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About ComSoc

This award is named in honor of Katherine Johnson, the American mathematician who calculated and analyzed the flight paths of many spacecraft during her more than three decades with the US space program. Her work helped send astronauts to the moon. This award recognizes outstanding papers on a subject related to the Society’s technical scope and whose author, upon the date of submission of the paper, is less than 30 years of age.

Description
The Katherine Johnson Young Author Best Paper Award honors the author(s) of an especially meritorious paper dealing with a subject related to the Society’s technical scope and who, upon the date of submission of the paper, is less than 30 years of age.

Prize
Plaque and honorarium of US$1000. In the event that there is more than one young author, the maximum prize shall be divided equally among all young authors and each shall receive a plaque. Maximum number of awards will be two (up to two papers per year), but only if a suitable number of recipients are identified.

Eligibility
Author(s) of an original paper in a subject related to the Society’s technical scope and appearing in one of the Society’s solely owned or jointly owned transactions or journals in the previous three calendar years and who, upon the date of submission of the paper, is (are) less than 30 years of age. There are no restrictions as to IEEE membership, nationality, race, creed, age or gender. The prize is only presented to the young author(s) who are under 30 years of age and have made a substantial contribution to the paper.

Basis for Judging
Originality, utility, timeliness, impact, and clarity of presentation.

Nominee Solicitation
Nominations solicited by Editors-in-Chief to the Editorial Boards and Guest Editors of all IEEE Communications Society publications. After screening, each Editor-in-Chief shall submit at least one nomination. Nominations will also be solicited from ComSoc Technical Committee chairs and readership (through published notices).

Awards Committee
The IEEE Communications Society Awards Committee will be responsible for the final selection. The committee consists of a chair (appointed by the president for a two-year term) and at least 12 members (appointed by the chair for a three-year term).

Selection Process
All nominations shall be submitted to the IEEE Communications Society Awards Committee for final selection by February 15 of each year. The selection process shall comply with procedures and regulations established in IEEE and ComSoc governing documents, in particular with IEEE Policy 4.4 on Award Limitations.

Schedule
Nominations will be solicited from January until February 15 unless otherwise noted via open call on the IEEE Communications Society website. Applications must be submitted via the nomination form on the website. Recipients will be notified by April 30.

Frequency
Annually. If in any year no eligible paper is deemed to be of sufficient quality, no award will be given.

Administration and Funding
The IEEE Communications Society will administer the award out of its annual Society operating budget. The Society's budget includes the amount of this award and the Society budget is net positive with the inclusion of the award. 

Presentation
Presented by the IEEE Communications Society Awards Committee Chair, in the name of the IEEE Communications Society at the IEEE International Conference on Communications (IEEE ICC).

Publicity
The award will be publicized on the IEEE Communications Society website, magazine, electronic newsletter, and awards luncheon brochure.

Deadline
Nominations due 15 February unless otherwise noted.

 

2023 Award Recipient

Zhaohui Yang, Mingzhe Chen, Walid Saad, Choong Seon Hong, and Mohammad Shikh-Bahaei 

"Energy Efficient Federated Learning Over Wireless Communication Networks," IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 20, no. 3, pp. 1935-1949, March 2021.

 

PAST AWARD RECIPIENTS

2022
Shuowen Zhang, Yong Zeng, and Rui Zhang
Cellular-Enabled UAV Communication: A Connectivity-Constrained Trajectory Optimization Perspective,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 67, no. 3, pp. 2580-2604, March 2019.

Mohammad Mohammadi Amiri and Deniz Gündüz
Federated Learning Over Wireless Fading Channels,” IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol. 19, no. 5, pp. 3546-3557, May 2020.

2021
Qingqing Wu, Yong Zeng, and Rui Zhang
"Joint Trajectory and Communication Design for Multi-UAV Enabled Wireless Networks," IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 2109-2121, March 2018.

Mingzhe Chen, Walid Saad, and Changchuan Yin
"Virtual Reality Over Wireless Networks: Quality-of-Service Model and Learning-Based Resource Management," IEEE Transactions on Communications,  Vol. 66, No. 11, pp. 5621-5635, November 2018.

2020
Zheng Chen, Jemin Lee, Tony Q. S. Quek, Marios Kountouris
Cooperative Caching and Transmission Design in Cluster-Centric Small Cell Networks”, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Vol. 16, No. 5, pp. 3401-3415, May 2017.

2019
Mohammad Mozaffari
"Unmanned Aerial Vehicle With Underlaid Device-to-Device Communications: Performance and Tradeoffs"IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Vol. 15, Issue 6, pp.3949-3963, June 2016.

2018
Ahmed Hamdi Sakr, Ekram Hossain
“Cognitive and Energy Harvesting-Based D2D Communication in Cellular Networks: Stochastic Geometry Modeling and Analysis”, IEEE Transactions on Communications, Vol. 63, No. 5, pp. 1867-1880, May 2015.

2017
Haijun Zhang, Chunxiao Jiang, Norman C. Beaulieu, Xiaoli Chu, Xiangming Wen, Meixia Tao
“Resource Allocation in Spectrum Sharing OFDMA Femtocells with Heterogeneous Services”IEEE Transactions on Communications, Vol. 62, No. 7, pp. 2366-2377, July 2014.

2016
Maria Gorlatova, Aya Wallwater, Gil Zussman
“Networking Low-Power Energy Harvesting Devices: Measurements and Algorithms”IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Volume 12, Issue 9, pp. 1853 - 1865, September 2013.

2015
Harpreet S. Dhillon, Radha Krishna Ganti, Francois Baccelli, Jeffrey G. Andrews
“Modeling and Analysis of K-Tier Downlink Heterogeneous Cellular Networks”IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, Vol. 30, No. 3, April 2012. pp. 550-560.