Dr. Filippos Balasis is a research engineer specializing in optical networking, SDN, and network automation, with strong expertise in mathematical modeling and optimization for next-generation communication systems. He holds a PhD and an MSc in Computer Systems and Network Engineering from Waseda University, Japan, and a Diploma in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the National Technical University of Athens. His experience spans both industry and research, including work on SDN agents, optical network control, and transmission impairment modeling at KDDI Research, as well as earlier experience as part of the team responsible for the expansion and maintenance of OTE’s access network. For the ten months prior to joining OCSN, he worked as a senior research consultant at Lenovo, contributing to the EU-funded FLECON-6G project and acting as a delegate to 3GPP SA5, with a focus on network management, automation, and standardization.