School of Computing Assistant Professor Shuai Nie has received the 2025 IEEE Communications Society Best Survey Paper Award.
The Best Survey Paper Award is presented annually to the authors of an especially meritorious paper published within the last five years in an IEEE Communications Society-owned journal dealing with a subject related to the society’s technical scope.
The award-winning paper, “Terahertz Band Communication: An Old Problem Revisited and Research Directions for the Next Decade,” was originally published in IEEE Transactions on Communications in June 2022. Nie co-authored the paper with President and CTO of Truva Inc., Ian F. Akyildiz, Associate Professor Chong Han and Ph.D. student Zhifeng Hu of Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and Professor Josep Miquel Jornet of Northeastern University.
In the paper, the authors review the last decade of Terahertz (THz) band communications technology initiatives and problems, pointing out what has been achieved in the research community so far. The paper also presents open challenges and new research directions still to be investigated for the THz band communication systems by covering diverse topics ranging from devices, channel behavior, communication and networking, to physical testbeds and demonstration systems. The key aspects presented in the paper will enable THz communications as a pillar of 6G and Beyond wireless systems in the next decade.
“It was such a wonderful surprise to receive this recognition,” Nie said. “I’m deeply grateful for the opportunity to collaborate on this paper with my Ph.D. advisor, Prof. Ian Akyildiz, and my Ph.D. lab alumni, Prof. Chong Han and Prof. Josep Jornet, shortly after I joined our School of Computing as a new assistant professor.”
The award will be officially presented at IEEE GLOBECOM 2025 at a ceremony in Taipei, Taiwan, on Tuesday, December 9.
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