Hongwei Zhang

Richardson Professor (Electrical and Computer Engineering), Director (Center for Wireless, Communities and Innovation) at Iowa State University

Speaker

­­Hongwei Zhang is the Richardson Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of the Center for Wireless, Communities and Innovation at Iowa State University. His research investigates modeling, algorithmic, and systems issues in wireless sensing and control networks (e.g., those in 5G and beyond) as well as their applications in connected and automated vehicles, XR, smart agriculture, and cyber-physical-human systems in general. He has led the development of open-innovation infrastructures for precision agriculture, connected and automated transportation, cellular networks, and IoT networks which have been used by researchers worldwide. He leads the $16M PAWR project ARA (arawireless.org) on rural broadband research, as well as the ARA OTIC for O-RAN testing and integration (wici.iastate.edu/otic). He also serves as the site-PI of the $42M Open RAN project ACCoRD (accord-wif.org) and $20M AI Institute project ICICLE (icicle.ai). His research results and system software have served as foundational elements of the DARPA sensor network systems “A Line in the Sand” and “ExScal” which, with its 200-node wireless mesh network and 1,200-node sensor network, was the world’s largest wireless mesh network and wireless sensor network deployed at its time. He is a recipient of the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and Best Paper Awards from the 2024 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems, 2023 ACM Workshop on Wireless Network Testbeds, Experimental evaluation and CHaracterization (WiNTECH), and 2021 IEEE International Conference on Network Softwarization (NetSoft). He currently serves as an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, and he served as an editor for IEEE Internet of Things Journal in 2020 and 2021. He was the Co-Chair of 2022 ACM WiNTECH and the Program Co-Chair of the 2019 IEEE Vehicular Networking Conference (VNC). He has also served on the program and/or organizing committees of conferences such as INFOCOM, ICCPS, IPSN, and ICC. More information about his work can be found from his website at http://www.ece.iastate.edu/~hongwei.