Ali Tizghadam, Technology Fellow, Telus Communications Inc.

A As a TELUS Fellow and the Chief SDN Architect, Ali Tizghadam is responsible for strategizing AI-driven network softwarization. Ali has led the design and implementation of an open platform leveraging most recent advances in Big Data, SDN, NFV and AI to enable TELUS to move towards building its touchless self-driving network via instantiation of intent-based closed-loop automated jobs across the cloudified network.

In the academic side, Ali has designed and taught a graduate course in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto to bridge the gap between understanding of networks in academic areas and service provider’s domain.

Ali holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering; his interest spans the evolution of SDN, clean-slate network architectures, Intent-based networking, end-to-end multi-layer orchestration, smart city platforms and applications of AI in networking.