Honors, press coverage, and lab news from the Drexel Wireless Systems Laboratory.
Honors
- 2025: Kapil Dandekar named a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (Drexel Engineering)
- 2023: Kapil Dandekar inducted into the College of Fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE)
- 2019: College Outstanding Innovation Award, Drexel College of Engineering
- 2016: Provost’s Award for Outstanding Mid-Career Scholarly Activity, Drexel University
In the Media
2025
What’s causing Bluetooth interference on the Ben Franklin Bridge? There are a lot of possibilities.
Philadelphia Inquirer, July 2025
2023
Kapil Dandekar Inducted into the 2023 Class of the AIMBE College of Fellows
American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering, March 2023
2022
VIP Project Helps Student Make Connections
Drexel Engineering, Jan 2022
2021
Students Aim for New Functionality for Smart Fabric Band
Drexel Discoveries, Fall 2021
Universities should transform their methodology
Mail and Guardian, May 2021
Coronavirus: How to boost your WiFi performance when everyone’s at home
Philadelphia Inquirer, January 2021
2019
West Chester firm lets you tag and track your suitcase, lands first contract with a major airline
Philadelphia Inquirer, June 2019
Meet the 17 people tasked with advising Philly on smart city best practices
Technical.ly Philly, April 2019
2018
Drexel’s Spray-On Antennas Could Be the Tech Connector of the Future
Drexel News Blog, September 2018
These Spray-on Antennas Could Be the Future of Communication
Communications of the ACM, September 2018
Streetwise: How a smart Philadelphia would embrace transformational technologies
Philadelphia Business Journal, June 2018
2017
Diplomacy In The Battle For Bandwidth
Drexel News Blog, May 2017
New Research Labs Foster Collaboration at Drexel’s 3101 Market St.
Drexel Now, April 2017
Amid Privacy Concerns, Wearable Tech Grows in Health
Athletic Business, January 2017
Wearable tech gaining in health care, but privacy is a concern
Philly.com, January 2017
2016
Could Machines Help End Dropped Calls? (feature on DWSL Ph.D. student Alex Lackpour)
Lockheed Martin, November 2016
These Smart Threads Could Save Lives
NSF Science Nation, September 2016
Engineers Create Biomedical Smart Fabrics to Save Lives
Electronics360, September 2016
CoE Students at the Democratic National Convention
Drexel News, August 2016
Drexel in the Top 50 of Worldwide List for Patents
Drexel News, July 2016
The Story of No. 8908787
Drexel Magazine, Winter/Spring 2016
2015
Demand for jobs high in cyber security
Philly.com, August 2015
Drexel Antenna Research Helping to Boost the Performance of Commercial Wireless Networking Technology
DrexelNow, July 2015; also covered by the Philadelphia Business Journal
2014
Retooling Locator Systems for Mobile 911 Calls
Govtech.com, August 2014
At Drexel lab, wearable tech taking shape
Philadelphia Inquirer, August 2014
Drexel team develops ‘belly band’ to monitor contractions of pregnant women
WHYY, May 2014
2012
Adant, a technology company cofounded by DWSL alumnus Daniele Piazza, is showcasing its amazing beamshaping antenna technology at CES 2013.
December 2012
Smart fabric could be cheap, non-invasive way to monitor complications in pregnancy
MedCity News, November 2012
2010
Drexel engineers may soon replace E-Z Pass box with transparent antennas
DrexelNOW, October 2010
Spirent Teams Up with Drexel University to Expand Research into Advanced Wireless Antenna Technologies
BusinessWire, October 2010
Community Service Program Expands
IEEE the institute article features our Senior Design activities, September 2010
Lab News
2026
2026: Congratulations to Dr. Md Shakir Hossain on completing the Ph.D.
2024
2024: Congratulations to Dr. Ankita Paul on completing the Ph.D. (co-advised with Prof. Anup Das).
2023
4/20: Congratulations to DWSL PhD student Md Abu Saleh Tajin and DWSL Post-doc Anim Kyei on the publication of their journal paper, “Incident power and relative phase distribution mapping in reconfigurable intelligent surfaces using energy harvesting” in IEEE Transactions on Antennas and Propagation.
4/5: Congratulations to Kapil Dandekar for being recognized by the College of Engineering for his installation as an endowed chair professor.
2023: Congratulations to Dr. Md Abu Saleh Tajin on completing the Ph.D.
2022
2/22: Congratulations to DWSL PhD student Md Abu Saleh Tajin on the publication of his paper, “Anomalous Radio Frequency Conductivity and Sheet Resistance of 2D Ti3C2Tx MXene” in IEEE Access.
2/22: Congratulations to DWSL and DISCO Lab PhD student Ankita Paul, and DWSL PhD student Md Abu Saleh Tajin on the publication of their paper, “Energy-Efficient Respiratory Anomaly Detection in Premature Newborn Infants” which has been published in the journal Electronics as part of the Special Issue Neuromorphic Sensing and Computing Systems.
2/22: Congratulations to DWSL Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program student Abhi Adhikari his undergraduate senior design team (Sameer Parihar, Sujoy Das), DWSL researchers Marko Jacovic and Vasil Pano, and industrial collaborator from Lockheed Martin ATL, Anthony Trezza on the acceptance of their paper “Software-Defined Radar Testbed for Multi-Target Tracking” to the 2022 IEEE RADAR Conference.
1/22: Congratulations to DWSL PhD graduate, Marko Jacovic on the successful defense of his dissertation, “Securing wireless communication systems at the physical layer”, and the start of his new job at Lockheed Martin.
1/22: Congratulations to DWSL researchers Marko Jacovic, Mike Liston, and Vasil Pano on the publication of their journal paper, “Experimentation framework for wireless communication systems under jamming scenarios” in IET Cyber-Physical Systems: Theory and Applications.
1/22: Working in collaboration with Drexel Professors Steven Weber and Spiros Mancoridis, DWSL is kicking off a new project for the FAA ASSURE program.
2021
12/21: DWSL Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program student Rei Balabani was showcased for his undergraduate research to develop a campus-wide Internet of Things (IoT) testbed as part of the Drexel Areas of Research Excellence (DARE) program.
10/21: Congratulations to DWSL and DISCO PhD student Ankita Paul, DWSL PhD student Md Abu Saleh Tajin, and our team for winning the Best Poster Award in the AI Systems and Applications session of the 2021 IBM-IEEE AI Compute Symposium (AICS2021).
8/21: Congratulations to DWSL PhD graduate, Oday Bshara on the successful defense of his dissertation, “Millimeter wave beamforming techniques for future wireless communication applications”, and the start of his new job at Toyota North America.
8/21: Best wishes to DWSL alum Xaime Rivas Rey for the start of his career at Comcast.
7/21: Congratulations to former DWSL undergraduate researcher Rob Ross on the publication of his paper “An adaptively parameterized algorithm estimating respiratory rate from a passive wearable RFID smart garment” in the 2021 IEEE COMPSAC conference.
6/21: Best wishes to DWSL post-doc Vasil Pano on his new job at Intel.
4/21: Congratulations to DWSL part-time PhD student Mike Liston, on the publication of his paper, “Entropy based exploration in cognitive radio networks using deep reinforcement learning for dynamic spectrum access” in the 2021 IEEE WAMICON conference.
4/21: Congratulations to our team for the publication of a book chapter, “Wearable smart garment devices for passive biomedical monitoring” in Springer Signal Processing in Medicine and Biology.
1/21: Working in collaboration with the Center for Functional Fabrics, DWSL is kicking off a new project for the Advanced Functional Fabrics of America (AFFOA) Institute.
2020
9/20: Congratulation to DWSL MS student, Martin Kraus on the successful defense of his thesis, “Semi-supervised machine learning based RF node authentication using properties of the wireless channel” and best wishes on your new job at Broadcom.
7/20: Several patents involving DWSL researchers and research projects have been granted, including: “Adaptive pursuit learning method to mitigate small-cell interference through directionality” (US 10694526 B2), “TSV-based on-chip antennas, measurement, and evaluation” (US 2020/0212538 A1), and “System for ultrasonic communication across curved metal surfaces” (US 10594409 B2).
6/20: Congratulations to DWSL PhD graduate Yuqiao Liu on the successful defense of his dissertation “Novel antenna technology for internet of things applications” and the start of his career at Maxlinear.
2019
10/23/19: Geoffrey Mainland, Alex Lackpour, and Kapil Dandekar of Team Dragon Radio attended the final DARPA Spectrum Collaboration Challenge event at 2019 MWC. The team placed 8th globally in the final competition. The final competition was live streamed at the following link.
5/19: Congratulations to DWSL PhD graduate Simon Begashaw on the successful defense of his dissertation, “Enhancing multi-user networks with pattern reconfigurable antennas” and the start of his career at Apple (joining a number of other DWSL alumni).
4/23/19: Marko Jacovic and Oday Bshara presented papers on physical layer security and UAV radar cross section measurements, respectively at the 2019 IEEE WAMICON conference.
1/23/19: Dr. Kapil Dandekar was named the recipient of the 2019 Outstanding Innovation Award from the Drexel College of Engineering.
2018
12/13/18: DWSL Team “Dragon Radio” placed eighth globally in the DARPA Spectrum Collaboration Challenge. The team consists of faculty and students in the College of Engineering and the College of Computing and Informatics.
9/21/18: In a collaboration between the Drexel Nanotechnology Institute and DWSL members Yuqiao Liuand Kapil Dandekar, a paper on “spray-painted” antennas was just published in Science Advances.
05/31/18: Xaime Rivas Rey won Continued Excellence in Teaching Assistance award at the 2018 Graduate Student day.
2017
11/07/17: DWSL Director Dr. Kapil Dandekar featured on a panel discussion titled Emerging Directions in Communications at the 2017 Texas Wireless Summit at UT Austin.