Ahmed Helmy

-  Short Bio: 

Ahmed Helmy received Computer Science Ph.D. '99 (with Prof. Deborah Estrin) & Electrical Engineering M.S. '95 from the University of Southern California (USC), and Eng. Math M.S. '94 & EE B.S. '92 from Cairo University. He was a key researcher for the IP multicast Internet standard PIM and the de facto Network Simulator NS-2 at USC/ISI from '95-'05.

He is currently the Associate Dean for Research at the College of Computing & Informatics (CCI) at the University of North Carolina (UNC) Charlotte. He is the co-founder and co-director of the AI4Health Center at Charlotte (for human digital twins and computational health), and serves on the deans council for the PreMiEr NSF ERC. Previously, he was a Professor & Graduate Director at the CISE Department at the University of Florida (UF), and Prof. of EE Department at USC '99-'06, where he founded the Wireless Sensor Networks, and Protocol Testing Labs.

In '02, he received the NSF CAREER Award for his research on resource discovery and mobility modeling in large-scale wireless networks (MARS), and the IEEE/IFIP MMNS best paper award. He was a winner in ACM MobiCom SRC '07, and ACM MobiCom WiNTech demo '10. In '13 he got the best paper award from ACM SIGSPATIAL IWCTS. In ACM MobiCom '14 he was a winner in several competitions. In '15 he got the best paper award from the Internet Technical Committee (ITC), in IEEE INFOCOM '17 the best poster, and in INFOCOM '18 best in-session presentation. 

His research interests include applied AI in healthcare and wellness, pose estimation, activity recognition, human digital twin for musculoskeletal models, brain signal analysis using deep networks, design, analysis & measurement of wireless adhoc, sensor & mobile social networks, mobility modeling, multicast protocols, IP mobility & network simulation.

He has led several NSF-funded projects (including MARS, STRESS, ACQUIRE, Aware, and MobiBench), and research grants by Intel, Cisco, DARPA, NASA, T-Labs, Nvidia, Nortel, HP, Pratt & Whitney, Siemens & Silicon Graphics. He served as associate editor of the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC), area editor of the IEEE Computer, the Adhoc Networks Journal - ElSevier, and chaired many leading IEEE and ACM conferences.

He is a Fellow of the IEEE, and a Distinguished Scientist of the ACM.

- Publication Citations (H-index = 62, citations: 22,500+, Google Scholar).

Quick Links:

• CCI Ph.D. Research Seminars Schedule

• UNC Charlotte's Strategic Plan: Shaping What's Next

- Awards & Achievements:

• Named IEEE Fellow, Dec. 2018, "for contributions to routing protocol design and mobility modeling"

  • Less than 0.1% of the IEEE voting members are selected for this grade. (more on IEEE website). This recognizes research work performed by the excellent students, collaborators and colleagues with whom I have been fortunate to work, and who have supported my work, over the past two decades. It is a testament to the great impact our work has had on the field of computer networks and mobile networking. (Press release).

• Inducted as ACM Distinguished Scientist, Nov. 2014. [Featured on ACM (Dec 4, 2014) - ACM announcement ]

• A winner of the ACM SIGCOMM Networking Systems Award 2020, with the Network Simulator (NS-2) original team, for “the development of a networking system that has had a significant impact on the world of computer networking.”

• Senior Faculty International Educator of the Year Award overall winner for College of Engineering, University of Florida, 2021/2022.

• Honorary Fellow, Institute for Advanced Study, Technical University of Munich (TUM), Germany, June – Aug 2017.

• University of Florida (UF) Term Professorship, Aug 2017 - Aug 2020.

• Doctoral Dissertation Advisor and Mentoring Award overall winner for College of Engineering, University of Florida 2012-2013.

• National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award, June 2002 – May 2008.

• Fan Bai, my x-PhD student (2005, USC), elevated to IEEE Fellow.

• Best Papers & Competition Awards:

  • Best presentation in session award from IEEE INFOCOM 2018 for the paper "Flutes vs. Cellos: Analyzing Mobility-Traffic Correlations in Large WLAN Traces". This is the result of many years of data collection (over 30TB of data) and four years of international collaboration with TUM at Munich, Germany and Aalto U., Helsinki, Finland. The extended Technical Report for this paper is now available. Sample datasets and code/tools to be shared through the MobiLib website to facilitate reproducibility.

  • The Best Poster Award IEEE INFOCOM 2017 for work on 'En Route'.

  • The "En-Route" paper for vehicular mobility simulations received all '5's in IEEE INFOCOM 2017 - SmartCity reviews.

  • The Best Paper Award of the Internet Technical Committee (ITC) for 2013 for the COBRA mobility framework (announced June 2015). Selected from ~140 published (450+ submitted) papers in seven IEEE ComSoc conferences.

  • The best app in the Mobile App Competition, at the ACM MobiCom 2014, and runner-up (2nd place) in the Start-up Pitch Competition. The Best Innovation, Epilepsy Foundation, 2014.

  • The Best Paper Award, ACM SIGSPATIAL IWCTS (Computational Transportation Science), 2013 for "Knowledge Discovery and Causality in Urban City Traffic: A study using Planet Scale Vehicular Imagery Data".

  • ACM MobiCom research competition (SRC): top 5 finalist and runner up, 2012.

  • Best Demo in ACM MobiCom WiNTECH demo competition (2nd place prize), Sept 2010.

  • ACM MobiCom research competition (SRC): 4th place and runner up, 2008.

  • Award winner in ACM MobiCom research competition (SRC): 3rd place award, 2007.

  • The Best Paper Award, IEEE MMNS Conference, 2002.

• Service Awards:

·       IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC) associate editor recognition, April 2016.

·       IEEE Computer editor recognition, 2014. – ACM Service Award: ACM MSWiM 2011.

·       Service recognition for: IEEE Globecom 2010 - IEEE/ACM IWCMC 2009, 2010

·       ACM SIGMOBILE workshop coordination chair for MobiCom, Mobihoc, Mobisys, Sensys 2006 - 2011

• Mentoring and Teaching Awards:

·   The Doctoral Dissertation Advisor and Mentoring Award, CISE Dept, U. Florida (UF), 2020/2021.

·   The International Faculty of the Year Nominee, CISE Department, UF, 2017, 2019.

·   Teaching excellence - dean’s appreciation, UF: Spring 2008, Fall 2008, Spring 2009.

·   Rank 1st (of 39 faculty) in EE-USC faculty merit review: 2004 & 2005. [5.0/5.0 teaching & research]

·   Northrop Grumman Excellence in Teaching Award Nominee, EE-S Department, USC 2004.

·   Teaching evaluations above 4.5/5 for all graduate courses taught as faculty at UF & USC.

• This page is work-in-progress. More info via my old webpage at the University of Florida (UF).