On April 10, 2026, TU Delft hosted the TUM-TUD Joint Doctoral Seminar, welcoming Prof. Jörg Ott's Connected Mobility group from TU Munich for a full day of research exchange with the Networked Systems and Cybersecurity groups at TU Delft. The seminar was co-organized by Nitinder Mohan, Fernando Kuipers, and Georgios Smaragdakis.
A Discussion-Driven Format
Designed as an intentionally small, discussion-driven format, the seminar brought together 30+ PhD researchers for 16 talks structured around four thematic sessions:
- Satellite & Non-Terrestrial Networks — reproducible network testbeds, Starlink content delivery, 5G/6G NTN O-RAN measurements, and lessons from Dagstuhl on Connected Space.
- 5/6G Architecture — cell-free network channel prediction, 6G core sustainability, knowledge graphs for mobile-core observability, and process-based monitoring for the O-Cloud.
- Edge & Orchestration — adaptive selective inference at the edge (ASIDE), energy-efficient MEC offloading (mApp), multi-RAT resilience strategies, and adaptive 6G telemetry.
- Security & Privacy — QUIC website fingerprinting, short-flow TCP acceleration, and emerging measurement challenges.
Each talk was deliberately kept to 10 minutes plus 5 minutes of Q&A, with the goal of surfacing open problems and ongoing work rather than polished results. The format gave PhD students room to share early-stage ideas and receive direct feedback from peers tackling adjacent questions on the other side.
The day closed with a Profs Panel featuring Jörg Ott, Nitinder Mohan, Georgios Smaragdakis, and Fernando Kuipers, reflecting on the trajectory of edge and 6G research and the role doctoral seminars play in shaping it.
Continuing the Conversation Over Dinner
The seminar wrapped with a group dinner in central Delft — an opportunity for both cohorts to continue conversations started in the seminar room in a more relaxed setting. These informal interactions are where many of the most productive collaborations begin, and the evening lived up to that expectation.
The seminar reinforces a long-standing research partnership between the two groups across edge computing, non-terrestrial networks, and Internet measurements, and lays the groundwork for joint publications, student exchanges, and shared infrastructure efforts in the year ahead.
