Research
Doing research is a natural path for people who exhibit intellectual curiosity, enjoy Science, and show respect for rigorous findings. It is also a path for people like me...
In this section, you can find additional information about my research. Being specific, you can check my full list of publications (and get access to most of them) and have a short description about the topics I am working on.
You can also do other things, like taking a look at the webpages of people I collaborate with or having access to resources that may be useful for your own research.
If you want information about things like invited talks, funding projects, technical program committees, or service to the IEEE, just check my CV.
Publications
Google Scholar Profile
I think that Google contributed tremendously to scientific dissemination by releasing Google Scholar. One can easily identify which the most popular works for a given topic are, electronic versions of the papers are easy to find and access, contributions of people who are working in your area are easy to track, you can even be notified when other people are relaying on your own research (sometimes, they even say good things about it!)
On top of that, it is very simple to use, quick, and fairly transparent. So yes, I am a Google Scholar fan and my profile is here.
Full list of publications
You may wonder: why do I need this one if I can go to Google Scholar? That would be indeed, a very pertinent question. So far, it is useful because here you will get: papers that have been submitted but not yet published, Matlab codes for some of the papers, and slides that I used in conference presentations. In the future, I would like to upgrade this, so that it gets more intelligent (providing .bib citations, allowing to group papers based on their topic,... ). My list of publications is here.
What am I working on?
With time and a bit of help, this section will grow and be more useful. So far, you will find a brief description of the topics I am most involved with.
- The core of my research work is the application of adaptive (stochastic) signal processing and non-linear optimization, mostly duality theory and dynamic programming, to the fields of cognitive radio and (cross-layer) resource allocation for wireless networks.
- During my time as a Ph.D. student, I worked on designing channel adaptive schemes based on quantized channel state information (a.k.a. limited-rate feedback systems). Most of my designs were trying to minimize the power consumed by the system, but other figures of merit were used too.
- After that, I started to look at optimal design for scheduling algorithms (cellular setups) capable to guarantee quality of service (rate, power, delay …). I also looked at optimal designs for multi-hop wireless networks, both general purpose networks (where the objective is to transmit as much information rate as possible, while guaranteeing quality of service) as well as wireless sensor networks. Development of stochastic algorithms that exhibit low computational burden, have guaranteed performance and are able to track the inherent variations in the network is critical for such complex systems. Consequently, I have spent some doing that too.
- The last years, I worked on developing algorithms for cognitive radios. Optimal designs for cognitive radios are challenging because the CSI information is typically imperfect and heterogeneous, collaboration cannot be assumed, the terminals have to obey new rules (spectrum sharing and dynamic spectrum access policies), and because the sensing and resource allocation tasks are typically coupled (intertwined).
- Nowadays, I have a growing interest in understating the relationship between signal processing and graph and network theory. My interest began when I started to look at multi-hop communication networks. In such networks, routing (which inherently depends on the network structure) is a critical task and design of distributed algorithms to solve both the state estimation and resource allocation problems is highly recommended. Development of signal processing algorithms tailored to graphs and networks will have a great impact into the emerging fields of power networks and smart grids, vehicular networks, and social networks, to name a few.
- In the last 1-2 years, as a result of the collaboration with some of my department colleagues, I am also working on the application of the previous tools to: i) the analysis of biomedical signals; and ii) the design of transportation systems. I do not know what I will get from this, but I am learning a lot of things and I am certainly having fun.
People
One of the many gifts of doing research is the people that one meets, and the many things that one learns from them. Intelligent people (sometimes it is difficult to believe how smart they are), moved by curiosity and who work hard to enlarge the frontiers of knowledge.
- I collaborate with different people at my university. Most of them are colleagues from my department and graduate students. I am not necessarily their advisor; this is sometimes good because you have the fun of doing research without the responsibility for leading the student!!).
- I have a special relationship with the University of Minnesota. I spent there my second and third years as Ph.D. student and I kept visiting them every year since. I primarily collaborate with Spincom, a research group whose director is Georgios Giannakis, who, by the way, is my Ph.D. thesis advisor.
- During my time there I made a lot of friends who are now spread through different hi-tech companies and universities. The ones who remained in the Academia and whom I am proud of being a friend of are: Alejandro Ribeiro, Xin Wang, Ioannis Schizas, Nikolaos Gatsis, Hao Zhu, Gonzalo Mateos, Tianyi Chen, Gang Wang, Emiliano Dall'Anese and many more to come!!
- When I visited Alejandro for the first time, I started to work with him and members of his group (Fernando, Weiyu, Luiz, ...) on Graph Signal Processing. A key player was Santiago Segarra who is now at Rice Geert Leus is another important member of the team. Our collaboration has brought us a number of best-paper awards and, more importantly, a strong friendship.
- Once again, many of the great friends that I made during my time at Penn are now spread through different hi-tech companies and universities. Those who remained in the Academia and have the chance to keep meeting them at conferences and research events include: Ceyhun Eksin, Aryan Mokhtari, and Santiago Paternain.
- I also collaborate with people at Carlos III University of Madrid. I am grateful for the education I received there. Several of the people who taught me are now friends and collaborators.
Needless to say, collaboration is not only about writing papers. It is mostly about scientific discussion, learning new tools, attending workshops and conferences together, sometimes even about organizing such events. It is about creating a research environment. The list of people who have contributed to improve my skills as researcher is too long to be written here, but at least I want to express my appreciation and gratitude to them.
Resources
If you click here, you will find links to useful websites, tips for doing slides, recommendations for writing a scientific paper, to name a few.
