CSE faculty, postdoc student receive Best Paper Award

Yansha Deng and Arumugam Nallanathan
Yansha Deng and Arumugam Nallanathan

A visiting postdoc student and faculty member from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering received the IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM) 2017 Best Paper Award last Wednesday in Singapore.

The paper, "A Microfluidic Feed Forward Loop Pulse Generator for Molecular Communication,” won in the Molecular, Biological and Multi-Scale Communications category in the Selected Areas in the Communications Symposium track. It was also selected as one of the two best overall papers in the Communications Symposium track. The paper was co-written by Yansha Deng of King’s College London, computer science and engineering assistant professor Massimiliano Pierobon, and Arumugam Nallanathan of Queen Mary University of London.

Deng began her research while she was studying as a visiting postdoc student at the University of Nebraska–Lincoln last year. The paper topic of microfluidic molecular communication stemmed from her research and an idea Pierobon began developing as a Ph.D. student and presented during his Nebraska interview.

Together, Deng and Pierobon were able to design and simulate a microfluidic device that is able to shape the concentration of molecules and give them a pulse. The pulse, which mimics the communication of circuits, would allow for transmission of information to and between cells. The first application would be used primarily in biomedical devices and could potentially be expanded to serve environmental purposes.

The IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is the world’s largest technical professional society. GLOBECOM is one of the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc)’s two flagship conferences dedicated to driving innovation in communications.

Pierobon and Deng, who is now a lecturer in the Department of Informatics at the King’s College London, will continue their collaboration and research in the future. They’re currently applying for grants to begin an exchange program between their labs. We congratulate them both on this prestigious award win!