Khaled B. Letaief

Khaled B. Letaief is the New Bright Professor of Engineering and Chair Professor at the Department of Electronic and Computer Engineering of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST), Hong Kong.

His research lies in the general area of wireless communications and networks, with research interests in AI and machine learning, mobile cloud and edge computing, tactile internet, and 6G systems.

Prof. Letaief was born in Nabeul, Tunisia in 1962.

With excellent scores in the public examination in 1981, he was among the top 200 high school graduates given full scholarships by the Tunisian government for undergraduate studies in the USA.

He received the BS degree with distinction in Electrical Engineering from Purdue University at West Lafayette, Indiana, USA, in December 1984.

He then received the MS and PhD Degrees in Electrical Engineering from the same university, in August 1986, and May 1990, respectively.

He has also received a PhD Honoris Causa from the University of Johannesburg, South Africa, in 2022.

Prof. Letaief started his academic career at the University of Melbourne in 1990, and was a Lecturer/Assistant Professor there for three years.

He joined the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) as an Assistant Professor in 1993, became an Associate Professor in 1996, a Full Professor in 2001, a Chair Professor in 2005, and since 2019, the New Bright Professor of Engineering.

While at HKUST, he has held many administrative positions, including Senior Advisor to the President, Acting Provost , Head of the Electronic and Computer Engineering department, Director of the Wireless IC Design Center, and Director of the Hong Kong Telecom Institute of Information Technology.

He has also served as the Dean of Engineering.

He is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) since 2003, and an international member of the United States National Academy of Engineering (NAE) since 2021.

Under his leadership, the School of Engineering has dazzled in international rankings (rising from # 26 in 2009 to # 14 in the world in 2015 according to QS World University Rankings.) From 2015 to 2018, he joined Hamad Bin Khalifa University (HBKU) as Provost to help establish a research-intensive university in Qatar in partnership with strategic partners that include Northwestern University, Carnegie Mellon University, Cornell, and Texas A&M.

Prof. Letaief is dedicated to serving professional societies and IEEE where he has held many leadership positions, including Member of the IEEE Board of Directors, IEEE Communications Society Vice-President for Conferences, Chair of IEEE Committee on Wireless Communications, elected member of IEEE Product Services and Publications Board, and IEEE Communications Society Vice-President for Technical Activities.

He also served as President of the IEEE Communications Society (2018-19), the world's leading organization for communications professionals with headquarter in New York City and members in 162 countries.

He served as consultants for different organizations including Huawei, ASTRI, ZTE, Nortel, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Motorola.

He is also dedicated to the organization and editorial services for journals and conferences.

He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the prestigious IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications and has served on the editorial board of other premier journals including the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications – Wireless Series (as Editor-in-Chief).

He has also been involved in organizing many flagship international conferences, including the General Chair of the IEEE Global Communications Conference (Globecom), IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), and IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC), etc.

Prof. Letaief is a member of many National Academies, and a fellow of many academic organizations, including:

Prof. Letaief is the recipient of many distinguished awards and accolades including:

Prof. Letaief has co-authored several books and book chapters, including Stochastic Geometry Analysis of Multi-Antenna Wireless Networks.

He has authored and co-authored over 700 journal and conference papers with over 52,600 citations and an h-index of 100 according to Google Scholar (as of May 2024).

He also holds 15 inventions, including 11 US patents.

In addition, he has launched and led several multi-university research projects, including the project manager and the principal investigator of the Area of Excellence Scheme of the Hong Kong Research Grant Council (a flagship project with a funding of HKD 87,304,000).