The Scientific Committee

Rakesh Kandula is a Technical Marketing Engineer in Cisco’s Mass Scale Infrastructure Group (MIG), where he handles security for products primarily deployed in service provider networks.   Rakesh received his Master’s Degree from Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi (IIT Delhi). He has been with Cisco for 15+ years in various roles. His current focus areas are Trustworthy Systems, Platform Security Chips, Secure Boot, DDoS Solutions and other security features relevant to routing platforms.   Outside his work, Rakesh is an avid runner who loves running marathons and trail ultras.

Dr Diego R. Lopez joined Telefonica I+D in 2011 as a Senior Technology Expert, and is currently in charge of the Technology Exploration activities within the GCTIO Unit. Before joining Telefónica he spent some years in the academic sector, dedicated to research on network services, and was appointed member of the High-Level Expert Group on Scientific Data Infrastructures by the European Commission.   Diego is currently focused on applied research in network infrastructures, with a special emphasis on virtualization, data-driven management, new architectures, security, and quantum communications. Diego is an ETSI Fellow and chairs the ETSI ISGs ZSM (on network automation) and the NOC of ETSI ISG NFV.   Apart from this, Diego is a more than acceptable Iberian ham carver, and extremely fond of seeking and enjoying comics, and good discussions on any (in)appropriate matter.

With over 15 years of experience in sales and business development, Marc is a dedicated IT and telecoms professional at Eurofiber. As a management consultant he has helped companies in both the public and private sector execute digital transformation.  Developing strategic partnerships and innovative new business models, he leads the quantum pathfinding mission at Eurofiber, focusing on new customer propositions across the full international fiberoptic connectivity portfolio.

Prior to CyberRidge, Eyal was CTO of Amdocs technology – [NASDAQ: DOX] andestablished Amdocs’ NFV group, which turned into the multi-million “Open Networks” business group.   An innovator and entrepreneur by nature, Eyal co-founded and held CXO positions in several successful startups in the communications and evolved-packet core space. These include Traffix Systems, acquired by F5 Networks, Allot Communications [NASDAQ: ALLT], and SANRAD, acquired by Toshiba Japan. Eyal also served as VP of Radware and head of its Cyber Security division [NASDAQ: RDWR].   Eyal holds over 50 patents to his name, has authored numerous refereed papers, and has won several prestigious awards for research excellence in network security. Eyal holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science, a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Technion Israel Institute of Technology and an MBA from Columbia University, NY.