The Centre for Alumni Relations and Resource Generation of the National Institute of Technology Rourkela organized an IEEE Communication Society Distinguished Lecture on “5G Networks: Opportunities and Challenges” on 07-March-2019 by Prof. Ashutosh Dutta. Prof. Dutta is a Senior Wireless Communication Systems Research Scientist and Lawrence Hafstad Fellow at Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Labs (JHU/ APL), Maryland USA, and also an alumnus of NIT Rourkela. He also participated in a pre-talk 5G sensitization discussion session with faculty members of NIT Rourkela to explore the possibilities of furthering 5G research. The meeting was chaired by Dr. Shantanu Kumar Behera, Associate Dean, Alumni Relations.

Dr. Dutta presented his valuable lecture describing the stateof- the-art of 5G research and discussed the immense possibilities of fast and reliable communication with 5G. Prof. Dutta lucidly explained the architectural differences of 5G from its previous generations. More than 50 faculty members and scholars of the Institute attended the talk. Prof. Dutta highlighted potential areas of real-time communication that can be made possible by 5G technology. The societal impact and expected coverage of 5G technology in developing countries such as India within a couple of years was discussed. In addition to his technical talk, he also provided an overview of the IEEE Future Networks Initiative and various roadmap activities that faculty and researchers can get involved with and contribute to.

The talk was technically co-sponsored by the IEEE Computational Intelligence Society Intelligent System Application Technical Committee. On behalf of IEEE CIS ISATC, Vice-chair Dr. Sambit Bakshi hosted him and thanked him for his visit to NIT Rourkela and the valuable talk and interaction.