News

Professor Derya Malak has won the Best Paper Award at the 20th International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad hoc, and Wireless Networks (WiOpt 2022). Malak, who is currently an assistant professor in the Communication Systems Department at EURECOM, was recognized for her solo-authored paper, “Throughput and Energy Tradeoffs for Retransmission-based Random Access Protocols.” The paper extends work on the fundamentals of massive Internet of Things uplink communications that Malak conducted during her Ph.D. and in collaboration with Howard Huang of Nokia Bell Labs.

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.

WNCG alumni were among the recipients of major paper awards from the Communications Society of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE ComSoc). The awards were presented at the International Conference on Communications (IEEE ICC), which took place virtually last month.

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 alumnus Rajiv Khanna and his colleagues Michal Derezinski and Michael W. Mahoney received the Best Paper Award at NeurIPS 2020. Their winning paper, “Improved Guarantees and a Multiple-Descent Curve for Column Subset Selection and the Nyström Method,” was presented in the conference’s Learning Theory track. The paper was one of three to receive the distinction for 2020. The award committee chose the winners in a two-stage selection process which considered the research’s impact, creativity, and “potential to endure,” along with its scientific and academic rigor.

WNCG student Yun Chen won Best Paper in the Wireless Networks track at the 2020 IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference. Chen received the award for her paper “Efficient Drone Mobility Support Using Reinforcement Learning.”

The European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP) has announced the winners of the 2020 Best Paper Awards. Two of the four winning papers were written by WNCG faculty members with their students and postdoctoral fellows.  EURASIP-sponsored journals each give their own award—either annually or biennially, depending on the number of papers published per year. A sub-committee for each journal evaluates the papers according to relevance, quality, style, and originality in order to select a winner.

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.

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.