David Lou graduated as Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering at Ghent University in 2005. In the same year he joined the Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs Application Research team. He has a leading involvement and management role in several European and national research projects (Giant, Smart Touch, Metaverse1, Mistra, Shift-TV, etc.), standardisation bodies (MPEG). In 2016 he joined Huawei Technologies as a Chief Researcher responsible for steering key network technology innovation and collaboration with industrial and academic partners. His research interests mainly covers IoT/IIoT/I4.0, industrial networking and connectivity, deterministic communication, video streaming and transportation, and immersive communication. He is the co-chair of the IIC Networking Task Group and has been actively involved in relevant standardization activities. He has (co-) authored more than 30 scientific publications and 20 patents.

Cloud PLC is a promising industrial scenario. By leveraging the elastic cloud platform, the cloud PLC will greatly increase the flexibility and efficiency of the flexible manufacturing systems. Meanwhile it brings huge opportunities and challenges to industrial networking. This presentation will illustrate the challenges of the cloud PLC and highlight some potential solutions and technologies.