News

PRESS RELEASE: New 6G Research Center Unites Industry Leaders and UT Wireless Experts Teaming up with industry titans including Samsung, NVIDIA, and more, researchers at The University of Texas at Austin are launching 6G@UT, a new research center to lay the groundwork for 6G, the next generation of wireless technology.

WNCG is happy to announce our newest faculty member, Prof. Nanshu Lu! Prof. Lu joins us from The University of Texas at Austin’s Departments of Aerospace and Biomedical Engineering. She has been with the University of Texas at Austin since 2011 and currently holds the title of Associate Professor. Prof. Lu's research focuses on the mechanics and manufacture of flexible, stretchable, and bio-integrated electronics. Her research team, comprised of 11 PhD students and one postdoctoral researcher, concentrates on four major areas: mechanics of flexible and stretchable structures,

WNCG student Ahmed Kord won a 2018 Graduate Fellowship award from the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) for his research on Magnetless Circulators for Full-Duplex Radios. Kord has been researching this topic at WNCG since 2015, advised by Prof. Andrea Alu. Their team hopes to develop “new concepts and circuit architectures for magnetless circulators based on spatio-temporal modulation (STM) of resonant three-port junctions.” In 2017, Kord won the IEEE MTT-S student design competition for a project on a related topic.

Engineers and scientists at The University of Texas at Austin and the AMOLF institute in the Netherlands have invented the first mechanical metamaterials that easily transfer motion effortlessly in one direction while blocking it in the other, as described in a paper published on Feb. 13 in Nature. The material can be thought of as a mechanical one-way shield that blocks energy from coming in but easily transmits it going out the other side.

Prof. Andrea Alù was recently appointed as a Simons Investigator in Physics. This program aims to provide a stable base of support for outstanding scientists, and enables them to undertake long-term investigations of fundamental questions in their fields. Each year, the Simons Foundation invites nominations from universities in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom for the Simons Investigators in Mathematics, Physics, Theoretical Computer Science and the Mathematical Modeling of Living Systems (MMLS) programs.

The third annual Simons Conference will explore the mathematics of stochastic processes and graphs for large graphs. The four-day conference, which will take place from May 9-12, 2016 at the Blanton Museum of Art on the UT Austin campus, brings together top researchers from various communities to provide a global picture of this broad subject. Each year, the Simons program alternates between an emphasis on either mathematics or network applications.

Hosted by the Department of Mathematics and the Wireless Networking and Communications Group (WNCG) at the University of Texas at Austin, the Simons Conference on Networks and Stochastic Geometry is an annual event that brings together a diverse set of world-class researchers from various scientific communities to foster interdisciplinary engagement. The multi-day conference focuses on the intersection of mathematics and applications to drive the future of wireless, transportation, social and distribution networks. Simons Conference 2015 was chaired by WNCG Profs.

Effective February 2015, WNCG is pleased to announce the introduction of a new Level III membership option in its Industrial Affiliate Program. The Industrial Affiliate Program allows companies to become stakeholders in WNCG and to participate in the growth and direction of the center. Initially founded to significantly lower the cost of pre-competitive research for each sponsor, the program maximizes benefits to each sponsoring company.

In recognition of his outstanding performance as a summer intern, Qualcomm awarded WNCG Ph.D. student Tianyang Bai the Roberto Padovani Fellowship.  The fellowship was created in 2008 to recognize Qualcomm’s corporate research and development interns who demonstrate superior technical performance during their summer internship. Roberto Padovani was Qualcomm’s chief technology officer for nearly 10 years and was a leading innovator for the company.

Modern communication systems rely on multiple antennas that enhance the performance of network links using a series of techniques known as Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO). However, new technology is needed to meet the demands of a rapidly increasing number of wireless devices and enable the next generation of cellular systems. Known as Massive MIMO, this adaptation of traditional MIMO techniques presents challenges to research and development teams worldwide.