For 2023, in alphabetical order by last name, here are 10 amazing women in networking and communications that you should know!
![]() | Anna Brunstrom Professor, Karlstad University, Sweden and Distinguished Researcher, University of Malaga, Spain Anna Brunstrom received a Ph.D. and M.Sc. in Computer Science from College of William & Mary, VA, in 1996 and 1993, respectively. She received a B.Sc. in Computer Science and Mathematics from Pepperdine University, CA, in 1991 as a valedictorian. She joined Karlstad University (KAU), Sweden, in 1996, where she is currently a Full Professor in Computer Science and Head of the Distributed Intelligent Systems and Communications Research Group. She is also a part-time Distinguished Researcher in the Institute of Software Engineering and Technologies (ITIS) at University of Malaga, Spain. Her research interests include Internet architectures and protocols, techniques for low latency communication, multi-path communication and design and performance evaluation of mobile systems including 5G/6G. She is the scientific director for the research profile DRIVE - Data-driven Latency-sensitive Mobile Services for a Digitalized Society, an eight-year nationally funded research initiative together with industry. She has led many other collaborative research projects and has been involved as KAU PI in several European Framework projects (e.g. HEU 6G-PATH, H2020 5GENESIS, MONROE, NEAT, and FP7 RITE and NEWCOM). She has served on numerous technical program committees over the years, where she served as a TPC chair for PAM and a TPC member for ACM SIGCOMM, ACM CoNEXT, IEEE INFOCOM, TMA, ACM WiNTECH, and ANRW during 2023 alone. She is actively engaged in standardization within the IETF and served as a working group chair for the RTP Media Congestion Avoidance Techniques (rmcat) working group from 2015-2023. She has authored/coauthored ten book chapters and 200+ international journal and conference papers, including several awarded publications. |
![]() | Soumaya Cherkaoui Polytechnique Montreal, Canada Pr. Soumaya Cherkaoui's research and teaching interests are in wireless networks. Particularly, she works on next generation networks (5G and beyond), Edge intelligence/Network Intelligence, and communication networks/edge intelligence for verticals such as Connected and Autonomous Cars, IoT, and Industrial IoT. She leads a research group which conducts research funded both by government and industry. Before joining academia as a professor in 1999, she worked for industry as a project leader on projects targeted at the Aerospace Industry. Pr. Cherkaoui has held invited positions at leading institutions including the University of California at Berkeley. Bell Laboratories, Monash University, and the University of Toronto, as well as an adjunct position at Lulea University, in Sweden. In 2010, she was appointed member of the Board of Directors of the Canadian Network of Centres of Excellence Auto21, Canada. Since 2017, she has been serving as member of MITACS Research Council. Pr. Cherkaoui avails of a long research experience in the wireless networking. She was named Distinguished Lecturer by the IEEE Communication Society. Her work resulted in technology transfer to companies and to patented technology. Pr. Cherkaoui has published over 100 research papers in reputed journals and conferences. She co-edited several collective works, has been an associate editor and guest editor of several IEEE, IET, Wiley and Elsevier Journals. She is currently on the editorial board of IEEE Network, the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, IEEE Systems, Elsevier Vehicular Communications, and IET Quantum Communication. Her work was awarded with recognitions and best paper awards including a best paper award at the IEEE Communications Society Flagship conference IEEE ICC in 2017. |
![]() | Octavia A. Dobre Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering Memorial University, Canada Octavia A. Dobre (Fellow, IEEE) is a Professor and Canada Research Chair Tier 1 at Memorial University, Canada. She received the Dipl. Ing. and Ph.D. degrees from the Polytechnic Institute of Bucharest, Romania, in 1991 and 2000, respectively. Between 2002 and 2005, she was with the New Jersey Institute of Technology, USA, after which she joined Memorial University. She was a Visiting Professor with Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA and Université de Bretagne Occidentale, France. Her research interests encompass wireless communication and networking technologies, as well as optical and underwater communications. She (co-)authored over 450 refereed papers in these areas. Her work was recognized through Best Paper Awards at various conferences, including IEEE ICC, IEEE Globecom, IEEE WCNC, and IEEE PIMRC. Dr. Dobre was a Fulbright Scholar, Royal Society Scholar, and Distinguished Lecturer of the IEEE Communications Society. She is an elected member of the European Academy of Sciences and Arts, a Fellow of the Engineering Institute of Canada, and a Fellow of the Canadian Academy of Engineering. Dr. Dobre serves as the Director of Journals of the Communications Society. She was the inaugural Editor-in-Chief (EiC) of the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society, the EiC of the IEEE Communications Letters, and the inaugural Chair of the Women in Communications Engineering standing committee. |
![]() | Ana Garcia Armada Professor at the Department of Signal Theory and Communications, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid, Spain Ana García Armada received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Polytechnical University of Madrid in February 1998. She is currently a Professor at University Carlos III of Madrid, Spain, where she has served in a variety of management positions (Head of Signal Theory and Communications Department, Vice-dean of Electrical Engineering, Deputy Vice-Chancellor of International Relations, among others). She is leading the Communications Research Group at this university. She has been visiting scholar at Stanford University, Bell Labs and University of Southampton. She has participated and coordinated a large number national and international research projects as well as contracts with the industry, all of them related to wireless communications. She is the co-author of eight book chapters on wireless communications and signal processing. She has published more than 250 papers in international journals and conference proceedings and she holds five granted patents. She has contributed to international standards organizations, such as ITU and ETSI, she is a member of the expert group of NetworldEurope European Technology Platform and was Vice-Chair of the advisory committee 5JAC of the ESA as expert appointed by Spain on 5G (2019-2023). She has served on the editorial boards of Physical Communication (2008-2017), IET Communications (2014-2017) and IEEE Communications Letters (2016-2019; Editor until Feb 2019, Senior Editor from Mar 2019, Exemplary Editor Award 2017 and 2018). She is serving on the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Communications and IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society since 2019 and ITU Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies since 2020. She has served on the TPC of many conferences and she has been a member of the organizing committee of IEEE MeditCom 2024 (General Chair), IEEE MeditCom 2023, IEEE WNCN 2024, IEEE Globecom 2022, IEEE Globecom 2021 (General Chair), IEEE Globecom 2019, IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC) Fall 2018, Spring 2018 and 2019, among others. She has been an officer since 2017 and is now the Vice-Chair of IEEE ComSoc Signal Processing and Computing for Communications Committee. She has been the Secretary of the IEEE ComSoc Women in Communications Engineering Standing Committee (2016-2017) and the Chair of this committee (2018-2019). She has been a Member at Large of the Board of Governors, Director of Online Content and member of several management committees in the IEEE Communications Society, where she is now the VP of Member and Global Activities. She has received the Young Researchers Excellence Award, the Award to Outstanding achievement in research, teaching and management and the Award to Best Practices in Teaching, all from University Carlos III of Madrid. She was awarded the third place Bell Labs Prize 2014 for shaping the future of information and communications technology. She received the Outstanding service award from the IEEE ComSoc Signal Processing and Communications Electronics technical committee in 2019 and the Outstanding service award from the IEEE ComSoc Women in Communications Engineering Standing Committee in 2020. She received the IEEE ComSoc/KICS Exemplary Global Service Award in 2022. Her main research interests are signal processing techniques applied to wireless communications. |
![]() | Elena Simona Lohan Tampere University, Faculty of Information Technology and Communication Sciences E.S. Lohan is a professor in the Electrical Engineering unit at Tampere University, a Visiting Professor at Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, and the leader of TLTPOS research group on Signal processing for wireless positioning at TAU. She is a co-editor of the first book on Galileo satellite system (Springer "Galileo Positioning technology"), co-editor of a Springer book on "Multi-technology positioning", and author or co-author in more than 300 international peer-reviewed publications. She is also an Editor for the IEEE Journal of Indoor and Seamless Positioning and Navigation and an Associate Editor for the RIN Journal of Navigation, the IET Radar, Sonar and Navigation journal, and the GPS Solutions. She has recently coordinated the A-WEAR MSCA/H2020 European Joint Doctorate network with 17 international units in the field of wearable computing. Her current research interests include LEO-PNT, GNSS, indoor positioning, tracking and sensing, RF convergence in 6G, RF fingerprinting and interference mitigation, sustainable management of water resources, and technological solutions to decrease social isolation and loneliness. |
![]() | Ingrid Moerman imec – Ghent University Ingrid Moerman received her degree in Electrical Engineering (1987) and her Ph.D. degree (1992) from Ghent University, where she became a part-time professor in 2000. She currently combines a professor position at Ghent University with a full-time staff position at imec, a world's leading independent R&D hub in Flanders-Belgium. She is a staff member at IDLab, a core research group of imec with research activities embedded in Ghent University and the University of Antwerp. Ingrid Moerman is coordinating the research activities on intelligent Wireless Networking (iWiNe) at Ghent University, where she is leading a team of about 35 researchers. In parallel, Ingrid Moerman is Program Manager of the 'Deterministic Connected Systems' track, part of the CONNECTIVITY program at imec, and in this role, she coordinates research activities on end-to-end wired/wireless networking services driven by professional and mission-critical applications that have to meet strict Quality of Service requirements in terms of throughput, bounded latency and reliability in smart application areas like industrial automation, vehicular networks, safety-critical operations, professional entertainment, etc. Her main research interests include real-time software-defined radio, intelligent cognitive radio networks, dynamic spectrum sharing, coexistence across heterogeneous wireless networks, time-sensitive networks, next-generation wireless networks (5G/6G/...), and experimentally supported research. Ingrid Moerman has longstanding experience in running and coordinating national and EU research-funded projects. At the national level, she is particularly active in demand-driven research with small, medium, and large Flemish enterprises. At the European level, she has coordinated several FP7/H2020 projects (CREW, WiSHFUL, eWINE, ORCA) and is involved in many H2020 and Horizon Europe projects related to 5G/6G connected vehicles (5G-MOBIX, 5G-CARMEN, 5G-Blueprint, DEDICAT-6G, HEXA-X-II, TrialsNet, 6G-SHINE, 6G-MUSICAL). She is also coordinating the EU Erasmus+ CBHE project DigiHealth-Asia. Ingrid Moerman is further highly active in several European discussion groups that drive the next-generation wireless roadmaps. Ingrid Moerman has an excellent research track record (around 1000 publications in international journals or conference proceedings, close to 20,000 citations and an h-index of 58, many keynote and invited presentations, 19 prizes/awards). Ingrid Moerman is further chair of the board of directors of A.S.T.R.I.D. (the company responsible for emergency communication in Belgium) and she is a board member of FITCE Belgium (broadband connectivity and services organization focussing on knowledge sharing and networking). |
![]() | Eve M. Schooler RAEng Visiting Professor, University of Oxford Dr. Eve M. Schooler is a Networking and Distributed Systems expert. She is an IEEE Fellow (2021) and the co-recipient of the IEEE Internet Award (2020) for her work on control protocols for Internet telephony and multimedia teleconferencing. Her current work focuses on evolving the Internet towards a sustainable edge-cloud infrastructure and carbon-aware networking. Currently, she is a Visiting Professor of Sustainable Computing at University of Oxford, sponsored by the UK's Royal Academy of Engineering (RAEng), as part of a program targeting industry-academia partnership. She previously held leadership positions in industry, most recently as Principal Engineer and Director of Emerging IoT Networks at Intel. Prior to Intel, she held positions at AT&T Labs-Research, USC's Information Sciences Institute (ISI), Apollo Computers, and Pollere. Throughout her career, Dr. Schooler has served in leadership roles in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standards body, has authored over 100 publications (cited over 15K times), including as an inventor on over 35 patents. She holds a BS from Yale, MS from UCLA, and PhD from Caltech, all in Computer Science. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association in the US, the EU H2020 SPATIAL Project, and on the Advisory Council for the Computing and Information Sciences Department at the University of Delaware. |
![]() | Milica Stojanovic Professor, ECE Dept.. Northeastern Univ., Boston, MA 02115, USA Milica Stojanovic is a Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. She graduated from the University of Belgrade, Serbia, in 1988, and received M.S. (’91) and Ph.D. (’93) degrees in electrical engineering from Northeastern University. Before joining Northeastern faculty in 2008, she was a Principal Scientist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She is a Guest Investigator at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI), where she also completed her Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her research interests include digital communications theory, statistical signal processing and wireless networks, and their applications to underwater acoustic systems. She is an Associate Editor for the IEEE Journal of Oceanic Engineering, and she chairs the IEEE Ocean Engineering Society’s Technical Committee for Underwater Communication, Navigation and Positioning. In the past, she has also served as an Associate Editor and Board Member for several IEEE journals and magazines. Milica is the recipient of the 2015 IEEE/OES Distinguished Technical Achievement Award, the 2019 IEEE WICE Outstanding Achievement Award, and is an IEEE/OES Distinguished Lecturer. In 2022, she was awarded an honorary doctorate from the Aarhus University in Denmark, and she was elected to the Academy of Engineering Sciences of Serbia. |
![]() | Li Wang Professor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications Li Wang received the Ph.D. degree from the Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications (BUPT), Beijing, China, in 2009. She is currently a Full Professor with the School of Computer Science(National Pilot Software Engineering School, BUPT, where she is also an Associate Dean and heads the High Performance Computing and Networking Laboratory. She is also a member of the Key Laboratory of the Universal Wireless Communications, Ministry of Education, China. She also held Visiting Positions with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech, Atlanta, GA, USA, from December 2013 to January 2015, and with the Department of Signals and Systems, Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden, from August to November 2015 and July to August 2018. She has authored/coauthored almost 70 journal papers and four books. Her current research interests include device-to-device communications, wireless caching networks, and edge intelligence, particularly in the context of applications for emergency scenarios. She currently serves on the Editorial Boards for IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, Computer Networks, and China Communications. She was the Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking,the Symposium Chair of IEEE ICC 2019 on Cognitive Radio and Networks Symposium and a Tutorial Chair of IEEE VTC 2019-fall. She also serves as the vice chair of Meetings and Conference Committee (MCC) for IEEE Communication Society (ComSoc) Asia Pacific Board (APB) for the term of 2020-2021, and chairs the special interest group (SIG) on Sensing, Communications, Caching, and Computing (C3) in Cognitive Networks for IEEE Technical Committee on Cognitive Networks. She was the recipient of the Best Paper Awards from several IEEE conferences, e.g., IEEE GLOBECOM 2018, IEEE ICNC 2019, and so forth. She has served on TPC of multiple IEEE conferences, including IEEE INFOCOM, GLOBECOM, ICC, and WCNC in recent years. |
![]() | Tingting Yang Peng Cheng Laboratory, P. R. China Tingting Yang received her Ph.D. degree in July 2010. She is a researcher at PengCheng Laboratory, Shenzhen, P.R. China. Her research interests include Communications and Computing Integrated Networks, Space-Air-Land-Sea Integrated Maritime Networks, Edge Intelligence, NET4AI, Networking and Resource Allocation, and Large Language Model for the 6G Wireless Networks. Dr. Yang plays a significant role in the telecommunications industry through her collaboration with leading companies and her leadership in key research initiatives. Her contributions to the development and integration of advanced network and computing infrastructures, based on PengCheng CloudBrain and PengCheng Mind, demonstrate her commitment to advancing the technological frontier. She has received numerous awards, including the IEEE International Conference Best Organization Award, the IEEE WCSP Best Industrial Innovation Award, and the IEEE HotICN Best Paper Award. As a visionary in advancing collective intelligence and multi-agent generative AI systems, Dr. Yang serves as the Academic Chair of the IEEE Communications Society's Emerging Technology Initiative (ETI) on Generative AI (GenAI) in Telecom. Her leadership in this initiative underscores her pivotal role in shaping the future of telecommunications through the integration of generative AI technologies. She also takes many editorial and organization positions in top IEEE journals and conferences. |