ABOUT
"An expert is a person who has made all the mistakes that can be made in a very narrow field."
“ Artificial Intelligence Enabled Self-Organizing Wireless Networks; Internet of Things; Cross-disciplinary Applications of Big Data; Control and Data Plane Split Architectures; Aerial platforms (Satellite/HAPs/Drones…) based connectivity; System Level Simulators. ”
Dr. Ali Imran has over 12 years of international research experience in areas listed above. He has been and is currently leading several multinational projects focused on next generation wireless networks, for which he has secured research grants of over $3 million in last five years as lead principal investigator. He is the founding director of Big Data Enabled Self-Organizing Networks Research Lab (www.bsonlab.com ) at The University of Oklahoma, where he is currently an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. At BSON lab he currently directs a team of over ten post graduate researchers.
Before joining OU in Jan 2014, for three years he has worked as a Research Scientist at Qatar Mobility Innovations Center, (formerly known as Qatar University Wireless Innovation Center), Doha, Qatar. QMIC is a national innovation centre embodying a unique initiative by the state of Qatar to carry out multidisciplinary applied research in field of mobile systems. In this position, Dr. Imran led the development of a wide range of innovative solutions by conducting research mainly in the disciplines of wireless communication, software development, internet of things (IoT) and intelligent transport systems. In this role, he also worked as the lead research scientist on a large multinational research project on performance enhancement in LTE/LTE-A. His role at QMIC also included teaching parts of courses on wireless communications at Qatar University at under graduate and post graduate level.
Prior to joining QMIC, he has worked for five years as a research fellow in wireless cellular systems at the Institute of Communications Systems (ICS), (formerly CCSR) at University of Surrey, UK. ICS is Europe’s largest and the most reputed research centre in the field of mobile communications. ICS hosts one of the world’s first 5G innovation centre and a citywide testbed established with over $100 million public and private funding. In that position, Dr. Imran has contributed to a number of pan-European and international research projects focused on self-organising networks leveraging small cells based deployments as well as high altitude platforms (balloons, drones). In these projects he worked in collaboration with key industrial players such as NEC Europe Ltd. (UK), Telefónica (Spain), DOCOMO (Germany), Polska Telefonia Cyfrowa (Poland), Qualcomm (Germany), TTI (Spain), mimoOn (Germany), CTTC (Spain), CEA– LETI (France). In two years preceding joining ICS at the University of Surrey, UK, he has worked as a communication lab instructor, BS deployment team leader and RF consultant for leading telecom companies.
Dr. Imran's experience is backed by a BSc in Electrical Engineering from the most reputed Engineering University in Pakistan: UET, Lahore that has less than 0.01% acceptance ratio in EE. He has an MSc with distinction in Satellite Communications Engineering from a globally reputed department in satellite communications: Surrey Space Centre, University of Surrey, UK. He earned his Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering with concentration in mobile communications systems from the highest ranked and largest mobile communications research center in Europe i.e., ICS, University of Surrey, UK. During his pedagogical journey, he has won several highly competitive awards for his outstanding academic achievements including scholarships with collective worth over $200,000.
Dr. Imran’s current research interests include Self-Organizing Wireless Networks (SON) functions design for enabling 5G; Big Data Enabled SON (BSON); artificial intelligence enabled wireless networks (AISON), new RAN architectures for enabling low cost human-to-human as well as IoT and D2D communications. On these topics, he has published over 60 refereed journal and conference papers. He has also designed and taught several extensive post graduate courses on these topics. He has given tutorials on these topics at several international conferences including IEEE ICC, WF-IoT, PIMRC, WCNC, CAMAD and European Wireless and Crowncom. He has been an invited speaker and served as a panellist on many international industrial fora. Dr. Imran’s research tackles real world problems faced by wireless industry and he is routinely consulted by several major telecom vendors and operators to solve challenging problems faced by the wireless industry. Currently, he is in the midst of championing the development of next generation SON for 5G and beyond, which he refers to as BSON. His seminal paper presenting the first complete BSON framework as a key enabler for 5G titled “Challenges in 5G: How to Empower SON with Big Data for Enabling 5G”, was selected to feature in TECH FOCUS on 5G in Sep 2015.
He is an Associate Fellow of Higher Education Academy (AFHEA), UK; president of ComSoc Tulsa Chapter; Member of Advisory Board for Special Technical Community on Big Data at IEEE Computer Society; board member of ITERA, and Associate Editor of IEEE Access special section on heterogeneous networks for 5G.
GRA Positions at BSON Lab
I am currently recruiting for GRA positions for joining in 2017. Candidates with exceptionally strong analytical background are encouraged to send me their resumes with subject line "GRA_BSONLab".
Contact
E. 41st Street, Building 4, Room 4209, Tulsa, OK 74135, USA; Ph: +1-(918)-660-3348; Email: ali.imran at ou.edu
Opportunities for Summer Internships in UK
For details visit IRES US-UK project
