Panelist and 2023 IEEE Theodore W. Hissey Outstanding Young Professional Award Recipient recognized for contributions in telecommunications research and innovation, leading to commercialization while inspiring tomorrow’s young technology leaders through STEM volunteering work.
Anna Zakrzewska is a senior principal engineer at the Telecom Co-Innovation Expert Centre at Dell Technologies in Dublin, Ireland. She leads company standardization efforts in O-RAN Alliance Workgroup 6 (Cloudification and Orchestration) and Workgroup 10 (OAM), contributes to network management solutions and projects with external partners.
Prior to joining Dell, Anna worked as a research scientist at Nokia Bell Labs (formerly Alcatel-Lucent Bell Labs) in Ireland. She also has research experience from NTT Communication Science Laboratories as a Vulcanus in Japan scholar, and Joint Research Centre in Italy. Since 2016 she has served as an expert consultant for European Commission, reviewing research and commercialization proposals related to wireless communications.
Anna holds M.Sc. Eng. degree in information and communication technologies from Wroclaw University of Technology, Poland (2008) and Ph.D. degree from Technical University of Denmark (2014). Her work has been recognized with several scholarships, paper awards and resulted in 10 patent applications. She is a Senior Member of IEEE (2019).
Anna specializes in wireless communications, systems engineering and network management, with a focus on heterogeneous and self-organising networks. She holds several patents in those domains, three of those were commercialized and implemented in the products of Alcatel-Lucent and Nokia.
Her patented cell ID allocation technique brought differentiating features to Motive Small Cell Optimisation Engine. It is compliant with multiple radio access network technologies and applicable to multi-vendor small cell deployments. This universal centralized method significantly lowers the number of conflicting assignments, and consequently lowers the interference and call drop probability. The solution also included a coordination scheme between three key SON functions in femtocell networks: cell ID assignment, coverage adjustment, and idle mode control ensuring stability and continuity of network operations, even with contradictory objectives of those functions.
Another successful tech transfer includes a Wi-Fi channel selection method maximizing channel bonding opportunities, thus enabling the use of wider bandwidths, and resulting in higher throughput. This idea was implemented as a feature of Nokia Whole Home Wi-Fi Beacon access points.
These solutions have been widely adopted by major telecom operators worldwide (including AT&T and T-Mobile among others), improving connectivity and quality of experience for millions of users. Anna’s contributions were recognized as “Outstanding Achievement”, and she was named as one of the “Top 10 Women in EMEA” within Alcatel-Lucent (2016).
Anna enjoys speaking about technology and as a STEM ambassador volunteers much of her time for outreach activities. She focuses her efforts mainly on encouraging and promoting STEM education among students at the primary and secondary level, both in Ireland and internationally. A few examples of her engagement include BT Young Scientist & Technology Exhibition, Technovation and Dell STEM Aspire programme.