Two new faculty members join ECE ILLINOIS

Two new faculty members, Haitham Hassanieh and Subhonmesh Bose, have joined ECE ILLINOIS this semester as assistant professors.

Here’s a look at these new faculty members and the expertise they bring to ECE ILLINOIS.

Subhonmesh Bose

Subhonmesh Bose joins the ECE ILLINOIS faculty as an assistant professor, and his primary research areas are in the optimization of power systems and design of electricity markets.

Bose looks forward to progressing his career in the Power and Energy Group, where he plans work on designing algorithms and market mechanics to look at how the paradigm of power systems is changing due to the advent of variable renewable supply.

Bose is from India, and attended the Indian Insitute of Techonoly in Kanpur for his undergraduate studies before coming to the U.S. to earn his master’s and PhD from Cal Tech.

He said that he chose to come to Illinois after his post-doctoral at Cornell because of its outstanding reputation in ECE, and it offered him the best opportunity to make an impact in the field.

He believes that power and energy are fundamental to society, and it is an area that requires able individuals manning it. He looks forward to helping develop the next generation of industry leaders during his time at Illinois.

“There is no better place than a collection of intelligent students where you can instill the basic seeds of education in an undergraduate class,” Bose said. “You are not aiming to give them all the information. That’s not the idea, but to at least motivate them to look at interesting questions for their entire lives.”

Haitham Hassanieh

Haitham Hassanieh joins the ECE ILLINOIS faculty as an assistant professor. His primary research interests are in networking and distributed computing.

He has a passion for developing the new age of communication through innovative devices and algorithms. He has worked on the next generation of wireless communication through 5G – which promises orders of magnitude improvement in communication throughput – and on novel designs for Internet-of-Things technologies.

His algorithmic work has led to the creation of faster algorithms for computing the Fourier transform, a core mathematical tool for extracting frequencies from signals. His research also demonstrated how this speedup impacts numerous applications ranging from medical imaging to GPS synchronization.

Hassanieh hails from Lebanon, where he earned his undergraduate degree at the American University of Beirut. He then went on to receive his master’s and PhD from MIT. During his time at MIT, he worked on wireless communications and algorithms. His work won the SIGCOMM Best Paper Award in 2011 and the TR10 Award in 2012.

In addition to his research, Hassanieh is looking forward to teaching next semester. He decided to come to Illinois because it attracts exceptional talent from around the world – both in terms of faculty and students – and boasts an environment that encourages innovation, creativity, and deep scientific contributions.

“When I walk around campus, I can sense a thirst to impact science and society through research and innovation,” Hassanieh said. “Everyone is passionate about their work. This drive and passion, coupled with intellectual curiosity and research rigor, is unique to UIUC. It is refreshing and exciting for me to be part of this environment both as a teacher and as a researcher.”