Dr. Saad named Steven O. Lane Junior Faculty Fellow of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Walid Saad, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering in the College of Engineering at Virginia Tech, has been named the Steven O. Lane Junior Faculty Fellow of Electrical and Computer Engineering by the Virginia Tech Board of Visitors.

The Steven O. Lane Junior Faculty Fellowship was endowed in 2004, through donations made in memory of the late Steven O. Lane, a 1978 graduate of Virginia Tech who was considered to be a leader in spacecraft antenna design. He spent his entire professional career with Boeing Satellite Systems; among his many accomplishments were 12 patents and several professional papers. The fellowship is presented to a junior faculty member for teaching and research excellence.

Saad joined the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering in 2014 as a tenure-track assistant professor. He has earned a reputation as an exceptional researcher having won numerous awards including three best paper awards at conferences, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers' (IEEE) ComSoc Fred W. Ellersick Prize in 2015 for the best IEEE magazine paper on communications published in the previous three calendar years, the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2013, and the Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award in 2015.

An active researcher, Saad’s research has resulted in 13 journal and book chapter publications since joining Virginia Tech. Many of these papers are published in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, considered to be top journals in his field.

He has published 17 conference papers or abstracts while at Virginia Tech, and has secured or helped to secure a high level of sponsored funding to support his research.

Saad is a principal investigator for $1.93 million in total awards from the National Science Foundation, Office of Naval Research, and others to support his research in wireless networking, cyber-physical systems, and security. The total amount of collaborative grants in which he participated as principal investigator is $3.8 million.

Also innovative in the classroom, Saad has introduced new courses at undergraduate and graduate levels and has successfully integrated ideas from his research into his classes which is positively received by his students.

Prior to coming to Virginia Tech, he was an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Miami from 2011 to 2014 and a postdoctoral research associate at Princeton University in 2011.

He has been a visiting scholar at numerous institutions including the University of Illinois and the University of Houston during his doctoral studies. He was an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Summer Faculty Fellow in 2014.

Saad received his Ph.D. in informatics from the University of Oslo, Norway, in 2010. He received the bachelor’s degree in computer and communications engineering from Lebanese University in 2004, and a master’s degree in computer, and telecommunications engineering from American University of Beirut in 2007.

Dedicated to its motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve), Virginia Tech takes a hands-on, engaging approach to education, preparing scholars to be leaders in their fields and communities. As the commonwealth’s most comprehensive university and its leading research institution, Virginia Tech offers 240 undergraduate and graduate degree programs to more than 31,000 students and manages a research portfolio of $513 million. The university fulfills its land-grant mission of transforming knowledge to practice through technological leadership and by fueling economic growth and job creation locally, regionally, and across Virginia.

Posted on Nov 19, 2015