News

WNCG researchers and alumni were selected as Best Paper Award Runners-up at this year’s ACM MobiHoc: International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing. WCNG postdoctoral fellow Daniel Vial’s paper, “Robust Multi-Agent Multi-Armed Bandits,” was one of the papers selected as a runner-up. Co-written by Sanjay Shakkottai and R. Srikant, this paper develops algorithms for online collaborative learning in a setting where malicious agents might inject false information into the learning system.

The spring semester is in full swing, and as WNCG continues on the forefront of research, the group has welcomed a new director. Professor Constantine Caramanis began his three-year term as WNCG Director at the start of the new calendar year. Prior to that, he served as the group’s associate director. With Caramanis stepping into the new role, Professor Alex Dimakis was chosen among WNCG faculty to serve as associate director. WNCG’s leadership system allows the associate director to learn the ropes over the course of the term before serving their own term as director. 

This Spring, WNCG welcomes Intel, NEC, and Western Digital as the newest WNCG Industrial Affiliates Program members. All three companies enter as Level 2 members. Since WNCG’s founding, the Industrial Affiliates Program has played a vital role in the group’s success. It facilitates “cooperation and mutual assistance” between WNCG and Affiliate companies. This collaboration between academia and industry embodies the group’s mission to “support research, provide highly relevant education and opportunities, [and] promote technical innovation, imagination and entrepreneurship.”

Each year, in conjunction with the Texas Wireless Summit, WNCG hosts a board meeting for its Industrial Affiliate members. This meeting invites affiliates to weigh in on current and future research directions and provides them with direct access to students for recruitment and research purposes. Affiliate members also receive sneak peeks into current faculty research.

The 13th ACM-IEEE International Conference on Formal Methods and Models for System Design was held this year on the UT Austin campus September 21-23. The conference was held in conjunction with co-located FMCAD, SAT, DIFTS and ACL2 conferences.  

Every few years, WNCG welcomes a new Director and Associate Director from among its faculty ranks. With an academic culture that encourages openness and research collaborations among equals, the rotation of Directors provides each faculty member with the opportunity to lead WNCG.

The annual WNCG Board Meeting brings together Industrial Affiliates, Board Members, Students and Faculty to share research and successes of the previous year, as well as to discuss the future of WNCG. Two representatives from each affiliate member company attend to keep up-to-date with the latest happenings and groundbreaking research in WNCG. 

Hosted by WNCG Profs. and General Chairs Sanjay Shakkottai and Sujay Sanghavi, ACM SIGMETRICS featured speakers from across the globe. The week-long conference focused on performance evaluation and methods for computer networks and systems. From student presenters such as Sharayu Moharir, Siddhartha Banerjee, Subhashini Krishnasamy to Prof. François Baccelli taking home the SIGMETRICS achievement award, WNCG played an active role in this year's conference at UT Austin. 

Dr. François Baccelli, the Simons Chair in Mathematics and Electrical and Computer Engineering at The University of Texas at Austin, has been selected to receive the 2014 ACM SIGMETRICS Achievement award. Dr. Baccelli is a member of the French Academy of Sciences and a cutting edge researcher at the intersection of mathematics, telecommunications, and information theory. He joined UT Austin in August 2012 from the École Normale Supérieure de Paris, where he was director of computer science research.