Christina Chaccour
Ph.D. Student in Electrical Engineering at NEWS@VT, part of Wireless@VT
Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Virginia Tech, Arlington, VA, USA
Email: christinac@vt.edu
BIO
Christina Chaccour is a Ph.D. Candidate at the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, under the supervision of Professor Walid Saad. She received her B.E. in Electrical Engineering from Notre Dame University- Louaize (NDU), Lebanon with Highest Distinction (Suma Cum Laude) and the M.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA, USA.
Her research interests include wireless communications, 5G and 6G networks, extended reality, terahertz frequency bands, machine learning, semantic communications, optimization and risk theory. She has derived some of the first performance analysis results on the potential of networking at THz frequencies. Christina is the co-founder of the startup Internet of Trees (IOTree), IOTree has won many local and international awards. She has held summer internship positions at Ericsson Inc, Plano, TX, USA, and Cadence Design Systems, Munich GmBh.
She was the recipient of the Best Paper Award for her first peer-reviewed conference paper at the 10th IFIP Conference on New Technologies, Mobility, and Security (NTMS), Canary Islands, in 2019. Additionally, Christina was the recipient of the Exemplary Reviewer (fewer than 2%) award from IEEE Transactions on Communications in 2021. Furthermore, she serves as a technical program committee member for IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radars in 2022. She has also served as a reviewer for various IEEE transactions and flagship conferences.
Awards and Distinctions
Exemplary Reviewer (fewer than 2%) award from IEEE Transactions on Communications in 2021. (See story here)
Best Paper Award at The 10th IFIP International Conference on New Technologies, Mobility and Security (NTMS) on her paper: "On the Reliability of Wireless Virtual Reality at Terahertz (THz) Frequencies" in the Mobility & Wireless Networks Track, Canary Islands, June 2019.
Finalist Team (IOTree) in the Global Social Venture Competition (GSVC) at University of California Berkeley (U.C. Berkeley), April 2019
The Alfa and Ericsson IoT Award, for the project Gaia (a Smart Irrigation System), May 2018 (See story here)
Second Prize Award in the Lebanese Industrial Research Association (LIRA) 14th Forum for the startup project IO Tree, December 2018 (See story here)
LIRA Fund Award for the startup IO Tree, May 2018
First Prize Award in Agrytech Hackathon, for the Startup IO Tree (Internet of Trees), April 2018 (See story here)
First Prize Award in Startup Weekend Mount Lebanon by Google for Entrepreneurs, February 2018
Second Prize Award in the LIRA 13th Forum of Technology & Industrial Innovation- Mechatronics Section, for the Project AgroRobot, December 2017 (See story here)
Academic Excellence Scholarship, Notre Dame University- Louaize, 2013-2018.