News

This distinction, created in 2014 as a tribute to the Canadian broadcasting pioneer, has been awarded to scientists such as Ian Akyildiz (international reference in data networks), Mario Gerla, or Jean-Pierre Hubaux. In this instance, Azcorra is one of the main drivers of European 5G technologies (in 2013 he was elected Chairperson of the Expert Advisory Board of the European Technology Platform Networld 2020, voted for by around one thousand public and private R&D&I organisations). Within this framework, he was responsible for the development of European wide 5G research guidelines, as reflected in the 2016 Strategic Research and Innovation Agenda (SRIA).

Arturo Azcorra is also one of only two academic members of the 5GPPP Partnership Board, a joint committee between the European Commission, industry and academic entities that has made European 5G technology a reality. He has also directly contributed to 5G technology thanks to his research (he was the coordinator of projects such as 5G-Crosshaul and 5G-TRANSFORMER) with inputs adopted by 5G standards and commercial products (5G midhaul, the 5G eCPRI standard, the architecture of the 5G control plane based on NFV/SDN, and the 5G emergency system with augmented reality developed for SAMUR). Together with David del Val (CEO of Telefonica R&D), he co-founded the 5TONIC research laboratory, which helped Spain become a pioneer in 5G technology development in Europe, and which has contributed to projects such as swarm intelligence used to control fleets of AVGs from the edge of the network.

His CV includes his position as a designer, founder and long-standing director of the regional research network, REDIMadrid, as well as founding and managing the International Research Institute, IMDEA Networks (ranked fourth in Europe in the “Mobile Computing” and “Measurements and Performance Analysis”, according to CS rankings). As the founder and first president of the Scientific Society of Telematics “ATEL”, he was a visiting researcher at UC Berkeley and MIT, as well as general director of the CDTI (responsible for leading industrial research in Spain, mainly in the engineering disciplines). He is an academic at the European Academy of Sciences “Academia Europaea”, which brings together the most distinguished scientists from Europe, including 70 Nobel Prize winners. He was the only Spanish member of the Steering Committee of the IEEE INFOCOM Congress (the most prestigious congress in Computer Communications).

With more than 150 publications and 6 patents, his scientific contributions have been incorporated into standards or have been turned into commercial products, such as the “Residential Gateway” (in millions of homes) or the procedure for generating Ppv4 addresses. He has been the coordinator or lead researcher in more than 30 projects, mostly European projects, as well as over 10 contracts with companies. He has obtained more than 15 million Euros of competitive funding to finance his research.