Research Team Facilitated by Prof. Brian L. Evans

Overview - Research - Students - PhD Dissertations - Student & Alumni Awards - Group Alumni - More Information

Students

	Elyes Balti (PhD student) cellular communication systems full duplex, massive MIMO, relays Google scholar page			Faraz Barati (PhD student) cellular communication systems reconfigurable intelligent surfaces
	Alice Liu (PhD student) cellular communication systems beamforming, massive MIMO, signal processing			Vignesh Nandakumar (PhD student) cellular communication systems Internet of Things and signal processing
	Pooja Nuti (PhD student) cellular communication systems reconfigurable intelligent surfaces

A multi-input multi-output (MIMO) communication system uses multiple antenna elements at the transmitter and receiver. Signal processing methods process the inputs to the transmitter and outputs from the receiver to improve cellular communication performance, such as bit rate.

PhD Alumni

Prof. Evans supervised the following students for their PhD dissertations. The link for each PhD alum's name leads to their PhD dissertation.

Name	PhD Topic	Graduation	Current Employer	Current Title
Yunseong Cho	Cellular communications	Aug. 2023	Samsung Research America	Senior Research Engineer
Javier Rodriguez-Fernandez	Cellular communications	Aug. 2020	Qualcomm	Senior Engineer
Junmo Sung	Cellular communications	May 2020	Samsung Research America	Staff Research Engineer
Faris Mismar	Cellular communications	Dec. 2019	Nokia Bell Labs	Distinguished Member of Technical Staff
Jinseok Choi	Cellular communications	Dec. 2019	Korea Adv. Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST)	Assistant Professor
Debarati Kundu	Image quality	May 2016	Qualcomm	Staff Engineer
Yousof Mortazavi	Data converters	May 2015	Ambiq Micro	Principal Research Engineer
Karl Nieman	Communication systems	Dec. 2014	AT&T Labs	Principal Member of Technical Staff
Chao Jia	Video acquisition	May 2014	Google AI Cloud	Staff Software Engineer
Jing Lin	Powerline communications	May 2014	Qualcomm	Senior System Engineer
Kyle Wesson	GPS receivers	May 2014	Starlink at SpaceX	Senior Regulatory Engineer
Marcel Nassar	Communication systems	Aug. 2013	Altos Labs	Senior Machine Learning Scientist
Aditya Chopra	Wireless communications	Dec. 2011	Amazon Project Kuiper	Senior Communication Systems Engineer
Kapil Gulati	Wireless communications	Aug. 2011	Qualcomm Corporate R&D	Principal Engineer
Gregory Allen	Design automation	May 2011	UT Austin Applied Research Laboratories	Senior Engineering Scientist
Hamood Rehman	Video processing	Dec. 2010	Avvasi	Design Engineer
Ian Wong	Cellular communications	May 2007	VIAVI Solutions	Director, RF & Wireless Architecture
Kyungtae Han	Design automation	Aug. 2006	Toyota InfoTech Labs	Senior Principal Scientist
Zukang Shen	Cellular communications	May 2006	Huawei	Senior Expert
Vishal Monga	Image hashing	Aug. 2005	Pennsylvania State University	Professor
Serene Banerjee	Image acquisition	Aug. 2004	Ericsson Research	Master Researcher
Ming Ding	Wireline communications	Aug. 2004	Broadcom	Principal DSP Engineer
Dogu Arifler	Network analysis	May 2004	Eastern Mediterranean University	Professor
Milos Milosevic	Wireline communications	May 2003	Halliburton	Head of Integrated Digital Well Construction
Wade Schwartzkopf	Image analysis	Dec. 2002	Integrity Applications	Research Scientist
Clint Slatton (deceased)	Image analysis	Dec. 2001	University of Florida	Associate Professor
Guner Arslan	Wireline communications	Dec. 2000	Silicon Labs	Distinguished Engineer
Niranjan Damera-Venkata	Image display	Dec. 2000	HP	Head of AI and Machine Learning Transformation
Biao Lu	Wireline communications	Dec. 2000	OpenSpirit	Senior Software Engineer
Murat Torlak	Cellular communications	Aug. 1999	The University of Texas at Dallas	Professor
Thomas Kite (deceased)	Image display	Aug. 1998	Audio Precision	Vice President of Engineering
Dong Wei	Image analysis	Aug. 1998	at&t Research Labs	Member of Technical Staff

The following PhD graduates were co-advised: Dogu Arifler (Prof. Gustavo de Veciana), Thomas Kite (Prof. Alan C. Bovik), Yousof Mortazavi (Prof. Arjang Hassibi), Wade Schwartzkopf (Prof. Alan C. Bovik), Zukang Shen (Prof. Jeffrey G. Andrews), Clint Slatton (Prof. Melba Crawford), Murat Torlak (Prof. Guanghan Xu), Dong Wei (Prof. Alan C. Bovik) and Kyle Wesson (Prof. Todd E. Humphreys).

Here's the breakdown of the most recent placements of the above PhD graduates:

• 5 in academia (Eastern Med. Univ., KAIST, Penn State Univ., Univ. of Florida, Univ. of Texas at Dallas)
• 8 in corporate R&D labs (2 x AT&T Labs, Ericsson Research, Nokia Bell Labs, Qualcomm R&D, 2 x Samsung Research America, Toyota InfoTech Labs)
• 1 in a university R&D lab (UT Austin Applied Research Labs)
• 13 in business units at large companies (Amazon Project Kuiper, Broadcom, Halliburton, HP, Huawei, Intel, 3 x Qualcomm, Silicon Labs, SpaceX, VIAVI Solutions, Waymo)
• 3 in small companies (Audio Precision, Integrity Applications, OpenSpirit)
• 2 in startup companies (Ambiq Micro, Avvasi)

The above PhD alumni took an average of 3.31 years of full-time graduate studies (including internships in industry) from the time that they first enrolled as a full-time post-Master's student to the time that they officially graduated with their PhDEE degree.

Student & Alumni Awards & Recognition

• 2022: The journal article published in March 2020 by lead author Dr. Faris Mismar with Prof. Brian L. Evans and Prof. Ahmed Alkhateeb entitled "Deep Reinforcement Learning for 5G Networks: Joint Beamforming, Power Control, and Interference Coordination" was one of the top 50 most accessed articles in March through May among all articles published in the IEEE Transactions on Communications. This follows 8 months in 2021 and 12 months in 2020 with the same distinction.
• 2022: Prof. Vishal Monga was elevated to Senior Member in the US National Academy of Inventors.
• 2021: Prof. Vishal Monga's lab's collaborative work at Pennsylvania State University with Amazon was runner up at the 2021 NTIRE Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) Relighting challenge. (Article)
• 2021: Prof. Vishal Monga (Pennsylvania State University) has been elected to three different IEEE Signal Processing Society technical committees-- Computational Imaging; Bio-imaging & Signal Processing; and Sensor, Array & Multichannel Signal Processing-- each for a three-year term starting Jan. 2022.
• 2021: The magazine article published in March 2021 by Prof. Vishal Monga (Pennsylvania State University) and Dr. Yuelong Li and Prof. Yonina Eldar entitled "Algorithm Unrolling: Interpretable, Efficient Deep Learning for Signal and Image Processing" in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine has been among the top 50 most downloaded articles each month from March to November 2021 among all articles published in the magazine.
• 2021: The magazine article published by Prof. Murat Torlak (UT Dallas) in March 2017 with Dr. Sujeet Patole, Dr. Dan Wang and Dr. Murtaza Ali entitled "Automotive radars: A review of signal processing techniques" in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine has been among the top 50 most downloaded articles each month from January to November 2021 among all articles published in the magazine.
• 2021: The journal article published in March 2020 by lead author Dr. Faris Mismar with Prof. Brian L. Evans and Prof. Ahmed Alkhateeb entitled "Deep Reinforcement Learning for 5G Networks: Joint Beamforming, Power Control, and Interference Coordination" was one of the top 50 most accessed articles in January and February and from May to September and in November and December of 2021 among all articles published in the IEEE Transactions on Communications. This follows 12 months in 2020 with the same distinction.
• 2021: Dr. Faris Mismar was awarded a Nokia Fearless Award for leadership and business impact in 2021.
• 2021: Dr. Faris Mismar was awarded a Nokia STAR Award in appreciation and recognition for a spectral efficiency improvement contribution.
• 2020: Journal article by lead author Dr. Jinseok Choi with Dr. Gilwon Lee, Prof. Ahmed Alkhateeb, Dr. Alan Gatherer, Prof. Naofal Al-Dhahir, and Prof. Brian L. Evans entitled "Advanced Receiver Architectures for Millimeter-Wave Communications with Low-Resolution ADCs" was one of the top 50 most accessed articles in September of 2020 among all articles published in the IEEE Communications Magazine.
• 2020: Dr. Jinseok Choi joined the Ulsan National Institute of Science and Technology in Ulsan, South Korea, as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering.
• 2020: Prof. Vishal Monga (Pennsylvania State University) was promoted to Professor effective July 1st.
• 2020: Mr. Yunseong Cho won a Spring 2020 Top Graduate Teaching Assistant Award from the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering for being a graduate teaching assistant for the Real-Time Digital Signal Processing Laboratory in spring 2019 and fall 2019.
• 2020: Journal article by lead author Dr. Faris Mismar with Prof. Brian L. Evans and Prof. Ahmed Alkhateeb entitled "Deep Reinforcement Learning for 5G Networks: Joint Beamforming, Power Control, and Interference Coordination" was one of the top 50 most accessed articles every month in 2020 among all articles published in the IEEE Transactions on Communications.
• 2020: Dr. Faris Mismar was awarded a Nokia STAR Award in appreciation and recognition for an automatic intelligent root cause analysis contribution.
• 2019: Prof. Vishal Monga (Pennsylvania State University) received the Penn State Engineering Alumni Society Outstanding Research Award. The award recognizes "outstanding engineering researchers for accomplishments in advancing the frontiers of knowledge" who "by their contributions to knowledge, have brought recognition to themselves, the College and Penn State."
• 2019: Prof. Vishal Monga (Pennsylvania State University) led teams that won first and second place at the New Trends in Image Restoration and Enhancement (NTIRE) Challenge in Image Dehazing out of 275 teams. Image dehazing has important applications in autonomous driving and navigation. The competition was held at the IEEE/CVF Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) in June 2019, and the winning team received $20,000. News Release.
• 2019: Journal article by Dr. Jinseok Choi with Dr. Gilwon Lee and Prof. Brian L. Evans entitled "Two-Stage Analog Combining in Hybrid Beamforming Systems with Low-Resolution ADCs" was one of the top 50 most accessed articles in April 2019 among all articles published in the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.
• 2018: Dr. Aditya Chopra was elevated to IEEE Senior Member.
• 2018: Dr. Ian Wong was appointed to the Board of Governors for the IEEE Communication Society as the Director of Industry Communities
• 2017: Journal article by Mr. Jinseok Choi with Prof. Brian L. Evans and Dr. Alan Gatherer entitled "Resolution-Adaptive Hybrid MIMO Architectures for Millimeter Wave Communications" was one of the top 50 most accessed articles in October 2017 among all articles published in the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.
• 2017: Mr. Faris Mismar received a $60,000 Marcus Wallenberg Foundation Fellowship to support his graduate studies.
• 2017: Mr. Faris Mismar was elevated to IEEE Senior Member.
• 2017: Journal article by Dr. Debarati Kundu with Dr. Deepti Ghadiyaram, Prof. Alan C. Bovik and Prof. Brian L. Evans entitled "No-Reference Quality Assessment of Tone-Mapped HDR Pictures" was one of the top 50 most accessed articles in May and June 2017 among all articles published in the IEEE Transactions on Image Processing.
• 2016: Mr. Jinseok Choi won a Top Teaching Assistant Award twice from the Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering for being a teaching assistant for the Real-Time Digital Signal Processing Laboratory in spring 2016 and fall 2016.
• 2016: Dr. Aditya Chopra received the Engineering Excellence Award at the National Instruments (R&D) Conference in April 2016.
• 2016: Prof. Vishal Monga (Pennsylvania State University) received the 2016 Joel and Ruth Spira Excellence in Teaching Award at the Pennsylvania State University. The award "recognizes individuals who excel in the classroom by helping students learn, understand and apply the fundamentals of engineering".
• 2016: Dr. Kyle Wesson received the 2016-2017 Institute of Navigation Congressional Science & Technology Fellowship and served as a Science & Technology Advisor to US Senator Richard Blumenthal, D-CT.
• 2015: Prof. Vishal Monga (Pennsylvania State University) received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor.
• 2015: Prof. Vishal Monga (Pennsylvania State University) won a prestigious 2015 US National Science Foundation CAREER Award. The award recognizes the very top researchers in science, engineering and mathematics among Assistant Professors in the US. The award is based on a thorough peer review of a full-length NSF proposal.
• 2015: Ms. Debarati Kundu and Prof. Brian L. Evans won a Top 10% Paper Award at the 2015 IEEE International Conference on Image Processing for the paper entitled "Full-Reference Visual Quality Assessment for Synthetic Images: A Subjective Study".
• 2015: Prof. Dogu Arifler was promoted to the rank of Professor at Eastern Mediterranean University in Famagusta, Cyprus.
• 2014: Prof. Murat Torlak (The University of Texas at Dallas) was promoted to the rank of Professor.
• 2014: Ms.Debarati Kundu won the 2014 Roberto Padovani Fellowship from Qualcomm. Qualcomm gives this award to the top 1% of their Corporate R&D interns each year.
• 2014: Dr. Chao Jia's paper with Prof. Brian L. Evans entitled "Constrained 3D Rotation Smoothing via Global Manifold Regression for Video Stabilization" was one of the top 25 most accessed articles in July 2014 among all articles published in the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.
• 2013: Mr. Karl F. Nieman, Ms. Jing Lin, Mr. Marcel Nassar and Prof. Brian L. Evans won The Best Student Paper Award for the Architecture and Implementation Track and Second Place in the Overall Student Best Paper Award Contest at the 2013 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and Computers for the paper "FPGA Implementation of a Message-Passing OFDM Receiver for Impulsive Noise Channels".
• 2013: Mr. Karl F. Nieman, Ms. Jing Lin, Mr. Marcel Nassar, and Prof. Brian L. Evans won The Best Paper Award at the 2013 IEEE International Symposium on Power Line Communications and Its Applications. Our paper was entitled "Cyclic Spectral Analysis of Power Line Noise in the 3-200 kHz Band". The fifth author was Dr. Khurram Waheed (Freescale Semiconductor). ECE News release.
• 2013: The following model for noise and interference for powerline communications in the 3-500 kHz band was adopted by the IEEE 1901.2 powerline communications standard: M. Nassar, A. Dabak, I. H. Kim, T. Pande and B. L. Evans, "Cyclostationary Noise Modeling In Narrowband Powerline Communication For Smart Grid Applications", Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. on Acoustics, Speech, and Signal Processing, Mar. 25-30, 2012, Kyoto, Japan.
• 2013: Dr. Greg Allen was elevated to IEEE Senior Member.
• 2013: Prof. Vishal Monga was elevated to IEEE Senior Member.
• 2012: Mr. Chao Jia and Prof. Brian L. Evans won a Top 10% Paper Award at the 2012 IEEE Multimedia Signal Processing Workshop. Our paper was entitled "Probabilistic 3D Motion Estimation for Rolling Shutter Video Rectification from Visual and Inertial Measurements". WNCG News release.
• 2012: A paper by Mr. Marcel Nassar, Ms. Jing Lin, and Mr. Yousof Mortazavi with co-authors Dr. Anand Dabak, Dr. Il Han Kim and Prof. Brian L. Evans entitled "Local Utility Powerline Communications in the 3-500 kHz Band: Channel Impairments, Noise, and Standards" was one of the top 25 most accessed articles in September 2012 among all articles published in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.
• 2012: Dr. Kyungtae Han won the 2012 Intel Achievement Award "For Developing the Converged Platform Power Management Framework". This is the highest technical award at Intel. At the awards ceremony in San Francisco on May 5th, Dr. Han officially received the award from Intel President and CEO Paul Otellini.
• 2011: Dr. Greg Allen won the 2011 UT Austin Applied Research Laboratories Excellence Award "for outstanding research recognized by his fellow employees".
• 2011: Dr. Ian Wong was elevated to IEEE Senior Member.
• 2011: Dr. Niranjan Damera-Venkata (HP Research Labs) won the 2011 ACM SIGWEB Best Paper Award.
• 2011: Prof. Vishal Monga (Pennsylvania State University) received a Top 10% Paper Award at the 2011 IEEE Multimedia Signal Processing Workshop.
• 2010: Mr. Kyle Wesson won a 2010 National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate (NDSEG) Fellowship from the Army Research Office.
• 2009: Prof. Brian L. Evans' paper with Prof. Lina J. Karam, Mr. Ismail AlKamal, Dr. Alan Gatherer, Mr. Gene A. Frantz, and Prof. David V. Anderson entitled "Trends in Multicore DSP Platforms" was one of the top 10 most accessed articles in December 2009 and January 2010 among all articles published in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.
• 2009: Prof. Vishal Monga (Pennsylvania State University) received a Top 10% Paper Award at the 2009 IEEE Multimedia Signal Processing Workshop.
• 2009: Prof. Dogu Arifler was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor at Eastern Mediterranean University in Famagusta, Cyprus.
• 2009: Dr. Kapil Gulati won a Best Paper Award at the 2009 IEEE Computer Society Annual Symposium on VLSI held in May.
• 2009: Prof. K. Clint Slatton was promoted to the rank of Associate Professor at the University of Florida.
• 2008: Dr. Vishal Monga received the 2008 Rochester Engineering Society Young Engineer of the Year Award for his work in perceptual image hashing and document image processing when he worked at Xerox Research Labs. The Rochester Engineering Society, founded in 1897, involves all engineering disciplines.
• 2007: Dr. Niranjan Damera-Venkata (HP Research Labs) received two awards for his development of a super-resolution projection system using lower-cost less-capable projectors:
  • Best Paper award at the 2007 Projector-Camera Systems Workshop
  • PC Magazine's list of "five ideas that will re-invent modern computing".
• 2007: Prof. Clint Slatton (University of Florida) won two awards for his proposal to combine physics-based models of signal propagation with pattern recognition for terrain mapping by airborne laser scanners:
  • 2007 Army Young Investigator Award
  • 2007 Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).
  To be eligible for PECASE, the researcher must first win a young investigator award from the US government. PECASE "is the highest honor bestowed by the United States government on outstanding scientists and engineers beginning their independent careers". Clint Slatton received tenure and promotion to Associate Professor at The University of Florida effective fall 2009. Sadly, Clint Slatton died on March 30, 2010, from cancer.