Electrical, computer engineering’s Aazhang earns Finnish professorship

Electrical, computer engineering’s Aazhang earns Finnish professorship

BY MARILYN HOWARD SPARKS
Special to the Rice News

Behnaam Aazhang, the J.S. Abercrombie Professor and chairman of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has earned a Finnish Distinguished Professorship under a competitive new program by the Academy of Finland and Tekes, the Finnish funding agency for technology and innovation.

Aazhang

Aazhang’s project on flexible wireless communication systems is one of only 24 projects funded through the Finland Distinguished Professor Program (FiDiPro), the goal of which is to raise the level of scientific and technological knowledge and know-how in Finland and to add a more international element to the Finnish research system.

During the five-year appointment, Aazhang will work with Matti Latva-aho, project leader in Finland and professor for digital transmission techniques at the University of Oulu in Finland, to develop technologies for future wireless communication systems. The work will cover all the relevant layers of the open system interface model as well as related technologies, like radio channels, transceiver techniques, transmission techniques, medium access control, radio resource management and Internet protocol over wireless systems. The goal is to develop technology in the areas of decentralized and self-organizing network topologies and operatorless radio access network concepts, focusing on cognitive radio technologies that apply to broadband wireless access solutions, like mobile phones and laptop computers, short-range communication devices, and body area networks used in medical applications.

“This appointment strengthens our link with existing relationships to one of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering’s major research collaborators, Nokia, as well as Finnish universities,” said Aazhang, who is no stranger to Finland. He has been a visiting professor at the Telecommunications Laboratory at University of Oulu in Finland, and at Nokia, the Finland-based world leader in mobile communications.

FiDiPro aims to promote high-quality scientific research with long-term funding, similar to the United States’ National Science Foundation. In addition to reinforcing an already robust research network, FiDiPro aims to give Finnish research an increased international profile, as well as a new kind of international cooperation between pure research and research-and-development activities of private enterprises.

The first projects are expected to begin in early 2007.

—Marilyn Howard Sparks is the communications director in Rice’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.