Assistant Professor
University of Maryland, College Park
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Email: zhambyl@umd.edu
Office: 2305 A.V. Williams
Zhambyl Shaikhanov is an Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland, College Park. He received his Ph.D. and M.S. from Rice University in 2024 and 2020, respectively, under the supervision of Dr. Edward Knightly, and his B.S. from The University of Texas at Austin in 2015. Zhambyl worked in the industry at the Dell Server Networking lab before his graduate school. His research has been featured in many top-tier ACM/IEEE conferences and journals and has won multiple awards, including Best Demo Awards at ACM HotMobile and ACM WiSec. Zhambyl has been honored as a Texas Instruments Distinguished Fellow, a Rice ECE Fellow, and a recipient of the "Bolashak" International Scholar award, among many others.
I am seeking motivated Ph.D. students passionate about wireless systems. If you are interested in joining my team, please contact me.
My research focuses on a broad spectrum of next-generation (6G and beyond) wireless. Building on strong theoretical foundations, I design, prototype, and demonstrate in-the-field next-generation wireless systems and architectures with applications in networking, security, and sensing. My research is multi-disciplinary, cutting across electromagnetics, protocols, signal processing, robotics, and end-to-end systems.
Next Generation Wireless
Networking
[Millimeter-wave and Sub-THz]
Security
[Smart Devices and Systems]
Recent News
Our paper on downlink multi-user sub-THz communication with a programmable metasurface was accepted to IEEE INFOCOM'25.
🏆 Our work, HeatPulse, received the Best Paper Runner-up Award at SPICES @ International Conference on Embedded Wireless Systems and Networks, 2024
Our paper on audio misinformation encoding via on-phone sub-terahertz metasurface was accepted to Optica Memoranda 2024.
Our work, MetaFly, a wireless backhaul security with an on-drone metasurface, was accepted to IEEE S&P'24 (Oakland).
Our work, FloatSense, balloon-based UAVs for accurate environmental mapping, was accepted to IEEE CCNC'24.
🏆 Our work on adversarial aerial metasurfaces received the Best Demo Award at ACM HotMobile'23.
We have been awarded $1.8M from the U.S. Army Research Office to enhance security against metasurface-in-the-middle attacks, 2023.
Our wireless security work, RMDM, for sending directional misinformation to eavesdroppers was accepted to IEEE CNS'23.
🏆 Our paper on the metasurface-in-the-middle (MSITM) attack received the Best Demo Award at ACM WiSec'22.
Our work, FALCON, on a networked drone system for sensing, localizing, and approaching RF targets, was accepted to IEEE IoT'22.
Our work, ASTRO, a system for off-grid networked drone sensing missions, was accepted to ACM TiOT'21.
