Slawomir Stanczak recognized with ITU “Certificate of Appreciation”

Prof. Slawomir Stanczak, head of the “Wireless Communications and Networks” department at the Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute (HHI), was honored by the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) with the “Certificate of Appreciation”. The certificate recognizes his outstanding work as chairman of the “ITU-T Focus Group on Machine Learning for Future Networks including 5G”. Prof. Stanczak has contributed significantly to the international standardization work on the promising 5G technology. The focus group was established by ITU-T Study Group 13 at its meeting in Geneva, November 6-17, 2017. An architecture developed by the focus group was standardized before the official end of the working group.

Prof. Stanczak has accumulated many years of experience and conducted cutting-edge research in all sub-fields of radio access networks. He has co-authored two books and more than 250 peer-reviewed journal articles and conference papers in the fields of information theory, wireless communications, signal processing, and machine learning. Into his role as chair of the focus group, which he held from 2017 to 2020, he brought not only his extensive fundamental knowledge in the field of ”Machine Learning for Wireless Communications” but also his leadership skills, which were crucial for many partners’ active participation.

“The communication networks of the future will be inherently intelligent: We are talking about a deep integration of Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence into communication protocols at all technology levels,” said Prof. Stanczak. “To make this vision a reality, we need to study and develop data formats for Machine Learning in communications, specify the requirements of Machine Learning algorithms for wireless communications applications, and finally we need corresponding guidelines and standards. The ITU-T focus group “Machine Learning for Future Networks including 5G“ has made important contributions in this context. In particular, the ITU Y.3172 architectural framework is an important step towards meeting these requirements,” explained Prof. Stanczak, who holds a professorship for network information theory at TU Berlin in addition to his job at Fraunhofer HHI.

The “Certificate of Appreciation” is awarded by ITU every four years to chairs and vice-chairs of ITU-T Research and Focus Groups and their subgroups to recognize special efforts and contributions to research and standardization.