Prof. Joon Kim, a WiDeS PhD graduate (2014), and now Assistant Professor at Chung-An University, received the Haedong Young Scholar Award by KICS (The Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences), which is for recognizing a young Korean researcher under the age of 40 who has made outstanding scholarly contributions to communications and information sciences R&D.

WiDeS is among the pioneers applying machine learning to propagation channels. Recent contributions include predictions of dual-band channels, estimating channel states at remote base stations, and clustering. In August, WiDeS head Molisch gave an invited talk at the ITU workshop on Machine Learning; conference presentations at Milcom and Globecom are coming up.

It was the biggest graduation day yet for WiDeS: a total of 6 group members defended in May/June of 2018. Sundar Aditya, Umit Bas, Zheda Li, Vishnu Ratnam, Seun Sangodoyin, and Rui Wang, all presented their theses. While their topics were very different, ranging from the construction of channel sounders to analysis of hybrid beamforming techniques, what they have in common are outstanding achievements and numerous impressive publications in prestigious journals. We wish them luck in their next stages of their careers.

The fall 2018 semester starts, and new members are joining our group. Yang Cai has joined us as PhD student, having received an Annenberg Fellowship from USC. He comes from Tsinghua University, where he worked with Prof. Yuan Shen on a variety of issues in localization and networking. Xiaokang Ye has joined us since June as a guest student, coming from Tongji University, where he has been working with Prof. Yin on channel measurements and evaluations. In September, Dr. Francois Rottenberg joined us from Belgium as a PostDoctoral researcher; He will be working on various aspect of massive MIMO. Welcome to all of them!

Dr. Naveed Abbasi, an expert in THz propagation channels and system design, has joined WiDeS as PostDoc. He recently received his Ph.D. from Koc University, Turkey, and will be leading channel measurement and modeling activities for the ComSenTer (Communications and Sensing at Terahertz) project.

WiDeS anticipates one or more openings for PhD students in the fall of 2019. If you are interested, please look at the information for prospective students and fill out the form here. Please note that this is in addition to the required application to USC.