Tomaso de Cola – Area Director, SIS

Tomaso de Cola is the Area Director of the Space Internetworking Services Area (SIS).

Tomaso de Cola received the master degree and PhD title from University of Genoa (Italy) in 2001 and 2010 respectively. He worked from 2002 to 2007 with the Italian Consortium of Telecommunications (CNIT), University of Genoa Research Unit, as scientist researcher. Since 2008, he has been with the German Aerospace Center (DLR), where he has been involved in several projects funded by EU and ESA programs, focusing on different aspects of DVB standards, CCSDS protocols, emergency communications, and testbed design. He is currently leading the integrated satellite systems group at the satellite networks departments, as part of the DLR institute of communications and navigation (DLR-KN). 

Tomaso de Cola has been taking part in different standardization activities within ETSI, IETF, DVB, and CCSDS, where he currently serves as area director of the Space Internetworking Services (SIS). He has been involved in many projects (co-)funded by European and Italian Space agencies and European Commission, where he served as project leader, project coordinator, or technical contributor. Finally, he is co-author of more than 100 papers, including international conferences and journals. His main research activity concerns: TCP/IP protocols, satellite networks, delay tolerant networks, and protocol architectures for space systems. 

Dr. de Cola has served on the Technical Program Committee at many IEEE International Conferences and as TPC chair for the satellite track in many ICC and Globecom editions. He has also been guest editor for many IEEE journals and magazines. He is an IEEE ComSoc member, where he served as chair of the Satellite and Space Communications (SSC) technical Committee (TC) from 2017 to 2020. He is also recipient of the 2020 Satellite Communications Distinguished Service award from the aforementioned SSC technical committee.