From August 1997 to July 1999, I was employed by the CCSR as a Research Fellow, which meant a slightly better salary than the student grant. I completed my PhD (January 1999) in the Centre for Communication Systems Research (CCSR), University of Surrey investigating traffic and congestion control functions for satellite ATM networks with emphasis on guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS). As a result of my research I have more than twenty publications at international conferences including papers published in books. I participated at the Management Committee (MC) meetings of COST Action 253 Service-Efficient Network Interconnection via Satellite, coordinating WG2 Network Architecture. The results of this work have been published in a book.

After a while as post-doc in the university, the recommendation by most friends was that I should move to industry to get some hands-on experience. So, I joined Nortel Networks Broadband Satellite Network Division as Senior Research/Systems Engineer in July 1999. My main responsibility was to write system requirements for the Astra broadband satellite network and to lead the definition of the systems IP architecture. At the peak of the Telecoms boom Nortel Networks decided to decrease their activity in the satellite area to concentrate more on their terrestrial core business.

After two interviews in the US I joined Intelsat in July 2000 as Senior Network Engineer to work on the Broadband Satellite programme. In July 2001 when Intelsat changed from an Inter-Governmental-Organization to a commercial I was promoted to Principal Systems/Network Engineer and joined the Telecommunications Service Development group. In 2002, I applied and was offered the position as Network Management Systems Project Manager in the Network Engineering and Implementation group. (more)