2026 Marconi Awards & Institute Forums
Location:
Fairmont San Francisco
950 Mason Street
San Francisco, CA 94108
We look forward to welcoming you to San Francisco for the 2026 Marconi Awards Gala & Institute Forums, taking place November 4–6 at the historic Fairmont San Francisco.
The 2026 Marconi Awards Gala & Institute Forums brings together the brightest minds in technology, from pioneering researchers and global executives to policymakers, academics, and innovators, for an unparalleled convergence of ideas, dialogue, and impact.
This year’s expanded program unifies the Marconi Society’s three Institutes—Advanced Wireless, Internet Resilience, Artificial Intelligence—into a Cross-Sector Institute Forum, culminating in the prestigious Marconi Awards Gala celebrating the field’s most transformative contributors.
The 2026 Marconi Awards Gala & Institute Forums are made possible through the generous support of our sponsors and partners. We invite organizations and individuals who share our commitment to advancing technology for the benefit of society to join us as sponsors and collaborators for this landmark gathering.
We hope you will join us in San Francisco as we celebrate innovation, leadership, and the next generation shaping our connected world.
Schedule subject to change as details are confirmed.
Hourly Schedule
Wednesday, November 4, 2026
- 7:00pm - 8:30pm
- Welcome Reception
- An excellent opportunity to connect with fellow attendees, speakers, and sponsors in a relaxed, convivial setting before the Forum programming begins.
Thursday, November 5, 2026
- 8:00am - 9:00am
- Registration
- 9:00am - 9:15am
- Opening Remarks & Forum Welcome
- John Janowiak – President & CEO, Marconi Society
-
Speakers:
John Janowiak
- 9:15am - 10:00am
- Opening Keynotes
- Featuring high-profile voices across Advanced Wireless, AI, and Internet Resilience
- 10:00am - 10:35am
- Why Technical Solutions Alone Cannot Save the Open Internet
- The resilience of the open Internet increasingly depends on the resilience of its wireless access layer. As Wi-Fi, 5G, and shared-spectrum systems become the primary on-ramps to the global network, the Internet’s stability is shaped as much by spectrum policy, wireless standards, and access-network governance as by core Internet protocols. Yet the most significant barriers to a secure, reliable, and open Internet are not technical. They are governance challenges: fragmented accountability across wireless and wireline systems, misaligned incentives between operators and platforms, regulatory frameworks that lag the pace of spectrum innovation, and the absence of widely adopted standards for critical information delivery under degraded or crisis conditions. This session brings together leaders from advanced wireless, Internet governance, and public-interest policy to examine where wireless and Internet resilience are now inseparable — and why the next decade of openness will depend on aligning the governance of both.
- 10:35am - 10:50am
- Networking Break
- 10:50am - 11:30am
- The Internet’s Hidden Vulnerabilities and Who Bears the Consequences
- The greatest threats to Internet resilience do not come from a single catastrophic failure. They come from hidden dependencies — the invisible web of interconnections between power grids, cloud platforms, financial systems, supply chains, and human institutions that quietly underpin every byte of data traveling across the globe. This panel will connect physical infrastructure fragility (subsea cables, power grids, interconnection facilities) to the human and institutional systems that depend on them. Rather than cataloguing every risk, the panel will press toward a shared framework: what does it mean to prioritize resilience investments in infrastructure planning conversations?
- 11:30am - 1:30pm
- Networking Luncheon
- 11:45am - 2:00pm
- Internet Resilience Experts Forum
- By invitation and application only. Please contact Marina Pappas at mpappas@marconisociety.org
- 1:30pm - 1:45pm
- Wireless Industry Keynote
- 1:45pm - 2:15pm
- The Edge-Native Future: Where Wireless, AI, and Distributed Compute Converge
- The next decade of connectivity will be defined by AI running at the edge, networks that learn, and devices that compute autonomously. This panel brings together leaders shaping the stack from silicon to systems to software.
- 2:15pm - 2:30pm
- AI Industry Keynote
- 2:30pm - 3:30pm
- Quantum Information Technology and Quantum Error Correction
- 3:30pm - 3:50pm
- Networking Break
- 3:50pm - 4:30pm
- Legal, Technical, and Operational Strategies Powering Energy Transformation
- The convergence of aging grid systems, explosive demand from AI data centers, accelerating climate pressures, and breakthrough digital technologies is forcing a fundamental rethinking of how power is generated, transmitted, managed, and protected. This session unites voices from industrial technology, independent power, major utilities, and law to examine the real-world strategies, obstacles, and opportunities shaping infrastructure and energy transformation. Panelists will move beyond theory to address what is being built, regulated, contested, and financed today to consider what the future demands.
- 4:30pm - 5:00pm
- Human-Centric Design Frameworks for a Sovereign AI Future
- For decades, technology has been designed for people — built by engineers, deployed by platforms, and handed to communities as a finished product. As artificial intelligence becomes the foundational substrate of our communications, infrastructure, and civic life, the question is no longer simply what should AI do, but who gets to decide. Panelists will explore one of the most promising and underexamined frameworks for answering that question: Participatory Policy Layers — a model in which communities, institutions, industry leaders, and infrastructure providers collaboratively define the guardrails of the AI systems they depend upon. This session examines how human-centric design, sovereign AI strategies, and safety-critical industry practice can work together to ensure that AI remains not merely a corporate asset or government instrument, but a resilient, accountable resource that serves the people it was built to empower.
- 5:00pm - 5:30pm
- Marconi Fellow Keynote
- 5:30pm
- Closing Remarks
- 6:30pm
- Networking Reception
Friday, November 6, 2026
- 8:00am
- Registration
- 9:00am - 9:05am
- Welcome Remarks
- 9:00am - 12:00pm
- AI Executive Forum
- By invitation and application only. Please contact Marina Pappas at mpappas@marconisociety.org
- 9:05am - 9:50am
- 2026 Marconi Fellow Fireside Chat
- A one-on-one conversation with this year’s Marconi Fellow Prize recipient, Robert Calderbank
- 9:50am - 10:25am
- How Wi-Fi, 5G, and Shared Spectrum Are Reshaping Enterprise Connectivity
- As enterprises modernize, the boundary between licensed, unlicensed, and shared spectrum is dissolving. Wi-Fi, private 5G, and CBRS are increasingly deployed together to meet rising demands for reliability, security, and performance. This convergence is not only transforming enterprise connectivity, it is becoming a foundational pillar of Internet resilience and infrastructure resilience. This session brings together leaders shaping this converged spectrum landscape to explore how hybrid architectures, neutral-host models, and next-generation Wi-Fi/5G coexistence are redefining enterprise and public-sector connectivity. Panelists will examine how resilient spectrum strategies, distributed wireless architectures, and shared-spectrum innovation strengthen the continuity, redundancy, and adaptability of the networks that underpin critical services, national infrastructure, and the open Internet.
- 10:25am - 10:45am
- Networking Break
- 10:45am - 11:45am
- Young Scholars Panel
- Hear directly from the 2026 Young Scholar Prize recipients as they discuss forward-looking perspectives on technology’s most pressing challenges
- 11:00am - 3:00pm
- Advanced Wireless Executive Forum
- By invitation and application only. Please contact Elizabeth Hibbler at ehibbler@marconisociety.org
- 11:45am - 1:00pm
- Closing Remarks & Networking Luncheon
- 5:30pm - 6:00pm
- VIP Reception
- Invitation Only
- 6:00pm - 7:00pm
- Welcome Reception
- 7:00pm - 10:00pm
- Marconi Awards Gala
