Professor Theodore Rappaport, founding director of NYU WIRELESS, is stepping back into the director role effective immediately. Assisting him will be Associate Directors Professor Sundeep Rangan; Professor Thomas Marzetta; Professor Dennis Shasha, from NYU’s Courant Institute for Mathematical Sciences;and Assistant Professor J.R. Rizzo, from NYU Langone Health.

Professor Rangan served as director for the past three years, spearheading the center through a busy time. He worked with all the center’s industrial affiliate partners, which have taken the millimeter wave propagation research conducted at NYU and created the 5G technologies that are set to revolutionize wireless communications and the other industries and products that benefit from mobile connectivity. It was the industrial affiliates’ energy, expertise and commitment to product excellence that have driven their research.

Amplifying the support from the industrial affiliates, several NYU WIRELESS investigators recently received research awards. These include the COSMOS platform, which is part of the Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) initiative, funded by the National Science Foundation. COSMOS is a testbed for a new generation of wireless technologies and applications. NYU WIRELESS Associate Director Professor Rangan is leading the project at NYU Tandon School of Engineering, together with colleagues Professor Shivendra Panwar, Research Assistant Professor Thanasis Korakis and researchers at Rutgers and Columbia in partnership with New York City, Silicon Harlem, City College of New York and the University of Arizona.

Another award was received by NYU WIRELESS from the U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). Effort on this grant will focus on reducing the time bringing millimeter wave technology to public safety communications. Drones will be part of the project, providing an end-to-end system simulation of a complex public safety scenario. Working with the Austin Fire Department and the University of Padova, the investigators will be using equipment and software provided by NYU WIRELESS industrial affiliate sponsor National Instruments. Research on the three-year grant will be conducted by principal investigators Professors Ted Rappaport and Sundeep Rangan, together with research scientist Marco Mezzavilla and post-doctoral research fellow Aditya Dhananjay.

Going forward, NYU WIRELESS has immense opportunities. With 5G becoming a commercial reality, the center continues to create the state-of-the-art in wireless communications at THz frequencies, along with revolutionary networks, circuits and applications — which Professor Rappaport recently discussed with FCC chairman Ajit Pai.