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Name (use @ tag) + | Company | Short Bio | Candidate Statement | |
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| 1 | Raj Panchapakesan | AccuKnox Inc | As the Global Head of Partner Ecosystem and Business Development at AccuKnox, I lead the creation and execution of innovative strategies to grow our cloud-native security platform and solutions across diverse markets and segments and Developer relations. With over 25 years of experience in technology-driven global enterprises, I have a proven track record of establishing and managing Strategic alliances, Business Development, and collaboration with cross-functional teams like Product, Marketing, Sales, Customer Success, Solution Engineering, Legal, etc. for product integrations, joint solutions, and GTM activities. Skills: Global Strategy · Strategic Relationships · Global Alliances · GSI · Teamwork · Partner Relationship Management · Global Business Development · Executive Management · Strategic Partnerships, Open Source Strategy and representation in Open source Consortiums | As a governing board member of CNCF and CD Foundation for three years, I contributed to the development and growth of the cloud-native computing industry. During my tenure, I helped shape these influential open-source foundations' vision, direction, and governance. My passion is to empower businesses and organizations to understand the Open source tools and ecosystem to build their products and achieve their goals with strategic partnerships, cutting-edge technology, and industry best practices. In Project Nephio, I aim to contribute by helping make it the de facto standard for K8S-based cloud-native network automation in different industries and LFN projects. I started the SIG Security and Accuknox is the core contributor and maintainer of the SIG, besides contributing to project Nephio. I want to represent Project Nephio in the LF Networking Strategic Planning Committee and Marketing Advisory Council, build relationships, and promote Nephio with other LF and open-source projects and various industry verticals. |
| 2 | Avinash Bhat | Samsung Electronics Co Ltd | I have 24 years of experience in telecom industry and had the opportunity to work in many diverse and cross functional teams. I have front ended many pre-sales discussions with various global operators and have played impactful roles in securing key business wins. Apart from this I have led many R&D Product development and currently leading virtualized RAN product development. Apart from this as part of the Global Open-Source Group, I am leading the Telecom related Open-Source Initiatives. I have played impact full role in O-RAN SC and represent Samsung in TOC, where we introduced a new project to bring in an AI/ML Framework that can work with non-RT RIC and Near-RT RIC based on the usecse. In Nephio, I have joined TSC around Apr’24 time frame but from the last year or so, I am driving the Nephio contribution strategy viz., O-RAN SC Support, Service Assurance, Helm to Operator tool etc. With my unique cross functional experience, I consider myself to be Telecom Industry expert with deep insight into the technology and market. | Samsung Electronics has been actively contributing to the Nephio Community. We have assigned many resources to the community and in the current eligible list 5/37 are from Samsung Electronics. I have internally nominated to represent Samsung Electronics in Nephio TSC and will internally coordinate the contribution strategy. I strongly believe in the power of open source and the role it will play in the telecom industry. In my opinion, we need to focus on Operators Business Outcomes and look at helping operators in areas such as improving customer experience, operational efficiencies etc. With a Cloud native based architecture, we can bring many IT capabilities like CI/CD, Scaling etc to Telecom. For orchestration and overall management, we should look at actively adopting open source-based solutions . Nephio has important role towards this journey, and I look forward to enabling features towards the same. |
| 3 |
| Ericsson | Ciaran is a senior expert in operations support systems (OSS) and programmable network architecture, and he is the chief architect of Ericsson’s Network Management portfolio. He has over 20 years’ experience in software development and architecture in the OSS domain, driving the evolution of management paradigms through multiple generations of networks. In the past Ciaran has represented Ericsson on the ONAP TSC and architecture sub-committee. He is a strong believer in the use of open source software to progress industry alignment, drive standardization, improve openness and simplify processes in telecommunications network management. | Ericsson is an active participant in the Nephio community, with significant contributions to features, robustness and characteristics over the last two releases. I have worked as a TSC member and community participant since 2023, working on modelling in the Network Architecture SIG, contributing to user story definition and development, and documenting the Nephio architecture. I have a strong belief in industry collaboration on open source projects to improve overall the quality, security and interoperability of the systems we build. I believe the Nephio project has significant potential to contribute to this through the development of software solutions to materially improve network operations. I would like to see broader synergies between telco, the IT sector, and standardization to improve interoperability and enable innovation, and I believe the Nephio community can be an enabler of this. I look forward to continuing to contribute to Nephio and participate in the community in 2025. |
| 4 |
| Nokia | I'm Head of Open Source Network and Service Automation at Nokia, where I'm responsible for driving Nokia’s overall engagement in Nephio. In this role I work across multiple industry organisations, both open source and standardisation, engage with both customers and other industry players, as well as internally across all Nokia businesses. I have over 30 years of experience in network systems, ranging from multivendor interoperability verification, systems architecture research, new business incubation, to network and operations systems standardisation and open source. I've been with Nephio from the very beginning and I'm currently Nokia’s Nephio TSC representative. In addition to Nephio, I serve at LF Europe Advisory Board, and at Eclipse Open Regulatory Compliance Steering Committee. | Nokia is among the top contributors to Nephio with the intention to maintain strong involvement. I am excited of the opportunity to help Nephio to become successful in the industry and to accelerate its adoption. To this end, I’m looking forward to making it easier for new people to get involved in the Nephio community especially through improved documentation. Further, I intend to continue to help fostering fruitful industry collaboration between Nephio and other relevant open source communities and standards organisations. I’m looking forward to continue help Nephio be present in industry events, e.g. Telco Days in KubeCon, and to help organising quality Nephio events, be they e.g. LFN D&TFs or Nephio Summits. |
| 5 |  | OpenAirInterface Software Alliance (OSA) | Sagar is currently working at OpenAirInterface Software Alliance (OSA). At OSA he is responsible for DevOps, Data Center management, and Radio equipment management. He takes care of packing OAI network functions (RAN and Core) and deploying them on different distributions of Kubernetes. He has experience working with ONAP and OSM. In the past, he has worked with OpenStack, LXC/LXD, and Juju. He holds a PhD in Telecommunication from Sorbonne University (Thesis title: Cloud Native Network Slice Orchestration in 5G and Beyond). His thesis focused on the orchestration of network functions. | Started contributing to Nephio to apply my experience of NF deployment and management. During my PhD studies, I have worked with different open-source Core and RAN network functions, and different Orchestrators (ONAP, OSM, and different European project proposed orchestrators). I would like to bring this experience and knowledge to Nephio. Contributions to Nephio
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| 6 | Balaji Varadaraju | Red Hat | Working in the Telco engineering in Red Hat. Current TSC member and chair of SIG release. Has been committer and TSC member of open day light as well in the past. Active contributions to all SIGs . |
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| 7 | Sana Tariq | TELUS, Canada | Sana Tariq is a Ph.D. in Computer Science and Fulbright alum, brings 20 years of telecom expertise. As TELUS's Principal Architect, shaping 5G and O-RAN automation architecture. A pioneer in cloud-native adoption through DevOps and open source, she leads initiatives with NGMN, LFN, and North American universities. Sana co-founded TELUS OSPO and Project Nephio. Her recognition as Nephio's top contributor award reflects her dedication to driving change in the industry and open source within TELUS. I have been serving Nephio community as TSC vice Chair and SIG Architecture Chair for the last 2 years. | I have been passionate about Nephio’s vision and adoption across industry since inception. Working in Service Orchestration space for the past 8+ years I understand the problems with previous opensource projects, standards, existing industry solutions and looking to bridge the gap of telecom, enterprise and web-scale world through Nephio. At this stage I would like to do the following
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