This page shows the MAIN 2026 program, including the program at a glance and the detailed program. All times in the program refer to Central European Summer Time (CEST, UTC+2). To check when an event takes place in your time zone, simply click on the corresponding time, service courtesy of worldtimebuddy.com.

Program Overview

The program includes keynote speeches, panel discussions, technical sessions, and networking opportunities.

Day 1 — Wednesday, 1 July 2026

09:00 – 09:30
Welcome
09:30 – 10:30
Keynote 1: Ian Akyildiz
10:30 – 11:00
Coffee break
11:00 – 12:15
Technical Session 1: Resource Allocation, Caching, and Scheduling
12:15 – 13:00
Technical Session 2: Traffic Prediction and Anomaly Detection
13:00 – 14:30
Lunch break
14:30 – 15:45
Technical Session 3: Security and Privacy
15:45 – 16:00
Coffee break
16:00 – 17:45
Technical Session 4: IoT, Sensing, and Wireless Power

Day 2 — Thursday, 2 July 2026

09:30 – 10:30
Keynote 2: Andra Lutu
10:30 – 11:00
Coffee break
11:00 – 12:15
Technical Session 5: AI for Network Design, Modeling, and Management
12:15 – 13:00
Technical Session 6: Vehicular Networks
13:00 – 14:30
Lunch break
14:30 – 15:30
Panel with Steering Committee members and Invited Speakers
15:30 – 15:45
Coffee break
15:45 – 17:30
PhD Workshop

Day 3 — Friday, 3 July 2026

09:30 – 10:30
Keynote 3: Shiqiang Wang
10:30 – 11:00
Coffee break
11:00 – 12:15
Technical Session 7: Wireless Networks, Positioning, and Networking
12:15 – 13:00
Technical Session 8: Security and Resilience
13:00 – 13:15
Closing
13:15 – 14:30
Lunch

Detailed Technical Program

Day 1 — Wednesday, 1 July 2026

Keynote 1

09:30 – 10:30

From Digital Twins to Cognitive Twins: Closing the Metacognitive Loop for 6G and Beyond Wireless Systems, by Ian Akyildiz

Technical Session 1: Resource Allocation, Caching, and Scheduling

11:00 – 12:15

Strategic Demand and Congestion Pricing in Shared Computation Systems by Pietro Meneghini, Riccardo Dal Maschio and Alessandro Buratto (University of Padova, Italy); Leonardo Badia (Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy)

Towards Multi-Model LLM Schedulers: Empirical Insights into Offloading and Preemption by Mert Yildiz (University of Rome Sapienza, Italy); Pietro Spadaccino (La Sapienza Università di Roma, Italy); Alexey Rolich and Francesca Cuomo (University of Rome Sapienza, Italy); Andrea Baiocchi (University of Roma Sapienza, Italy)

Optimistic Online Caching with Switching Costs and Dynamic Batched Requests by Xufeng Zhang (Inria, France & Université Côte d’Azur, France); Guodong Sun, Francescomaria Faticanti, Sara Alouf and Giovanni Neglia (Inria, France)

Technical Session 2: Traffic Prediction and Anomaly Detection

12:15 – 13:00

Event-Driven Traffic Forecasting in FTTH Networks by Daniele Baccega (University of Turin, Italy); Paolo Castagno (Università Degli Studi di Torino, Italy); Edoardo Acquarone (University of Turin, Italy); Matteo Sereno (University of Torino, Italy); Francesca Parasecolo (Open Fiber, Italy); Sara Mazzarella (OpenFiber SpA, Italy); Francesco Carpentieri (Open Fiber, Italy); Claudio Valenti and Alessandro Dellaqueva (OpenFiber SpA, Italy)

Trace: An Unsupervised Temporal Approach for Invalid Ad Traffic Detection by Jorge Marco (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain & Universidad Complutense de Madrid, Spain); Ruben Cuevas Rumin and Ángel Cuevas (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)

Technical Session 3: Security and Privacy

14:30 – 15:45

Feasibility and Security of AAG-Type Key Exchange Protocols in 5G Networks by Ersoy Kıvanc (Free University of Berlin, Germany); Giuseppe Filippone (Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy); Silvia Schilleci (University of Study of Palermo, Italy); Mariana Falco (University of Palermo, Italy); Giovanni Falcone (Universita Degli Studi di Palermo, Italy); Domenico Garlisi (University of Palermo, Italy & CNIT Italian National Consortium for Telecommunications, Italy)

On the Effects of Online Black-Box Attacks Against Mobile Network Traffic Capacity Forecasters Under Temporal Constraints by Louis Miermont, Claudio Fiandrino and Guillermo Suarez-Tangíl (IMDEA Networks Institute, Spain)

Reducing Mobility Trace Identifiability via Stochastic Roaming in IEEE 802.11 Networks by Juan Manuel Montes-Lopez (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain); Isabel Schwein (IMDEA Networks, Spain); Marco Gramaglia and Pablo Serrano (Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain)

Technical Session 4: IoT, Sensing, and Wireless Power

16:00 – 17:45

Zigbee vs. Matter over Thread: Understanding IoT Protocol Performance in Practice by Massimo Nobile, Fabio Palmese, Antonio Boiano, Alessandro E. C. Redondi and Matteo Cesana (Politecnico di Milano, Italy)

Wake Sound Spotting in Internet of Things by Manuele Favero (Università Degli Studi di Padova, Italy); Leonardo Badia (Università degli Studi di Padova, Italy); Luciano Murrone (Ogenus SRL, Italy); Sergio Canazza (University of Padova, Italy)

Optimal Beam Partitioning and Scheduling for SWIPT Networks by Biagio Boi and Christian Esposito (University of Salerno, Italy); Gustavo de Veciana (The University of Texas at Austin, USA)

Delay-Doppler Domain Feature Extraction for Explainable Wi-Fi Activity Recognition via SVM by Elena Tonini (University of Brescia, Italy); Renato Lo Cigno (University of Brescia & CNIT – Consorzio Nazionale Interuniversitario Telecomunicazioni, Italy); Emanuele Viterbo (Monash University, Australia)

Day 2 — Thursday, 2 July 2026

Keynote 2

09:30 – 10:30

From National Coverage to Global Platforms: Evolving the Mobile Network Architecture, by Andra Lutu

Technical Session 5: AI for Network Design, Modeling, and Management

11:00 – 12:15

NeuroFlexMLP: A Low Complexity MLP Architecture for Long-Term Time Series Forecasting by Pablo Fernández Pérez, Claudio Fiandrino, Marco Fiore and Joerg Widmer (IMDEA Networks Institute, Spain)

A Playground for Benchmarking Agentic AI in Network Management by Stefano Salsano (University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy); Andrea Mayer (University of Rome “Tor Vergata”, Italy); Lorenzo Bracciale (University of Roma “Tor Vergata”, Italy); Pierpaolo Loreti and Giuseppe Bianchi (University of Rome Tor Vergata, Italy)

TANGRAM-AI: An Intelligent Assistant for Performance Modeling and Learning-Based Control by Rosa M M Leão and Edmundo de Souza e Silva (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); Quentin Kyle Chambers (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil); Gaspare Bruno (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil & Anlix, Brazil); Théo Castilho Gounot (Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

Technical Session 6: Vehicular Networks

12:15 – 13:00

Layer Specialization in LSTM Networks for Smart Road-User Interaction Systems in Vehicular Networks by MD Nurnobi Hossain (University of Catania, Italy); Joannes Sam Mertens J (University of Catania, Italy & CNIT-National Inter-University Consortium for Telecommunications, Italy); Giacomo Morabito (University of Catania, Italy)

Repeated Contention Scheduling: A Novel Resource Allocation Algorithm Toward 6G Vehicular Networks by Alexey Rolich, Marco Tricco, Simone Paroli and Mert Yildiz (University of Rome Sapienza, Italy); Andrea Baiocchi (University of Roma Sapienza, Italy)

Panel

14:30 – 15:30

Networking in the ’30s: what research topics will be hot?

Moderated by Marco Ajmone Marsan

Confirmed panelists: Ian Akyildiz, Edmundo de Souza e Silva, Vasos Vassiliou

PhD Workshop

15:45 – 17:30

Students’ presentations and posters

Day 3 — Friday, 3 July 2026

Keynote 3

09:30 – 10:30

Towards Agentic AI at the Edge: Challenges and Opportunities, by Shiqiang Wang

Technical Session 7: Wireless Networks, Positioning, and Networking

11:00 – 12:15

xApp-Driven Multi-Metric Handover in 5G Open RAN with COTS User Equipment by Alessio Vicario (Università degli Studi di Palermo, Italy); Antonino Pagano, Alessandra Dino, Daniele Croce and Ilenia Tinnirello (University of Palermo, Italy)

From 5G Single-Cell Signals to Pervasive Smartphone Positioning: A Real-World Study by Stavros Eleftherakis (New York University Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates); Domenico Giustiniano (IMDEA Networks, Spain); Yuxin Zhao (Ericsson AB, Sweden); Xiaolin Jiang (Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China); Gustav Lindmark (Ericsson AB, Sweden); Fredrik Gunnarsson (Ericsson Research, Sweden)

Assessing the Technical Requisites for Carbon-Aware Routing: Routing Policy Support and RPKI Adoption by Leonardo Maccari (University of Venice, Italy); Filippo Orsi, Annalisa Laini, Alessandro Simonato and Yazan Isam Mohammad Slaila (Ca’ Foscari University of Venice, Italy); Antonia Affinito (University Twente, The Netherlands)

Technical Session 8: Security and Resilience

12:15 – 13:00

Hybrid Adaptive Fuzzy and Neuro-Fuzzy Based Intrusion Detection for Jamming Attacks in IoT Networks by Michael Savva (University of Cyprus, Cyprus); Iacovos Ioannou (Philips University, Cyprus & University of Cyprus and CYENS Centre of Excellence, Cyprus); Vasos Vassiliou (University of Cyprus & CYENS Center of Excellence, Cyprus)

Enabling Classical Detectable Byzantine Broadcast and Consensus Through Quantum Error Correction Circuits by Farzam Nosrati (University of Palermo, Italy); Nicolás Borrajo (ETH Zurich, Switzerland); Antonio Fernández Anta (IMDEA Software Institute, Spain & IMDEA Networks Institute, Spain); Vincenzo Mancuso (University of Palermo, Italy & IMDEA Networks Institute, Spain)

Important information for authors: Authors should prepare a 20-minute presentation, allowing for 5 additional minutes for Q&A.