EE Graduate Students Win National Competition

Emrecan Demirors (fourth from left) and George Sklivanitis (left), with Professor Pados (center) and fellow Ph.D. students Adam Gannon (second from left) and Ngwe Thawdar (right).

Published July 14, 2014 This content is archived.

Ph.D. students George Sklivanitis and Emrecan Demirors are the winners of the  "2014 Nutaq Software-Defined Radio Academic US National Contest."

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The competition "aims to encourage innovation and support academics in their efforts to develop tomorrow’s wireless technologies." The award comes with a prize of $16,000.

The competition was conducted in two phases and involved submission of a project development proposal. After the first phase (qualification round), ten ranked teams advanced to the final round.  In the qualification round, the UB-EE team ranked 1st among the finalist for their work to study, implement, and demonstrate a new approach for spectral efficiency  maximization in future heterogeneous wireless systems.  Among the finalists were Ohio State University, Virginia Tech, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Rice University, University of Arizona, University of Texas at Austin and others.

In the second and final round, the finalists had the opportunity to submit an extended, revised proposal.  The UB-EE team was the final winning team and is currently featured on the front page of Nutaq' website:  http://www.nutaq.com/en

The whole article can be found at:
http://www.nutaq.com/en/library/success-story-news/nutaq-announces-2014-software-defined-radio-academic-us-contest-winner

The winners were also featured in this article on EIN News:
http://www.einnews.com/pr_news/207919014/nutaq-announces-the-2014-software-defined-radio-academic-us-contest-winner

George Sklivanitis and Emrecan Demirors (advised by Professors Dimitris Pados, Tommaso Melodia and Stella Batalama) are members of the Software Defined Networks Laboratory in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the State University of New York at Buffalo.  The laboratory is supported by a variety of federal funding sources including the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), and the Office of Naval Research (ONR).  Dimitris A. Pados, Clifford C. Furnas Professor of Electrical Engineering and Coordinator of the Signals, Communications, and Networking Research Group, Stella N. Batalama, Professor and Chair of Electrical Engineering, and Associate Professors Tommaso Melodia and Weifeng Su, are the faculty team members of the research effort.