Hi, I am Lan Emily Zhang. I am an assistant professor at the Department of ECE, Clemson University, since Spring 2024. I was an assistant professor at the Department of ECE, Michigan Technological University (MTU) from 2020 to 2023. I received my Ph.D. from the University of Florida (UF) in 2020.

My research interest spans the areas of wireless communications, distributed machine learning, cybersecurity, Internet-of-Things (IoT), and cyber-physical systems (CPS). 

I am always looking for highly motivated Ph.D. students interested in solving real-world machine learning, cyber-physical systems, wireless communications, and cybersecurity challenges (full financial support as RA). If interested, please send me your CV, transcript(s), GRE, TOEFL (international applicants only), and sample publications, if any. 

For students at Clemson, multiple paid part-time and volunteer research assistant positions are available. If you are interested, please send me your CV and transcripts (unofficial copies are acceptable).

News

• [paper] 08/25: One paper about UAV-aware semantic communications has been accepted by IEEE Globecom 2025. 

• [service] 07/25: Excited to join the editorial board of IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering (TNSE, Impact Factor: 7.9) as an Associate Editor. Looking forward to seeing your great work at TNSE!

• [paper] 06/25: Our paper on modulation-aware semantic communications has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Communications with an impact factor of 8.3.  

• [paper] 05/25: Our paper on RL-based sample-efficient Deep Brain Stimulation has been accepted by IEEE IMC 2025. Congratulations to Harsh, our Master’s researcher!

• [service] xx/xx: Happy to join NSF panel discussions!

• [paper] 02/25: Two papers on Semantic Communications have been accepted by IEEE ICC 2025. 

• [grant] 01/25: Our research on resilience-enhanced intrusion detection for transportation systems has been supported by TraCR. Thanks to TraCR! Thanks to collaborators Dr. Chao Fan at Clemson, Dr. Satish Ukkusuri and Dr. Lingxi Li at Purdue.

• [service] 01/25:  I served as a guest editor for the special issue of IEEE TCCN (IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking, with an impact factor of 7.4) on "Artificial General Intelligence for Low-Altitude Economy Networking". We are pleased to invite you to submit your papers! 

• [paper] 01/25: Our paper on EaaS safety has been published in Transactions on Artificial Intelligence. Congrats to Gaurav!

• [mentoring] 12/24: Congrats to Dr. Madhureeta Das (co-advised with Dr. Yang) on passing her Ph.D. dissertation! Dr. Das will join the University of Petroleum and Energy Studies (UPES), Dehradun, as an assistant professor at the School of Computer Science. 

• [paper] 11/24: Our paper on hybrid bit/semantic communications has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Communications (TON) with an impact factor of 7.2. 

• [paper] 11/24: Our paper on generative AI and semantic communications has been accepted by IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing (TMC) with an impact factor of 7.7.

• [book] 10/24: Our book "Wireless Semantic Communications: Concepts, Principles, and Challenges" has been accepted by John Wiley & Sons, first published in 2025. This will be the FIRST book on wireless semantic communications. 

• [paper] 10/24: Our paper on semantic RAN has been accepted by the IEEE Communications Magazine (impact factor: 8.3). 

• [paper] 09/24: Our paper on channel-resilient semantic communications has been accepted by IEEE Communications Letters (impact factor: 3.7). Congrats to Shuai's first work!

• [paper] 08/24: Our paper on semantic communications has been accepted by IEEE Globecom 2024. 

• [paper] 07/24: Our paper on federated learning has been accepted by IEEE VTC2024-Fall.  

• [award] 07/24: We have received the 2025 IEEE CIS TETCI Outstanding Paper Award. Thanks, IEEE Computational Intelligence Society!

More news here!