Prof. Marquez-Barja currently is an Associate Professor at University of Antwerpen, as well as the Head of the Wireless Group in IDLab-Antwerpen, which is part of imec, Belgium. Formerly, he was a Research Assistant Professor in the CONNECT Centre for Future Networks and Communications at Trinity College Dublin (TCD), Ireland. He was involved in several European research projects such as Fed4FIRE/FAVORITE, Fed4FIRE+, eWINE, and FUTEBOL projects. Currently, he is also the Technical Coordinator of the FUTEBOL consortium, becoming Principal Investigator for imec within this project. He is a member of ACM, and a Senior member of the IEEE Communications Society and IEEE Education Society where he participates in the board of the Standards Committee. His main research interests are: 5G advanced heterogeneous dense cells architectures; elastic and flexible future wireless networks, and its integration and impact on optical networks; IoT clustering; softwarization and virtualization; provisioning and dynamic resource allocation towards dynamic converged networks. He is also interested in vehicular networks, mobility, and smart cities deployments. Prof. Marquez-Barja is co-leading the Citylab Smart City testbed, part of the City of Things programme, located in Antwerpen. 

It is a fact the 5G network slices will be composed by several different network technologies. However, in order to deliver end-to-end connectivity several challenges need to be addressed. The H2020 EU-Brazil FUTEBOL project has developed and deployed a set of software toolkits, wrapped-up in a Control Framework, that is capable to converge Wireless, Optical, MEC, and IoT network components in order to truly provide end-to-end connectivity within 5G slices. This talk will address some challenges related to the convergence and interoperability of heterogeneous network segments, in particular wireless and optical; the FUTEBOL control framework; and the ongoing experimentation between Brazil and Europe Testbed facilities.