Harpreet S. Dhillon - Awards and Honors

Wireless@Virginia Tech, Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech

Selected Awards and Honors

2025, Appointed as the Associate Dean for Research and Innovation
2024, Named the W. Martin Johnson Professor of Engineering at Virginia Tech (VT News)
2024, Appointed as the Interim Department Head of the Bradley Department of ECE at Virginia Tech (VT News)
2024, Selected as a Dean’s Fellow in Virginia Tech College of Engineering
2024, Selected as a Fellow of the Commonwealth Cyber Initiative (CCI)
2023, Elected Fellow of the International Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance (AIIA)
2023, Dean's List of Outstanding Instructors during AY 2022-2023 (first such list compiled by VT since I joined in 2014)
2023, AI2000 Most Influential Scholars (Top 35 in Internet of Things), AMiner, Tsinghua University
2023, Elevated to IEEE Fellow for contributions to heterogeneous cellular networks (IEEE Fellows Class of 2023) (VT News)
2022, Elected AAIA Fellow for “outstanding achievements in the area of Machine Learning for Communication Systems”
2022, Promotion to Full Professor, Virginia Tech
2022, AI2000 Most Influential Scholars (#18 in Internet of Things), AMiner, Tsinghua University
2021, IEEE ComSoc Wireless Communications Technical Committee (WTC) Outstanding Young Researcher Award for research contributions to the field of wireless communications and for service to WTC
2021, WiOpt Best Student Paper Award, 19th Int. Symp. on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad hoc, and Wireless Networks (WiOpt)
2021, AI2000 Most Influential Scholars (#15 in Internet of Things), AMiner, Tsinghua University
2020, IEEE ComSoc Communication Theory Technical Committee (CTTC) Early Achievement Award for fundamental contributions to stochastic geometry and heterogeneous cellular networks
2020, IEEE ComSoc Radio Communications Committee (RCC) Early Achievement Award for contributions to radio communications (WNCG News)
2020, (Inaugural) IIT Guwahati Young Alumni Achiever Award (NDTV News)
2020, AI2000 Most Influential Scholars (#16 in Internet of Things), AMiner, Tsinghua University
2020, Dean's Award for Excellence in Research, Virginia Tech College of Engineering (Link)
2019, Named the Elizabeth and James E. Turner Jr. ’56 Faculty Fellow, Virginia Tech (VT News)
2019, Early tenure and promotion to Associate Professor, Virginia Tech
2019, Virginia Tech Favorite Faculty Award, Virginia Tech Division of Student Affairs
2019, Elevated to IEEE Senior Member, IEEE
2019, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters Top Editor Award, IEEE Communications Society
2018, Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science) Highly Cited Researcher, Clarivate Analytics
2018, Named College of Engineering Faculty Fellow, Virginia Tech College of Engineering (Link)
2018, Named the Steven O. Lane Junior Faculty Fellow of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech (VT News)
2017, Clarivate Analytics (Web of Science) Highly Cited Researcher, Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters) (VT News)
2017, Outstanding New Assistant Professor Award, Virginia Tech College of Engineering (Link)
2016, Virginia Tech Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science (ICTAS) Junior Faculty Award
2016, IEEE ComSoc Heinrich Hertz Award for Best Communications Letter, IEEE Communications Society
2015, National Science Foundation CISE Research Initiation Initiative (CRII) Award
2015, IEEE ComSoc Young Author Best Paper Award, IEEE Communications Society
2014, IEEE ComSoc Leonard G. Abraham Prize Paper Award, IEEE Communications Society
2014, Best Student Paper Award, European Wireless Conference (WNCG News)
2014, Viterbi Postdoctoral Fellowship, University of Southern California
2013, Best Paper Award, IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC) (UT ECE News)
2013, Wireless Networking and Communications Group leadership award, The University of Texas at Austin
2013, Exemplary Reviewer, IEEE Wireless Communications Letters, IEEE Communications Society (IEEE Xplore Article)
2010, Microelectronics and Computer Development (MCD) Fellowship, The University of Texas at Austin
2008, Agilent Engineering and Technology Award (best undergraduate research thesis award), Agilent Technologies
2007, NASA Tech Briefs Create the Future Design Contest: Honorable Mention (among top 3 projects in the medical category worldwide)
2006, Recipient of several student awards in Techniche (IIT Guwahati, India) including the Best Student Paper and the second Best Hardware Project

Recent Keynotes, Colloquia, Tutorials, and Panels

(Invited Seminar) Spatial Models for Networks: Bridging the Gap Between Industry and Academia: Delivered an invited seminar at the Samsung R&D Institute (SRI) India-Bangalore, July 1, 2024.
(Invited Seminar) Fundamentals of Vision-Based Geolocation: Delivered an invited seminar at the 2024 International Conference on Signal Processing and Communications (SPCOM), Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, July 1-4, 2024.
(Colloquia) Stochastic Geometry for Networks: University of Pennsylvania Electrical and Systems Engineering Colloquium, Philadelphia, PA, November 17, 2023.
Virginia Tech Mathematics Department Colloquium, Blacksburg, VA, October 27, 2023.
(2023 VT EFO Inspiration Seminar) Wireless Communication Systems: History, Personal Reflections, and Future Prospects: Delivered the 2023 Virginia Tech Engineering Faculty Organization (EFO) Inspiration Seminar, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, October 4, 2023.
(Panel) IEEE PIMRC 2023 Panel on Emerging Trends in the Era of 6G and AI: Served on this panel with Petar Popovski (Aalborg), Xianbin Wang (Western), Vincent Wong (UBC), and Wei Yu (Toronto, Moderator), IEEE PIMRC, Toronto, Canada, September 5-8, 2023.
(Invited Seminar) Fundamentals of Landmark-Based Geolocation: IEEE Communication Theory Workshop, Hualien, Taiwan, July 2-5, 2023. Invited to present for being the winner of the IEEE ComSoc CTTC Early Achievement Award.
(Keynote) Drone-Assisted Cellular Networks: Modeling and Fundamentals: DroneCom: 4th International Workshop on Drone Assisted Wireless Communications for 5G and Beyond, ACM MobiCom 2021, New Orleans, US, March 28 - April 1, 2022.
(Invited Seminar) Poisson Line Cox Process: Distributional Properties and Applications to Vehicular Networks: LINCS-NEMO Workshop on Vehicular Networks, Laboratory for Information, Networking and Communication Sciences (LINCS), Paris, Mar 10-11, 2022. (Video Lecture)
(Short Course) Machine Learning in Communications: JTG/IEEE ITSoc Summer School in Information Theory, Signal Processing, Telecommunication, and Networking, IIT Kanpur, India, June 28-July 1, 2021. (Video Lectures)
Second offering: SPARC Project Event, Indian Institute of Technology Bhubaneswar, India, Jan 21-24, 2022.
(Keynote) Random Sequential Adsorption: A Multilayer Extension and its Applications to Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks: Fifth Symposium on Spatial Networks, School of Mathematics, Bristol University, Oct 23, 2020.
(Keynote) Integrated Access and Backhaul: Foundations and Design Insights: India Research Network 2020 event organized by Samsung Research India - Bangalore, India, Sept. 21-25, 2020.
(Keynote) An Application of Grassmann Clustering in Massive MIMO: Open-RAN Workshop, IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), 25-28 May 2020.
(Invited Seminar) Role of Age of Information in the Internet of Things: Workshop on 5G Technology that Fuels Massive IoT Growth, IEEE 5G World Forum, Bangalore, India, Sept. 2020.
(Invited Seminar) Random Networks on Lines: Stochastic Geometry for Vehicular Systems: IEEE Radio Communications Technical Committee (RCC) Meeting at the IEEE ICC 2020. Invited to present for being the winner of the IEEE ComSoc RCC Early Achievement Award.
(Invited Seminar) Stochastic Geometry for Smart Cities: Building Blocks for Smarter Cities Workshop, Virginia Tech Research Center - Arlington, July 29, 2019.
(Keynote) Poisson Cluster Process and its Applications to Cellular Networks: Third Symposium on Spatial Networks, School of Mathematics, Bristol University, UK, Sept. 13, 2018.
(Invited Tutorial) Poisson Line Process: Historical Perspective and Applications to Vehicular Networks: Short Course on Stochastic Geometry, School of Mathematics, Bristol University, UK, Sept. 11, 2018.
(Invited Seminar) 3GPP-inspired Stochastic Geometry Models for Cellular Networks: Texas Wireless Summit, WNCG, The University of Texas at Austin, TX, Nov. 6, 2017.
10th annual Huawei University Days, Futurewei R&D Center, Chicago, IL, Aug. 4, 2017.
(Invited Seminar) Modeling and Analysis of Emerging Trends in Device-to- Device Networks: Communications Theory Workshop, Orange County, CA, May 2015.
(Invited Seminar) Modeling and Analysis of Clusters and Exclusion Zones in D2D Networks: Simons Conference on Networks and Stochastic Geometry, Austin, TX, May 2015.
(IEEE ComSoc Webinar) Small Cells, Big Gains: Increasing Cellular Capacity (by 1000x): IEEE ComSoc webinar (sponsored by InterDigital), Mar. 26, 2015.
(Invited Seminar) Spatial Models for 5G Networks: Beyond Homogeneous Poisson Point Processes: Qualcomm Corporate R&D Academic Lecture Series, San Diego, CA, Dec. 10, 2015.
(Invited Tutorial) Small Cells, Big Gains: Increasing Cellular Capacity by 1000x: 24th Virginia Tech Symposium on Wireless Communications and 10th Annual Wireless Summer School, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, May 28-30, 2014.

Recent Media Coverage

Virginia Tech, Harpreet S. Dhillon appointed College of Engineering's associate dean for research and innovation, February 19, 2025
Virginia Tech, Harpreet S. Dhillon named interim head of Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, August 16, 2024
Virginia Tech, Harpreet S. Dhillon named W. Martin Johnson Professor, August 16, 2024
The Wall Street Journal, Where’s the Signal? Warehouse Robots Are Searching for Stronger Internet Connections, September 17, 2023
The Washington Post, Amtrak WiFi can be infuriating. Here’s how to make it work for you. August 28, 2023
Virginia Tech, Harpreet S. Dhillon elected fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, December 19, 2022
Virginia Tech, 6G vision: The future of wireless communications can be seen through your phone’s camera lens, November 9, 2022

Research Grants

2024, NSF IUSE grant, Visualization-Enhanced Undergraduate Wireless Engineering Education through Problem- and Project-based Learning Approaches (Role: PI)
2024, Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Seed Grant: Fundamentals of Geotagging Images and Videos Using Non-Unique Landmarks (Role: PI)
2024, Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Fellow grant to work on an institute-level proposal (Role: PI)
2023, NTIA, Learning-Based ORAN Testing (Role: Co-PI)
2023, Lockheed Martin Corporation, Multi-Target Detection and Tracking with Multi-Mode Radar Networks (Role: Co-PI)
2023, Commonwealth Cyber Initiative Seed Grant: Fundamentals of Privacy-Detectability-Timeliness Tradeoff in Wireless Networks (Role: PI)
2022, NSF grant CNS-2225511, NSF-AoF: Vision-Guided Wireless Communication Systems (Role: Co-PI) (Project Website) (VT News)
2021, NSF grant CNS-2107276, Collaborative Research: CNS Core: Medium: Localization in Millimeter Wave Cellular Networks: Fundamentals, Algorithms, and Measurement-inspired Simulator (Project Website) (Role: PI)
2020, NSF grant ECCS-2030215, Collaborative Research: SWIFT: SMALL: Enabling Seamless Coexistence between Passive and Active Networks using Reconfigurable Reflecting Surfaces (Project Website) (Role: PI)
2020, NSF grant AST-2037870, SII Planning: ARIES: Center for Agile, RelIablE, Scalable Spectrum (Role: Co-PI)
2019, NSF grant CNS-1923807, SpecEES: Collaborative Research: DroTerNet: Coexistence between Drone and Terrestrial Wireless Networks (Project Website) (Role: PI)
2018, NSF grant CNS-1814477, NeTS: Small: Fundamentals of Internet-of-Things with Energy Harvesting and Edge Intelligence (Project Website) (Role: PI)
2017, NSF grant CPS-1739642, CPS: Small: Statistical Performance Analysis and Resource Management for Cyber-Physical Internet of Things Systems (Role: PI)
2017, NSF grant ECCS-1731711, SpecEES: Collaborative Research: Stochastic Geometry Meets Channel Measurements: Comprehensive Modeling, Analysis, Fundamental Design-tradeoffs in Real-world Massive-MIMO Networks (Role: PI)
2017, National Spectrum Consortium grant NSC-16-RPP-04, LTE Output Power Characterization and LTE Output Power Aggregation Models (Prime: Draper) (Role: PI)
2016, NSF grant IIS-1633363, BIGDATA: Collaborative Research: IA: Big Data Analytics for Optimized Planning of Smart, Sustainable, and Connected Communities (Project Website) (Role: Co-PI)
2016, NSF grant CNS-1617896, NeTS: Small: Joint Backhaul and Radio Access Design for Heterogeneous Wireless Networks (Project Website) (Role: PI)
2016, Junior Faculty Award, Institute for Critical Technology and Applied Science at Virginia Tech (Role: PI)
2015, NSF grant CCF-1464293, CRII: CIF: Towards Self-Powered Heterogeneous Cellular Networks (Role: PI)