Momentum Builds for ORAN-TWIN at BCU: A Day of Innovation, Impact, and New Partnerships

On the 14th of May, Birmingham City University BCU team had the pleasure to host the 3rd face-to-face meeting for the collaborative project, EPSRC CHEDDAR Hub ORAN-TWIN, which brought together three partner universities: University of Surrey (Lead), University of York and University of Leeds, to showcase how ORAN-TWIN tackles the challenge by building a network digital twin (NDT) for ORAN.

ORAN-TWIN has been productive and creative: 10 months now, with 10+ IEEE Trans journal publications, 15+ high-rank Conference presentations, organised 3 international workshops, and supported demo in MWC25 and 2 more successful bids; This time we have also invited and introduced “new” industrial partners, including Keysight Technologies, Digital Catapult, TrainFX Ltd and Black Space Technology, to foster extended collaborations.

ORAN-TWIN partners Mohammad Shojafar, Hamed Ahmadi, Syed Ali Raza Zaidi, Chuan Heng Foh presented impactful achievements, and we very much enjoyed the follow-up round table discussion with BCU PVC Professor Maxine Lintern, and explored the BCU Strategy and Vision and how to co-create impacts and partnerships. During the workshop, we also run networking/student poster sessions and made them open to wider teams to engage and interact.

It was a great pleasure with full of fruitful conversations, collaborative ideas and opportunities, and it was wonderful to network with so many enthusiastic partners internally and externally. The ORAN-TWIN team is looking forward to seeing more collaborations progress and strong momentum as we move ahead.