Advanced Wireless Communications and Networks

Professor Gianluca Setti joined KAUST in 2022 from the Politecnico di Torino, Italy, where he served as a Professor of Electronics for Signal and Data Processing in the Department of Electronics and Telecommunications (DET). He also served as the Rector’s Delegate on Research Quality Evaluation.

He received his Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering and Computer Science ('97) from the University of Bologna, Italy. From 1997 to 2017, he was an assistant, associate and full professor of Circuit Theory and Analog Electronics at the University of Ferrara, Italy. Dr. Setti is the first serving non-US Editor-in-Chief of the Proceedings of the IEEE, the flagship journal of the Institute, a role he has held since 2019. He has also held the IEEE Vice Presidency for Publication Services and Products for two terms. During this period, he ensured ethics in using bibliometric indicators for evaluating the impact of individual scientists' research. Additionally, he served on IEEE's board of directors, where he addressed the impact of open access mandates on IEEE members.

He received the 1998 Caianiello Prize for the best Italian Ph.D. thesis on neural networks. He also received the 2013 IEEE Circuits and Systems Society (CASS) Meritorious Service Award and was an IEEE CASS Distinguished Lecturer in 2004–2005 and 2015–2016. In addition to publishing circa 320 scientific articles in journals and conference proceedings, as well as four books, he has received best paper awards in three different IEEE Transactions and six best paper awards or nominations at major conferences, including the IEEE International Symposium on Circuits and Systems and the Design, Automation and Test in Europe.

The nature of Setti's research interests and approaches is multidisciplinary: they include nonlinear circuits, statistical signal processing, electromagnetic compatibility, compressive sensing, biomedical circuits and systems, power electronics, design and implementation of IoT nodes, as well as machine learning techniques for anomaly detection and predictive maintenance.

Ahmed M. Eltawil is a professor of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Program at KAUST. He joined the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Science and Engineering (CEMSE) Division in 2019. At KAUST, he founded and directs the Communication and Computing Systems Laboratory (CCSL). Previously, he was a faculty member in the Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Department at the University of California, Irvine (UCI), U.S., from 2005 to 2019.

His research at the CCSL at KAUST focuses on efficient architectures for computing and communications systems, with an emphasis on wireless systems. This research spans several application domains, including low-power mobile systems, machine learning platforms, sensor networks, body area networks, and critical infrastructure networks.

An active participant in the academic community, Eltawil has served on the technical program and steering committees for numerous workshops, symposia and conferences focused on low-power computing and wireless communication system design. He is a recipient of several prestigious awards and grants, including the NSF CAREER grant for his research in low-power computing and communication systems.

He is a Senior Member, Distinguished Lecturer (2023/24) of the IEEE, and a Senior Member of the National Academy of Inventors. In 2021, he was recognized as "Innovator of the Year" by the Henry Samueli School of Engineering at UCI and received two US Congressional Recognition Awards for his pioneering work in wireless systems. Committed to a collaborative, multidisciplinary approach, Professor Eltawil is passionate about translational research, aiming to move practical innovations from the lab to societal applications.

Professor Eltawil’s current research focuses on efficient architectures for computing and communications systems and wireless networks, encompassing low-power mobile systems, sensor networks, body-area networks, cyber-physical systems and critical infrastructure networks.

His research examines the larger context of smart and connected systems where devices seamlessly integrate into our daily lives. His approach to research combines rigorous analysis with a robust experimental background that leverages insights obtained through simulations and corroborated by experiments. By finding innovative solutions to research problems, he aspires to offer practical approaches that can be readily adopted, resulting in significant societal benefits.

Basem Shihada is a leading expert in computer networking and distributed systems. He is a founding professor of the Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering Programs in the Computer, Electrical and Mathematical Sciences and Engineering (CEMSE) Division at KAUST. He earned his Ph.D. in Computer science from the University of Waterloo, Canada. In 2009, he was appointed visiting faculty in the Department of Computer Science at Stanford University. In 2012, he was elevated to the rank of Senior Member of IEEE. His current research covers energy and resource allocation in wired and wireless networks, software-defined networking, cloud/fog computing, the Internet of Things, data networks, and underwater networks.

Professor Shihada's research expertise lies in developing cutting-edge wireless systems, where he has made groundbreaking contributions across various domains, including intelligent wireless systems, wireless underwater systems, molecular communication systems and non-terrestrial systems. His notable achievements include:

• Aqua-Fi: The creation and successful demonstration of Aqua-Fi, the world's first underwater Wi-Fi, enabling high-speed internet connectivity in aquatic environments.
• Sun-Fi: The demonstration of Sun-Fi, the world's first passive internet via building glass.

Professor Slim-Alouini is the Al-Khawarizmi Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and the holder of the UNESCO Chair on "Education to Connect the Unconnected." He is also an Affiliate Professor of Applied Mathematics and Computational Science (AMCS), an Affiliate Professor of Statistics (STAT) and the principal investigator of the Communication Theory Lab (CTL) at KAUST.

He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1998 from the California Institute of Technology (Caltech), U.S.

Throughout his more than 25-year academic career, Professor Slim Alouini, an IEEE and OSA Fellow, has developed analytical and simulation tools for evaluating the performance of radio-frequency and optical wireless communication systems. He has also designed and optimized innovative technologies for emerging wireless networks.

Alouini has published numerous conference and journal papers and co-authored the textbook Digital Communication over Fading Channels, published by Wiley Interscience. A former editor of IEEE Transactions on Communications, he also served as an editor for IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing and the Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing journal. He was a series editor for the IEEE Communication Magazine's Optical Communications and Networks Special Series.

Alouini is the founding field chief editor for the Frontiers in Communications and Networks journal (since 2020) and an editor for the IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronics Systems (since 2022).

In addition to diversity combining techniques and MIMO techniques, Professor Alouini is interested in multi-hop and cooperative communications, optical wireless communication systems, cognitive radio systems, green communication systems, and integrated ground-airborne-space networks for research.

He is actively working on addressing the uneven global distribution, access to, and use of information and communication technologies (ICT) by studying and developing new generations of aerial and space networks as a solution to provide connectivity to far-flung, less-populated, and/or hard-to-reach areas.

His KAUST Communication Theory Lab (CTL) investigates viable solutions to minimize ICT costs by (i) capitalizing on emerging and new solutions that operate within the unlicensed radio frequency spectrum and by (ii) deploying a variety of aerial and space-based networks.

Tareq Al-Naffouri is a professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) Program at King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST).

Al-Naffouri earned a B.S. (Hons.) in Mathematics and Electrical Engineering from King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, Saudi Arabia, 

During the summers of 2005 and 2006, Al-Naffouri was a visiting scholar at the California Institute of Technology, U.S. He was a Fulbright Scholar at the University of Southern California, U.S., in 2008.

An IEEE Senior Member, he has produced over 370 publications in journals and conference proceedings and 24 issued/pending patents. Al-Naffouri received the IEEE Education Society Chapter Achievement Award (2008), the Almarai Award for Innovative Research in Communication (2009) and the Abdul Hameed Shoman Prize for Innovative Research in IoT (2022).

• lie in the areas of adaptive, 
• Sparse and statistical signal processing and their applications.
•  These applications include communications,
•  Ultrawideband and ultrasound-based localization and tracking. 
•  Design and analysis of wireless networks.