Dai and Franzon win 2019 Qualcomm Faculty Award
Dr. Huaiyu Dai and Dr. Paul Franzon have been awarded 2019 Qualcomm Faculty Awards for research that is inspirational to graduate students and serves to spark new approaches in key technology areas.
July 22, 2019 
Charles Hall
Huaiyu Dai, professor of electrical and computer engineering, and Paul Franzon, Cirrus Logic Distinguished Professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State, have been awarded a 2019 Qualcomm Faculty Award (QFA) for research that is inspirational to graduate students and serves to spark new approaches in key technology areas.
The Qualcomm Faculty Award (QFA) supports key professors and their research through a $75,000 charitable donation to their university. The goal of the QFA funding is to advance wireless communications research in academia and to strengthen Qualcomm’s engagement with faculty who are playing a key role in their recruitment of top graduate students.
Qualcomm is an American multinational semiconductor and telecommunications equipment company that designs and markets wireless telecommunications products and services.
“The QFA program was created to recognize distinguished faculty research that inspires students and sparks new approaches in key technology areas, explained a Qualcomm representative. “Selection for QFA is internally driven.”
Huaiyu Dai, professor of electrical and computer engineering at NC State
Dai received his B.E. and M.S. degrees in electrical engineering from Tsinghua University, China and his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Princeton University. His current research focuses on networked information processing and crosslayer design in wireless networks, cognitive radio networks, network security, and associated information-theoretic and computation-theoretic analysis.
Dai was a co-recipient of best paper awards at the 2010 IEEE International Conference on Mobile Ad-Hoc and Sensor Systems, the 2016 IEEE INFOCOM BIGSECURITY Workshop, and the 2017 IEEE International Conference on Communications. He has served as an Editor for the IEEE Transactions on Communications, the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, and the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.
Paul Franzon, Cirrus Logic Distinguished Professor and Director of Graduate Programs for ECE at NC State
Franzon is an expert in constructing silicon microsystems for applications in computing, communications, sensors, robotics, and signal processing. An IEEE Fellow, he has received numerous recognitions for his research and graduate teaching, including ECE Graduate Teacher of the Year Awards in both 2005 and 2007, the College of Engineering Alcoa Research Award in 2005, and the College of Engineering Board of Governor’s Award for Excellence in Teaching in 2014.
Prior to arriving at NC State in 1989, Dr. Franzon obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Adelaide in Australia, and was an engineer at the Australian Defence Science and Technology Organization while serving as an officer in the Australian Army Reserve.
