel Australia gave him practical experience in testing and commissioning submarine systems. After this he was at Bell Labs working on terminal design and troubleshooting. This was followed by a return to Alcatel in...
Gwennael Amice / TU1A-2 : Novel all optical methodology for G.OSNR direct measurement
Gwennael Amice, Senior member of technical staff, EXFO
Gwenn Amice is a Subject Matter Expert at EXFO, focusing on optical networks and transmission. With 30 years of experience ranging from R&D to field operations, he works closely with system manufacturers, network operators, and hyperscalers, offering trusted advice in his field.
Since...
Lindsay Smith / TU1B–3 : Advancements in Fibre Optic Cable Tracking and Burial Measurement in the Telecoms Industry
Lindsay Smith, Business Development Manager, SMD
Dr. Lindsay Smith joined SMD in 2023 as Business Development Manager for New Technologies. She holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering and brings over a decade of experience working in research and development within the subsea sector. At SMD, Lindsay leads the integration and commercialisation of...
Diego Matas / TU1C-3 : A Clockwork Network: Implementation of reliable protection over a transatlantic submarine cable with >1,000 km optical express links
Diego Matas, COO, EllaLink
Diego Matas is the Chief Operating Officer of EllaLink, where he has been working for the past eight years, joining the project during its development phase.
With a career spanning 28 years, Diego has held key leadership positions in major telecommunications firms. At Interoute, he served as...
Nuno Carreira / TU1A–3 : Impact of cable faults and their location on channel performance over unrepeated cables 90dB+ link budgets
Nuno Carreira, Subsea Lead Engineer, Nokia
Nuno Carreira, currently serving as the Lead Subsea Engineer at Nokia has over a decade of experience in the field, Nuno has established himself as a knowledgeable and innovative expert in subsea engineering and telecommunications technology. His expertise spans a wide range of areas including...
Andy Palmer-Felgate / TU1B–4 : Revolutionizing Route Surveys with Low-Carbon, Uncrewed Platforms: Insights from the 2024 North Atlantic Deep-water Saildrone Demonstration
Andy Palmer-Felgate, Submarine Cable Engineer, Meta
Andy Palmer-Felgate is responsible for marine engineering and route planning of submarine cable systems at Meta and serves as Acting President of the North America Submarine Cable Association. Andy is also a Director and Executive Committee member of the International Submarine Cable Protection ...
Alexander Nikolaidis / TU1C-4 : Network resiliency via mesh connectivity of submarine cable branches
Alexander Nikolaidis, Network Planner, Meta
Alexander Nikolaidis has been a Network Planner at Meta for ten years. He is responsible for long-term demand forecasting, backbone network architecture, investment planning, and multi-layer topology modeling and simulation. Alexander has worked on the topology design, timing, and technology...
Lara Garrett, Director - Product Management, subcom
Lara Garrett received her Ph.D. in integrated optics from the University of Texas and then joined AT&T Bell Labs in the early days of long haul WDM transmission research. She is now Director of Product Management at SubCom, working on novel architectures to combine the flexibility of...
Tony Frisch / Introducing Transmission Budgets: Why It's Not Just For Engineers
Tony Frisch, CTO, Xtera
Tony started work at British Telecom’s Research Lab (BTRL). A move to Alcatel Australia gave him practical experience in testing and commissioning submarine systems. After this he was at Bell Labs working on terminal design and troubleshooting. This was followed by a return to Alcatel in...
Mike Clare / TU1B–5 : No calm after the storm: Delayed hazards for subsea cables
Mike Clare, Principal Researcher, National Oceanography Centre
Dr Mike Clare is a Principal Researcher in Ocean BioGeoscience at the National Oceanography Centre, UK. His research focuses on dynamic processes that operate in the deep sea, the influence of climate change and human activities on the seafloor, and assessing risks to seafloor infrastructure, which ...
Aldo Righetti / TU1A–5 : Miniaturized subsea optical repeater based on quantum-dot semiconductor optical amplifier
Aldo Righetti, Founder, Subphoton srl
Aldo Righetti is a visionary entrepreneur and one of the Founder of Subphoton srl, a cutting-edge technology company specializing in the development of advanced solutions for the submarine fiber industry. With over 40 years of experience in the telecommunications sector, Aldo is a recognized expert ...
Yoshinori Yamamoto / TU1A–6 : Standardization of SDM Optical Fibers
Yoshinori Yamamoto, Manager, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.
Yoshinori Yamamoto received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in electronics, information, and energy engineering from Osaka University, Japan, in 2000 and 2002, respectively. In 2002, he joined Optical Communications Laboratory in Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd., Japan, where he was engaged in R&D...
Fatih Yaman / Chair Address
Fatih Yaman, Senior Research Staff Member, N.E.C Labs America
Fatih Yaman received his Ph.D. in Optical Engineering from The Institute of Optics at University of Rochester in 2006. After postdoctoral research at CREOL, he joined NEC Laboratories of America in 2010 as a research staff member. His current research interests include performance optimization of...
Pierre Mertz / Chair Address
Pierre Mertz, Fellow, Nokia
Dr. Mertz is currently a Fellow in the Advanced Optical Development group at Infinera, now part of Nokia, developing advanced modulation formats, automation software, and fiber sensing solutions for subsea communications. He was awarded OSA’s 2021 Paul F. Forman Team Engineering Excellence Award...
Max Schneider / TU2B-1 : Overcoming cable burial challenges where sandwaves and uxo co-exist.
Max Schneider, Senior Project Manager, Global Marine
Max Schneider is a Senior Project Manager at Global Marine.With an MSc in Project Management, Max joined Global Marine Group's inaugural graduate scheme in 2014. Over a two-year period Max navigated four role rotations within the business including experience offshore, and in 2016 he became a...
Pascal Pecci / TU2A-1 : Are multi-core fibers the future of submarine cable systems?
Pascal Pecci, Engineer, Meta
Pascal Pecci is a Global Optical Architect for Meta, overseeing the design, build, and operation of Open Cable submarine systems and introducing new optical technologies in the Meta global network. After 25 years within Alcatel working on terrestrial and subsea projects as a researcher, system...
Mikael Mazur / TU2C-1 : Active Cable Protection Enabled by Long-Reach Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry
Mikael Mazur, Member of Technical Staff, Nokia Bell Labs
Mikael Mazur received his PhD from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden in 2019. At Bell Labs, he develops real-time signal processing techniques for optical transmission and fiber sensing systems. His work puts particular emphasis on developing fiber sensing systems that are compatible with...
Denise Wood is a trusted advisor to technology and communications companies, focusing on commercial and regulatory matters with a particular emphasis on subsea and terrestrial digital infrastructure and space and satellite issues. Her diverse clientele spans the technology and communications...
Joshua B. Forman is a member of the Corporate Practice in Greenberg Traurig’s Miami office. Joshua represents data center owners, developers, operators, and investors globally, specifically focusing on data center expansion, operations, leases and colocation agreements, and transit...
Florian Hillenhagen / TU2B-2 : A software-based approach to improved repeater deployment
Florian is the Product Manager for the Submarine Cable Group at Makai Ocean Engineering, where he ensures product quality and drives the development of new features to meet customer needs. With expertise in submarine cable installation, marine engineering projects, and software testing and...
Yuushi Matsuo / TU2A-2 : 10,000 km transmission using 200 um MCF and cabling trials towards petabit-level transoceanic systems
Yuushi Matsuo, Developer, NEC
Yuushi Matsuo received the B.E. and M.E. degrees in science and engineering from Ritsumeikan University, Shiga, Japan, in 2017. In 2017, he joined NEC Corporation. He is currently an Engineer with Submarine Network Division, where he is responsible for high-capacity submarine transmission...
Chris Atherton / TU2C-2 : SUBMERSE: Submarine Cables for Research and Exploration
Chris Atherton, Senior Research Engagement Manager, Géant
Chris Atherton is a Senior Research Engagement Manager at GÉANT, the pan-European research and education network based in the Netherlands, bringing over two decades of experience in the IT and Space sectors. His career has centred on enabling cutting-edge research by collaborating closely with...
Zhaopeng Zhang / TU2B-3 : A study on PLIB solution in sand wave area
Zhaopeng ZHANG has 8-year experience as a Route Engineer & Survey Manager in company of HMN Technologies, carrying out route engineering, Desktop Study, inshore and offshore geophysical & geotechnical surveys and burial assessment survey for submarine cable projects, and has rich project...
Govind Vedala / TU2A-3 : Transmission in Uncoupled Four Core (4C) MCF over 6,470 km with 21.85 Tb/s Core Capacity with 101 km Amplifier Spacing
Govind Vedala, Sr. Member of Technical Staff, System Research, subcom
Alexei Pilipetskii received his Ph.D. in 1990 in nonlinear fiber optics. From 1994 to 1997, he worked on fiber optic data transmission at UMBC. In 1997, he joined SubCom, focusing on new transmission technologies for undersea fiber optic cables. He became an IEEE Photonics Society Fellow in 2018.
Valey is a founder of Kamalov LLC company dedicated to subsea environmental sensing and protection of submarine cables (since 2023). Valey discovered polarization based sensing with transcontinental submarine cables in January 2020, and has been devoted to optical fiber sensing technologies since...
Hayley Adlam / TU2B-4 : Remote Sensing Strategies for the Detection of Fish Aggregating Devices
Hayley Adlam, Technical Interface Manager at ASN, is a seasoned offshore professional with over a decade of experience as a Surveyor and Superintendent. While seconding from submarine telecoms, Hayley certified as an ICCAT Bluefin tuna fisheries observer, later, operating as a CCAMLR Scientific...
Philippe Perrier / TU2A-4 : Multi-Core EDFA Architectures for Multi Petabit Submarine Cable Systems
Philippe Perrier, Submarine Cable Systems Engineer, Meta
Philippe A. Perrier joined Meta’s Subsea Engineering Team as Submarine Cable Systems Engineer at the end of 2021 in Singapore. His main responsibilities include the design, build, and delivery of Open Cable submarine cable systems in the APAC region and to drive technology developments for the next ...
Jan Kristoffer Brenne / TU2C-4 : Repeatered DAS for long-haul submarine cables
Jan Kristoffer Brenne is R&D Manager at Alcatel Submarine Networks Norway, with over 20 years’ experience in development of fiber optics sensing technology. His research interests are fiber Bragg gratings, low-noise fiber lasers, interferometric fiber optic sensing and distributed acoustic...
Jeff Wabik / Introducing Optical Networking
Jeff Wabik, CTO, DC BLOX
As CTO, Jeff Wabik is responsible for strategic, technical, and operational aspects across the DC BLOX business, as well as for innovation to advance the company’s Hyperscale, Connectivity, and Subsea solutions.
For more than 38 years, Jeff has combined imagination, vision, and a deep technical...
Ruben Soares Luis / TU2A-5 : Unrepeatered SDM transmission system supported by incoherent distributed Raman amplification
Ruben Soares Luis, Chief Senior Reseacher, National Institute of Information and Communications Technology
Ruben S. Luis is a Senior Researcher at the National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (NICT) in Japan, specializing in cutting-edge optical fiber transmission systems and spatial division multiplexing. Since joining NICT in 2016, he has focused in advancing ultra-high-capacity...
Shun Kayamori / TU2B-6 : Bypass Laying Method for the installation of Branching Unit(BU) at Deep Sea
I have been involved in submarine communications as a cable engineer at KDDI Cable Ship & Subsea Engineering Co.
Since joining KCS, I have been aboard the cable ship for 10 years.
Mainly I take lead for cable handling on deck work and plan the equipment used for deck operations such as...
Alexis Carbo Meseguer / TU2A-6 : A Path Towards a Digital Twin for Accurate Capacity Estimation in Submarine Cables
Alexis Carbó Meseguer joined ASN in 2018. Since then, he has worked on the modeling and characterization of new subsea Open Cable systems. Among other topics, he has studied the impact of signal droop, GAWBS, and EEPN. He also proposed a novel experimental model to analyze both the homogeneous and...
Tim Stronge / TeleGeography Mythbusters V: The Greatest Hits
Tim Stronge, Vice President of Research, TeleGeography
Tim Stronge is Chief Research Officer at TeleGeography. His responsibilities span across many of our research practices including network infrastructure, bandwidth demand modeling, cross-border traffic flows, and telecom services pricing.
Alan Mauldin / TeleGeography Mythbusters V: The Greatest Hits
Alan Mauldin, Research Director, TeleGeography
Alan Mauldin is a Research Director at TeleGeography. He manages the company’s infrastructure research group, focusing primarily on submarine cables, terrestrial networks, international Internet infrastructure, and bandwidth demand modeling. He also advises clients with due diligence...
Henry Adjer / Keynote Speaker
Henry Adjer, Deepfake Cartographer and Founder, Latent Space Ventures
Henry Ajder is a world-leading expert on AI, deepfakes, and the synthetic revolution. Recognised as a “Generative AI Power Player” by the Financial Times’ Sifted publication and named one of the world’s top 15 AI speakers, Henry is renowned for anticipating the seismic impact of AI and deepfakes in ...
Alan Mauldin / Keeping the Lights On: The Critical Work of Cable Maintenance
Alan Mauldin, Research Director, TeleGeography
Alan Mauldin is a Research Director at TeleGeography. He manages the company’s infrastructure research group, focusing primarily on submarine cables, terrestrial networks, international Internet infrastructure, and bandwidth demand modeling. He also advises clients with due diligence...
Jean-Francois Baget joined Alcatel Submarine Network in 1994 and has been involved in various technical functions in design, integration and engineering:
He is currently Technical Marketing Manager and Product Line Manager for submerged Equipment in ASN Product Strategy Group.From 2007 to 2019, he...
Kent Bressie / WE1C-1 : Sharing maritime areas during a critical minerals scramble: submarine cables and deep seabed mining
Kent Bressie, Partner, HWG LLP
Kent Bressie is Partner and Head of International Practice with the law firm HWG LLP in Washington DC and the Legal Adviser to the International Cable Protection Committee (ICPC), the world’s leading nongovernmental organization dedicated to submarine cable protection and resilience. Kent has...
Mikael Mazur / WE1B-1 : Operational Subsea Cables as Seismic Sensor Arrays: Seismic Analysis of Multiple Detected Earthquakes
Mikael Mazur, Member of Technical Staff, Nokia Bell Labs
Mikael Mazur received his PhD from Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden in 2019. At Bell Labs, he develops real-time signal processing techniques for optical transmission and fiber sensing systems. His work puts particular emphasis on developing fiber sensing systems that are compatible with...
Matthias Stegmaier / WE1A-1 : 2-Core MultiCoreFiber for Submarine Cable Systems with Ultra-Low Loss of 0.146 dB/km
Matthias Stegmaier, Senior Development Engineer, Lightera
Matthias Stegmaier graduated from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (Germany) in 2013 and received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Münster (Germany) in 2017. In 2017 he joined OFS (now Lightera) where he is currently working as a Senior Development Engineer. His work has centered around ...
Matthew West / Introducing Route Planning & Survey
Matthew West, Route Planning Manager, OceanIQ
Matthew has worked for Global Marine Group since 2012. He leads the Route Planning Team within the OceanIQ business unit that carries out Desktop Studies and other consultancy work. He has worked worldwide engineering and surveying cable routes. Highlights include planning a telecoms cable route to ...
Graham Evans / Introducing Route Planning & Survey
Graham Evans, Managing Director Global Subsea Cable Business, EGS Survey Group
Managing Director Global Subsea Cable Business – EGS Survey GroupVice Chairman – International Cable Protection CommitteeGraham has 47 years’ experience as a marine geoscientist and is Managing Director Global Subsea Cable Business for the EGS Survey Group of companies, and co-founder and Director...
Denise Toombs, Toombs Marine Consultancy LLC, Principal
Ms. Toombs is a globally recognized expert in environmental permitting for subsea cables and other marine projects. She has global experience working with engineering, legal and construction teams to obtain approvals needed from multiple...
Steinar Bjørnstad / WE1B-2 : State of polarization sensing - correlating across cable sections
Steinar Bjørnstad, Strategic Competence and Research Manager, Tampnet AS
Steinar Bjørnstad is with Tampnet AS in Norway, Stavanger, specializing in R&D on fibre sensing and optical communication. He holds a Ph.d. in telecommunication from Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) and has authored/co-authored more than 70 scientific papers within optical...
YASUHARA Keisuke (yasuhara.occ@nec.com) is an engineer in the OCC's Submarine Systems Division Engineering Department. He joined OCC's Submarine Systems Division in 2015. His responsibility is submarine cable R&D. He received his B.Sc. from Nagasaki University in 2015.
Cecile Walch Sousa / WE1C-3 : A legal focus on bathy data: regulation, rights, and access
Cecile Walch Sousa, Deputy General Counsel, Alcatel Submarine Networks
Cécile Walch Sousa is Deputy General Counsel at Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN), France. She holds a postgraduate degree in public and private international law and brings over 20 years of global legal experience, including expatriate work in India. At ASN, she provides legal support for submarine ...
William Wilcock / WE1B-3 : Offshore Earthquake and Tsunami Early Warning in Cascadia: The Case for a Public-Private Partnership
William Wilcock, Professor, University of Washington
William Wilcock is a professor in the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington, Seattle, where he holds the Jerome M. Paros Endowed Chair in Sensor Networks. He is a marine geophysicist whose research interests include the seismicity of submarine volcanoes, seafloor...
Jean-christophe Antona / WE1A-3 : From MCF transpacific experiments and modeling to power-managed multi-Petabit/s transmission systems
Jean-christophe Antona, Research & Technology Projects, Alcatel Submarine Networks
Currently in charge of Research & Technology projects and line modelling within Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN).He joined Alcatel Corporate Research Center in 2000 to study nonlinear effects in optical networks, then headed the Dynamic Optical Networks research group within Alcatel-Lucent Bell ...
Nicole Starosielski / WE1C-4 : Enhancing Strategic Network Resilience in the Caribbean
Nicole Starosielski, Professor, University of California, Berkeley
Nicole Starosielski is Professor of Film and Media at the University of California-Berkeley and a principal investigator on the Sustainable Subsea Networks, a project of the SubOptic Foundation, working to enhance the sustainability of subsea cable systems.
Bruce Howe / WE1B-4 : Observing the oceans and Earth with SMART subsea cables with a look toward the future
Bruce Howe, Researcher, JTF SMART Cables, University of Hawaii at Manoa
Dr. Howe leads the Joint Task Force (JTF) SMART Cable Initiative (Science Monitoring And Reliable Telecommunications) to incorporate sensors into the global submarine telecommunication cable network for climate, ocean circulation and sea level monitoring and tsunami and earthquake warning. He...
Yuki Kawaguchi / WE1A-4 : Bending performance of 200 µm un-coupled Multi Core Fibers
Yuki Kawaguchi, Assistant General Manager, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.
Yuki Kawaguchi, PhDAssistant General Manager,Optical Communications Lab., Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.He received the Ph.D. degree in information science from Hokkaido University, in 2011.Following a Research Fellowship with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science during 2009–2012, he...
Jeff Wabik / Introducing Marine Installation & Repair
Jeff Wabik, CTO, DC BLOX
As CTO, Jeff Wabik is responsible for strategic, technical, and operational aspects across the DC BLOX business, as well as for innovation to advance the company’s Hyperscale, Connectivity, and Subsea solutions.
For more than 38 years, Jeff has combined imagination, vision, and a deep technical...
Douglas Njenga / WE1C-5 : Navigating Regulatory Compliance Throughout the Project Lifecycle in Subsea Infrastructure Development
Douglas Njenga, Director Regulatory and Strategic Affairs, West Indian Ocean Cable Company
Douglas Njenga Irungu is a seasoned executive in digital infrastructure and submarine cable resilience, serving as Director of Regulatory & Strategic Affairs for WIOCC Group, Africa’s premier hyperscale digital infrastructure investor. He has 15+ years of legal, financial, and project...
Zack Spica / WE1B-5 : Next-generation fiber-optic sensing for asset protection and network monitoring
Zack Spica, CEO, Lumetec
Dr. Zack Spica, CEO, is a recognized leader in fiber-optic sensing technology, credited with over a decade of pioneering contributions to the field. He merges academic expertise with entrepreneurial vision to accelerate innovation, translating cutting-edge research into real-world applications.
Pierre Mertz / WE1B-6 : Sensing and Localizing Tidal Variations on a Subsea Cable Using Both Directly and Coherently Detected RF-OTDR
Pierre Mertz, Fellow, Nokia
Dr. Mertz is currently a Fellow in the Advanced Optical Development group at Infinera, now part of Nokia, developing advanced modulation formats, automation software, and fiber sensing solutions for subsea communications. He was awarded OSA’s 2021 Paul F. Forman Team Engineering Excellence Award...
DAVID WALTERS / WE1A-6 : Guaranteeing Reliability of Fibres and Splices Coiled in Submerged Plant
DAVID WALTERS, Consultant, Independent
Dave Walters first started in the submarine cable industry as a Cambridge University physics graduate in 1971, working on the development and then on the marine installation of an electrical analogue transatlantic cable system. He later worked for 17 years at the STL research laboratories on the...
Isobel Yeo / Chair Address
Isobel Yeo, Senior Research Geoscientist, National Oceanography Centre
Isobel Yeo is a senior researcher in volcanology and geohazards at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, where her research focuses on understanding threats to coastal communities and seafloor infrastructure and application of novel technology to better understand hazards in the ocean. Her PhD was ...
Jiang Lin / WE2C-1 : OSNR monitoring in Submarine Cable System using BP neural networks
Jiang Lin, Test Manager, HMN Technologies Co., Ltd.
Jiang Lin was born in Hube province, China, in 1986. He received the master’s degree in photoelectric information engineering from Huazhong University of Science&Technology in 2011. In 2013 He joined in Huawei Marine Networks, which has changed name to HMN Technologies in 2021, and has been...
Yuki Kawaguchi / WE2B-1 : Two-core fiber submarine cable mitigating the crosstalk during cabling process
Yuki Kawaguchi, Assistant General Manager, Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.
Yuki Kawaguchi, PhDAssistant General Manager,Optical Communications Lab., Sumitomo Electric Industries, Ltd.He received the Ph.D. degree in information science from Hokkaido University, in 2011.Following a Research Fellowship with the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science during 2009–2012, he...
Shaun Atkinson / WE2A-1 : Deburial of Deeply Buried Cables: Addressing Technological and Operational Maintenance Challenges
Shaun Atkinson, Project Engineering Manager, Global Marine
Shaun is a Project Engineering Manager at Global Marine Group. After completing his Marine Engineering degree and gaining experience in the maritime world, he joined the Group's Graduate Programme, moving around the business, gaining hands-on experience across the full breadth of the...
Alan Hollander / WE2C-2 : A Business Case Study of Using Pluggable Optics in Submarine Cable Systems and Terrestrial Backhauls
Alan Hollander, VP Subsea Systems Engineering, Nokia
Alan Hollander is Nokia's VP Subsea Systems Engineering.
Based in Amsterdam, Alan leads a global subsea engineering team responsible for network upgrade solutions. Acting as a key technical advisor both externally and internally, Alan has been involved with some of the largest subsea network...
Philippe Perrier / WE2B-2 : Impact of the Fluctuations of Opto-Geometrical and Concentration of Erbium-doped Preforms on the Performances of Multi-Core Amplifiers for Next Generation Submarine Cables
Philippe Perrier, Submarine Cable Systems Engineer, Meta
Philippe A. Perrier joined Meta’s Subsea Engineering Team as Submarine Cable Systems Engineer at the end of 2021 in Singapore. His main responsibilities include the design, build, and delivery of Open Cable submarine cable systems in the APAC region and to drive technology developments for the next ...
James Porter / WE2A-2 : Seabed Congestion – How much room is left?
James Porter, Cable Route Engineer, Alcatel Submarine Networks
James Porter is a Cable Route Engineer working for ASN, in the Greenwich office, London. James has experience working on numerous large scale submarine cable projects, he is responsible for the cable routing and cable design from early concept phase through to cable manufacturing. During this...
Richard Norris / WE2C-3 : Techno-Economic Considerations for POP-to-POP Submarine Networks
Richard Norris, Senior Director, Sales Engineering, Ciena
Richard Norris is Senior Director of Global Submarine System Engineering at Ciena with responsibility for submarine solution technical sales and development. He’s been in the telecom industry for over 30 years working for both vendors and operators. He was first involved in submarine networking in...
Ryuichi Sugizaki received his B. E. degree from Chiba Institute of Technology in Chiba, Japan, in 1990. He joined Furukawa Electric Co., Ltd. in1990 where he has been engaged in research and development of optical fibers. He is now a specialist for the Photonics laboratories. Mr. Sugizaki is...
AKIRA KAGEYAMA / WE2A-3 : Onboard efforts for the Repair of suffered cable systems caused by 2024 Noto Peninsula Earthquake
I am a Cable Engineer at KDDI Cableships & Subsea Engineering Inc. with nine years of experience in submarine telecommunications. For eight years, I specialized in ROV operations for submarine cable repair, gaining advanced technical and hands-on skills. I also worked at a Cable Landing...
Hitoshi Takeshita / WE2B-4 : Demonstration of bidirectional core pumped 4-core multicore EDFA integrated with optical loopback
Hitoshi Takeshita, Researcher, NEC Corporation
Hitoshi Takeshita received his B.E. and M.E. degrees in Electrical Engineering and information from the University of Tokyo, Japan in 1993 and 1995 and his Ph.D. degree in information and communication engineering from the University of Nagoya, Japan in 2019. In 1995, he joined NEC...
Nick Harrington / WE2A-4 : Shore-End Showdown: Keeping Cables Safe from Surf and Sunbathers
Nick Harrington, Submarine Cable Engineer, Meta
Nick has been Submarine Cable Engineer at Meta since 2018 working across a number of global subsea cable projects, including as the 2Africa MWG chair. Previously held the positions of Cable Route Engineer and Marine Engineering Projects Manager for six years at ASN, having previously come from a...
John Downie / WE2B-5 : Long-haul transmission study over 4-core MCF with core-pumped multicore EDFA
John Downie, Research Fellow, Corning Incorporated
John Downie is currently a Research Fellow with Corning Research and Development Corporation in Corning, NY. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from Stanford University in 1989. Prior to joining Corning, he worked at the NASA Ames Research Center for 10 years. In 1999, he joined...
Frankie Targett / WE2A-5 : Enhancing global connectivity: strategic management and repair of subsea cables in designated corridors
Frankie Targett, Principal Submarine Cable Engineer, Vodafone Group
As Principal Submarine Cable Engineer for Vodafone Group, I specialise in Operations and Maintenance. Managing both marine and land repair operations for various submarine cable systems and working within several global operations and maintenance consortia working groups. Additionally, I co-chair...
Jean-Francois Baget / WE2B-6 : Network Architecture for Petabit Systems: Resilience and flexibility
Jean-Francois Baget joined Alcatel Submarine Network in 1994 and has been involved in various technical functions in design, integration and engineering:
He is currently Technical Marketing Manager and Product Line Manager for submerged Equipment in ASN Product Strategy Group.From 2007 to 2019, he...
Stephen Hall / WE2A-5 : Enhancing global connectivity: strategic management and repair of subsea cables in designated corridors
Stephen Hall, Head of Partnerships, Nippon Foundation - GEBCO Seabed 2030 Project
Stephen Hall FIMarEST is a chartered marine scientist, and a Fellow of IMarEST, SUT and MTS. He has worked in ocean science, technology and policy for over 35 years, in the public & private sector, with roles including managing autonomous underwater vehicle programmes for the UK National...
Camino Kavanagh / Plenary Panel - Shifting Tides: Geopolitics and the Subsea Cable Industry
Camino Kavanagh, Visiting Senior Fellow, Dept. of War Studies, King’s College London
Dr. Camino Kavanagh is a Visiting Senior Fellow at the Department of War Studies at King’s College London, a Research Fellow with UNIDIR’s Security and Technology Programme and Senior Digital Advisor to the Policy and Mediation Division in the UN Dept. of Political and Peacebuilding Affairs. Her...
Mick McGovern / Plenary Panel - Shifting Tides: Geopolitics and the Subsea Cable Industry
Mick commenced his career with Standard Telephones & Cables in 1985 as a transmission engineer in fiber optics for terrestrial network build. He moved to the submarine division in 1988 and held various positions within the Marine installation department both offshore and onshore installing...
René d'Avezac de Moran / Chair Address
René d'Avezac de Moran, COO, OMS Group Sdn Bhd
René joined the OMS Group in 2023 as Telco group COO. René previously oversaw the global business development of services provided by Fugro to the subsea cable industry such as desktop studies and route surveys. René was employed by Fugro for over 20 years, he headed the offshore positioning...
Gabriele Olivieri, Phd Student, Università di Roma La Sapienza / Oceans & Cables Limited
Gabriele Olivieri is a PhD student in Geographical Studies at the University of Rome “La Sapienza”, where he obtained a master's degree in Political Science. He has published several articles on the geopolitics of the sea, as well as contributions to De Agostini's high school textbooks. His ...
Mark Hinds / WE3B-1 : Performance Evaluation and Optimization of Network Domain Controllers for Efficient Commissioning of Submarine Optical Fiber Networks
Mark Hinds, Photonic Systems Development, Ciena Canada
Mark graduated with a graduating with a B Sc EE 1984 and an M Sc EE 1989 from the University of Saskatchewan and has since been working in fiber optic transmission.
He started his career with MPB Technologies working on the TAT-9 cable system project doing test, installation and maintenance, of...
Emmanuel Danjou / WE3A-1 : The carbon footprint of transpacific and transatlantic subsea telecommunications cables: new data and perspectives
Emmanuel Danjou, Head of Business Development, Alcatel Submarine Networks
Emmanuel Danjou is currently Head of Business Development of Alcatel Submarine Networks.
During his 27-year career in the Telecommunications industry, Emmanuel has held several management positions in Industrialization, Projects, Sales & Marketing and Strategic Alliances & Partnership at...
Isobel Yeo / WE3C-2 : Resilience of island subsea telecommunications connections: insights from a global comparison of hazard exposure and vulnerability
Isobel Yeo, Senior Research Geoscientist, National Oceanography Centre
Isobel Yeo is a senior researcher in volcanology and geohazards at the UK’s National Oceanography Centre, where her research focuses on understanding threats to coastal communities and seafloor infrastructure and application of novel technology to better understand hazards in the ocean. Her PhD was ...
Cedric Vandenweghe / WE3B-2 : Transponders and Pluggable for Petabit Cable
Cédric Vandenweghe holds a Master's degree in Computer Methods for Industrial Systems from the University of Versailles and a Telecommunications Engineering degree from Esigetel Paris. Cédric Vandenweghe began his career in WDM optical communication and was recognized as a Distinguished Member...
Hesham Youssef / WE3A-2 : Metrics for Cable Landing Station Sustainability
Hesham Youssef is Senior Transmission Engineer and CLS expert at Telecom Egypt, bringing over 14 years of experience in optical communications and submarine cable operations. He holds a master's degree in electrical, electronics, and communications engineering from Alexandria University, where...
Jane Ruffino / WE3C-3 : Looking back to look ahead: historical depth as resilience in a cable factory in northern sweden
Jane Ruffino, PhD Student, Södertörn University
Jane Ruffino is a PhD researcher at Södertörn University in Sweden. Her research looks at the subsea cable network in the Baltic Sea region through the lens of archaeology. She's interested in the people, places, and material things, and processes that contribute to resilience.
Teresa Monteiro / WE3B-3 : Operationalizing Coherent Optical Pluggables in the Backhaul
Teresa Monteiro, Director Solutions Marketing, Nokia
Teresa Monteiro is Director of Marketing at Nokia, where she champions Nokia Network Infrastructure solutions. Her focus includes management, control, software automation, SDN, and Analytics and Machine Learning techniques. Teresa is dedicated to helping network operators evolve and optimize their...
Terry Griffiths / WE3C-4 : Interpretation of distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) data and laydown analysis of 4d seismic cable system
Terry Griffiths, Director, Aurora Offshore Engineering
Terry is a mechanical engineer with over 25 years’ experience in pipeline, subsea facilities and cables engineering including in Australia, Asia and the North Sea. He has been involved in the full life cycle from conceptual, FEED and detailed design to operational integrity studies, including...
Quynh Nguyen, Lead Environmental Officer, Oceanic Environment Cables GmbH
Quynh Nguyen is Lead Environmental Officer at Oceanic Environmental Cables in Germany, specializing in subsea cable recovery and recycling. With a background in Environmental Engineering and expertise in carbon footprint analysis, she actively promotes sustainable practices across the subsea cable...
Michael Cuddington / WE3C-5 : The Emperor's new PPE: What should the subsea cable purchaser’s Health & Safety posture look like?
Michael Cuddington, Submarine Cable Systems Engineer, Meta
Mike Cuddington is a Chartered Engineer with Meta, where he supports the build of a large number of global systems. He has particular interests in the quality management of subsea systems and locating techniques for wet plant faults. Prior to Meta he spent 20 years at British Telecommunications plc ...
Stefano Russo / WE3B-5 : Increased reliability of a modular cable landing station
Stefano Russo, Program Manager, Retelit
Stefano Russo is a telecommunications Program Manager at RETELIT with 10 years of experience in managing large-scale network projects, specializing in submarine cable terrestrial infrastructure and Modular Cable Landing Stations (MCLS). His expertise covers program planning, technical...
Ronan Marec / WE3A-5 : Target to net zero emission for cable ship – a dream or a reality
Ronan MAREC is the Marine Strategy Officer at Alcatel Submarine Networks, bringing over 33 years of maritime experience across operational, advisory, and leadership roles.
He began his career at sea aboard cable ships and seismic vessels, advancing to the rank of Captain. He later transitioned to...
Matthew Marchant / WE3C-6 : Has the evolution of design, routing and installation of submarine cable systems been detrimental to their overall longevity and reliability?
Matthew Marchant, Principal Engineer, Submarine Engineering, Vodafone Group
Matt Marchant is Principal Engineer, Submarine Engineering at Vodafone Group. He joined Vodafone in January 2022, having previously worked at BT Group since 2015.
Matt is responsible for the Operation and Maintenance (O&M) of Vodafone’s portfolio of submarine cable systems, which covers a...
Miki Nishioka / WE3B-6 : Investigation and Solutions For Electromagnetic Interferance In Sea Earth Line
Miki Nishioka, System Engineer, NEC Australia
Miki Nishioka received the B.E. degree in engineering from Sophia University, Tokyo, Japan, in 2018, and the M.E. degree in 2020. She joined NEC in 2020, where she developed amplifiers for satellite communication until 2022. Since 2022, she has been responsible for the development and maintenance...
Maximilliam Vieira / WE3A-6 : Submarine optical cables in the Oil and Gas industry: Decision approach between repeatered and repeaterless systems.
Maximilliam Vieira, Technology Advisor, Petrobras
Senior Tech Advisor
Jody Edmunds / Workshop 1 - The Truths about Permitting
Jody Edmunds, Network Environmental Manager, Meta
Jody has over 25 years’ of marine and coastal environmental experience. Her main areas of expertise include environmental consents and licensing, environmental protection, marine physical processes, hydrodynamics, and data management and analysis. At Meta, she supports the EMEA region network...
Eoghan Kieran / Workshop 1 - The Truths about Permitting
Eoghan Kieran, , subcom
Eoghan Kieran is the manager of the SubCom global permitting team. He manages a team of 16 Permitting Managers, who are based in various locations ranging from Singapore to USA. In this role, he provides leadership, advice and strategic direction to the multinational, multilingual and multiskilled...
Kim Bridge / Workshop 1 - The Truths about Permitting
Kim Bridge, Director Marine EIA, Ramboll
Kim has over 13 years’ experience in environmental consultancy across a broad range of marine sectors and permitting regimes, with a focus on the UK and Europe. She has extensive experience in a wide range of sectors, including telecommunication cables, interconnectors, offshore renewables, ports...
Alex Overstall / Workshop 2 - Marine Operations: Developing & Adapting for the Future
Alex Overstall, Technical Business Developer, AMAZON WEB SERVICES, INC.
Alex Overstall joined Amazon Web Services (AWS) in 2022 as a Technical Business Developer, involved with developing Amazon’s subsea backbone infrastructure globally including the design, contracting and implementation of subsea cables and associated infrastructure. Prior to joining Amazon, Alex...
Nick Harrington / Workshop 2 - Marine Operations: Developing & Adapting for the Future
Nick Harrington, Submarine Cable Engineer, Meta
Nick has been Submarine Cable Engineer at Meta since 2018 working across a number of global subsea cable projects, including as the 2Africa MWG chair. Previously held the positions of Cable Route Engineer and Marine Engineering Projects Manager for six years at ASN, having previously come from a...
James Francis / Workshop 2 - Marine Operations: Developing & Adapting for the Future
James Francis, Project & Offshore Operations Manager, Alcatel Submarine Networks
I joined Alcatel Submarine Networks (ASN) in Greenwich in 2019, first working as a Cable Route Engineer designing the routes and pre-installation surveys of ASN supplied cable systems in many different parts of the world. Following this and after working briefly offshore on ASN’s Cable Ship the C/S ...
Max Schneider / Workshop 2 - Marine Operations: Developing & Adapting for the Future
Max Schneider, Senior Project Manager, Global Marine
Max Schneider is a Senior Project Manager at Global Marine.With an MSc in Project Management, Max joined Global Marine Group's inaugural graduate scheme in 2014. Over a two-year period Max navigated four role rotations within the business including experience offshore, and in 2016 he became a...
Malte Cesson / Workshop 2 - Marine Operations: Developing & Adapting for the Future
Malte Cesson is the Global Key Account Manager for the telecoms cables service line at geo-data company Fugro. The company is headquartered in the Netherlands and is the world leading provider for geo-data and related specialist services. After working as a surveyor and engineer for many...
Ben Plimmer / Industry Leaders Panel - Navigating the Future of Subsea Cable Industry -
Ben Plimmer, Technical Program Manager, Google
Ben Plimmer works as a Technical Program Manager within Google's Subsea build team. His previous experience includes working on Subsea build projects for Meta and Vodafone working primarily on the 2Africa cable system. Ben's roles have led him to place a particular focus on overseeing the...
Frankie Targett / Industry Leaders Panel - Navigating the Future of Subsea Cable Industry -
Frankie Targett, Principal Submarine Cable Engineer, Vodafone Group
As Principal Submarine Cable Engineer for Vodafone Group, I specialise in Operations and Maintenance. Managing both marine and land repair operations for various submarine cable systems and working within several global operations and maintenance consortia working groups. Additionally, I co-chair...
Nico Roehrich / Industry Leaders Panel - Navigating the Future of Subsea Cable Industry -
Nico Roehrich, Director, Network Investments APAC, Meta
Nico’s career has largely focused on network infrastructure ranging from academic research to network investment. As Director, Network Investment APAC, Nico leads a team at Meta focused on building out the connectivity required to deliver Meta’s Family of Apps to people in APAC including recently...
Bevan Slattery / Industry Leaders Panel - Navigating the Future of Subsea Cable Industry -
Bevan Slattery, Founder, SODA
Bevan Slattery is one of Australia’s leading digital infrastructure entrepreneurs having founded a record 5 ASX companies spanning everything from metro fibre, subsea cables, data centres and elastic connectivity. PIPE Networks, NEXTDC, Megaport, Superloop, SubPartners, SUBCO and SODA are some of...
Alain BISTON / Industry Leaders Panel - Navigating the Future of Subsea Cable Industry -
Alain BISTON, President & Chief Executive Officer, Alcatel Submarine Networks
Alain has been working for more than 25 years in telecoms, with Nortel, then Alcatel-Lucent / Nokia, holding management and leadership positions in R&D, Product Line, Industrial Operations, Sales & Marketing, Business Unit P&L accountability. At the helm of ASN since 2019, he brings his ...
David Coughlan / Industry Leaders Panel - Navigating the Future of Subsea Cable Industry -
David Coughlan, Chief Executive Officer, SubCom
David Coughlan is CEO of SubCom, a position he has held since 2018 when he rejoined the business after serving as its General Manager from 2001 to 2014. As a key stakeholder in the subsea cable industry for more than 20 years, Mr. Coughlan has led the development and implementation of SubCom's...
Mohamed Nasr / Industry Leaders Panel - Navigating the Future of Subsea Cable Industry -
In March 2023, Nasr was named Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of Telecom Egypt. He also serves as a member of Telecom Egypt's board of directors, representing the Egyptian government, after previously serving as a non-executive Board member since July 2020.He joined Telecom Egypt...
Stuart Blythe / Chair Address
Stuart Blythe, Partner, BAKER BOTTS (UK) LLP
Stuart Blythe is a partner with the international law firm, Baker Botts. He is dual U.S./English law qualified (having practiced both in London and New York) and advises on a wide range of corporate and commercial transactions in the technology and telecoms sectors. He has significant industry...
Mike Pan / Chair Address
Mike Pan, PLM, cisco
Mike Pan is a Senior Product Manager at Cisco, specializing in Optical Networking. With over two decades of experience in the optical telecommunications sector, Mike drives innovation and customer-focused solutions. His current role builds upon a distinguished tenure at Acacia Communications, where ...
Sonia Jorge / TH1A-1 : Good practices for subsea cables policy: investing in digital inclusion
Sonia Jorge, Executive Director, Global Digital Inclusion Partnership
Sonia is the Founder and Executive Director of the Global Digital Inclusion Partnership (GDIP). She has successfully led global coalitions to reduce the cost of connectivity and make universal meaningful connectivity a reality for everyone in global majority countries. Sonia is an experienced...
Michael Cuddington / Introducing AIS and its Use in Incident Analysis: Become a Better Armchair Critic
Michael Cuddington, Submarine Cable Systems Engineer, Meta
Mike Cuddington is a Chartered Engineer with Meta, where he supports the build of a large number of global systems. He has particular interests in the quality management of subsea systems and locating techniques for wet plant faults. Prior to Meta he spent 20 years at British Telecommunications plc ...
Arif Hussain / TH1A-2 : Pipeline crossings for submarine cable builds: seeking better ways to negotiate these complex agreements and manage the associated business risks
Arif Hussain, Network Development Manager, Meta Platforms Inc.
Arif is a Network Development Manager at Meta, overseeing their commercial interests in various subsea and terrestrial fiber projects, including 2Africa. With over 25 years’ experience in fiber optic and wireless networks, he has expertise throughout the digital infrastructure development lifecycle ...
Mike Conradi / TH1A-3 : Building a branch to a third party trunk system - legal considerations
Mike Conradi, Partner, DLA Piper
Mike is co-chair of the international telecoms group and lead partner for digital infrastructure at DLA Piper, one of the largest law firms in the world. He is rated as one of the leading telecoms lawyers globally by all the various guides and is the editor of two books on telecoms regulation
Mike ...
Denise Wood is a trusted advisor to technology and communications companies, focusing on commercial and regulatory matters with a particular emphasis on subsea and terrestrial digital infrastructure and space and satellite issues. Her diverse clientele spans the technology and communications...
Clément Galic / TH1B-4 : New space-based Radio Frequency detection technology applied to maritime surveillance for subsea cable networks
Clément Galic, CEO, Unseenlabs
Clément Galic is the CEO and co-founder of Unseenlabs, the global leader in space-based RF detection for maritime surveillance. A graduate of the École Nationale de l’Aviation Civile (ENAC), he co-founded the company in 2015 with his brothers to address the lack of maritime visibility beyond...
Kieran Clark / TH1A-5 : Forecasting submarine cable faults: a machine learning framework for proactive risk management
Kieran Clark, Senior Analyst, Submarine Telecoms Forum
Kieran Clark is the Senior Analyst for Submarine Telecoms Forum, Inc. He originally joined the company in 2013 as a Broadcast Technician to provide support for live event video streaming. He has 8+ years of live production experience and has worked alongside some of the premier organizations in...
Daniel Saathoff / TH1B-5 : Record Breaking Span Length in Unrepeatered Transmission Systems
Daniel Saathoff, Senior System Engineer, Prysmian
After several years of military service, I gained my first experience with submarine cables about 11 years ago and entered the field of submarine telecommunications about 7 years ago. Since then I have been working for Prysmian as a system engineer or senior system engineer for submarine...
Andrew Lipman / TH1A-6 : Financing considerations for submarine cable developers
Andrew Lipman, Partner and Practice Group Leader, Morgan Lewis
Andrew D. Lipman practices in most aspects of communications law and related fields, including regulatory, transactional, litigation, legislative, and land use. Andy’s clients in the private and public sectors include those in the areas of local, long distance, and international telephone common...
Olly Thomson / TH1B-6 : Deliver enhanced & automated support with AI for smart customer experience and smoother troubleshooting
Olly Thomson has worked for Alcatel Submarine Networks since 2012 across multiple teams. He now works in the ASN Services team as a Commercial Manager responsible for customer relationships after systems have been installed and throughout their lifecycles. Olly is involved with ASN’s expansion of...
Luciano Maniglio / Round Table 1: Permitting and congestion on the Mediterranean
Luciano Maniglio, Business Development, Poliservizi
Luciano Maniglio has a degree in Civil and Environmental Engineering (EQF level 6) and a master's degree in Civil Engineering (EQF level 7), both from the University of Salento, and is also a certified PMP. In 2024 he started an MBA which he will finish in 2025. Through his master's thesis...
Valey Kamalov / Round Table 2: Fiber Sensing
Valey Kamalov, Consultant, Valey Kamalov LLC
Valey is a founder of Kamalov LLC company dedicated to subsea environmental sensing and protection of submarine cables (since 2023). Valey discovered polarization based sensing with transcontinental submarine cables in January 2020, and has been devoted to optical fiber sensing technologies since...
Oli Pope / Round Table 3: Installation ‘Coopetition’: Improving together but maintaining a Competitive Edge
Oli Pope, Managing Director, Route Position
Oli is the Managing Director at Route Position, a consultancy specialising in supporting subsea telecoms cable planning and implementation. Oli started offshore in 2007, working in commercial seabed survey, offshore construction and metocean projects for the energy sector before joining the subsea...
Wilfried Dudink, Senior Director- Strategy and Development, Digital Realty
Wilfried Dudink is Senior Director - Strategy & Development, Network Service Providers, responsible for Strategic Initiatives that seed future business, such as Edge Computing, Satellite Systems and Subsea Cable Systems. Furthermore, business development with selected Strategic Accounts in the...
Andy Bax / Round Table 5: Best Practices for Cable Development & Implementation
Andy Bax, Senior Partner - Digital Infrastructure, Cambridge MC
Summary With over 30 years of experience in the telecommunications industry, Andy has developed and implemented numerous submarine
network systems totalling over 260,000km of global, international, and regional networks to deliver disruptive, sustainable connectivity
into regions that previously...
Julian Rawle / Round Table 5: Best Practices for Cable Development & Implementation
Julian Rawle, Associate, Cambridge MC
Spanning five decades and multiple complex domains and continents, Julian is a highly respected figure in the telecommunications industry. Having worked in many emerging markets, including Myanmar and the former Soviet Union, his expertise lies in driving innovation towards strategic growth. Driven ...
Elaine Reed / Round Table 6: Addressing Workforce Challenges in the Subsea Cable Industry
Elaine Reed leads the Submarine Engineering team at Vodafone Group, ensuring technical and operational best practice in the deployment, operation and decommissioning of submarine cable systems for which Vodafone have responsibility.
Elaine joined Vodafone in April 2021, having spent the previous...
Mary Jackson / Round Table 6: Addressing Workforce Challenges in the Subsea Cable Industry
Mary Jackson, VP Human Resources, subcom
Mary Jackson is VP Human Resources at SubCom, where she drives the HR strategy to support a highly skilled, global workforce. With over 20 years of experience in human resources and manufacturing, Mary specializes in talent acquisition, workforce planning, and organizational development. In her...
Erick Contag / Round Table 7: SubOptic Foundation Update – Inspiring the Next Generation of Subsea Telecom Professionals
Erick Contag, President, SubOptic Foundation
President – Board of Trustees | SubOptic FoundationFounder – CEO | StratWorks, IncIndependent Board Member | PadtecCo-Founder & Board Advisor | Seafields Solutions, LtdFormer CEO and Executive Chairman | GlobeNet Cabos Submarinos
Erick Contag is a seasoned strategist driven by his passion for...
Leigh Frame / Round Table 8: Challenging the Status Quo: Rethinking Subsea System Contracting to Sustain the Supply Chain
Leigh Frame, COO, Xtera Ltd
Leigh Frame serves as the COO (Chief Operating Officer) of Xtera Subsea Networks, and he is a key architect of the company’s strategy. Leigh brings with him a wealth of senior-level and hands-on experience. Previously Leigh had an extensive career with Alcatel Submarine Networks, which includes...
Vincent Gatineau / Round Table 9: Extending Connectivity of Existing Systems – Return of Experience on Deploying Submarine Branches
Vincent Gatineau, SVP Subsea Infra Development, EllaLink
Vincent is the driver of EllaLink’s efforts in expanding its subsea cable network, after leading the Sales and Marketing team of the EllaLink project since its inception back in 2019.Vincent has been a member of Alcatel Submarine Networks’ Sales and Marketing team for 9 years. Previously, held...
Hany Zaalouk / Round Table 10: Submarine Cable Systems - Landing station Construction and Future Challenges
Hany Zaalouk, Director international infrastructure management, Telecom Egypt
With over 25 years of experience, Zaalouk has served as TE international projects management Director since 2020, overseeing global Subsea projects for Telecom Egypt investments, network Implementation, and state of the art terrestrial infrastructure development within and outside Egypt.
From...