The annual Excellence awards for delegates in 3GPP have been presented by the Working Group Chairs during the recent meetings in Seville (SA5) and Athens (RAN2, SA2 and CT4).

Håkan Palm, RAN2

As a leading RAN2 control plane expert and the NR RRC specification rapporteur (TS38.331), Håkan Palm continues to put an enormous amount of work to ensure that the specification continues to be of high quality, accurate, and most importantly that the ASN.1 compiles and can be used by implementations in the field.   

Diana Pani, WG RAN2 Chair observed that “with more and more features added to NR over the last three releases, the complexity of the spec has significantly increased, and culminated with Rel-18 that introduced an extremely large number of features across all RAN WGs.   As we approach the end of Rel-18, Hakan’s role has to be recognized. The work he puts into his task as rapporteur to keep RRC a world class specification and the work he is currently putting in to organize the ASN.1 review is truly amazing and something which deserves the 3GPP Excellence Award.”  

Yizhi Yao, SA5

Yizhi Yao has made major contributions in 2023 on AI/ML management as Prime rapporteur and Management Data Analytics (Phase 2) and 5G performance measurements and KPIs (Phase 3) – both as Secondary rapporteur.

WG SA5 Chair Lan Zou notes that “In the Rel-18 the ’Study on AI/ML management’ was one of the most complicated topics in SA5. The study was successfully concluded in 2023 with the great coordination efforts from Yizhi Yao. The corresponding work item ‘AI/ML management’ is expected to be finalized within the Rel-18 time frame. Looking forward, during the preparation of Rel-19 work, he has also taken the moderator role to facilitate the corresponding Rel-19 “AI/ML management phase2” topic discussion, managing to reach group agreement on the objectives for further study in the area.”

Qi Caixia, CT4

One of the major contributors in CT4, Qi Caixia has held a number of work item rapporteurships including EDGE_Ph2 in Release 18. She also holds the pen on several 29 series Studies and Technical Specifications.

“Qi Caixia has a highly developed moral compass – working respectfully across companies and nationalities to maintain the focus on making world class specifications. Her personality and knowledge impress everyone, she is calm and polite and moves the work forward expertly – Caixia you are the perfect representative of the spirit of this community” said Song Yue, WG CT4 Chair.

Jinguo Zhu, SA2

“Jinguo has played a very active role in both the completion of Release 18 and the content definition of Release 19 this year. He always behaves in a fair, calm and consensus-building way, even when controversial issues need to be handled in high-pressure situations.” says Andrew Bennett, WG SA2 Chair.

He was Moderator of two Rel-19 SID candidates during Q3 and Q4 – The study on ‘UPF enhancement for Exposure’ and ‘SBA Phase 2, Study on Improvements of network controlled Network Slice Selection’.

Jinguo Zhu was also Rapporteur of a TEI18 item ‘Enhancement of NSAC for maximum number of UEs with at least one PDU session/PDN connection’ and Primary rapporteur for Network Slicing Phase 3, continuing his long-standing and active leadership of this complex topic over a number of releases.

See the complete 3GPP Excellence Award Roll-of-honour at https://www.3gpp.org/about-us/achievement-awards/excellence-award