John Strassner

CTO and VP, Standards and Industry Development, Futurewei at Futurewei Technologies, Inc.

Santa Clara, California, United States

About John Strassner

John Strassner is CTO and VP, Standards and Industry Development, Futurewei at Futurewei Technologies, Inc. Location: Santa Clara, California, United States.

For nearly four decades, my professional mandate has been closing the gap between advanced theoretical computer science and commercial-scale telecommunications infrastructure. As Chief Technology Officer at Futurewei Technologies, I direct strategic initiatives in disruptive ICT research spanning autonomic systems, policy-based management, software architecture, neuro-symbolic systems, and next-generation network intelligence. My current focus is integrating Neuro-Symbolic Artificial Intelligence into wireless network infrastructures. As Chair of the ATIS AI Network Applications Initiative, I lead a cross-industry coalition developing NESY, a Neuro-Symbolic Cognitive Assistant designed specifically for next-generation networks. Using a Reactive-Deliberative-Reflective framework, this architecture addresses the high-dimensional data complexities of 6G by combining the perceptual power of deep neural networks with the verifiable, transparent logic of symbolic reasoning to reduce "black box" LLM vulnerabilities in AI-driven network operations. It provides explainable decision-time executable governance and is applicable for cybersecurity applications. My key contributions include: Global Standards Leadership: Distinguished Fellow of the MEF Forum (now Mplify Alliance) for contributions to orchestration, policy management, and Domain-Specific Languages for Intent Networking. Distinguished Fellow of the TM Forum for work in autonomic and autonomous systems, policy management, and ZOOM. I contribute to ATIS Quantum, Cyber, NGA, and Zero Trust initiatives. Technical Manager of ETSI ENI. Contribute to CSA. Architectural Innovation: PTL of OpenStack Congress and the inventor of Directory Enabled Networks (DEN/DEN-ng), which advanced policy-driven network provisioning. I received Futurewei’s global Most Innovative Project award for intent-driven network DSLs. Executive Scaling & Corporate Strategy: I have driven corporate strategy, M&A, and R&D pipelines as VP and Fellow at Motorola, a Fellow at Cisco, and as the Chief Strategy Officer at IntelliDEN (acquired by IBM in 2010). Intellectual Property Generation: Fully tenured Professor in AI and Computer Science, authored 2 books and 340+ refereed publications, PRB chair at Cisco, Motorola, and Futurewei with 58 patents granted or pending in systems abstractions, policy control, and intelligent network management. Top Skills: Neuro-Symbolic AI · Cognitive Networks and Systems · 6G Networks · Autonomic Technologies · Policy-Driven Orchestration · Software Architecture

Skills

  • Distributed Systems
  • Algorithms
  • Telecommunications

Additional experience

  • Chief Technical Officer

    Futurewei Technologies, Inc.

Education

  • , University of Southern California
  • Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), WIT