We are very excited to announce the list of “N2Women: Rising Stars in Computer Networking and Communications”.
For 2024, in alphabetical order by last name, here are 10 women in networking and communications that you should watch!
 | Tara Boroushaki MIT, USA Tara Boroushaki is a rising star in the field of wireless, mobile, and sensor computing. She has made fundamental contributions in developing new systems and learning models that fuse computer vision with radio frequency (RF) signals to enable novel sensing, perception, and manipulation tasks that were infeasible before. In doing so, her research opens entirely new capabilities in robotics and AR applications. Her work has led her to publish in the most prestigious and selective venues in mobile/sensor networking (NSDI, SIGCOMM, MobiCom, SenSys, RFID) and robotics (RSS, ICRA). Her research has won the IEEE RFID’23 Best Paper Award and the ACM SenSys’21 Best Paper Finalist. Furthermore, her research resulted in multiple patents that have been licensed by a startup, Cartesian, that is building on her technologies to solve indoor positioning problems in retail and supply chain. Tara has also received the prestigious Microsoft PhD fellowship, and MIT selected her work as one of the “103 Ways MIT is Making the World Better”. Moreover, her research has been widely covered in the press including being highlighted twice on the front page of MIT News as well as in outlets such as the BBC, The World Economic Forum, and The Boston Globe, and it was named by The Wall Street Journal as one of the top AI trends to watch over the next decade. Tara’s pioneering efforts set her on a path to shape the next generation of wireless and sensing technologies. Fadel Adib (Associate Professor at MIT & CEO of Cartesian) |
 | Yanjiao Chen Zhejiang University, China Yanjiao is a brilliant and promising young researcher, making significant contributions to interdisciplinary areas of networking, artificial intelligence and network security. Her early works on dynamic spectrum allocations and congestion control are impactful for 5G and cloud computing. With the ever-increasing attention on AI for computer networks, her recent works in secure and privacy-preserving AI in IoT networks are poised to lay the foundation for the next generation of computer networks. She has published an extensive array of impactful papers in prestigious venues, such as IEEE INFOCOM, IEEE S&P, and ACM CCS. For her pioneering contributions to computer networks, she has been invited to join the editorial board of prestigious journals like IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security and IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, as well as to serve on the program committee of prestigious conferences like IEEE INFOCOM, ACM CCS, USENIX Security. Not only is Yanjiao’s academic record exceptional, she is also a strong advocate for fostering involvement of under-represented women in the field of computer networks, serving as co-chair on the Fellowship and Geo-diversity committee of N2Women. Baochun Li (Associate Chair, Research. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering University of Toronto) |
 | Hadeel Elayan Northeastern University, USA Hadeel Elayan has made outstanding contributions to the field of nano-communication, a transformative area with the potential to revolutionize how we process and transmit information across various applications, from healthcare to quantum computing. What sets this field apart is its unique position at the intersection of wireless communication, nanotechnology, biology, and physics, requiring a researcher with multidisciplinary expertise and a visionary approach. Hadeel’s contributions are not only extensive but also deeply impactful, with an impressive publication record for a scientist at her career stage. In 2022, Hadeel was recognized as a rising star in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science by the University of Texas at Austin. Her doctoral work further distinguished her as one of the winners of the Innovators Under 35 MENA (Middle East and Africa) Awards by MIT Technology Review Arabia. Beyond her research, Hadeel serves as the co-chair of the IEEE Toronto ComSoc Chapter and regularly participates as a TPC member in several IEEE conferences and workshops. She is also a frequent reviewer for prestigious IEEE, Elsevier, and ACM journals. Without question, Hadeel is a trailblazer in the field and will continue to make far-reaching contributions that shape the future of nano-communication. Lian Zhao (Professor, Toronto Metropolitan University) In addition to her work on nano-communicaitons, Hadeel has, essentially single-handedly, opened up a new avenue of research into the interaction of THz electromagnetic waves and proteins, amongst other biological systems. Her theoretical work has demonstrated the potential of controlling conformal changes in proteins, with attendant control of protein (mis-)behavior. Her experimental work has provided early validation of this unique interaction. The applications will diverse and hugely impactful. Hadeel’s focus on challenging, but high-reward, long-term research is extremely impressive in a young researcher and the term “trailblazer” is very appropriate. Raviraj Adve (Professor, University of Toronto) |
 | Yang Liu University of Cambridge, UK Dr Yang Liu is a rising star in the area of wearable and intelligent sensing systems. She works with technologies which include artificial intelligence and signal processing and applies them to problems related to health and human computer interaction. Her work has laid the foundations for building wearable systems which allow the use of augmentations in hand and finger movement. She is now establishing herself as a pioneer in the area of hearable computing. She has published numerous influential papers in a variety of top tier venues. She received the Best Paper Award at EarComp'23, the Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Award at ACM SIGBED China'21, and a Best-in-Session Presentation Award at INFOCOM'18. She has served as a reviewer and TPC member for prestigious journals and conferences in the networking and communications and has held organizational roles at these conferences. Cecilia Mascolo (Professor, University of Cambridge) |
 | Qurrat-UI-Ain Nadeem NYU Abu Dhabi, UAE Qurrat-Ul-Ain has made outstanding contributions to the physical layer design and analysis of next generation multi-antenna communication systems, resulting in an extensive and impactful publication record in leading IEEE venues. She has published seminal works on emerging technological trends such as reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) and massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, that have been listed as best readings in the relevant areas by IEEE ComSoc and as popular works in IEEEXplore. For her pioneering research contributions, she received the prestigious Paul Baron Young Scholar Award by The Marconi Society in 2018 and the NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship Award in 2021. Qurrat is an active member of IEEE ComSoc Young Professionals (YP) committee, and has been involved in co-chairing tracks and organizing workshops at flagship IEEE conferences. She is a strong advocate for diversity and inclusion, and often leads initiatives to encourage women to pursue engineering careers through outreach and mentorship. Mohamed-Slim Alouini (Al-Khawarizmi Distinguished Professor of ECE & Holder UNESCO Chair on Education to Connect the Unconnected King Abdullah University of Science and Technology (KAUST)) |
 | Debashri Roy University of Texas Arlington, USA Dr. Debashri Roy has demonstrated exceptional talent throughout her doctoral degree and post-doctoral research, making foundational contributions to wireless communications and machine learning. In her current Assistant Professor position, she is pushing the envelope of physical layer design, network communications, and distributed learning algorithms. Dr. Roy's notable achievements involve applying deep learning to signal detection, RF fingerprinting for IoT security, and multimodal data fusion with camera, GPS, and LiDAR data for high-bandwidth communication in autonomous vehicles. All these outcomes will be pivotal for emerging wireless standards in the years ahead. Her machine learning-based spectrum detection research resulted in a NSF SWIFT award as Co-PI and has the potential to solve the nationally relevant spectrum crunch problem while stimulating economic development. Dr. Roy has published over 40 high-quality papers and serves in leadership roles in various premier conferences. Her impressive accomplishments and dedicated service make her highly deserving of this recognition, and I am excited at all the forward-looking research that she will accomplish within academia. Kaushik Chowdhury (Chandra Family Endowed Distinguished Professorship in Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Texas at Austin) |
 | Weihang Wang University of Southern California, USA Weihang has established herself in several important research areas, including software engineering, network measurement, and web security. She is one of the few experts with specialized skills in testing WebAssembly programs, and her pioneering research has reshaped our understanding of the not-always-obvious impacts of compiler optimizations. Weihang has been a recipient of the NSF CAREER Award, the Facebook Testing and Verification Research Award, the Mozilla Research Award, and the Maurice H. Halstead Memorial Research Award. She truly deserves this wonderful recognition, and I anticipate that she will continue to make impactful contributions to our community. Nenad Medvidovic (Thomas Lord Department of Computer Science and Professor of Computer Science, USC) |
 | Huaqing Wu University of Calgary, Canada Dr. Huaqing Wu has made exceptional contributions to the development of efficient network management solutions for next-generation networks, focusing on space-air-ground integrated networks, the Internet of Things/vehicles, and AI for networking. She has pioneered research that paves the way for enhanced network performance and reliability. Her research has garnered several Best Paper Awards. Moreover, Dr. Wu’s dedication to serving the research community exemplifies her commitment to fostering collaboration and driving innovation within the field. She serves as an Associate Editor of IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials, IEEE Network, and Security and Safety Journal since 2021, and the Co-Chair of Communication QoS, Reliability and Modeling Symposium in IEEE GLOBECOM 2024. She also actively serves/served as a TPC member and regular reviewer for numerous journals and conferences. Dongmei Zhao (Professor, Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, McMaster University) |
 | Shuowen Zhang The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, China Shuowen has made outstanding contributions to solving challenging beamforming and resource allocation optimization problems in various wireless communication systems. Her research works have made high impact with over 5900 Google Scholar citations. She has received several prestigious awards, including the 2021 Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar Award, 2022 IEEE Communications Society Young Author Best Paper Award, and 2023 IEEE Communications Society Best Tutorial Paper Award. Rui Zhang (Professor, National University of Singapore) |
 | Yiran Zhang Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China Yiran Zhang’s research interests focus on transmission performance optimization in data center networks and new emerging networks such as satellite networks. She is a rising star in the area of network system research. She is creative and impressive in designing simple and effective network transmission systems to solve application performance problems, such as a fundamental ternary congestion detection system to improve the existing network protocols in datacenters. She has published over 20 papers in top journals and conferences including SIGCOMM, NSDI, MOBICOM, ATC, TON, JSAC, etc. Her research has won several best paper awards at conferences (e.g., 2022 EuroPar, 2023 ICWS), and also won the 2022 Technology Innovation Award by IEEE Technical Committee on Cloud Computing. I believe she will make outstanding and influential contributions in her future career Shangguang Wang (Professor, Dean of the School of Computer Science, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China) |
