About: Carol Davids is a research associate professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology where she has taught since 2003. She founded, designed, and directs the Real Time Communications Laboratory which hosts the National Emergency Numbers Association's (NENA) Industry Collaboration Events (ICE) and has been the site of numerous industry-inspired projects, including a patented method for preventing steganographic theft in the media channel of a VoIP/WebRTC session, and a method for identifying the z-coordinate of a smartphone user in a multistory building. She developed and taught courses in 'Telecommunications over Data Networks', 'Data and Network Communications' and 'Multimedia Communications' and initiated courses in WebRTC and Telecommunications.Carol is a graduate of the Columbia School of Engineering and Applied Science and worked for over 30 years in the telecommunications field, starting at AT&T/Illinois Bell/Ameritech and moving to Motorola and then Tellabs during the period when voice and video communications moved away from circuit- and towards packet-switched solutions. There her work focused on transitional solutions to using the cable infrastructure to deliver telecommunications services. She led integration test groups and developed certification test plans for these solutions. During this period, she developed standards with CableLabs, PacketCable and worked as a member of Specialist Task Forces (STF) at the European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI).Carol's focus today is on applications of real time communications technologies to the solution of societal needs such as Next Generation Emergency Services and Smart Homes and Smart Cities.