Prof. Khaled B. LETAIEF Named by Tunisian Government as Best Tunisian Researcher Living Abroad
Prof. Khaled B. LETAIEF, New Bright Professor of Engineering and Chair Professor of Electronic and Computer Engineering, was awarded Tunisia’s national accolade for the Best Tunisian Researcher or Inventor Abroad. A maximum of one award is given every year based upon the review of a national committee.
Held on the national science day, the award ceremony was presided by the President of Tunisia Kais SAIED and government officials and was broadcast live on national TV.
Prof. Letaief is an internationally recognized leader in wireless communications and networks with research interest in artificial intelligence, big data analytics systems, mobile cloud and edge computing, tactile Internet, 5G systems and beyond.
He served in many high-level administrative positions in universities, including Dean of Engineering (2009-2015) and Head of Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering (2003-2009) at HKUST, and Provost of Hamad Bin Khalifa University (2015-2018) in Qatar. He also took leadership roles in professional societies, such as President of the IEEE Communications Society (2018-2019), the world’s leading organization for communications professionals, and Founding Editor-in-Chief (2002-2006) of the well-regarded IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.
In his research areas, he has over 640 papers with over 37,500 citations and an h-index of 88. He has given keynote talks as well as courses all over the world. He also has 15 patents, including 11 US inventions, and served as a consultant for different organizations, such as Huawei, ASTRI, ZTE, Nortel, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Motorola.
Over the years, he has received numerous prestigious awards and honors. These include a top 30 internet of things scholar on the 2020 AI 2000 Most Influential Scholar List by Tsinghua University; 2019 Distinguished Research Excellence Award by HKUST School of Engineering; 2019 IEEE Communications Society and Information Theory Society Joint Paper Award; 2018 IEEE Signal Processing Society Young Author Best Paper Award; 2016 IEEE Marconi Prize Award in Wireless Communications, and 2011 ISI Highly Cited Researcher by Thomson Reuters. He is also a Fellow of IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) and HKIE (Hong Kong Institution of Engineers).
Other than research achievements, he has earned many teaching excellence awards, including the 1998 Michael G. Gale Medal for Distinguished Teaching, HKUST’s top teaching award for one outstanding educator across all Schools annually, Teaching Excellence Appreciation Award by HKUST School of Engineering on four occasions, and 1990 Mangoon Award for Best Graduate Instructor by Purdue University.
Prof. Letaief holds BS with distinction, MS, and PhD degrees, all in Electrical Engineering, from Purdue University in the US. He was a faculty member at the University of Melbourne in Australia before joining HKUST in 1993.
Related link:
- Facebook post of Embassy of Tunisia in Beijing (Sept 14, 2020)
