CHEDDAR Industry Day 2026 concludes with awards celebrating outstanding research

CHEDDAR Industry Day 2026 concluded with a celebration of the researchers and teams behind some of the outstanding posters, demonstrations and presentations displayed throughout the event.

Held at Central Hall Westminster on 10 July, the event brought together researchers, industry leaders and innovators to discuss the technologies, opportunities and challenges shaping the future of advanced connectivity.

Alongside keynote presentations and panel discussions, attendees explored an array of posters and live demonstrations spanning wireless sensing, integrated sensing, communication and powering, sustainable O-RAN, geopolitical resilience and trustworthy artificial intelligence.

The event concluded with a series of awards recognising the quality, creativity and potential impact of the research presented, as well as the exceptional contributions of individuals who have supported the CHEDDAR community.

Poster award winners

Congratulations to the teams recognised for their outstanding posters:

Control-Aware Residual Reservoir Computing for Reusable Multi-Task Wi-Fi CSI Sensing

Zihui Yan, Sharmarke Gabayre, Xiyu Shi and Varuna De Silva
Loughborough University

The research explored a reusable approach to Wi-Fi sensing that can support multiple sensing tasks while improving the adaptability and efficiency of wireless sensing systems.

Dynamic Dual-Domain Resource Allocation for Integrated Sensing, Communication and Powering — 3D-ISCAP

Yathreb Bouazizi, Fatma Benkhelifa, Prabhat Raj Gautam, Jinchao Yang, Zhuangkun Wei and Professor Julie A. McCann
Imperial College London

This work presented a dynamic resource-allocation approach for systems that combine sensing, communication and wireless power transfer.

EcoAgentRAN: Intent-Driven Agentic AI for Energy-Efficiency Optimisation in O-RAN

Abdelaziz Salama, Yejing Fan, Mohammed M. Hameed Qazzaz, Maryam Hafeez and Dr Syed Ali Raza Zaidi
University of Leeds

EcoAgentRAN demonstrated how intent-driven agentic AI could support more intelligent and energy-efficient management of future Open Radio Access Networks.

Demonstration award winners

The live demonstrations gave attendees an opportunity to interact directly with emerging technologies and speak with the researchers developing them.

Congratulations to the demonstration award winners:

Visualising Mobile Operator Connectivity to Understand Geopolitical Resilience

Joshua Levett, Vassilios Vassilakis and Poonam Yadav
University of York

The demonstration explored how mobile operator connectivity can be visualised and analysed to improve understanding of geopolitical dependencies and the resilience of communications infrastructure.

5G Network in a Box

Abdelaziz Salama, Sarat Ahmad, Maryam Hafeez and Dr Syed Ali Raza Zaidi
University of Leeds

The team demonstrated a compact and accessible 5G network platform designed to support research, experimentation and the development of future network applications.

Audience Award

A special congratulations goes to Dr Muhammad Zakir Khan from the University of Glasgow, whose presentation received the Audience Award.

TRUSTED AUTONOMYOPS: Deployment-enabling layer for CHEDDAR trusted autonomous deployment

The presentation focused on a central challenge for future autonomous networks: 6G will allow networks to sense the world around them, from spectrum activity and security threats to events such as a fall in the home—but can we trust what artificial intelligence tells us about those signals?

The work explored TRUSTED AUTONOMYOPS as a deployment-enabling layer designed to support the trusted and autonomous deployment of advanced network technologies within CHEDDAR.

The recognised University of Glasgow team included:

Mr Syed Basit Ali Zaidi, Dr Ali Rizwan, Dr Muhammad Zakir Khan, Professor Qammer H. Abbasi, Dr Shuja Ansari, Professor Ali Imran and Professor Muhammad Ali Imran.

The presentation highlighted the importance of developing AI-enabled systems that are not only accurate and autonomous, but also transparent, explainable, dependable and suitable for trusted real-world deployment.

Star of CHEDDAR Awards

The event also recognised three individuals with special Star of CHEDDAR Awards, celebrating their hard work, commitment and exceptional contribution to the CHEDDAR community.

The awards were presented to:

Professor Hongjian Sun
Professor Qammer H. Abbasi
Dr Syed Ali Raza Zaidi

Their awards recognised the time, energy and dedication they have contributed to supporting CHEDDAR’s research, events, collaborations and wider community.

Professor Qammer H. Abbasi was unable to collect his award in person, and it was received on his behalf by Dr Muhammad Zakir Khan from the University of Glasgow.

The Star of CHEDDAR Awards provided an opportunity to acknowledge not only research excellence, but also the sustained effort, leadership and collaboration that help make the Hub’s activities possible.

Celebrating collaboration and innovation

The poster and demonstration sessions reflected the breadth of research taking place across the advanced connectivity community. They also created valuable opportunities for researchers, industry representatives and policymakers to exchange ideas, explore potential collaborations and discuss how emerging technologies could be translated into real-world impact.

Thank you to everyone who presented a poster, delivered a demonstration, shared their research and contributed questions throughout the event.

The quality and ambition of the work on display demonstrated the creativity, collaboration and technical expertise driving the development of future communications systems.

Congratulations once again to all the award winners and everyone who contributed to CHEDDAR Industry Day 2026.