1. Mr. Hiromichi Shinohara (Representative Director and Senior Executive Vice President, Chief Technology Officer, Chief Information Security Officer, Senior Vice President of Research and Development Planning; in charge of technical strategy and international standardization, NIPPON TELEGRAPH AND TELEPHONE CORPORATION)

Title: NTT Group's Actions towards Resilient and Green Society

Biography: Hiromichi Shinohara joined Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Public Corporation in April 1978. In April 2003, he became an Executive Research Engineer at the Access Network Service Systems Laboratories of NTT's Information Sharing Laboratory Group, at which he became a Vice President in June 2003. He became a Senior Vice President of the Information Sharing Laboratory Group in June 2007. In June 2009, he became a Member of the Board and Senior Vice President of the Research and Development Planning Department of NTT and, from June 2011 to September 2011, he also held the position of Senior Vice President of NTT's Information Sharing Laboratory Group. In June 2012, he became Executive Vice President and Senior Vice President of NTT's Research and Development Planning Department. In June 2014, he was elected to his current position as Senior Executive Vice President of NTT.

2. Mr. Alex McEachern (Fellow of IEEE, President of Power Standards Lab)

Title: Energy for Telecommunications: the Next 25 years

Abstract: Over the next 25 years, the electric grid will change: DC, microgrids, and storage; and with these changes we will see new grid instabilities. The telecom function has divorced itself from the electric grid by standardizing throughout the world on 48 volts DC; but the new 380 volts DC may reconnect the electric grid and the telecom grid. The new grid instabilities should be considered. Society values will evolve, as they always have: new emphasis on carbon emission reduction, availability of telecom in developing world, new telecom-based methods of education and medicine. These evolutions will change the way energy is used in the telecom industry. Bits-per-watt is the ultimate telecom energy measure, and the number of bits in telecom content will continue to expand over the next couple of decades: we have gone from characters, to voice, to photo, to video. Now we're on the edge of telecom for small 3-dimensional objects, and perhaps next will come huge, moving 3D objects, then perhaps even telecom for thought, or taste, or smell. Telecom technology will continue to go through revolutions, including some very clever mathematical revolutions, but bits-per-watt will fundamentally be constrained by receiver sensitivity and quantum noise. However, the statistical dispersal of telecom usage could be at risk if massively cooperative (or competitive) events take place, which will abruptly increase the peak energy required for telecom. And there will be continuing evolution of telecom output devices (click, sound, screen, video, 3D printer, then…?). Every one of these historical stages required more energy than the previous stage, and there's no reason to expect that to change. But these are all examples of fairly smooth transitions. We know from experience there could also be abrupt upheavals in telecom: technology revolutions like the transistor, or the microprocessor, or the internet, or viral attacks; global scale disasters, natural and man-made; contact with extra-terrestrial intelligence; and, of course, unknown unknowns. History has shown that we cannot plan very well for these upheavals, but we can prepare for them, and humbly acknowledge that we are somewhat lost whenever these upheavals begin.

Biography: Mr. Alex McEachern in a Fellow of the IEEE, and the Chairman of many IEEE and IEC Standards. He has worked on electric power challenges for telecommunication systems for 40 years in North America, Asia, Africa, Europe, and South America. He has been awarded 31 patents so far, and serves as President of Power Standards Lab (U.S.A.).

3. Prof. Dr. Johann W. Kolar (Fellow of IEEE, Director, Power Electronic Systems Laboratory, Department of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering (D-ITET)), Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich

Title: Approaches to Overcome the GOOGLE Little Box Challenges

Biography: Johann W. Kolar is a Fellow of the IEEE and is currently a Full Professor and the Head of the Power Electronic Systems Laboratory at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH) Zurich. He has proposed numerous novel PWM converter topologies, and modulation and control concepts and has supervised over 50 Ph.D. students. He has published over 650 scientific papers in international journals and conference proceedings and has filed more than 120 patents. He received 21 IEEE Transactions and Conference Prize Paper Awards, the 2014 IEEE Middlebrook Award, and the ETH Zurich Golden Owl Award for excellence in teaching. The focus of his current research is on ultra-compact and ultra-efficient SiC and GaN converter systems, wireless power transfer, Solid-State Transformers, Power Supplies on Chip, and ultra-high speed and bearingless motors.