Digital Industries Forum

Mrinalini Lakshminarayanan is the Head of Industry 4.0 product strategy and innovation for Industry 4.0, Energy, V2X and Aviation to drive markert leadership for Verizon network and services. She leads the strategic technology disruptions through next generation edge compute and connectivity solutions for robotics(AMRs, AGVs), drones, computer vision, artificial intelligence, IoT, device and digital twins, industrial systems, drones, connected cars, electric grid and electric vehicle(EV) charging.

Prior to Verizon she has held product, technology and operations global leadership positions in Motorola Solutions, Zebra technology, Gogo Inflight(acquired by Intelsat), Parker Hannifin and Ingram Micro leading cutting edge technology and product introductions in Internet of Things(IoT), Artificial Intelligence(AI), eXtended Reality(XR), Private-5G(P-5G), Radio communications and Aircraft connectivity(passenger and avionics). She has led the global P&L, industry and university partnerships ecosystems, technology and industry center of excellence(CoE) across the broad spectrum of verticals and channels globally.

Awards and recognition: Wondrous women in IT by Global Touch, Women of the Channel 2022 by CRN, Channel Chiefs 2022 by CRN,  Women in M2M and IoT award in 2019 by Connected world, Leadership Greater Chicago Fellow, Board member of Midwest IoT Council – Illinois Technology Association and Executive advisory committee member of Center for Advanced Analytics – University of Illinois Chicago and Chair of the IISc AANA. She has led various initiatives to drive girls and women in STEM and leadership.

Hakim Achouri joined Airbus 1.5 years ago as a 5G Solution Architect in the Digital Transformation & IM Teams. His work consists in building the strategy, roadmap and the right architecture towards a 5G connected Factory and he also acts as a Technical Authority on the 5G Connected Aircraft building data & user centric solutions for factory digitalization, Aircraft remote predictive maintenance and future seamless passenger connectivity. Before this he worked 6 years in the UK for McLaren Applied Technologies as a Principal Telecommunication Engineer, building solutions to connect Trains (Virgin Trains, Japanese Bullet Trains, Formula 1 telemetry). Before this he spent 10 years at Orange R&D in the Wireless Access Networks Teams doing research and building innovative solutions for fast moving vehicles connectivity V2V/V2X. Hakim has several patents around multiple wireless links aggregation, handovers, etc.

Jo Gilbert is a Technical Director at the GSMA. She leads the GSMA Digital Industries activities which brings together mobile network operators, enterprises, and the wider ecosystem to connect the benefits of 5G in the industrial sector.  With a career spanning 20 years in the telecom sector, Jo has supported organisations to harness new and emerging technologies such as identity, IoT, big data, artificial intelligence and 5G.

Samita Chakrabarti works as a Standards Architect at Technology Strategy, HQ Network Planning, Verizon. She leads Industrial IoT standards vertical; she is Verizon’s lead technical delegate at 5G-ACIA and GSMA IoT Manufacturing. Her primary work interest areas are 5G Private networks, Industrial 5G/IoT services, TSN, architecture and standards evolution with Edge computing and AI. She has worked in the Networking Industry for many years in various R&D roles from Software development to Technology Architecture, Standards and Strategic Innovations. Before joining Verizon, she worked at Ericsson developing end-to-end architecture for IoT edge in Enterprise Networks. Samita co-chaired IETF 6lo Working group from 2013 to 2018 and currently co-chairing IOT-Directorate group at IETF. She holds a MS in Computer Science from State University in New York at Albany, USA.