As a Lead Architect and Technology Strategy Manager, Ali Tizghadam is responsible for strategizing and developing new directions (mainly software-defined) in backbone network data and traffic management at TELUS. Presently, Ali and his team are using most recent advances in Big Data and Software Defined Networking to characterise the network. traffic and to optimize the end-to-end traffic flow assignment accordingly. Ali has designed a graduate course – Service Provider Networks – to bridge the gap between understanding of networks in academic area an service provider’s domain. He is currently teaching this course in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Toronto. Moreover, he has led the design and implementation of a University-based platform (Connected Vehicles and Smart Transportation - CVST) to collect and process transportation network data and to deliver intelligence for transportation practitioners. Ali received his M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Tehran (1994) and University of Toronto (2009), respectively. Between his M.A.Sc. and Ph.D. studies he worked in the industry for about 10 years, where he gained an abundance of experience in different aspects of networking from telecommunication networks to transport systems and power grids. In that period of time Ali was appointed as the director of an R&D department, where he lead a team of engineers to develop an award winning digital local exchange that is still operational in middle east.
