Dr. Bernardo Huberman, a technology pioneer and futurist whose inventions have affected business and residential behaviors, will be a special guest speaker during the Opening General Session of SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo^® 2018 on Tuesday, Oct. 23, in Atlanta, the Society of Cable Telecommunications Engineers (SCTE) and its global arm, the International Society of Broadband Experts (ISBE), announced today.

Dr. Huberman, Fellow and vice president of the Core Innovation Team for CableLabs^®, will address how Silicon Valley and the cable and telecommunications industry can jointly ride the tidal wave of Artificial Intelligence and Internet of Things technologies to unlock new areas of growth. During a conversation with Light Reading Editor Jeff Baumgartner, Dr. Huberman will discuss the opportunities around such areas as AI, data analytics, driverless vehicles and drones and network virtualization, as well as how Silicon Valley’s energy management research aligns with the cable industry’s Energy 2020^® program. 

“Cable and Silicon Valley play pivotal, complementary roles in transforming consumers’ lives through technology,” said Kevin Hart, executive vice president and Chief Product and Technology Officer for Cox Communications. “Dr. Bernardo Huberman’s 360-degree view of innovation will sharpen our audience’s focus on the breakthrough opportunities ahead and how our industry can capitalize on them.”

“No infrastructure has been more foundational than the cable telecom network in helping connected technologies achieve scale,” said Dr. Huberman.  “To optimize time to market and ROI across the entire ecosystem, our industries must create an environment in which network evolution, industry standards and workforce skills are in step with technology innovation.”

With CableLabs, Dr. Huberman leads innovation efforts in the areas of artificial intelligence, PHY and MAC layer communications network technologies, and Software Defined Networking and Network Functions Virtualization. Previously, he was senior vice president and Senior Fellow at Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company, and director of the Mechanisms and Design Lab at HP Labs.

Dr. Huberman began his career as a physicist and was one of the discoverers of chaos in numerous physical systems. During a career in which he has earned four dozen patents, he has uncovered the nature of electronic markets, designed novel mechanisms for enhancing privacy and trust in e-commerce negotiations, and invented ePrint—the first system to allow remote printing from a mobile device anywhere in the world. Dr. Huberman received his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Pennsylvania.

“Dr. Bernardo Huberman’s work truly has been groundbreaking,” said Mark Dzuban, president and CEO of SCTE•ISBE.  “Throughout his career, he has demonstrated a remarkable ability to envision new possibilities that exceed the limits of current technology, break new ground in innovation and create new opportunities for companies to engage with their customers.”

Dr. Huberman’s guest appearance completes a heavyweight Opening General Session. In addition to Hart, the opening session already features a keynote by Pat Esser, president of Cox Communications, as well as a landmark panel featuring: Michael Powell, president and CEO of NCTA–The Internet & Television Association; Phil McKinney, president and CEO of CableLabs; and Dzuban.  The panel will be moderated by Tony Werner, president, Technology, Product, Xperience, Comcast Cable.  Further insights will be provided by two all-CEO panels in Innovation Theater:  an opening panel during which NTCA’s Shirley Bloomfield, NCTC’s Rich Fickle, and ACA’s Matt Polka will discuss success strategies for small, midsize, and rural markets (moderated by Cablefax publisher Mike Grebb); and a panel featuring Cable ONE’s Julie Laulis and AlcaCruz’s Emily Ward, moderated by The Cable Center’s Jana Henthorn. In addition, Vernice “FlyGirl” Armour, America’s first African American female combat pilot, will bring her message of “going gutsy” to achieve breakthrough results to the Annual Awards Luncheon on Wednesday, Oct. 24.

Scheduled from Monday, Oct. 22 through Thursday, Oct. 25 at Atlanta’s Georgia World Congress Center, SCTE•ISBE Cable-Tec Expo is renowned as the pre-eminent venue that combines the thought leadership, engineering innovation, and deal-making that power the technological future of broadband telecommunications.  As a nexus for content and service providers, technology partners, and industry experts, Expo provides rich insights into technologies, products, and services that can generate revenue, streamline operations, and increase customer satisfaction.