Officer candidates June 2023 – June 2025 – IEEE Communications Society Network Operations & Management Technical Committee

Chair candidates:

Noura Limam

Biography: Noura Limam is a research assistant professor of computer science at the University of Waterloo, Canada. She received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in computer science from the University Pierre & Marie Curie (now Sorbonne University), France, in 2002 and 2007, respectively. She is an active researcher and contributor in the area of network and service management. Her current interests revolve around network automation and cognitive network management. Her most recent contributions are in applying AI and in particular ML to networking and network management problems. She is a recipient of several awards including the 2008 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick award and the 2021 CNOM best paper award.

In addition to her contributions to research, Noura Limam has been actively involved in the IEEE CNOM community for over a decade. She served and continues to serve on the Technical Program Committees of CNOM flagship conferences including IEEE/IFIP NOMS (also previously FIP/IEEE IM), IEEE/ACM/IFIP CNSM, and IEEE NetSoft. She also served and continues to serve on the organizing committees of these conferences as well as other CNOM-endorsed conferences and IEEE ComSoc sponsored conferences, in many capacities. Most recently she served as finance co-chair of NOMS 2023, and was appointed TCP co-Chair of CNSM 2023, and NOMS 2024. She also serves on the Steering Committees of NOMS (a.k.a. NISC), CNSM, NetSoft, and IEEE CloudNet.

Noura is on the Editorial Board of the IEEE Communications Magazine (Associate Technical Editor since January 2021), and is Guest Editor of the IEEE Communications Magazine Series of Network Operations and Management. She was Guest Editor of the 2020 IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC) SI on Advances in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning for Networking, among others.

Noura also served as the Technical Program Chair of the IEEE ComSoc Network Intelligence (NI) Emerging Technical Initiative (2017 to 2023).

Noura is the current Chair of CNOM.

Position statement: I welcome the opportunity to serve as CNOM Chair for a second term, to grow and strengthen the community, create more opportunities for the members of the community to thrive, support them and keep them engaged, improve the visibility and impact of CNOM events and benefit the research community at large.

I will work with the CNOM TC officers, IEEE ComSoc officers as well as officers and members from other TCs and working groups (e.g. IFIP WG6.6) to carry over and build on the efforts engaged by past and current CNOM officers. My plan is to build on the initiatives I established with help from my fellow officers this past term, such as (1) Establishing CNOM Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and engage the members of the community with a common and relevant interest in advancing specific strategic areas with tangible impact. My plan also includes facilitating the exchange of ideas and knowledge transfer to the community at large by having the SIGs organize webinars, special sessions and panels in CNOM flagship conferences, symposia in IEEE ICC/Globecom, and special issues in journals such as IEEE TNSM and JSAC, (2) Boost the visibility of CNOM flagship conferences by creating more opportunities to contribute and offering more reasons to participate. Organizing a data challenge is one avenue that is supported by the current TC and that, in my opinion, would greatly benefit NOMS/CNSM. Indeed a data challenge requires data to start with, and (real-world) datasets are hard to get. I will leverage my experience dealing with this particular issue and seek partnerships from members from the industry, who could facilitate data collection, (3) Creating a better and more engaging experience for the students who remain the main contributor to conferences. This can be implemented through one-to-one mentorship for knowledge transfer, student forums for the exchange of ideas, creating opportunities for internships, and foster collaborations, (4) Continue engaging in collaborative liaison with other TCs, (5) Acknowledging the scientific merit of the CNOM members and their contribution to the community by carrying over the CNOM awards, and (6) Retaining and engaging young professionals as they transition to the industry and start losing exposure and lose the incentive to publishing and doing research.

Finally, I am aware of and experienced with the duties and responsibilities of ComSoc TC officers, and will work diligently with my fellow officers on the various technical and organizational activities. I am looking forward to serve, again.

Nur Zincir-Heywood

Biography: Nur Zincir-Heywood is a Distinguished Research Professor and an Associate Dean Research of Computer Science with Dalhousie University, Canada. Her research interests include machine learning and artificial intelligence for cyber security, network, systems, and information analysis, topics on which she has published over 200 fully reviewed papers. She is the Co-Editor of the books Communication Networks and Service Management in the Era of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning (Wiley/IEEE), and Recent Advances in Computational Intelligence in Defense and Security (Springer) as well as the coauthor of the book Nature-Inspired Cyber Security and Resiliency: Fundamentals, Techniques, and Applications (IET). She is a recipient of several best paper awards as well as the Supervisor for the recipient of the IFIP/IEEE IM 2013 Best Ph.D. Dissertation Award in Network Management. She is an Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management and International Journal of Network Management (Wiley), and a Guest Editor of Journal of Network and Systems Management (Springer).

Position statement: It is an honor and pleasure to be a candidate for the position of ComSoc CNOM Technical Committee Chair for the next term. My goal is to work with the TC officers and CNOM community to facilitate communication between ComSoc and the community. As a network and service operations and management researcher, my research is in the intersection of AI/ML for cyber security, network, systems, and information analysis. I have been involved in organization of several conferences and workshops in our community from NOMS to IM to CNSM to CSNet and AnNet over the years, I have also been involved in Associate Editorship in our community’s journals as well as Special Issues, in particular AI/ML for NSM. I aim to leverage my experience to extend the established activities of the TC and grow it with special interest groups on emerging NSM technologies. I look forward to the opportunity to be more closely involved in serving CNOM community.

Vice-chair candidates:

Nur Zincir-Heywood

Position statement: It is an honor and pleasure to be a candidate for the position of ComSoc CNOM Technical Committee Vice Chair for the next term. My goal is to work with the TC officers and CNOM community to facilitate communication between ComSoc and the community. As a network and service operations and management researcher, my research is in the intersection of AI/ML for cyber security, network, systems, and information analysis. I have been involved in organization of several conferences and workshops in our community from NOMS to IM to CNSM to CSNet and AnNet over the years, I have also been involved in Associate Editorship in our community’s journals as well as Special Issues, in particular AI/ML for NSM. I aim to leverage my experience to extend the established activities of the TC and grow it with special interest groups on emerging NSM technologies. I look forward to the opportunity to be more closely involved in serving CNOM community.

Jérôme François

Biography: Jérôme François is a research scientist at the university of Luxembourg in the research group SEDAN (Service and Data Management) at SnT. He received a Ph.D. degree in computer science from the University of Lorraine, France, in December 2009. From 2009 to 2014, he moved to SnT as a research associate before being appointed as permanent researcher at Inria in France where he became deputy team leader of the RESIST research team. He is also the co-founder of Cybi (https://www.cybi.fr/), a cybersecurity startup. In March 2023, he had a sabbatical leave for two years (renewable) to let him joining SnT again.

He developed a strong scientific expertise and practical experience in the area of applied Machine learning for network and cybersecurity. Part of his research agenda is the creation of network-specific ML methods and algorithms. He covered different types of problems ranging from intrusion detection, threat prediction, phishing prevention and vulnerability management. With the advances in network softwarization, he proposed to offload processing of traffic analysis onto programmable dataplanes. He led the NATO international research project ThreatPredict and contributes to several national and international project (H2020 SecureIoT, H2020 AI@EDGE, French FUI HuMa, etc.) He co-supervised 8 PhD students,

who successfully defended their thesis. He currently co-supervises 4 PhD students. Approximately half of them have been funded by collaborative projects and the other half through industrial partnerships with Orange Labs or Thales in France. He is also always involved in teaching on network security and big data. He believes that major progresses in research are done through collaborations and exchanges. He is an active participant to the network and service management community. He took over several responsibilities in the organization of its main conferences, for example by serving as TPC co-chair of IM 2019, publication co-chair of NOMS 2022 and chairs of different co-located workshops. He had the honour to be the recipient of the IEEE Young Professional award in Network and Service Management for my involvement. He has co-created an associate team with University of Waterloo (NetMSS) and another one with the University of Osaka (CyberGenAI).

Position statement:It is with great enthusiasm that I express my strong interest in serving the CNOM community as Vice-Chair. Throughout my career as a researcher, I have closely aligned my professional path and research orientations with the topics and themes at the core of CNOM. I thus acknowledge the great effort which has been made by the whole community to consolidate it, to empower collaborations and increase the impact of CNOM activities and events.

If elected as Vice-Chair, I commit to fostering regular and meaningful collaborations with all relevant partners and communities within the CNOM scope. Recognizing the potential of online/hybrid events in a post-pandemic era, I will actively encourage engaging activities and discussions about related organizational matters and community engagement. Actually, we can broaden participation, reach a wider audience, and so create a higher impact.

Furthermore, I strongly believe in the importance of addressing emerging challenges in our field. With the rise of machine learning and artificial intelligence, it is crucial to consider activities around open sciences and reproducibility. Additionally, I am committed to attract the next generation of researchers within our community and help them to be involved in the community beyond participations to events.

TPC chair candidates:

Yulei Wu

Biography: Dr. Yulei Wu is a Senior Lecturer with the Department of Computer Science, Faculty of Environment, Science and Economy, University of Exeter, UK. He received his Ph.D. degree in Computing and Mathematics and B.Sc. (1st Class Hons.) degree in Computer Science from the University of Bradford, UK, in 2010 and 2006, respectively. His research interests focus on network digital twins, network management, network slicing and softwarisation, and AI-powered and self-driving networks. Dr. Wu is currently leading Smart Networks and Services (SmartNetS) Lab. His research has been supported by UK research council and industry. He has published 8 authored/edited monograph books and over 150 research papers in prestigious international journals and conferences. He has 6 ESI highly-cited papers by Clarivate Analytics and was the recipient of 5 Best Paper Awards. His work has been featured by the IEEE Network Scanning the Literature and the IEEE Xplore Innovation Spotlight. He has delivered more than 20 keynote/invited talks at technical conferences and institutions. Dr. Wu serves as an Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management (TNSM) and IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering (TNSE), as well as an Editorial Board Member of Computer Networks, Future Generation Computer Systems, and Nature Scientific Reports at Nature Portfolio. He won the TNSE Excellent Editor Award in 2021 and 2022. He contributes to the organisation of many conferences as various roles, including the General Chair and the Program/Symposium Chair, e.g., Symposium Chair of ICC-2024 and ICNC-2024, Program Chair of PCDS-2023, BDTA-2023, DSC-2022 and Blockchain-2020. He was awarded the Outstanding Leadership Award from IEEE Blockchain-2020. He is chairing a CNOM SIG on Ethical AI for Future Networks and Digital Infrastructure. He is a Senior Member of the IEEE and the ACM.

Position statement: It is my honour and pleasure to be a candidate for the TPC Chair of CNOM. I’ve been an active member of CNOM for a couple years and been involved in several CNOM sponsored activities, e.g., Associate Editor of TNSM, Symposium Chair of ICC-2024, Chair of a CNOM SIG, etc. I’ll continue contributing to the CNOM community and make it stronger and bigger by collaboratively working with other members/chairs/advisers. If I am elected, I will work with the other officers and members to serve CNOM community, support existing programmes, and build new and stronger programmes. This includes (1) making existing activities stronger, e.g., work with CNOM sponsored conferences organisers to work out plans to increase submissions; (2) developing new activities, e.g., approach experts globally and work with them to create new SIGs on new and advanced topics on network operations and management; (3) growing our community, e.g., reach out to diverse researchers/engineers in both academia and industry and attract them to participate our activities; (4) building stronger relationships with industry, e.g., through industry-academia co-created activities.

Marc-Oliver Pahl

Biography: Marc-Oliver Pahl is a full professor for cybersecurity at IMT Atlantique, a French Grand École. There he leads the industrial chair Cybersecurity for Critical Networked Infrastructures (https://cyberCNI.fr). Marc-Oliver is an adjunct professor at Carleton University in Canada. Marc-Oliver is vice president of the German chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) (germany.acm.org). He leads the Future Education activities of the German-French Academy for the Industry of the Future (future-industry.org).

Marc-Oliver’s research focuses on a holistic approach to cybersecurity with an emphasis on collaborative approaches, including VR -based cybersecurity interfaces and novel side-channel based anomaly detection and federated learning. He is an experienced teacher and an eLearning pioneer who has received several teaching awards. He continuously organises events for larger audiences, such as the TALK.CYBERcni.frSpeaker Series and the future-iot.org PhD School Series.

Position statement: I am very active in the Network and Service community since 2014. For our flagship conferences NOMS/ IM and CNSM I was holding most of the available OC positions over the past years. I am very active in promoting cybersecurity through different forms such as teaching including MOOCS, broader education in the form of public webinars, and seasonal schools. For many years I am a CNOM member and I know and am known by many people in our community.

Having a good relationship to the other candidates, I would enjoy developing our society further together. I would like to provide continuity for the great work, Carol Fung delivered. At the same time, I would like to establish cybersecurity as new additional focus of our Technical Committee. Having an explicit axis for security will significantly help to increase awareness and exchange on best practices.

In addition, I would like to strengthen our community by establishing a webinar format about relevant topics from our community. This new service will offer a great chance to exchange among us, and it will provide opportunities to collaborate.

Secretary candidates:

Vinícius Fülber Garcia

Biography: Vinicius Fulber-Garcia received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Informatics Department of the Federal University of Parana (UFPR – Brazil) in 2022. He also holds a Computer Science degree (2016) from the Federal University of Santa Maria (UFSM – Brazil) and a Master’s degree (2019) in Computer Science from the UFSM Post-Graduate Program in Computer Science. Currently, he is a professor at the Federal University of Parana and a researcher at the Network, Distributed Systems and Security Laboratory (LaRSiS – UFPR – Brazil). He has worked as a reviewer for several conferences and journals, including GLOBECOM, IM, NOMS, ICDCS, ComNet, and TNSM. He has also served as a member of the organizing committee for events such as SBSeg and CNSM. As a professor, he is involved in supervising and teaching undergraduate and graduate courses in computer science, as well as programming courses for undergraduate engineering students. His current research interests include but are not limited to network function virtualization, network service deployment, network management, business opportunities in networks, future networks, information theory, and compression algorithms.

Position statement: I began working with network operations, management, and security in 2015 as an undergraduate student at the Federal University of Santa Maria. Since then, I have pursued my M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees, conducting research that approaches the management of virtualized networks and accumulating over seven years of experience in this field. During these years, I have contributed to the community by reviewing papers, chairing publications, and organizing events for national and international journals and conferences. In the CNOM context, I have served as publication co-chair for the IEEE International Conference on Network and Service Management (CNSM) and worked as a reviewer for different conferences and journals, such as CNSM, IM, NOMS, and TNSM. I am now seeking the opportunity to serve as Secretary of CNOM to promote its activities, establish a continuous and fruitful dialogue with IEEE TC members, and disseminate knowledge of network operations and management in the broad scope of telecommunications, computer science, and technology.

Weverton Cordeiro

Biography: Weverton Cordeiro holds a PhD degree (2014) in Computer Science from the Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). He is currently an Adjunct Professor at the Institute of Informatics (INF), Federal University of Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS). His research is broadly focused on network security and management. His current interests include software defined networks, network function virtualization, and programmable forwarding planes. He is the recipient of the IEEE/IFIP NOMS 2020 Best Paper Award and IEEE/IFIP NOMS 2010 Best Student Paper Award. He received various awards including a Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship Award in 2011. He has been an active member of the network operations & management research community, contributing to the organization of various events (e.g. ACM SIGCOMM 2016 and Brazilian Symposium on Computer Networks 2019), serving in many OC roles (e.g. IEEE/IFIP IM 2019 workshop co-chair and IEEE/IFIP DISSECT workshop co-chair in conjunction with NOMS/IM conferences, and upcoming IEEE/IFIP NOMS 2024 Panel Co-Chair), as well as PC member of various conferences from our community (e.g., IEEE/IFIP NOMS & IM, CNSM, and IEEE NetSoft).

Position statement: My involvement with the network operations & management community started in 2008, when I attended my first IEEE/IFIP NOMS event in Salvador, Brazil. Since then, I’ve been continuously working to contribute to our community in many ways, first with technical contributions to events from our community, then with the organization of co-located workshops, and finally serving as PC and OC member in some of the main events. I have also interacted with many colleagues from our community throughout the years and built a strong collaboration network, always focusing on technical excellence and impact of research initiatives to our society. In this sense, my involvement with the network operations & management community has had profound positive implications to my personal growth as a professional and researcher in the field of network management.
I am aware of the critical role our community has acquired over the years in influencing the networking research agenda and shaping the future of our digital society. I am also aware of the many challenges our community will face to continue performing a leading role in networking in the decades to come. In this context, and in retribution to the many opportunities our community has provided me as a professional and researcher, I would like to extend my service to the community through the role of a CNOM officer, assuming broader coordination responsibilities as stated in the CNOM Policies & Procedures.