Please find below some names and biographies of speakers, who have confirmed already to speak at the LTE Forum 2013 in Istanbul. During the next days and weeks more confirmations are expected and the final conference agenda will be published.

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She graduated from Middle East Technical University, Department of Electric-Electronic Engineering and got the masters degree at the same Department. She began her career at the Undersecretariat for Defense Industries in 1992 and started to work at Information Technologies and Communications Authority in 2000. While she was working as the Head of Authorization Department at the Authority, she was appointed as Vice President in 2011 and currently carries out the same duty.

Coskun Sahin serving as Chief Technology Officer, responsible for Network, IT, R&D and QA functions of AVEA.
Previously he served for other GSM operators in Turkey and some major companies in consumer electronics, defense electronics and R&D institutions.
He holds B.Sc.(1987)  and Ms.C.(1991) degrees in Electronics and Communication Engineering and Ph.D. (1997) degree in Computer and Control Engineering from İstanbul Technical University. He has seven patents, more than 15 scientific conference papers, many technical reports and electronic and ICT system design.

Alan Hadden has 25 years experience in the mobile communications industry, and has been President of GSA since its formation in 1998.
Previously he was on the senior management team of a PCN/GSM 1800 operator (which became T-Mobile UK), involved in start-up, launch, and expansion phases. He assisted with discussions with key stakeholders and overseas regulators to establish 1800 MHz as a mainstream band for cellular and new mobile businesses. He represented the company at ETSI, the GSM Association and the UMTS Forum. Before that time Alan was Industrial Advisor to the UK communications regulator, working in the mobile communications field and represented views influencing regulation and standardisation at national and international level.

Claudius Boller is responsible for digital business and business development at Universal Music MENA since 2 years. He conducted Universal Music’s strategy for MENA and brought the local Dubai operation and business to life. He concluded several digital content licensing agreements and established brand partnerships with global and local brands.

Before joining Universal Music Claudius Boller was Vice President Business Development at Arvato in Dubai and Hamburg for 4 years. Arvato is a subsidiary of Bertelsmann. He was responsible for digital content solutions for mobile operators, technical service providers, media companies and brands.

In both positions Claudius Boller has developed customized services for his clients in more than 35 countries. He also developed the relevant marketing and implementation plans for the services to be successful.

Claus Hetting from HETTING Mobile Industry Consulting (www.hettingconsulting.com) has worked in the mobile industry for more than 15 years. He has consulted to major operators in Europe, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East. His work includes conducting business case strategy workshops and consulting projects for 3G mobile and beyond. He also works as a research analyst providing in-depth coverage of both technology and business trends in mobile worldwide. Mr. Hetting has worked for - among others - Nokia Networks at the senior management level.

Ed Candy is the Technology Strategist for the 3 Group following his position as Group Technology Director for Hutchison 3G until February 09. It was here that he was primarily responsible for the development of the worlds most advanced 3G Networks operating across nine countries. He successfully introduced enterprise and IP systems and architectures into the cellular networks to create the most powerful broadband content and services delivery platform amongst 3G operators. 
 From 1996 to 2000, as Group Development Director for Simoco, a buy out of Philips Radio Systems he orchestrated the development TETRA Handsets and Digital radio networks.  From 1993 to 1996 he was Technology Director for Hutchison Orange and during that time became the inaugural Chairman of the 3G UMTS Forum and Chairman for the UK DTI  UMTs Technical Advisory Group.  In 1987, whilst International Manager Radio Systems at Phillips, he formed the UMTS R&D consortium under the European Commission RACE broadband research program.  He is a visiting professor at Strathclyde University, a Fellow of the IET, a Senior Member of the IEEE and a companion of the IREE Australia

Hassan M. Claussen has been working in the Telecoms and IT market for over 20 years. In the early 90’s, Hassan was heading sales & marketing operations in Hamburg (Germany) for one of the largest IT Consultants, Telemation (acquired in 2000 by Dimension Data).
In Portugal since 1996, Hassan started a new career in business development, training and consulting with international training experts, ComGlobal. During this time he provided valuable services to many individuals and enterprises in the area of IT and Telecommunications. The business he worked with was recognized for many years as a leading IT Consultant.
After 17 years experience in the Telecoms and IT markets, Hassan M. Claussen founded HanseCom Media & Communication in November 2004.
With HanseCom he is now working in the event management and organization industry specializing in the telecommunications and IT industry. Together with his team, Hassan focuses his expertise in developing profitable events, handling projects from design and research, to marketing and sales, through to speaker acquisitions and management running up to and on the day of an event.

Imad has been working with Etisalat for 15 years. His experience covers areas of 2G/3G/4G Rf coverage and capacity planning, network optimization and technology strategy planning. His experience was based on multivendor networks in both UAE and Egypt. He was part of the initial team to launch Etisalat mobile network in Egypt between 2006 and 2008. Currently he is responsible on mobile technology strategy planning for Etisalat UAE. He is holding MBA from Wollongon university and BSc in Electrical Engineering from UAE University.

Manfred Schmitz is a Partner at Detecon International GmbH and in this function responsible for the business in Turkey. During more than five years with Detecon he had multiple international assignments in the area of global operational excellence, technology strategy and planning with special emphasis on new telecommunication technologies such as LTE and network related services. He studied in Electrical Engineering in Cologne and earned an MBA at the Henley Management College, UK. 

During more than 20 years in the mobile and fixed network telecommunications business he has held several positions at both suppliers and for different mobile operators. Before joining Detecon he was Senior Manager Global Technology Planning at Vodafone Group Technology, Head of Service Management department at MobilCom Multimedia and Software Developer at Siemens in Munich.

He is internationally recognized in the area of strategic telecommunication and authored numerous publications on telecommunications strategy and planning, network operations management and managed services.

Mustafa is responsible for the technology and venture arm of Turk Telekom Argela and also leading Turk Telekom Group R&D. He was instrumental building small cell division in Argela. He also teaches entrepreneurship at Koç University. Prior to joining Argela in 2009, Mustafa was co-founder of WiChorus Inc., a Silicon Valley startup based on mobile broadband infrastructure and LTE and WiMAX core gateways. The company was founded in 2005 and acquired in 2009 by Tellabs for $200M after following four up-rounds with tier-1 venture backing including Redpoint, Accel and Mayfield. Before, he was a member of National Semiconductor Labs and awarded National Semiconductor Post Doctoral Fellowship at UC Berkeley where he co-founded Distributed Sensing Lab, focusing on statistical sensor and mobile intelligence. Dr. Ergen received PhD’04 and MS degrees in electrical engineering from UC Berkeley. He also received MA degree in International Studies and completed MOT program of HAAS Business School from the same university. His BS for electrical engineering is from Orta Dogu Technical University, Ankara as a valedictorian. He is lately awarded Docent title as well.  Dr. Ergen authored two books: “Mobile Broadband – Including WiMAX and LTE” and “Multi-Carrier Digital Communications: Theory and Applications of OFDM” from Springer. He served in the board of trustees of TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Ankara.  He has filed more than 33 patents and many publications.

Richard Jones co-founded Ventura Team as a different kind of consultancy - employing only senior professionals (the average age is 45) with exceptional hands-on skills.

Richard's pragmatic approach to developing and then implementing strategies and operations with his colleagues has earned a strong reputation with operators facing tough challenges in the region and also with industry bodies such as the Fibre to the Home Council and GSM-A.

Richard recently completed his second NGA startup and rollout in the Gulf. He has previously been seconded in as Chief Commercial Officer from startup to the launch phases of a Gulf startup operator - covering all aspects of business and financial planning, commercial deployment and implementation. During this work he was closely involved in the evaluation process and eventual selection of the largest WiMAX deployment in EMEA.

Richard supports strategic decision making through generic and tailored events and workshops, as well as holding training across a number of topics including project and programme management and leadership.

He has also designed and led major change programmes for multinational companies - directing and training internal facilitation teams to identify and implement changes in projects of up to two years duration and covering all aspects of multi-country operations. He is currently engaged in a project of this type for the UN - working to help the regulator in Iraq.

His work in turning around the toughest projects and programmes led to his writing Project Management Survival - published by Kogan Page in English and available in other languages including Chinese.Richard has a degree in Electronics (UK/France), a masters equivalent in engineering and an MBA with distinction.

Mr Gedikoglu was commercially responsible from launching 5 GSM start-ups in CIS; involved and take part as the commercial lead of 5 M&A operations in CIS and in Asia. The last 15 years, he had served in various roles such as being the expert to the CEO and Board Member level . He had completed many re-structuring of organizations, technology & company change implementations , and re-branding projects in those regions. Mr Gedikoglu has been invited to lead the commercial part of LTE project deployment in Kazakhstan for the government company JSC Altel.

Tõnu Grünberg has held executive positions in telecommunications technology companies for over 15  years. Currently he serves as Vice President, Group CTO of TeliaSonera Eruasian operations in seven countries, ranging from Moldova to Nepal. He takes care of keeping the technology strategy, innovation, network deployment and operations, quality assurance and procurement in high level all over the operations.
Among other posts he has also served in TeliaSonera Nordic/Baltic operations technology management, being part of launching worlds first commercial LTE neworks in Sweden and Norway at 2009.

He as aquired his Masters degree from Chalmers University of Technology in Gothenburg, Sweden, and have mastered his management skills in London Business School.

Mr. Weimin Ying is the President of GSM&UMTS&LTE Wireless Network of Huawei. He is responsible for the overall management of Huawei’s GSM&UMTS&LTE business, including R&D of infrastructure, management of marketing, manufacturing, and customer service.
Mr. Ying graduated from Academy of Science of China with a Master’s degree of electronics and information. Mr. Ying has been an important part of the Huawei team for more than 13 years and has held several key leadership positions across a number of product lines and various
business units, including Product R&D, Network Performance, Maintenance, and Marketing.