Nile University: Wireless Intelligent Networks

For the last three days, I've been attending the conference on wireless intelligent networks organized by the Nile University in the Smart Village. The conference was held under the auspices of Dr. Tarek Kamel, the minister of communications and information technology. Ohio State and RICE universities also contributed to the conference. The conference was followed by a WARP workshop, but only a limited number of the attendees was invited.

It was a great initiative from the Nile University to introduce this interesting field to the academic community in Egypt. University students were also invited to get exposed to the ongoing research in wireless networks and get in touch with the world leaders in this technology. You can find all the information you need about the event on the conference website. The conference presentations should be available soon.

The conference was more oriented to EE topics. As a CS undergraduate, I had some difficulty following up with some talks, but it was a good experience after all. I talked to some of the speakers about the role of CS students in this field and here is what I got:

"The middle east is going to become very powerful both using and developing technology. There is going to be a tremendous need for better ideas," said Prof. A. Paulraj. He also mentioned some topics of interest regarding mobile technology including: powerful processes that consumed little power, new architectures that saves power using techniques like clock gating, more user friendly interfaces suitable for dealing with more data, security and clean slate internet.

"You should take your studies very seriously," said Prof. A. El Gamal.

"Go outside traditional education. Think outside the box. Whatever you learn isn't just courses, you should find points of interlinking between the things you learn. Think about the applications of what you study. Think about services and how it can be provided in a systematic and organized manner," said Prof. M. Eltoweissy.

"If you want to make something outstanding in networks, you have to combine the knowledge from both EE and CE. Without understanding the physical layer, your work will be rather theoretical," said Prof. A. Abozeid.

Finally, I would like to mention Prof. Hesham El Gamal and the Nile University students for their efforts in organizing this conference.