Hands-on cross-functional technical leader, inventor, and problem solver; trained in research. I am currently with General Motors R&D, where I've lead several challenging and high impact cross-functional projects in Connectivity, Sensing, and ADAS/Autonomy streams. In general, I enjoy building real, working end-to-end systems and applications that involve multi-disciplinary skills, including both hardware and software, and like to collaborate with experts from other domains for interdisciplinary work. Both through my academic and industry work, I have gathered extensive experience in algorithms and techniques for advanced sensing and connectivity, and related end-to-end HW/SW system implementation. I am an expert system architect who can effectively design and build highly complex systems that may involve a variety of skills including hardware design, fast prototyping, firmware programming, algorithms, machine learning, and proof-of-concept demos.

I graduated with a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the Department of Computer Science & Engineering at Michigan State University, where I was being advised by Dr. Alex Liu. I received my B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences in 2013 from the School of Science and Engineering (SSE) of Lahore University of Managment Sciences (LUMS), Pakistan, where I worked on Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) in Advanced Communications (AdCom) Lab, before moving to Michigan for PhD. Here is a link to my previous website which contains the details of my course-work and projects while at LUMS.

My PhD research was focused on bringing new usefulness and functionalities to existing electronic devices and infrastructure around us, while keeping the original purpose of those devices intact and completely avoiding any hardware level changes. It involved diving deeper into the physical layer of various different technologies and leveraging the signals obtained from their physical layers either to develop new sensing applications or to modify/improve their existing PHY/MAC layer protocols to enable even more useful deployment scenarios - which they are not originally designed for.

Advanced Course-Work:
Detection & Estimation Theory, Stochastic Processes & Applied Probability, Deep Learning, Machine Learning, Data Mining, Design & Theory of Algorithms, Digital Signal Processing, Wireless Communications, Digital Communications, Information Theory, Error Correction Coding, Embedded Systems Design, Digital System Design, Distributed Systems/Advanced Operating Systems, Computer & Network Security

News & Updates

  • Feb 2020: Joining Electrical and Controls Systems Lab at General Motors R&D, Michigan, USA, as an R&D (Applied) Scientist/Researcher focusing on technologies related to autonomous and connected transport systems.
  • May 2019: Joining Pervasive Systems research group at Bell Laboratories, Cambridge, UK, second time around for research internship this summer.
  • Jan 2019: Teaching Spring 2019 Computer Networks (CSE 422) course with Professor Dennis Phillips.
  • Oct 2018: Serving IFIP Networking 2019 as Technical Program Committee (TPC) member.
  • Aug 2018: Teaching Fall 2018 Operating Systems (CSE 410) course with Professor Mark McCullen.
  • July 2018: Our paper titled 'Distributed Spectrum Sharing for Enterprise Powerline Communication Networks' has been accepted at IEEE ICNP 2018 !
  • May 2018: Joining Pervasive Systems research group at Bell Laboratories, Cambridge, UK, for research internship this summer.
  • March 2018: Our paper titled 'The Insecurity of Home Digital Voice Assistants - Vulnerabilities, Attacks and Countermeasures' has been accepted at IEEE Conference on Communications and Network Security (CNS) 2018.
  • Jan 2018: Teaching Spring 2018 Operating Systems (CSE 410) course with Professor Philip K. Mckinley.
  • May 2017: Starting research internship in the Applied Sciences Group at Microsoft Research, Redmond this summer. Looking forward to working on Microsoft Surface products!
  • February 2017: The extended version of our MOBICOM 2015 paper on the Keystroke Recognition using Commodity WiFi Devices has been accepted to IEEE JSAC Human-In-The-Loop Mobile Networks journal.
  • December 2016: Our research work @LUMS on WSN based Monitoring and Event Reporting in Underground Mine Environments has been accepted to IEEE Systems Journal.
  • August 2016: A part of our work on Boosting Powerline Communications for Ubiquitous Connectivity in Enterprises, in collaboration with Hewlett Packard Labs, has been accepted as a poster at IEEE ICNP 2016.
  • May 2016: Starting research internship in the Mobile Communications & Networking Group at NEC Labs America, Princeton this summer. Excited!
  • April 2016: Our research work @LUMS on Event Localization and Tracking Scheme for WSNs in Dynamic Environments has been accepted to IEEE WCNC 2016.
  • December 2015: Our research work @LUMS on Distributed Event Identification for WSNs in Non- Stationary Environments has been accepted to IEEE GLOBECOM 2015.
  • September 2015: Filed 2 patents based on ideas generated from our research work on Boosting Powerline Communications for Ubiquitous Connectivity in Enterprises, in collaboration with Hewlett Packard Labs.
  • June 2015: Our research work @LUMS on Composite Event Detection and Identification for WSNs using General Hebbian Algorithm has been accepted to IEEE ICC 2015.
  • June 2015: Our paper on the Keystroke Recognition using Commodity WiFi Devices has been accepted to ACM MOBICOM 2015. Excited to present my first research work towards PhD in Paris, France!
  • May 2015: Starting research internship in the Networking and Mobility Group at Hewlett Packard Labs, Palo Alto, California this summer. Excited about working with some of the best researchers in the field.
  • Jan 2015: Lead teaching assistant (TA) for the Spring 2015 Object-Oriented Software Development (CSE 335) course offered by Professor Alex X. Liu.