Thomas Erich Zinner

Thomas Erich Zinner is Professor at the Department of Information Security and Communication Technology, Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), a position held since August 2019. Previously, he served as visiting professor and head of the FG INET research group at TU Berlin, and led the 'Next Generation Networks' research group at the University of Würzburg's Communication Networks chair.

His educational background includes a diploma (2006) and Ph.D. (2012), both from the University of Würzburg. His research spans network architecture performance evaluation with emphasis on SDN/NFV and QoE-centric management approaches for emerging networks.

Zinner's recent publications reveal strong trends toward intelligent 6G architectures integrating AI in the user plane, QoE-aware 5G resource allocation, and autonomic management of softwarized networks. His work combines theoretical modeling, simulation frameworks like OMNeT++, and practical implementations focused on real-world applicability in beyond-5G systems.

He leads the Networking Research Group at NTNU working on the TeraFlow project, developing secure cloud-native SDN controllers for autonomic traffic management at massive scale. This initiative addresses critical challenges in next-generation network infrastructure through innovative controller architectures and flow management techniques.