The School of Engineering and Applied Science has honored wireless communications expert Yasaman Ghasempour for early-career excellence in research and teaching. She is one of three recipients of the E. Lawrence Keyes, Jr./Emerson Electric Co. Faculty Advancement Award and one of seven assistant professors to receive a junior faculty award this year. Each recipient will receive $50,000 to support their research.

Ghasempour, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, studies fundamental mechanisms of wireless communication and sensing technologies. Her work focuses on designing, implementing and experimentally evaluating next-generation systems that use high-frequency signals, especially in the millimeter-wave, sub-terahertz and terahertz bands of the electromagnetic spectrum. Some of that spectrum has only recently been made available for research and is not yet used in commercial applications. Ghasempour develops techniques to access this part of the spectrum and build new systems that leverage its higher data rates and greater precision while managing the increased complexity these systems bring. 

In 2023, Ghasempour’s team won best paper awards at the USENIX NSDI and ACM MobiCom conferences. She has won a Young Investigator Program award from the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, a Commendation for Outstanding Teaching from Princeton University, and a Marconi Young Scholar Award, among many other honors. Additionally, she co-directs Princeton’s NextG Initiative and has held leadership positions at more than a dozen academic conferences and journals. Ghasempour joined Princeton in 2021 after completing her Ph.D. at Rice University.