Keynote Speakers

Biography:

Octavia A. Dobre (Fellow, IEEE) is a Professor and Tier-1 Canada Research Chair with Memorial University, Canada. She was a Visiting Professor with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA and Université de Bretagne Occidentale, France. Her research interests encompass wireless communication and networking technologies, as well as optical and underwater communications. She has (co-)authored over 500 refereed papers in these areas. Dr. Dobre serves as the VP Publications of the IEEE Communications Society. She was the inaugural Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society and the EiC of the IEEE Communications Letters. Dr. Dobre was a Fulbright Scholar, Royal Society Scholar, and Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society. She obtained 8 IEEE Best Paper Awards including the 2024 Heinrich Hertz Award. Dr. Dobre is an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Biography:

Debbie Leung has been a Professor at the Institute for Quantum Computing (IQC) and the Department of Combinatorics and Optimization at the University of Waterloo since 2005. Before that, she was a Tolman postdoctoral fellow at the Institute for Quantum Information, California Institute of Technology (Caltech), a program postdoctoral fellow at the Workshop on Quantum Computation 2002, at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, Berkeley, and a postdoctoral fellow at the Physics of Information group at the IBM TJ Watson Research Center, 2000-2002. After a BSc in Phys/Math from Caltech in 1995, she did a PhD in Physics at Stanford under the supervision of Professor Yoshihisa Yamamoto and Professor Isaac Chuang. Her research is in the theory of quantum information, focusing on capacities of quantum channels, quantum data compression, entanglement theory, measurement based quantum computation, quantum error correction and fault-tolerant quantum computation.

Title: Generic nonadditivity of quantum capacity

Abstract:

Determining capacities of quantum channels is a fundamental question in quantum information theory. Despite having rigorous coding theorems quantifying the flow of information across quantum channels, their capacities are poorly understood due to super-additivity effects. Studying these phenomena is important for deepening our understanding of quantum information, yet simple and clean examples of super-additive channels are scarce. Here we study a family of channels called platypus channels. Its simplest member, a qutrit channel, is shown to display super-additivity of coherent information when used jointly with a variety of qubit channels. Higher-dimensional family members display super-additivity of quantum capacity together with an erasure channel. Furthermore, super-additivity can occur between two channels each with large weakly additive capacity. Remarkably, a single, novel transmission strategy achieves super-additivity in all examples. Our results show that super-additivity is much more prevalent than previously thought.

Joint work with Felix Leditzky, Vikesh Siddhu, Graeme Smith, and John Smolin

Biography:

Dr. Xianbin Wang is a Professor and a Tier-1 Canada Research Chair in 5G and Wireless IoT Communications with Western University, Canada. His current research interests include 5G/6G technologies, Internet of Things, machine learning, communications security, and intelligent communications. He has over 600 highly cited journals and conference papers, in addition to over 30 granted and pending patents and several standard contributions. Dr. Wang is a Fellow of IEEE, a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering and a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada. He has received many prestigious awards and recognitions, including the IEEE Canada R. A. Fessenden Award, Canada Research Chair, Engineering Research Excellence Award at Western University, Canadian Federal Government Public Service Award, Ontario Early Researcher Award, and 10 Best Paper Awards. He is currently a member of the Senate, Senate Committee on Academic Policy and Senate Committee on University Planning at Western. He also serves on NSERC Discovery Grant Review Panel for Computer Science. He has been involved in many flagship conferences, including GLOBECOM, ICC, VTC, PIMRC, WCNC, CCECE, and ICNC, in different roles, such as General Chair, TPC Chair, Symposium Chair, Tutorial Instructor, Track Chair, Session Chair, and Keynote Speaker. He serves/has served as the Editor-in-Chief, Associate Editor-in-Chief, and editor/associate editor for over ten journals. He was the Chair of the IEEE ComSoc Signal Processing and Computing for Communications (SPCC) Technical Committee and is currently serving as the Central Area Chair of IEEE Canada.

Title: Beyond ISAC: Integrated Heterogeneous Service Provisioning in the Era of 6G and AI

Abstract:

The unprecedented deployment of wireless infrastructures and their rapid convergence with computing and vertical applications have fundamentally transformed our lifestyles and industries. Future wireless networks, particularly 6G, are expected to support a diverse range of applications by integrating heterogeneous services. The future networks will not only enhance traditional connectivity-centric functions but also introduce emerging beyond-communication capabilities. Despite recent advancements in integrated sensing and communications (ISAC), current designs remain static, isolated, and functionally limited, creating significant challenges in meeting the diverse requirements of future applications while operating under stringent resource constraints. This presentation will start with an in-depth overview of these technical challenges in integrative 6G service provisioning. New 6G design strategies and operational objectives for concurrent heterogeneous service provisioning will be discussed. Furthermore, a new multi-dimensional multiple access (MDMA) technique as an inclusive enabling platform to intelligently integrate various capabilities by shared access to multi-dimensional radio resources will be presented.