Edward Mutafungwa

Edward is working in the ICT and Electronics team at Spinverse as a Senior Project Manager.

He has over 15 years experience in preparation, implementation and management of R&D&I projects that aim to leverage communication technologies for different vertical segments. This includes projects funded by local and international R&D&I funding instruments, such as, European Commission (FP6, FP7, Horizon 2020 and Horizon Europe), Business Finland, Eureka Clusters (Celtic, Celtic-Plus) and Finland Ministry of Foreign Affairs (HEI ICI programme).

Prior to joining Spinverse, Edward was a Staff Scientist and Project Manager at Aalto University with applied research interests that included analysing how advances in progressive mobile technology generations (particularly, 4G, 5G and beyond) impact various vertical industries (and vice versa). To that end, he was involved in formulation of multi-stakeholder technology-driven R&D&I projects that demanded a grasp of the operational requirements, trends, and ecosystems of diverse vertical sectors, as well as, scouting industry, public sector and academic collaborators in those areas.

The aforementioned diversity in terms of vertical sectors is particularly exemplified in EC-funded RIA/IA reference projects, such as, those related to automotive (e.g., connected and automated mobility in H2020 5G-MOBIX), public safety (e.g., leveraging immersion of connected drones in H2020 PriMO-5G and H2020 TERAWAY), health (e.g., connected personal health systems FP7 PRECIOUS and H2020 RICHFIELDS) and manufacturing (e.g., intelligent swarm production systems in HEU Zero-SWARM). Moreover, with the H2020 Global5G.org CSA project he contributed work at an EC program-level for the 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership (5G PPP) Technology Board, notably on the portfolio analysis of the use cases and standards impact of 5G-PPP projects.  

Edward received his DSc (Technology) degree in Communications Engineering from the Helsinki University of Technology TKK (now Aalto University), Finland, MSc degree in Telecommunications and Information Systems and BEng degree in Electronic Systems Engineering (Telecommunications), both from the University of Essex, Great Britain. He has been a lecturer or instructor on optical networks and mobile communication systems, in Finland and various African countries. Furthermore, he has authored or co-authored over 80 conference publications, journal and magazine articles, book chapters, as well as technology white papers.

In his spare time, Edward enjoys football, basketball, music and growing vegetables on an allotment garden.