Biography

Ahmed Arafa received the B.Sc. degree, with highest honors, in electrical engineering from Alexandria University, Egypt, in 2010, the M.Sc. degree in wireless technologies from the Wireless Intelligent Networks Center (WINC), Nile University, Egypt, in 2012, and the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering from the University of Maryland at College Park, MD, USA, in 2016 and 2017, respectively. He has been with the Electrical Engineering Department at Princeton University as a Postdoctoral Research Associate during 2017–2019. Currently, he is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. Dr. Arafa's research interests are in communication theory, information theory, machine learning, and signal processing, with recent focus on federated learning, timely information processing and transfer (age-of-information), information-theoretic security and privacy, and energy harvesting communications. He was the recipient of the Distinguished Dissertation award from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Maryland, in 2017, for his Ph.D. thesis work on optimal energy management policies in energy harvesting communication networks with system costs. In 2022, he received the NSF CAREER Award.

Awards and Honors

• NSF CAREER Award, 2022.

• ECE Distinguished Dissertation fellowship, University of Maryland, Spring 2017.

• ECE Distinguished Teaching Assistant, University of Maryland, Spring 2017.

• TA Training and Development fellowship, University of Maryland, Fall 2016.

• Future Faculty Program fellowship, University of Maryland, Spring 2016.

• Distinction with Honor for the B.Sc. degree, ranked in top 4%, Alexandria University, 2010.

Service

Editorial Board:

1. Associate Editor: Springer journal on Wireless Personal Communications

2. Editor: IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking — Green IoT and Energy-Harvesting Communications

3. Associate Editor: Frontiers in Communications and Networks journal — Data Science for Communications speciality section

4. Review Editor: Frontiers in Communications and Networks journal — Communications Theory specialty section
   

Co-organizer and Co-Chair:

1. Invited Session: “Semantics and Age of Information” (in Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, 2024)

2. Workshop: Edge Learning over 5G Mobile Networks and Beyond (in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 2024)

3. Invited Session: “Age of Information and Beyond” (in Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, 2023)

4. Special Session: “Timely and Private Machine Learning over Networks” (in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC), 2023)

5. Workshop: “Distributed, Private, and Robust Machine Learning over Networks” (in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking (SECON), 2023)

6. Workshop: “Timely and Private Machine Learning over Communication Networks” (in conjunction with the IEEE International Conference on Acoustics, Speech and Signal Processing (ICASSP), 2023)

7. Invited Session: “Recent Advances in Federated Learning over Wireless Networks” (in Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), 2022)

8. Invited Session: “Age-of-Information: Recent Advances” (in Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), 2020)
   

Publication Chair:

1. International Symposium on Modeling and Optimization in Mobile, Ad hoc, and Wireless Networks (WiOpt), 2025

TPC Co-Chair:

1. 6th Age of Information Workshop (in conjunction with INFOCOM), 2023
   

Technical Program Committee (TPC) member:

1. IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom): Communication Theory Symposium, 2025

2. 8th Age and Semantics of Information Workshop (in conjunction with INFOCOM), 2025

3. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC): Signal Processing for Communications Symposium, 2025

4. IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom): Communication Theory Symposium, 2024

5. 7th Age and Semantics of Information Workshop (in conjunction with INFOCOM), 2024

6. IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom): Communication Theory Symposium, 2023

7. IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), 2023

8. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC): Mobile and Wireless Networks Symposium, 2023

9. International Conference on Communications, Signal Processing, and their Applications (ICCSPA), 2022

10. 5th Age of Information Workshop (in conjunction with INFOCOM), 2022

11. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC): Mobile and Wireless Networks Symposium, 2022

12. IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), 2022

13. IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom): Wireless Communications Symposium, 2021

14. 4th Age of Information Workshop (in conjunction with INFOCOM), 2021

15. IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), 2021

16. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC): Mobile and Wireless Networks Symposium, 2021

17. 6th International Workshop on Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Techniques for 5G and Beyond (in conjunction with IEEE ICC), 2020

18. 3rd Age of Information Workshop (in conjunction with IEEE INFOCOM), 2020

19. International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC), 2020

20. International Conference on Innovation and Intelligence for Informatics, Computing and Technologies (3ICT), 2019

21. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC), Fall 2019

22. Middle East & North Africa Communications Conference (MENACOMM), 2019

23. 5th International Workshop on Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Techniques for 5G (in conjunction with IEEE ICC), 2019

24. IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), 2019

25. International Conference on Computing, Networking and Communications (ICNC), 2019

26. 4th International Workshop on Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Techniques for 5G (in conjunction with IEEE Globecom), 2018

27. International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP), 2018

28. 3rd International Workshop on Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Techniques for 5G (in conjunction with IEEE ICC), 2018

29. Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), 2018
    

Conference Session Chair:

1. Federated Learning (in Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, 2024)

2. Semantics and Age of Information (in Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, 2024)

3. Age of Information and Beyond (in Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, 2023)

4. AoI in Communications and Networking (in AoI Workshop — in conjunction with IEEE Infocom, 2021)

5. Low Latency Communications (in IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom), 2019)

6. Algorithms and Data Over Networks (in Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, 2019)

7. Sensor Networks and Security (in Allerton Conference on Communication, Control, and Computing, 2018)

8. Control and Scheduling (in Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS), 2018)
   

Technical Reviewer:

Journals (selected):

1. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications

2. IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Information Theory

3. IEEE Transactions on Communications

4. IEEE Transactions on Information Theory

5. IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications

6. IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking

7. IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing

8. IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security

9. IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking

10. IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology

11. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing

12. IEEE Internet of Things Journal

13. ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks

14. IEEE Wireless Communication Letters

15. IEEE Communication Letters

16. IEEE Networking Letters

17. IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine

18. IEEE Communications Magazine

Conferences (selected):

1. IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT)

2. IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom)

3. IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC)

4. IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM)

5. IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC)

6. IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC)

7. IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS)