Steering Group

Steering Group Committee

Steering Group Committee

Stefano Ruffini - ITSF Chairman, Expert Ericsson Research, Ericsson email»
Stefano graduated in Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Rome " La Sapienza" (Italy) and joined Ericsson in 1993 and has been working on synchronization aspects for more than 20 years. He is one of the Ericsson experts working on 5G transport and sync aspects. He is currently contributing to ITU-T, serving as Rapporteur of Q13/15 (ITU-T expert group responsible for standards on network synchronization and time distribution performance) and IEEE1588 Liaison Rapporteur, and to other relevant standardization bodies and forums. Stefano has published several international journal papers and is co-author of a book dealing with IEEE1588 and Synchronous Ethernet, and is also member of the WSTS (Workshop on Synchronization and Timing Systems) Executive Committee.

Duke Buckner - ITSF Vice Chairman, Head of Strategy and Business Development - Frequency & Time, Microchip email»
Duke has more than 30 years of experience in communications and data network industry with 20 years directly related to the timing and synchronization aspect of digital networks. Duke’s career began with the US Air Force and as a telecommunications network analyst for NASA at the emergence of the Internet era, becoming an expert in a variety of protocols and networking design. He has held strategic and managerial roles in various capacities including engineering, global account sales, and most recently the head of North American sales. In his current role, Duke is responsible for the strategic guidance of product and development efforts to meet the synchronization needs of the evolving communications infrastructures.

Tommy Cook - ITSF Immediate Past Chairman, Calnex email»
Tommy Cook is the founder and CEO of Calnex Solutions. With over 30 years experience in the telecoms Industry, his experience has been in telecoms test and measurement having been employed by Hewlett Packard and Agilent Technologies before starting Calnex. Tommy has participated in a number of standards forums throughout his career, and currently is an active member of ITU-T Study Group 15 & the MEF to participate in the discussions on Timing-over-Packet solutions. Tommy holds a Master of Science degree in Digital Techniques from Herriot-Watt University, Edinburgh and a Bachelor of Science degree with Honours in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Paisley University.

Prof Charles Curry - BEng, CEng, MITP, FIET, FRIN   - ITSF Founder, MD, Chronos Technology Ltd email»
Charles Curry is a chartered Engineer and a Fellow of the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET) and founder & Managing Director of Chronos Technology Ltd. Charles graduated in Electronics from Liverpool University in 1973, and started his career at GEC Hirst Research Centre working on silicon MOS boundary research, progressing to Racal Instruments where he was responsible for sales of test equipment including specialist frequency and time products such as Loran C and Caesium standards. Later with GSE Rentals Charles was involved with some of the first civil GPS and laptop PC deployments into the North Sea offshore oil exploration industry during the early 1980’s. Charles founded ITSF in 2001, and is also a member of the Workshop on Synchronization in the USA Telecommunications Systems (WSTS) Steering Group. Charles is also a member of the Industry Advisory Boards for the Universities of Liverpool and Bath, Electrical and Electronics Faculties and in 2012 was awarded Honorary Professorships from both Universities.

Pedro Antao - Senior Network Architect, NOS email»
Pedro has over 20 years experience in communications, working in the mobile and fixed networks within the context of transport technologies: ATM, Ethernet, IP and MPLS architectures. Pedro has been involved in  the Mobile backhaul evolution from TDM/ATM to ETH/IP packet networks and is currently working on the IP MPLS network design strategy and performance validation to enable phase synchronization for LTE-A, and follows the standards developments for next generations networks.

Allan Armstrong - Executive Director, Marketing & Applications Engineering, Epson email»
Allan is responsible for technical marketing and applications engineering for Epson’s timing device, IC, and MEMS sensor products. He has worked in engineering, applications, marketing, and as an analyst on timing technology throughout his career including frequency synthesis at HP (now Keysight/Agilent), GPS and Cesium oscillators at HP (now MicroSemi/Symmetricom), timing generator ICs at Vitesse Semiconductor (now Microsemi), and BAW resonators and PLL ICs at Maxim Integrated. Allan was born in Whitby, England, earned his BSEE from MIT, and resides in Silicon Valley.

Douglas Arnold - Principal Technologist, Meinberg-USA email»
Douglas is currently co-chair of the IEEE Working Group and co-chair of the ISPCS PTP Plugfest Organizing Committee. He has spent twenty years working on precise timing technology. He received his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinios.

Guy Buesnel - Market Segment Leader (Robust Positioning, Navigation & Timing), Spirent Communications email»
Guy has more than 16 years’ experience in protecting GNSS Receivers from emerging threats, having started his career as a Systems Engineer involved in the development of GPS Adaptive Antenna Systems at Raytheon Systems Limited in the UK. Guy joined Spirent in May 2014 as Market Segment Leader–Robust Positioning Navigation and Timing. Guy holds an MSc (Eng) in Communications Engineering from the University of Birmingham and a BSc (Hons) in Physics with Atmospheric Physics from the University of Wales Aberytstwyth. Guy is a Chartered Physicist, a Member of the Institute of Physics and an Associate Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation.

Bob Cockshott - Director, Location & Timing Programme, Digital Systems KTN/NPL email»
Bob is PNT Lead in Innovate UK's Knowledge Transfer Network, which facilitates knowledge exchange to promote economic growth. Bob has specialised knowledge transfer in positioning, navigation and timing (PNT) for over 8 years, and has organised events on many aspects of PNT, including internationally renowned conferences on GNSS vulnerability. Before working in knowledge transfer, Bob spent many years as a systems engineer and project manager in the space industry, developing electro-optical and RF payload instrumentation.

Lee Cosart – Senior Technologist, Microsemi Corp. email»
A graduate of Stanford University, Lee worked as an R&D engineer at Hewlett-Packard/Agilent and Symmetricom prior to joining Microsemi in 2013. His R&D activities have included measurement algorithm development and mathematical analysis for a variety of test equipment for which he holds several patents. He serves on, as chair, contributor and editor, the ATIS and ITU-T committees responsible for network synchronization standardization. His TimeMonitor software is used to collect and analyze synchronization and packet timing measurement data and has been used in laboratories and live operating networks throughout the world.

Mike Ellis – Enterprise Architect, BBC email»
Mike is an Enterprise Architect working for the BBC where his main focus is on the production infrastructure. Starting in the BBC's TV studio engineering team, he moved to BBC R&D where he specialised in DAB and IP networks, giving him a wide experience in radio, television and online technologies. From BBC R&D, he took on the role of Technical Architect for the BBC's newest production centres in MediaCity:UK and Broadcasting House. Now within the BBC Engineering Strategy and Architecture team, Mike is part of the team choosing the BBC's path for the future.

Chris Farrow - Technical Services Manager, Chronos Technology email»
Chris joined Chronos from Marconi’s UK Technical Assistance Centre in Liverpool in January 2006. Whilst at Marconi Chris was responsible for the field trial, rollout and support of enhanced synchronisation products and services within Marconi’s System X Switching and SDH products. At Chronos Chris is responsible for all professional services focused on the sync product area including Synchronisation MasterClass, Sync Audit and network planning consultancy, customer demonstrations and SyncWatch development.

Tony Flavin - MIET, Manager - Strategic Research, Chronos Technology email»
Tony joined the Post Office Research department (later to become BT) as an apprentice in 1974 and started his career in electronic and semiconductor design for early digital transmission systems. Later he helped develop the first optical fibre networks, before specialising in SDH and network synchronisation. He represented BT’s interests globally at ETSI and ITU for SDH and OTN/DWDM transport systems and gained experience across network design, procure, test, development and rollout. In the later years he was responsible for BT’s timing platforms supporting frequency time and phase across all of its platform domains. At Chronos Tony is responsible for strategic research, technical support within the research projects and helping new products to emerge into the marketplace.

Tim Frost BSc, MSc, MIET, C.Eng – Strategic Marketing Manager, Calnex Solutions Ltd. email»
Tim Frost joined Calnex in the summer of 2013.  He has several years of experience in next-generation synchronisation techniques, having worked with both Symmetricom and Zarlink Semiconductor on packet synchronisation technologies.  He has been active in the ITU Network Synchronisation question (Q13/SG15), the Small Cell Forum, where he was editor for their Synchronisation white paper, and also in the Metro Ethernet Forum (MEF), where he was the editor for their circuit emulation standards. Tim has over 20 years experience in the electronics and telecommunications industry, having worked in areas such as the design of embedded CPU cores for ASIC devices, and in railway signaling systems. Tim has a BSc in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from the University of Leeds, and an MSc. from the University of Manchester. He is a Member of the IET and a Chartered Engineer.

Mike Gilson, BA (Hons), MIET - Technology Specialist, BT email»
Has played a major role in developing and implementing BT's synchronisation and timing strategy from 1988 to present day. He has represented BT on various national and international working groups and standards committees (including ETSI, ITU, PNOIG, IETF) and is currently actively contributing to ITU-T SG15 (Transport Networks, Systems & Equipment) on the synchronisation question (Q13).

Kenneth Hann - CEO Time4 Systems email»
Kenneth is Senior Director R&D for Oscilloquartz, Finland. He was founder and CEO of Time4 Systems with 30 years’ experience in telecommunications from Nokia, Martis and Tellabs. For the past decade Kenneth has focused on innovative synchronisation solutions for packet networks and has been actively involved in the development of standardisation for both synchronous Ethernet, and IEEE 1588. Kenneth has a number of synchronisation related patents and a Master’s degree in Electrical and Electronic Engineering from Queens University Belfast.

Helmut Imlau, Dipl.-Ing. - Timing & Synchronisation, Deutsche Telekom Fixed and Mobile Engineering Deutschland (FMED) email»
Has 20 years experience in the field of transport networks along with specific synchronisation and measurement issues. Since 2002 Helmut has been responsible for synchronisation systems within Deutsche Telekom's fixed network. His current focus is on Deutsche Telekom's future synchronization strategy as well as phase synchronization for mobile base stations. He is active in standardisation with main focus on ITU-T SG15 (Transport Networks, Systems & Equipment) on the synchronisation question (Q13).

Martin Kingston - Principal Designer for Mobile Backhaul at EE;email»
Martin has over 20 years experience in communications, amassing a broad knowledge of fixed, mobile and internet services combined with a deep understanding of transmission and transport technologies. He began working on terrestrial and satellite communication systems for outside broadcasts at the BBC before moving to Orange UK were he gained extensive experience of synchronisation in mobile networks and evolution to next generation transport network architectures in a converged mobile, home and business service provider. Martin is currently working with a team of Senior Designers developing design strategy and solutions for packet transport networks to support the next generation of radio access technologies.

Ullas Kumar - Telecom Systems Engineer, Rakon;email»
Ullas is with the Business Development Team in Singapore.Prior to joining Rakon, he was working in the telecom synchronisation domain for the last 17 years working on traditional and packet synchronisation techniques. He has presented papers on various forums and published technical articles. He represents Rakon at various standardisation bodies.He holds Masters degree in Electronics Design and Technology (Telecom) from Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, India and Master of Business Administration degree from National University of Singapore.

Michael Mayer, B.Sc. – email»
Michael is a graduate of Queen's University (Kingston, Canada). He is currently employed with Ciena Corporation and is involved with research and development related to transport systems design and standardization. Prior to this, he was employed by Bell-Northern Research and Nortel. Since 1998, the focus of his standardization work as been with the ITU-T, contributing to diverse topics such as synchronization, SDH, OTN and control plane architecture. He is currently involved with ITU-T Question 13 and is the editor of several recommendations related to packet network synchronization.

Andrew Miles – email»
Andrew’s experience encompasses RF, telecommunications, semiconductors, crystal oscillators, GNSS and mm-wave backhaul in design, project management, product management and marketing roles at Nortel, Symbionics, SiGe Semiconductor, Rakon, u-blox and Blu Wireless Technology. He is a graduate of Durham University.

Paolo Novellini - Principal Engineer Xilinx email»
Paolo is working as RF IO Specialist, supporting strategic accounts in EMEA. Previously, Paolo worked for Alcatel-Lucent and for Infineon Technologies. His main areas of interest include burst data recovery circuits, network timing synchronization, oversampling techniques and low latency transmission architectures. Paolo has a Master’s Degree in Microelectronics from Politecnico di Milano and holds 15 granted patents.

Wojciech Owczarek - Global Communications Lab Manager, Intercontinental Exchange, Inc. email»
Wojciech is a network architect with a background in software development and operating systems, working with communications technologies for over 12 years. He specialises in low latency trading networks, multicast distribution, data centre networks and network-centric R&D. Involved in time synchronisation for the enterprise since 2010, he also develops PTPd, an open source IEEE 1588 implementation. In his current role with the New York Stock Exchange (part of the Intercontinental Exchange group), he has been working with low latency trading technologies since 2007. Wojciech manages the operation of the Global Communications Lab, ICE’s internal, global R&D facility based in the UK, where he runs a small team delivering projects for internal and external customers. His facility is responsible for consultation, testing and verification of network designs, product testing, software regression testing, issue reproduction, root cause analysis and work with vendors. Wojciech is NYSE’s key time sync engineer and consultant.

Cesar Prados - CTO and Managing Director of Seven Solutions Germany email»
Cesar started his Engineer career 13 years ago at I.D.S Space Laboratory, Italy, developing numerical methods and in parallel he continued working on research projects at University. Cesar won first prize in the Innovative Entrepreneurial Projects Contest and founded a spin-off in 2007. In 2009 he started working in GSI, Germany, as a Timing Engineer and later as a Technical Project Manager of the Control & Timing System. He has designed and developed HW/SW for the new control and timing system based on White Rabbit technology. Alongside, he has been studying how to increase the reliability and robustness of high accuracy systems. As timing network architect, he has designed, deployed and operated several high accuracy mid-size timing networks within GSI campus. These networks are used to steer and control the accelerator and experiments. Besides he has planned and designed the next high accuracy timing network for the new FAIR accelerator. During 2017 he introduced the White Rabbit technology to Frankfurt Stock Exchange and helped them to evaluate the advantages of sub-nanosecond timing for trading diagnostic in their campus. Since Feb 2018 Cesar is the CTO and MD of Seven Solutions bringing high accuracy sync into new ecosystems and markets.

Andy Proctor, FRIN - Lead Technologist Satellite Navigation, Innovate UK email»
Andy is Lead Technologist for Satellite Navigation at the UK's Innovation Agency, Innovate UK and also the UK lead delegate to the European Space Agency (ESA) Programme Board for Navigation (PBNAV) providing a governance role for ESA activities within the flagship EU Galileo and EGNOS Navigation Systems. Andy also works on a cross-thematic basis in Innovate UK bringing the benefits of Positioning Navigation and Timing (PNT) technology and data to other Innovate UK teams. Andy is the founder and chair of the Cross-government working group on PNT and also sits on the UK Space PNT Committee. Andy has held engineering and business and consultancy positions within a variety of organisations; military, governmental and commercial, both large and small, for over 20 years. His particular interest is in new product and market entry and has had success in growing businesses during recession. He has experience in multiple sectors including Space, Telecommunications, Defence and Automotive, plus has a large amount of international business experience having worked in the USA, Asia and mainland Europe. Andy is a Fellow of the Royal Institute of Navigation and the Institute of Sales and Marketing Management and holds a Master's degree in Strategic Sales and Management.

Silvana Rodrigues –Director of System Engineering - IDT Canada email»
Silvana Rodrigues is a Director of System Engineering at Integrated Device Technology (IDT) . Silvana graduated in Electrical Engineer from Campinas University, Sao Paulo, Brazil in 1985. She started her career at the Telecommunication Research Center in Brazil. She worked at Zarlink (formerly Mitel Semiconductor) where she hold several positions as Analog designer, Engineering Manager and System Architect. Currently, Silvana is working in the Timing and Synchronization Division at IDT. She also participates in several standards group, being the secretary for the IEEE 1588 standards committee and the editor of the ITU-T G.8262, G.8263, G.8272 and G.8273.x Recommendations.

Kishan Shenoi - CTO, Qulsar, Inc. email»
Kishan Shenoi received his bachelors, masters, and doctorate degrees from IIT-Delhi, Columbia University, and Stanford University, respectively, in 1972, 1973, and 1977. He is active in Standards bodies and co-chair of the technical committee of NIST-WSTS. He is named on 45 patents and has several publications including two books, Digital Signal Processing in Telecommunications (1995) and Synchronization and Timing in Telecommunications (2009). He is currently CTO of Qulsar, developing fit-for-purpose solutions for timing and synchronization in the fields of communications, power, sensor networks, and the Internet of Things.

Terry Sullivan - Senior Designer, EE;email»
Terry Sullivan is a Senior Designer working for mobile network provider EE. Terry originally joined Orange UK in 2001 within the Network Design team and worked extensively on adding capacity to the Orange 3G backhaul and core network before moving on to pseudowire and ethernet based backhaul technologies. Throughout his time at Orange/EE, Terry has worked on synchronisation solutions for both the legacy ATM network and the IP backhaul network, and within his current role is the Design Authority for mobile backhaul synchronisation; designing synchronisation solutions for the packet transport network and RAN elements.

Frédéric Vittrant - Telecom OCXO Product Manager with Rakon, France email»
Frédéric graduated in 1996 from ISEN engineering school in France and also holds an MSc in Control and information technology from UMIST in Manchester, UK. He has worked for different companies starting with Filtronic Comtek in the UK and Finland designing base station filters. He also designed radio-frequency side of mobile phones with SAGEM and MOTOROLA in France; and 4G RFIC with Renesas Mobile. He later worked as RF product line manager with Zodiac Data Systems (now part of SAFRAN) and held senior management positions there until joining RAKON in 2019.

Dr Marc A. Weiss - Telecom Sync and GPS expert, U.S. NIST email»
Dr. Marc Weiss has worked at NIST (the National Institute of Standards and Technology--formerly NBS, the National Bureau of Standards) since 1979. He received the NBS Applied Research Award (with others) for a first GPS timing receiver in 1983. He was awarded a patent (with others) for the Smart Clock algorithm in 1993. Marc founded and has led WSTS, the Workshop on Sync in Telecom Systems, annually since 1992. Dr. Weiss has also led the NIST program to support the GPS program office in developing their clocks and timing systems since 1992, after participating in it since 1980.  He received his Ph.D. in Mathematical-Physics from the University of Colorado in 1981.

Christopher Wilson - Principal Designer, BT email»
Christopher is a Chartered Engineer and Member of the IET. Chris served as an Engineering Officer in the Royal Navy until 2001 when he left to join mobile network operator Orange. Orange subsequently became EE, and is now owned by BT. Chris has worked in both mobile and broadband services and mainly in the last 8 years as a designer in mobile backhaul technologies – TDM, ATM and IP. Chris currently works in the EE/BT Mobile Backhaul Design team looking at backhaul of mobile services from cell sites to the core network. Chris has an interest in sync as it will be even more critical to mobile networks in the coming years with 5G.

Edrich Yau - Head of Galileo System Engineering Unit email»
Edrich joined the European Space Agency (ESA/ESTEC) in 2005 starting in the field of Ground to Space Interfaces. ESA are the original designers of the Galileo System and maintain the responsibility as the System End to End Architect on behalf of the EC and GSA who are responsible for the funding, operation and exploitation of the Galileo services. He is now the Head of the Galileo System Engineering Unit which is a team responsible for maintaining of the System Technical Requirements applied to procure the final version of Galileo targeted for 2020 and the performance of the system over the various phases of the deployment.