EECS Professor Wins NSF Early Career Award

Hamid Jafarkhani, deputy director of the Center for Pervasive Communications & Computing and assistant professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science, is one of this year's recipients of a Faculty Early Career Development Program grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Jafarkhani is expected to receive a five-year grant of $400,000. The funds will further his work in the area of coding for multiple-input multiple-output channels and should make an immediate impact on practical wireless communications systems and networks.

Early Career awards are the NSF's most prestigious honor for junior faculty members, recognizing and supporting "teacher-scholars who are considered most likely to become the academic leaders of the 21st century." Awardees are selected on the basis of creative career development plans that effectively integrate research and educational components.

Jafarkhani is the seventh faculty member from The Henry Samueli School of Engineering to win this award. Past recipients include Steven George, chair of the Department of Biomedical Engineering; Stanley Grant, chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering and Materials Science; Maria Feng, Amelia Regan and Brett Sanders, from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Haris Catrakis, from the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.

Jafarkhani joined the Samueli School in 2001. To learn more about his work, visit http://www.eng.uci.edu/users/hamid-jafarkhani.