Dr. Kai Li is a Senior Research Scientist at the Real-Time and Embedded Computing Systems Research Centre (CISTER), a nationally recognized research unit funded by the Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT) of Portugal. He holds the distinction of being a CMU-Portugal Research Fellow, jointly supported by Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and FCT. He also serves as the head of the Intelligent NetworKed Systems (INKS) Laboratory at CISTER. Dr. Li has been a visiting scholar at leading institutions worldwide, including TU Berlin (Germany), Carnegie Mellon University (USA), and the University of Cambridge (United Kingdom).
He is a Senior Member of IEEE and ACM. His research interests include machine learning, resource allocation and cyber resilience in mobile edge computing, Internet of Things (IoT), UAV networks, and vehicular cyber–physical systems.
PhD in Computer Science, The University of New South Wales (UNSW), Sydney, Australia, 07/2011 - 09/2014.
PhD Dissertation: Reliable Communications and Energy Efficient Relay in Aerial Wireless Sensor Networks
MS in Telecommunications, The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Hong Kong, 09/2009 - 06/2010.
Master Dissertation: A Secure RFID System Design Based on Electronic Product Code Tags
BEng in Electronic Information Science and Technology, Shandong University, Weihai, China, 09/2005 - 07/2009.
I am looking for highly self-motivated PhD students. If you are interested in working with me, feel free to send me your CV. Please refer to http://www.cister.isep.ipp.pt/phd/ for graduate admission information.
07/2016 - Present, senior research scientist and CMU-Portugal research fellow with Real-Time and Embedded Computing Systems Research Centre (CISTER), Portugal. Kai Li focuses on Cyber-Physical Systems.
11/2024 - Present, visiting research scholar with the Telecommunication Networks (TKN), the School of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, TU Berlin, Germany.
01/2023 - 07/2024, visiting research scientist with the Division of Electrical Engineering, Department of Engineering, University of Cambridge, Cambridge CB2 1PZ, United Kingdom.
06/2022 - 11/2022, visiting research scholar with Wireless Sensing and Embedded Systems Lab, CyLab Security and Privacy Institute, Robert Mehrabian Collaborative Innovation Center, Carnegie Mellon University (CMU), Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States.
06/2016 - 08/2016, visiting research fellow with Engineering Systems and Design Pillar, SUTD, Singapore.
12/2014 - 06/2016, Postdoc research fellow with The SUTD-MIT International Design Centre, Singapore. Kai Li did research on human sensing systems and energy harvesting wireless sensor networks in smart city.
09/2012 - 03/2013, visiting research assistant with ICT Centre, Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation (CSIRO), Brisbane, Australia. Kai Li did research on scheduling optimization in low-power wireless sensor networks.
06/2010 - 06/2011, full-time research assistant with Mobile Technologies Centre, Department of Information Engineering, The Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK), Hong Kong. Kai Li worked on machine learning algorithm and mobile application programming. The android application can be found in Google play: [DrunkAlert] [AndroLib]
2022 - 2025, €242K, Principal Investigator
Project Title: ADANET: Autonomous Drones Assisted Internet of Things Networks
Hosting Institution: CISTER Research Centre
Sponsor: Scientific Research and Technological Development (SR&TD), FCT Portugal.
2021 - 2022, €57K, Principal Investigator
Project Title: CRUAV: Cooperative Trajectory Planning for Real-Time Surveillance in UAV-assisted Intelligent Transportation Systems
Hosting Institution: CISTER Research Centre
Sponsor: Carnegie Mellon Portugal Program (CMU Portugal), Carnegie Mellon University, United States, and FCT Portugal.
2018 - 2021, €240K, Principal Investigator
Project Title: ARNET: Airborne Relaying Networks for Reliable and Secure Mobile Communications
Hosting Institution: CISTER Research Centre
Sponsor: Scientific Research and Technological Development (SR&TD), FCT Portugal.
Project Reference: POCI- PTDC/CCI-COM/4280/2021
Project Title: IBEX - Quantitative methods for cyber-physical programming: reasoning precisely about imprecisions in cyber-physical behaviour
Hosting Institution: CISTER Research Centre
Sponsor: Scientific Research and Technological Development (SR&TD) Project Grants, FCT Portugal.
Project Reference: H2020-ECSEL-2019-2-RIA, Grant Nr 876019 ECSEL/0010/2019
Project Title: ADACORSA - Airborne data collection on resilient system architectures
Hosting Institution: CISTER Research Centre
Sponsor: FCT, ECSEL, Horizon 2020 European Union
Project Reference: ECSEL JU Grant nr. 692529-2 ECSEL/0002/2015 (H2020-ECSEL-2015-2-IA-two-stage)
Project Title: SafeCOP - Safe Cooperating Cyber-Physical Systems using Wireless Communication
Hosting Institution: CISTER Research Centre
Sponsor: FCT, ARTEMIS, Horizon 2020 European Union
Project Reference: JU Grant nr. 621353 ARTEMIS/0004/2013
Project Title: DEWI - Dependable Embedded Wireless Infrastructure
Hosting Institution: CISTER Research Centre
Sponsor: FCT, Horizon 2020 European Union
Project Title: Proactive Information Surveillance in Wireless Networks
Hosting Institution: Singapore University of Technology and Design
Sponsor: Seed Project under Temasek Laboratories
Project Title: Green Heterogeneous Sensor Networks Based on Radio Broadcasting for Smart City
Hosting Institution: Singapore University of Technology and Design
Sponsor: Singapore – China Joint Research Programme
Project Title: Liveable Places: A Building Environment Modelling Approach For Dynamic Place Making
Hosting Institution: Singapore University of Technology and Design
Sponsor: The Ministry of National Development Research Fund, Singapore
Project Reference: DP110104344
Project Title: Flying Networks: Airborne Sensing for Environmental Monitoring and Disaster Response
Hosting Institution: The University of New South Wales
Sponsor: Discovery Projects Funding of the Australian Research Council
Project Title: Batmon Project in CSIRO’s Sensor and Sensor Networks Transformation Capability Platform
Hosting Institution: CSIRO
Sponsor: CSIRO
Project Reference: ITS/045/09
Project Title: An Extensive Distributed Measurement Platform for Analyzing Quality-of-Experience (QoE) of Multimedia Applications over Wireless Networks
Hosting Institution: The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Sponsor: The Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) of the Hong Kong SAR Government
Project Title: Architectural Design of Mobile Measurement Platform
Hosting Institution: The Chinese University of Hong Kong
Sponsor: Office of the Telecommunications Authority (OFTA) of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region
Project Reference: ITP/022/08LP
Project Title: RFID Benchmarking Methodology, Report and Tool Support
Hosting Institution: The Hong Kong University of Science and Technology
Sponsor: The Innovation and Technology Fund (ITF) of the Hong Kong SAR Government
UNSW COMP3331/9331 Computer Networks and Applications (2014s1, 2013s2, 2013s1, 2012s2, 2012s1, 2011s2)
UNSW COMP4335/9335 Wireless Mesh and Sensor Networks (2013s2, 2012s2)
UNSW COMP9334 Capacity Planning of Computer Systems and Networks (2014s1, 2013s1, 2012s1)
2022, Best Paper Award, IEEE International Wireless Communications and Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC).
2020, CMU-Portugal Research Fellow, Carnegie Mellon University, United States, and FCT Portugal.
2016, IEEE TMC Most Popular Paper: May, June, August.
2014, The Postgraduate Research Student Support, Graduate Research School, UNSW, Australia.
2012, Student Participation Grants, IEEE LCN conference.
2012 - 2013, Top-Up scholarship for PhD students, CSIRO, Australia.
2011 - 2014, School Supplementary Payment, Faculty of Engineering, UNSW, Australia.
2011 - 2014, Research scholarship, Australian Research Council Discovery Grants.
2011, Scottish Informatics and Computer Science Alliance (SICSA) Prize Studentship, University of Glasgow, UK.
2009, Akademische Pruefstelle (APS) Certificate, German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD).
2008, China National Computer Rank Examination Grade 4, Authentification Certificate of Network Engineer.
2025 - , ACM Senior member; 2020 - 2024, ACM member
2023 - 2025, Symposium Chair, AI for autonomous unmanned systems (AAUSS) symposium, International Conference on Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC)
2024 - , Associate Editor, Elsevier Internet of Things Journal
2024, Workshop Chair, Workshop on Mobility in the Evolving Internet Architecture (MobiArch), ACM MobiCom
2023 - , Associate Editor, Springer Nature Computer Science Journal
2023 - 2024, Workshop Chair, IEEE workshop on wireless outdoor, long-range and low-power networks (WoLoLo), IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM)
2022, Publicity Co-Chair, The 18th International Wireless Communications & Mobile Computing Conference (IWCMC)
2022, Workshop Chair, Intelligent UAV-assisted wireless data networks workshop, The 10th International Conference on Information Systems and Computing Technology (ICISCT)
2021 - , Associate Editor, Elsevier Computer Communications Journal
2021 - , Associate Editor, Elsevier Ad Hoc Networks Journal
2020 - , IEEE Senior member; 2014 - 2019, IEEE member
2020 - , Member of IEEE Vehicular Technology Society
2020 - , Member of IEEE Communications Society
2018 - 2024, Associate Editor, IEEE Access Journal
2018, Demo Co-Chair, The 17th ACM/IEEE International Conference on Information Processing in Sensor Networks (IPSN)
TPC member of
2025, IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WoWMoM); IEEE International Mediterranean Conference on Communications and Networking (MeditCom)
2024, IEEE WoWMoM; IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC); IFIP International Conference on ICT Systems Security and Privacy Protection (SEC); IEEE MeditCom; IEEE Conference on Local Computer Networks (LCN); IEEE Latin-American Conference on Communications (LATINCOM); IEEE Conference on Standards for Communications and Networking (CSCN)
2023, IEEE MeditCom; IEEE LCN; IEEE LATINCOM; IEEE CSCN
2022, IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2022-Spring); IPSN (poster/demo)
2021, IEEE LCN; IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad Hoc and Smart Systems (MASS); IEEE 5G World Forum (WF-5G); IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2021-Fall)
2020, IEEE 5G World Forum (WF-5G)
2019, Posters and Demos Track, IEEE International Conference on Pervasive Computing and Communications (PerCom); International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks (EWSN)
2019, IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Sensor Networks (MSN); IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing (SMARTCOMP); IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS); International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Systems: Computing, Networking and Services (MobiQuitous); The International Conference on Digital Image and Signal Processing (DISP)
2018, The 4th IEEE International Conference on Smart Computing (SMARTCOMP); IEEE Global Communications Conference: Mobile and Wireless Networks Symposium (Globecom); IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2018-Spring); IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad hoc and Sensor Systems (MASS); ACM International Workshop on Complex Networked Systems for Smart Infrastructure (C-NetSys); International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP); IEEE 5G World Forum (WF-5G); International Workshop on Mobile Applications (MobiApps)
2017, IEEE Global Communications Conference: Mobile and Wireless Networks Symposium (Globecom); IEEE International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Communication Networks (CICN); IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2017-Spring, VTC2017-Fall); International Workshop on Mobile Applications (MobiApps); International Workshop on Information Quality and Quality of Service for Pervasive Computing (IQ2S)
2016, IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC2016-Spring, VTC2016-Fall)
2015, IEEE ICC Workshop on Green Communications and Networks (WGCN); International Conference on Intelligent Sensors, Sensor Networks and Information Processing (ISSNIP); International Conference on the Future Internet of Things and Cloud (FiCloud); International Conference on e-Quality & e-Service Sciences (eQeSS); International Symposium on Web of Things and Big Data (WoTBD); International Workshop on Signal Processing, Image Processing and Pattern Recognition (SIPR); International Workshop on the Design and Performance of Networks on Chip (DPNoC); International Conference on Engineering & Computational Innovative Sciences (ENCINS)
2014, International Conference on Computational Intelligence and Communication Networks (CICN); International Workshop on Mobile Applications (MobiApps); International Symposium on Pattern Recognition and Image Processing (PRIP)
2013, International Journal of Computing and Digital Systems (IJCDS)
Review papers for
IEEE Communications Letters; IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine; IEEE Consumer Electronics Magazine; IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking (TON); ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN); IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC); IEEE Internet of Things Journal (IoTJ); IEEE Systems Journal; IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems (TITS); IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (TWC); IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC); IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics (TII); IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (TVT); IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing (TSP); IEEE Transactions on Emerging Topics in Computing (TETC); IEEE Sensors Journal; IEEE Access Journal; IEEE Transactions on Aerospace and Electronic Systems (TAES); Computer Communications Journal (COMCOM); EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking; KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems; ACM Journal of Computing Surveys (CSUR); The Pervasive and Mobile Computing Journal (PMC); Ad Hoc Networks Journal; International Journal of Sensors; International Journal of Distributed Sensor Networks (IJDSN); International Journal of Communication Systems; International Journal of Wireless Networks
ICCPS, WoWMoM, EWSN, WCNC, ICDCN, DCOSS, BIGCOM, RTSS, MSWiM, VTC, PIMRC, WiMob, IQ2S, IWWCN, TENCON, ICCCRI, APWCS, LCN, MASS, ICC, WCNC, International Conference on Sensor Systems and Software (S-CUBE), The International Conference on Mobile and Ubiquitous Multimedia (MUM), International conference on selected topics in Mobile and Wireless Networking (MoWNet), IEEE International Conference on Networks (ICON), GlobeCom - Ad Hoc and Sensor Networking Symposium, CCNC - eHealth & Ambident Assisted Living, IEEE International Conference on Advanced Networks and Telecommunication Systems (ANTS), IEEE International Symposium on Communications and Information Technologies (ISCIT) conference.