Prosper Chemouil

My current position and activities
I am Director of Research Program in the area of Networks and Systems at Orange Labs.
Presently, my main interests are with the management and engineering of Future Networks. I am thus concerned with issues like routing and transport mechanisms, QoS and performance models, network and service management in the framework of post-IP networks based on virtualization and autonomic networking, resource management in heterogeneous networks, spontaneous networks (mesh and WSN) and their impact on devices and applications. As such, I am a Member of the Board of the IST FP7 IP Project 4WARD, representing France Telecom.

My background
I graduated from École Nationale Supérieure de Mécanique de Nantes in 1975 and obtained a PhD in control theory in 1978. I joined the then Centre National d'Études des Télécommunications (now Orange Labs R&D) late 1980. I had then been a member of the Teletraffic and Network Planning Section where I was the Head of the "Network Management and Traffic Engineering" Department until the end of 1998. Next I was Research Program Director in the area of Traffic Modelling, Network Control and Protocol Evaluation. During this period I have been involved in various theoretical research activities regarding traffic modelling and control. They have been implemented in several projects dealing with the design and operations of telecommunications networks and services, with a specific emphasis on dynamic routing and network management*.

I have thus initiated and coordinated several national and international projects related with routing and network management issues through multi-lateral cooperation.

I wrote more than 50 technical papers published in international journals or presented in major conferences, although I have not been very productive lately ;-) I was lecturing too in engineering schools and for continuing education in telecommunications.

My activity in standardization
Until end of 2008, I have been Vice-Chairman of the Service and Network Operations group (SNO). From 1994 to 2003, I have been Vice-Chairman of ITU-T Network Management Development Group (NMDG), now SNO since 2003, , and, from 1997 till 2000, Vice-President of WP 2/2 (Network Assessment) of ITU-T Study Group 2 (Network and Service Operations). I have also been very active on Questions related to Network Management, Routing and Traffic Engineering. Previously, I have been involved in other activities of ITU-T, formerly CCITT, such as GAS 10 in the domain of Traffic Forecasting, Signalling and TMN. Finally I also participated in the work of ETSI related to Object Modelling of Traffic Management Activities for TMN.

My involvement in scientific expertise
I am a Member of the CNRS Expert Group on Communications Networks and a Member of the Scientific Council of the EMANICS - European Networks of Excellence for the Management of Internet Technologies and Complex Services. Until September 2008, I have been a member of the National Committee of Scientific Research set up by CNRS, as a Member of the Section on Information and Engineering Sciences. From 1998 till 2002, I have been chairing the Network Architecture and Telecommunications Systems Committee of the former National Forum on Telecommunications Research (RNRT), now embedded within the National Agency for Research (ANR), in France. I also participate to the Scientific Council of INESC Coimbra, Portugal, and I am reviewing research projects for various international agencies.

I am also involved in the Research Group on Architecture, Systems & Networks of CNRS (ASR), and more specifically in the Communications Networks area (ResCom). In this context, I have supervised several scientific collaborations with research centres and universities in France and worldwide. Previously, I have been an expert on telecommunications in the Control Theory Group for the National Research Council and for the Ministry of Research and University.

My contribution to scientific animation
I have been involved in the organization of several conferences and workshops: I am currently the Chairman of the International Advisory Committee (IAC) of the International Teletraffic Congress (ITC) and a member of the Steering Committee of the World Telecommunications Congress (WTC), of the Workshop on IP Operations & Management (IPOM) and of the Symposium on Design of Reliable Communications Networks (DRCN). I have had various positions in the organization of many events like formerly International Switching Symposium (ISS), the International Communications Conference (ICC) and IEEE Globecom, the Network Operations and Management Symposium (NOMS), the Integrated Network Management Symposium (IM), the IEEE conference on High-Performance Switching and Routing (HPSR).
More practically, I am involved in the TPCs/OCs of NOMS 2010, WTC 2010, Globecom 2010.
Recently, I have been General Chair of the 21st International Teletraffic Congress (ITC 21, 15-17 September 2009, Paris, France) and I have been also a Vice-Chair of the 20th ITC Specialist Seminar on Network Virtualization (ITC-SS20, 18-20 May 2009, Hoi An, Viet-Nam) and a Member of the Organizing Committee of IEEE/IFIP IM 2009 (1-5 June 2009, Long Island, NY, USA). I have been a TPC Member of various conferences such as IEEE Globecom 2008 and ICC 2009, ACM Symposium on Applied Computing (SAC 2009).

My previous life
Before joining France Télécom, I worked in 1979 in a subsidiary of the Alstom Group where I coordinated and developed anti-heaving systems for oil drilling research in the North Sea. In 1980, I then spent one year at UMIST, the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, Manchester (UK) on a sabbatical leave granted by INRIA, the French Institute on Computer Science and Control Engineering.

Awards and recognition
I have been nominated for the "Engineer of the Year" in France in 1995 and was awarded by SEE, the French Society of Electronical and Electrical Engineers, the Blondel Medal in 1996 for my contribution in traffic engineering and management. I was also awarded the Ampère Medal by SEE in 2003 for my involvement in the Scientific Community.

I have got several awards within France Telecom, in particular as a contributor of the Program on Intelligent Networks which received the Research Prize in 1995.