IEEE COMSOC Summer School 2018 Organized at LUMS

The invention of COMSOC Summer School came into being with the idea of elevating the research among the fresh graduates, MS and PhD students. Initially, it was started as an experiment program by COMSOC USA, which then caught the strength after the success of the program among the professionals, researchers and the students. For the last three years (from 2016 to 2018), the IEEE COMSOC Summer School has been taking place in Pakistan, which is undoubtedly an honor for the country. First COMSOC Summer School was organized in Italy in 2015 and then from the following year onwards, the honor of conducting this event has been offering to Pakistan and COMSOC Lahore Section has been organizing these events so far.

In 2016, the summer school was jointly organized by Punjab University and KICS UET Lahore from 26^th to 29^th July and then in 2017, it was organized with a joint collaboration of FAST university and KICS UET Lahore from 11^th to 14^th July.

This year i.e. 2018, IEEE LUMS Student Branch (Lahore Section, R-10) in collaboration with IEEE COMSOC Lahore Section and KICS-UET Lahore organized a 4-day COMSOC Summer School 2018 on the theme of ‘The Intelligent Communication Networks’ from 7^th to 10^th August at the Syed Babar Ali School of Science and Engineering, LUMS (Lahore University of Management Sciences). The event was attended a large number of attendees including the professors, professionals and the students.

IEEE COMSOC Summer School 2018 was not only filled with technical talks, but also laced with a full 4 days of excitement, which pleased the participants. 40 researchers and 10 speakers both national and international participated in the summer school. International speakers were from the University of Oklahoma (USA), University of Leeds (UK), Vodafone (UK) and NEC Labs Europe (Germany) whereas the national speakers were from LUMS, ITU and UET Lahore.

Dr. Shahid Masood (Dean SBASSE LUMS and the acting Vice Chancellor LUMS) was the chief guest of the opening ceremony. Kashif Bashir (Chair IEEE COSMOC Lahore Chapter & Manager HUTIC UET Lahore and the General Chair of IEEE COMSOC Summer School 2018) was the distinguished guest among others. Dr. Waqar Mahmood (Director KICS UET and Co-Chair – Advisory Committee IEEE COMSOC Summer School 2018) was the chief guest of the closing ceremony. Dr. Momin Uppal (Associate Professor, EE Dept, LUMS and Focal Person of IEEE COMSOC Summer School 2018), Kashif Bashir and Dr. Tariq Jadoon (Head of EE Dept, LUMS and Chair, Advisory Committee of IEEE COMSOC Summer School 2018) were among the distinguished guests. 

Technical talks were delivered on the topics such as: ‘Emerging Technologies for Intelligent Communication Network Design and Deployment’, ‘OFDM: The Theory of Practice’, ‘Blind Deconvolution using Deep Generative Priors’, ‘NFV and SDN – Key Technology Enablers for 5G Networks’, ‘Cross-roads between machine learning, signal processing, and communications’, ‘Leveraging AI for Designing Lean, Elastic, Agile and Proactive (LEAP) Wireless Networks of the Future: Case Studies, Challenges and Opportunities’, ‘On Analyzing Self-Driving Networks: A Systems Thinking Approach’, ‘Internet of Things (IoT) – A Digitally Connected Society’, ‘Towards Intelligent Receiver Design for Nano-Scale Communication Systems Operating in the Terahertz Band’ and ‘Factor Graphs in Channel Coding’.

A competition was also arranged with the title of ‘5 Minutes Thesis Madness’. Graduate and doctorate students participated in this competition and showcased their thesis and research work. 7 total students participated and out of them 3 were declared winners who were presented shields.

A visit was also arranged to Punjab Safe City Authority where the procedure of the safe city was shown to the delegation. This year’s summer school was really appreciated by the attendees and the students who all want it to happen once again in Pakistan.