Rui Zhang (张睿)

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Assistant Professor, State University of New York at Buffalo
Office: 225 Davis Hall, Buffalo, NY 14228
E-mail: rzhang45 [@] buffalo [DOT] edu
Google Scholar

Education

  • Ph.D., School of ECE, Georgia Tech (Aug 2017 to May 2022). Advisor: Prof. Gee-Kung Chang and Prof. Xiaoli Ma

  • B.S. in Electrical engineering and B.A. in Economics, Peking University (Sep 2013 to June 2017).

News

  • I have openings for Ph.D students in Spring 2026 and Fall 2026. Prospective students are welcome to send your transcripts and CV to my email.

Research Interests

My research interests are broadly in next-generation communication systems and networks. Currently, I'm particularly interested in the following topics:

  • Fiber-wireless integrated system design

  • Near-Field communication and sensing

  • Integrated communication and sensing

  • Optical wireless communication and networking

  • Federated Learning and distrbuted AI over heterogeneous networks

  • Wireless and optical wireless experiments

Teaching

  • EE 450/550 Broadband Access Networks (Spring 2024, Spring 2025)

  • EE 459/559 Machine Learning (Fall 2024, Fall 2025)

Research funds

  • “Near Field Communication in 6G Era”,
    Sponsor: MediaTek Inc USA

  • “Collaborative Research: Convergence of Optics and Radio Frequency in Large-Scale Integrated Air-Ground-Underwater Networks: Theoretical Framework and Experimental Validations”,
    Sponsor: National Science Foundation, ECCS-2512911 (together with Dr. Seyyedali Hosseinalipour at UB, Dr. Nicholas Mastronarde at UB and Dr. Rajeev Sahay at UCSD)

Academic Services

Associate Technical Editor for IEEE Communication Magazine

Review Editor for Frontiers In Communications And Networks

TPC Member of 2024/2025/2026 Optica Signal Processing in Photonics Communications (SPPCom), IEEE GLOBECOM 2025.

Reviewing Activities:

  • IEEE Communication Magazine

  • IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications

  • IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications

  • OSA Optics Express

  • OSA Optics Letters

  • IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technology

  • IEEE Photonics Technology Letters

  • OSA Journal of Optical Communications & Networking

  • IEEE Communication Letters

  • IEEE Photonics Journal

  • Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications Technologies

Honors and Awards

  • 2022 Marconi Young Scholar Award. News from Marconi Society

  • Top scored Paper in Optical Fiber Communications Conference 2022.

  • Fall 2017 Oscar P. Cleaver Award (Georgia Tech).

  • 2018-2020 Corning Stem Scholarship.

  • Bell Labs Summer Intern Award for Outstanding Innovation (2020).