My Interview with EEWeb

Post date: May 5, 2015 3:36:56 AM

http://www.eeweb.com/spotlight/interview-with-dr.-ismail-guvenc

Featured Engineer

Dr. Ismail Guvenc

Interview with Dr. Ismail Guvenc- Assistant Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Florida International University

Can you give us a little background about yourself?

I am currently an assistant professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of Florida International University (FIU). Before joining FIU in 2012, I worked for DOCOMO Innovations, Inc., in Palo Alto, California, for six years. I received my Ph.D. degree from University of South Florida in 2006, my MS degree from University of New Mexico in 2003, and my BS degree from Bilkent University in Turkey in 2001, all in the fields of electrical and computer engineering areas.

At FIU, I am the faculty advisor for the MPACT (stands for mobile, pervasive, and autonomous communication technologies) Research Lab. I teach and do research in the areas of wireless communications and networks. I have over 100 conference/journal papers and book chapters, 3 books, close to 30 patents, and several standardization contributions. I also continuously serve as an editor and organizer in academic journals, conferences, and workshops.

How did you become interested in Electrical Engineering?

I loved math and science since elementary school, and always wanted to be an engineer when I grow up. Two fields that I was particularly interested were electrical engineering and computer science. I ended up choosing EE over CS, mainly because EE was slightly more popular at the time I started college. Looking back, I am happy about the decision. I love my field of communication systems, and being an electrical engineer allows you to gain deeper insights about the fundamentals of communication networks.

Can you tell us about your work as an Assistant Professor at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Florida International University? Could you describe a typical work day?

FIU is a vibrant, dynamic, and fastly growing institution. We currently have over 54K students in the college, placing us among the top 5 universities in the US based on our enrollment count. Our students, who are mostly minority (Hispanic) students, are very energetic and eager to be successful, and it is a quite fulfilling experience to interact with them.

My typical work day at FIU may show a lot of variation depending on what deadlines are there on the horizon. Since I am a third-year assistant professor, my major focus has been on writing grant proposals since I have joined FIU. I write proposals mostly to National Science Foundation (NSF), and was fortunate to be awarded five NSF grants over the past year. This has been a big relief, as I can now have long-term support for my graduate students to do research. Before grant application deadlines (I apply more than ten grants each year), my major focus becomes writing and editing grant proposals, possibly together with other collaborators.

I also have 8 graduate students currently in my MPACT Research Lab. We meet regularly with each student to talk about their research progress. Especially before paper submission deadlines, I work closely with my students in writing and editing their paper drafts. After my second year at FIU, I started to teach two courses each semester. On the days of my courses, I prepare for delivering the lectures. A lot of time also goes to preparing/grading homeworks, exams, labs, and course projects.

Finally, academic service (internal or external to FIU) may take major effort during certain periods. For internal service, I serve in committees such as the faculty search and screening committee. Externally, I serve in editorial boards and organization committees of international journals and conferences. This requires reviewing and handling several academic papers every month.

With all these, some days of the year may be really busy. You can not really plan things perfectly so that you are never overloaded. Sometimes, mainly due to long-term commitments, tasks start poping up one after another, and you have to figure out how to do them all under the pressure of tight deadlines. I sometimes think of myself as a juggler. At times, you may have to juggle so many tasks without dropping any of them.

Your research interests include heterogeneous wireless networks and future radio access beyond 4G wireless systems. Can you please give us a little background about these two topics?

Heterogeneous networks have been a key research area for 4G and 5G wireless systems. They provide major throughput advantages, meaning that they can enable services such as seamless HD video, anywhere, anytime. They have their own challenges; from our group, we have several contributions in the literature related to interference and mobility management challenges of densely deployed heterogeneous networks.

The 4G LTE has been commercially established as a successful cellular technology. It has been adopted by the cellular operators worldwide. Now there is a major research trend in the academia to develop the next generation (5G) of wireless communication standards. They have to support high peak throughput (on the order of 10 Gbps) and low latency (lower than 1 ms). We are investigating several flavors of 5G systems in our research group, ranging from dense HetNet architectures, device to device communication techniques, mobility/interference management challenges, mobile relays, and testbed development efforts.

You have many inventions. Which one is your favorite and why?

I had my invention disclosures mostly while I was working for DOCOMO Innovations in California (2006-2012), and few others while I was doing an internship in Mitsubishi Electric Research Labs (MERL) during 2005. I can not pinpoint a single favorite invention, but I guess the ones that I like the most are related to those which address interference and mobility management challenges in femtocell and heterogeneous networks. The reason is that HetNets have been an emerging field; we were fortunate to have many early patents in this area, and hence, I think they may have larger chances of having some long-term impact.

You received plenty of awards and recognitions. What are your secrets to achieve those awards and recognitions?

I guess working hard, working well with a team, planning ahead, developing your network, building on your own strengths, and being proactive in all situations may be some of the factors. Among these recognitions, I am most proud to have recently received the 2015 NSF CAREER award. It was awarded for our work in our group on the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to facilitate broadband connectivity during emergency and public safety scenarios.

What are you currently working on?

Apart from our group’s activities on 5G wireless systems, I am recently interested in software defined radio,UAV communications, and machine learning. I am trying to study and experiment more in these fields to initiate new research thrusts and reinforce our ongoing research activities in our group.

What books do you like to read aside from engineering books?

I like reading non-fiction bestsellers when I can find opportunity. For example, I read two of the Malcolm Gladwell’s recent books (Blink, Outliers) in the past few years. I am recently reading “The Idea Factory” from Jon Gertner, which talks about how Bell Labs has been founded, and how it became the home to many of the great inventions that are impacting our everyday lives today, ranging from transistors to cellular communication systems. I strongly recommend it to anyone who is involved in research and development.

I have a 7 year old daughter and we were recently blessed with a baby boy last year. Thanks to my daughter, I probably read some 50 chapter books over the past year or so (bedtime stories!). The ones I particularly like have been “Magic Tree House” and “Ivy and Bean” series, and the amazing books written by Roald Dahl :-)

What do you usually do during your free time?

I like a wide range of sports, especially soccer, basketball, table tennis, running, and hiking. I ran San Francisco Half-Marathon twice while I was back in California. I also used to hike a lot with friends; Yosemite was our favorite destination for the summer. I am proud that I made it to the summits of Half Dome, Cloud’s Rest, and Alta Peak. I miss those times now, but unfortunately the highest point in peninsular Florida is 95 meters (Sugarloaf Mountain), and not much opportunity to hike. It is also very difficult to find free time to do many things for yourself as a tenure-track assistant professor, especially while the classes are ongoing. Over the weekends I try to spend time with the family, go shopping and sightseeing. But sometimes they are mad that I have to keep working hard even over a weekend day due to an upcoming deadline.

Few years from now, what direction do you see yourself?

Right now the major research direction in our field is 5G wireless systems. I expect that we will continue to conduct our research on several emerging challenges of 5G heterogeneous networks. We recently startedNSF-funded research projects on visible light communications, smart grid communications, and public safety communications, so I expect that we will have several key research outcomes in these new directions as well. In particular, my NSF CAREER project aims to integrate the use of UAVs in public safety and emergency communication scenarios, and I am expecting that I will be heavily involved doing research in this area with several of my students. We already have many UAVs in our group, and especially undergraduate students are particularly excited to have projects and experiments with them.

As a professor, what words of encouragement would you give to your students?

I am a fan of Steve Job’s 2005 commencement talk to Stanford students. “You’ve got to find what you love”, “stay hungry, stay foolish”, and “you can only connect the dots looking backward” are some of my favorite excerpts from his talk. It is not always clear where life will take us; what is important is to always work hard, and proactively do your best within the circumstances that may bound. Looking backward, we can learn from our strengths and weaknesses, and build on them to aim new opportunities. If you work hard on the right set of problems, sooner or later you will reach success.

As a faculty advisor, what I really look for in a graduate student is his/her potential and motivation to become an independent researcher in the future. This requires hard work, dedication, and persistency, in order not to give up in the face of difficulties. This is easier said than done. Research is very difficult (and quite different than coursework), you have to deal with many ambiguities and steer your way through them in consultation with your advisor. Many students do not really get how difficult it is to do research, until they work on their first research paper. That’s why I encourage my students to start publishing as early as possible, well before finishing their coursework. In research, sometimes you may get stuck with a problem for a long time, and only way to go beyond it may be to become obsessed with it day and night. If you can focus on the problem well enough, you will realize that solutions may come up at unexpected times, not while you are in front of the computer, but when you are commuting, eating, walking etc.

For further advise on doing great research, I can strongly recommend interested students the 1986 talk by Richard Hamming from Bell Labs, titled “You and Your Research”. It is available as full text if Googled, and also available in Youtube video, recorded when Richard Hamming actually made the talk.

Is there anything you’d like to say to young people to encourage them to pursue Engineering?

Engineering is great, go for it! The future will surely bring many new and exciting technologies, but will also introduce many intricate problems. Cybersecurity, big data, UAVs, and brain research are only few of the emerging research areas where we need bright engineers to tackle tomorrow’s problems. I would recommend young people interested in engineering to reach out the faculty about their interests, and try getting some early research experience if there are related opportunities.