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As an interdisciplinary research center, WNCG supports research with applications in several areas. Our faculty and students are leading the way in topics from 6G to artificial intelligence and machine learning, to healthcare technology and beyond. WNCG graduate students showcased some of their work in a virtual open house for affiliates last fall. In lieu of a traditional poster session, the students filmed five-minute videos introducing their research. Check out a curated selection of our students’ research videos on WNCG’s YouTube channel here.

WNCG students Akash Doshi and Manan Gupta have been named winners in the 2021 Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship (QIF) North America Program. Doshi and Gupta proposed the project “Federated Generative Learning for Channel Estimation in mmWave and THz systems.” The pair was one of 16 winners chosen from 43 teams of finalists. “We are extremely honored to have been selected as the recipients of this prestigious fellowship,” Gupta said. “We look forward to working with Qualcomm to develop impactful and innovative wireless technology.”

IBM recently announced the awardees of this year’s IBM Ph.D. Fellowship Program. WNCG student Tianlong Chen was among only 16 students selected worldwide for 2021. According to IBM, the Fellowship Awards Program is “intensely competitive.” Awardees are exceptional Ph.D. students conducting research in promising and disruptive technologies, particularly: Hybrid Cloud; Quantum Computing / Quantum Systems; Artificial Intelligence; Cloud / Open Source Technologies; Security / Cyber Security; Data Science; and Systems.

Texas ECE sat down with WNCG alumna Dr. Kalpana Seshadrinathan (PhD, 2008) to discuss her career in electrical and computer engineering. Seshadrinathan is part of the team that received a 2020 Technology & Engineering Emmy® Award. TELL US A BIT ABOUT YOURSELF.

WNCG student Nithin Ramesan received the Best Student Paper Award at the 18th International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad Hoc and Wireless Networks (WiOpt 2020).  This is the second year in a row that the award has gone to a WNCG student. Ramesan’s winning paper, "Wireless Queues in Poisson Interference Fields: the Continuum Between Zero and Infinite Mobility," was co-authored with his advisor, Prof. François Baccelli.

WNCG student Lakshay Narula received the Walter R. Fried Memorial Award for Best Paper at the 2020 IEEE/ION PLANSx Conference. The award recognizes “substantial contribution to the technology of navigation and positioning equipment, systems, or practices” judged on criteria including technical content, innovation, importance of topic, and writing quality. Narula’s winning paper, “Automotive-Radar-Based 50-cm Urban Positioning,” demonstrated how self-driving cars can use commercially-available, low-cost automotive radars to improve navigation.

WNCG student Ian Roberts has been awarded the National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. The NSF program identifies researchers “anticipated to become knowledge experts who can contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering.”

Ph.D. student Jessica Hoffmann received second place in the INFORMS Nicholson Student Paper competition. She received the award for her recent paper "Learning Graphs from Noisy Epidemic Cascades" with her advisor, WNCG professor Constantine Caramanis.Epidemics are a powerful framework for modeling human and computer viruses, as well as influence, rumors, information and disinformation.

WNCG alumnus Ahmed Kord has been named to the 2020 Forbes 30 Under 30 List in Science. Kord received the designation for the work he completed as a Graduate Research Assistant developing a new class of magnet-less circulators, which are smaller and enable more applications. Circulators are crucial for devices to transmit and receive data at the same time. Kord was the recipient of the 2018 IEEE MTTS Fellowship for this research. Dr. Kord received his Ph.D. from Texas ECE under the supervision of Prof. Andrea Alù. He is currently a postdoctoral research scientist at Columbia University.

Prof. Zak Kassas was among the recipients of the Office of Naval Research’s (ONR) Young Investigator Awards for 2019. The Young Investigator Program identifies early tenure-track academic scientists and engineers “who show exceptional promise for doing creative research.” Those considered must have received their doctorate or equivalent degree on or after January 1, 2012. Of over 260 applicants to the highly competitive program, only 25 researchers were selected.