TomHou

Tom Hou

Bradley Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Professor of Computer Science (by courtesy)
IEEE Fellow

Mailing address:
The Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Virginia Tech
453 Whittemore Hall, Mail Code 0111
1185 Perry Street
Blacksburg, VA 24061

Office: 2040-K Torgersen Hall
Phone: +1 (540) 231-2950
E-mail: thou at vt dot edu

US News & World Report rankings (2024)
- Graduate programs: 16 (Electrical Engineering); 23 (Computer Engineering)
- Undergrad programs: 16 (Electrical Engineering); 15 (Computer Engineering)

Link to my Google Scholar profile

Biography

Tom Hou is Bradley Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA. He received his B.E. degree from the City College of New York in June 1991, M.S. degree from Columbia University in New York City in May 1993, and Ph.D. degree from New York University (NYU) Tandon School of Engineering in January 1998. From 1997 to 2002, he was a Researcher at Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Sunnyvale, CA.

Prof. Hou's research has been focused on studying and developing solutions to complex science and engineering problems arising from wireless and mobile networks. Over the years, he and his research team have been studying performance bottlenecks in different network systems and have developed innovative solutions to circumvent these bottlenecks and improve performance envelops. He and his team have successfully developed some powerful optimization techniques to advance throughput, delay, and energy performance limits across the layers of network protocol stack. Currently, he is leading his team to address real-time (on the scale of sub-millisecond or less) optimal solutions for next generation communications networks (e.g., 5G) and CPS/IoT systems. He is also interested in wireless security and privacy.

He has published extensively in IEEE and ACM transactions/journals and top-tier IEEE/ACM conferences. He received nine best paper awards from IEEE and ACM, including IEEE INFOCOM 2008 and 2021 Best Paper Awards. He also holds six U.S patents. Prof. Hou is a co-editor of a graduate textbook entitled Cognitive Radio Communications and Networks: Principles and Practices (Academic Press/Elsevier, 2010). This book was listed as one of the Best Readings on Cognitive Radio by IEEE Communications Society. His second graduate textbook was entitled Applied Optimization Methods for Wireless Networks (Cambridge University Press in May 2014). This book was the first of its kind in terms of offering a comprehensive toolbox to solve complex optimization problems in wireless networks. He was named an IEEE Fellow in 2014 for "contributions to modeling and optimization of wireless networks" and was presented with the Virginia Tech College of Engineering Dean's Award for Research Excellence in 2013.

Prof. Hou has made substantial contributions to his professional society and research community. He was Steering Committee Chair of the IEEE INFOCOM conference (2013-2019), the highest ranked conference on computer networking per Google Scholar. He was an elected member of the IEEE Communications Society Board of Governors (2016-2018). He is/was on the editorial boards of 12 journals and guest edited 7 journal special issues. He was Chair of IEEE Communications Society GLOBECOM/ICC Technical Committee (GITC) during 2016–2017. He co-chaired NSF Enhancing Access for Radio Spectrum (EARS) Program Principal Investigate (PI) Meeting in 2016. He was presented with Virginia Tech College of Engineering Dean's Award for Excellence in Service in 2017.

Honors and Awards

Professional Activities

Journal Editorial Boards

Current

  • Editor, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking
  • Associate Editor, ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks

      • Past

      • Editor, IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, September 2009 ~ November 2014.
      • Editor, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications – Cognitive Radio Series, January 2012 ~ April 2015.
      • IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications,
        Area Editor of Wireless Networking area, December 2009 ~ December 2014;
        Editor, February 2007 ~ December 2009.
      • Technical Editor, IEEE Wireless Communications, February 2009 ~ April 2014.
      • Editor, ACM/Springer Wireless Networks (WINET), January 2005 ~ January 2012.
      • Editor, Elsevier Ad Hoc Networks Journal, January 2005 ~ January 2012.
      • Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, April 2004 ~ April 2007.
      • Editor, KICS/IEEE Journal of Communications and Networks, September 2002 ~ December 2004.

      Journal Guest Editorships

      • Guest Editor, ACM/Springer Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET) special issue on "Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks and Communications," vol. 13, no. 5, October 2008.
      • Guest Editor, ACM/Springer Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET) special issue on "Next Generation Wireless Technologies," vol. 12, no. 1, January 2007.
      • Guest Editor, ACM/Springer Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET) special issue on "Broadband Wireless Networking," vol. 11, no. 5, October 2006.
      • Guest Editor, ACM/Springer Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET) special issue on "Recent Advances in Wireless Networking," vol. 11, no. 1, February 2006.
      • Guest Editor, ACM/Springer Mobile Networks and Applications (MONET) special issue on "Energy Constraints and Lifetime Performance in Wireless Sensor Networks," vol. 10, no. 6, December 2005.
      • Guest Editor, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications special issue on "Recent Advances in Service Overlay Networks," vol. 22, no. 1, January 2004.

      Conference Steering or Organizing Committee

      • Chair of IEEE INFOCOM Steering Committee
      • Member of INFOCOM Achievement Award Selection Committee, IEEE INFOCOM 2009, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
      • Co‐Chair of Technical Program Committee, IEEE ICC 2010 – Wireless Networking Symposium, Cape Town, South Africa.
      • Co‐Chair of Technical Program Committee, IEEE INFOCOM 2009, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
      • Steering Committee Member, International Conference on Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks and Communications (CrownCom), 2008, 2009, 2010.
      • Technical Program Co‐Chair, IFIP International Conference on Network and Parallel Computing (NPC), October 1819–20, 2008, Shanghai, China.
      • Technical Program Chair, International Conference on Wireless Communications, Networking and Mobile Computing (WiCOM), September 19–21, 2008, Dalian, China.
      • Tutorial Co‐Chair, IEEE Globecom 2007, November 26–30, 2007, Washington, DC, USA.
      • Chair, NSF Workshop on Bridging the Gap between Wireless Networking Technologies and Advances at the Physical Layer, August 27–28, 2007, Reston, VA, USA.
      • Co‐Chair of Technical Program Committee, Second International Conference on Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks and Communications (CrownCom), Orlando, FL, August 1–3, 2007.
      • Steering Committee Member, IEEE/Create19–Net International Conference on Broadband Networks (BroadNets), 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010.
      • Chair, First IEEE Workshop on Networking Technologies for Software Defined Radio (SDR) Networks (Held in Conjunction with IEEE SECON 2006), September 25, 2006, Reston, VA.
      • Panel co‐chair, IEEE INFOCOM 2006, April 23‐29, 2006, Barcelona, Spain.
      • General Vice‐Chair, IEEE/Create-Net International Conference on Broadband Networks (BroadNets), October 3-7, 2005, Boston, MA, USA.
      • Tutorial co-chair, IEEE INFOCOM 2005, March 13‐17, 2005, Miami, FL.
      • Co-chair of Technical Program Committee, IEEE/Create‐Net International Conference on Broadband Networks (BroadNets) – Wireless Networking Symposium, October 25‐29, 2004, San Jose, CA, USA.
      • Publicity co‐chair, First International Conference on Quality of Service in Heterogeneous Wired/Wireless Networks (QShine), October 18‐20, 2004, Dallas, TX, USA.
      • Publicity Co‐chair, IEEE INFOCOM 2004, March 7‐11, 2004, Hong Kong.