CV

Academic Positions

Academic Degrees

Educational Experience

My educational activities span from regular lecturing and course organization to writing textbooks and spreading scientific knowledge on social media. The latter activities have been recognized by the 2026 EURASIP Athanasios Papoulis Award and the 2024 Telephone Director H.T. Cedergren’s medal. I also have extensive experience in planning educational programs and supervising doctoral students and postdocs.

Pedagogical Training

• “Research supervision – Advanced Course in Higher Education Pedagogy” (4 credits), Linköping University.
• “Basic Communication and Teaching” (3 credits), KTH Royal Institute of Technology.
• “Learning and Teaching” (7.5 credits), KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Educational Leadership

I am currently the Head of the Department of Communication Systems at KTH, with responsibility for educational activities, the work environment, and teacher personnel within the topics of wireless communications, internetworking, antenna theory, and general engineering skills. From 2016-2020, I was the director of the Master’s program in Communication Systems at Linköping University.

Teaching at Bachelor and Master levels

I am currently teaching the following courses at KTH:

• II2202 Research Methodology and Scientific Writing (2020-), Master level, course director, examiner, project supervisor.
• IK2560 Mobile Networks and Services (2020-), Master level, course director, examiner.
• FIK3510 Multiple Antenna Communications (2021-), PhD level, course director, examiner, lecturer.
• IK2510 Wireless Networks (2020-), Master level, lecturer.
• FEO3280 Theoretical Foundations of Wireless Communication (2022-), PhD level, lecturer.

I am also examining around five Master’s degree projects per year.

Previous experience: I have taught courses at Linköping University (as a lecturer and examiner) in digital communications, estimation theory, multiple antenna communications, and MATLAB. I have also been a teaching assistant in signal processing at KTH (during doctoral studies) and in calculus, linear algebra, computational methods, and signal processing (during undergraduate studies).

Supervision at the Doctoral and Postdoctoral levels

I have been the main supervisor for 8 doctoral graduates and a co-supervisor for 9 doctoral graduates. I have also supervised 13 postdocs who are now working in academia or industry across the world. Further details are available here. I am currently the supervisor of several doctoral students and postdocs.

Academic Textbooks

I have published four textbooks aimed at Master’s and Doctoral students, as well as unpublished teaching material for various courses. The textbooks are available as open access and delivered with simulation code and (in some cases) exercises:

• Emil Björnson, Özlem Tuğfe Demir (2024), “Introduction to Multiple Antenna Communications and Reconfigurable Surfaces,” Boston-Delft: now publishers. (Download Simulation Code)
• Özlem Tuğfe Demir, Emil Björnson, Luca Sanguinetti, “Foundations of User-Centric Cell-Free Massive MIMO,” Foundations and Trends® in Signal Processing, vol. 14, no. 3-4, pp. 162-472, 2021. (Download Simulation Code)
• Emil Björnson, Jakob Hoydis, Luca Sanguinetti, “Massive MIMO Networks: Spectral, Energy, and Hardware Efficiency,” Foundations and Trends® in Signal Processing, vol. 11, no. 3-4, pp. 154–655, 2017. (Download Simulation Code)
• Emil Björnson, Eduard Jorswieck, “Optimal Resource Allocation in Coordinated Multi-Cell Systems,” Foundations and Trends in Communications and Information Theory, vol. 9, no. 2-3, pp. 113-381, 2013. (Download Simulation Code)

Social Media Activities

Apart from producing popular science material within my own social media channels (videos, podcasts, and blog posts), I am also frequently interviewed by Swedish media, giving talks at popular science events in Sweden, and have written several articles for technology newspapers.

Scientific Grants

My research activities have mainly been funded by Swedish agencies and foundations, such as the Swedish Research Council (VR), Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF), Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation, VINNOVA (through the Advanced Digitalisation program), Digital Futures, and the European Union. I primarily relied on individual grants during the first ten years of my career, whereas now I am involved in several collaborative projects with multiple co-applicants. My ongoing and previous grants are detailed below.

Research Grants as Principal Investigator

• Dec 2024 – Nov 2028: I am the main PI of the 6G Research Environment “Distributed MIMO with Intelligent Edge Computing Services enabling Energy- and Cost-Efficient 6G Networks (DICE-6G)” funded by the Swedish Research Council (VR).
• Jan 2025 – Dec 2029: I am the main PI of the Industrial PhD project “Advanced Beamforming Techniques for Near Field MIMO Systems” together with Ericsson, which received funding from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF).
• Nov 2024 – Oct 2027: I am the main Swedish PI of the collaborative project “A New Paradigm of Multiple Antenna Communications for 6G,” which received funding from the Scientific Collaboration with Korea 2024 call of the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF).
• Jan 2024 – Dec 2028: I am the director of the VINNOVA Competence Center “Swedish Wireless Innovation Network (SweWIN)”. The project partners are KTH, RISE, ABB, SAAB, Ericsson, Beammwave, Cellmax, and Northern Waves.
• Jan 2023 – Dec 2027: I received a Consolidator Grant from the Swedish Research Council (VR) for the project “Far-Reaching Near-Field Data Transfer Through Massive Layering (FREEDOM)”.
• June 2022 – May 2027: I am the main PI of the collaborative project “Sustainable Cyber-physical Software-defined System Slicing (SUCCESS),” which received funding fromthe Future Software Systems (FuSS) call of the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF).
• Jan 2021 – Dec 2025: I have been appointed Digital Futures Fellow with the project “Recycling Wireless Signal Energy in the Digitalized Society”.
• Apr 2020 – Mar 2025: I received a Future Research Leader Grant from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) for the project “Intelligent wireless networks with innovative MIMO topology”.
• Jan 2021 – Dec 2025: I have been appointed a Wallenberg Academy Fellow with the project “Impairment-aware Signal Detection (ISIDE)”.
• Dec 2019 – Nov 2023: I have received funding from the Swedish Research Council (VR) for the project “The Next Leap in Wireless Spectral Efficiency: Exploiting Spatial Correlation and Distributed Antenna Surfaces”.
• Apr 2019 – Mar 2021: I have received funding from the Wallenberg AI, Autonomous Systems and Software Program (WASP) for the project “ICARUS—Intelligent Cell-free Access for wiReless Ubiquitous Services”.
• Jan 2016 – Dec 2019: I have received funding from the Swedish Research Council (VR) for the project “Optimized Design of Wireless Networks with Multiple Performance Metrics”.
• Sept 2015 – Aug 2018: I have received a 2015 Ingvar Carlsson Award from the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF) for the project “Holistic energy efficiency optimization in cellular networks”.
• Jan 2015 – Dec 2020: I have received funding from CENIIT for the project “Radio Resource Management in Massive MIMO Communication Systems”.
• Sept 2012 – July 2014: I was one of the first recipients of the International Postdoc Grant from the Swedish Research Council (VR). This grant funded a 2-year postdoc position at SUPELEC, France.

Research Grants as Co-Applicant

• Mar 2025 – Feb 2031: I was a co-applicant of the multidisciplinary research center “Sustainable Mobile Autonomous and Resilient 6G SatCom (SMART 6GSAT)” funded by Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research (SSF). The funding is divided between KTH, Luleå University, and RISE, and includes in-kind contributions from tens of industrial partners.
• Aug 2022 – July 2024: I was a co-applicant of the project “Low complexity MIMO mmWave transceiver architectures for handheld devices” which was funded by VINNOVA within the strategic innovation program Smarter Electronic Systems. The project is coordinated by Beammwave AB, and the third partner is Lund University.
• Jan 2021 – June 2024: I was a co-applicant of the project “REsilient INteractive applications through hyper Diversity in Energy Efficient RadioWeaves technology (REINDEER)” which was funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No. 101013425. The project is coordinated by Technikon and the other partners are KU Leuven, Linköping University, Lund University, Telefonica, Ericsson, TU Graz, BlooLoc, and NXP Semiconductors.
• Aug 2019 – July 2021: I was a co-applicant of the project “Array antennas for SatCom applications on mobile platforms” which was funded by VINNOVA within the strategic innovation program Smarter Electronic Systems. The project is coordinated by ReQuTech AB, and the other partners are Forsway Scandinavia AB and Linköping University.

Scientific Services

I am actively involved in the scientific community, particularly within the IEEE Communications Society, IEEE Signal Processing Society, and European Association for Signal Processing (EURASIP). I am a frequent reviewer of journal articles and conference papers for venues organized by these associations, as well as of doctoral theses and scientific grant proposals (too many to list here). I have held various editorial roles and co-organized conferences/workshops, which are detailed below.

Committee Assignments

• Steering Committee Member of the IEEE Wireless Communications Letters since 2022.
• Chair of the Online Content Board of the IEEE Communications Society and Member of the Publication Council, 2024-2025.
• Associate Director for Seminars & Workshops at the Digital Futures research center and Member of the Executive Committee, 2022-2024.
• Elected member of the Signal Processing for Communications and Networking Technical Committee (SPCOM-TC). First term: 2017-2019. Second term: 2020-2022.

Editorial Roles

• Guest editor of the special issue on “The Road to 6G: Driving the Next Wave of Connectivity” in the Proceedings of the IEEE, 2024-2025.
• Guest editor of the special issue on “Near-Field Signal Processing: Algorithms, Implementations and Applications” in the IEEE Journal of Selected Topics in Signal Processing, 2023.
• Area Editor for Social Media and Outreach of the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, 2021-2023.
• Editor in the Online Editorial Team of the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 2020-2022.
• Research Blog Officer of the Machine Learning for Communications Emerging Technology Initiative, 2019-2020.
• Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Communications, 2017-2022.
• Lead guest editor of the special issue on “Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Based Communications for 6G Wireless Networks” in the IEEE Open Journal of Communications Society, 2020.
• Associate Editor of the IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking 2016-2020.
• Associate editor of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC), series on Green Communications and Networking, 2015-2016.
• Guest editor of the special issue on “Multiple Antenna Technologies for Beyond 5G” in the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 2020.
• Guest editor of the special issue on “AI for Mobile Networks”, IEEE Network, 2020.
• Guest editor of the special issue on “Millimeter Wave Communications for Future Mobile Networks” in the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, 2017.

Conference and Workshop Organization

• Technical Program Co-Chair of the IEEE Communication Theory Workshop (CTW 2025), Venice, Italy, 2025.
• Technical Program Co-Chair of the IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC), Lucca, Italy, 2024.
• Keynote Chair Co-Chair for the IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), Valencia, Spain, 2024.
• Publicity Co-Chair for the IEEE International Conference on Machine Learning for Communication and Networking (IEEE ICMLCN), Stockholm, Sweden, 2024.
• Co-organizer of the DELTA Winter School, Ruka, Finland, 2024.
• Technical Area Chair for MIMO Communications and Signal Processing at the 57th Annual Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, 2023.
• General Chair of the Swedish Communication Technology Workshop (Swe-CTW), Stockholm, Sweden, 2023.
• Co-Chair of the Communication Theory Symposium at the IEEE International Conference on Communications, Seoul, South Korea, 2022.
• Technical Program Co-Chair of the IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC), Virtual Conference, 2021.
• Technical Area Chair for MIMO Communications and Signal Processing at the 52nd Annual Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, 2018.
• Technical Program Chair of the Joint IEEE SPS and EURASIP Summer School on Signal Processing for 5G Wireless Access, Gothenburg, Sweden, 2017.
• Co-organizer of the Massive MIMO Communications Symposium at the IEEE Global Conference on Signal and Information Processing (GlobalSIP), Atlanta, Georgia, 2014.

Open and Reproducible Research

I am an active promoter of the reproducibility of research results and of open publishing. As an early adopter of these practices in the field of communications, I was asked to write the article Reproducible Research: Best Practices and Potential Misuse for IEEE Signal Processing Magazine in 2019. I have made simulation code freely and publicly available for more than 70 scientific publications, including my books from 2013, 2017, 2021, and 2024. Most of the code is available on my GitHub page, where I have 2500+ followers.

Awards and Honors

I have received numerous awards for technical papers (co-authored with students and senior colleagues), as well as personal awards recognizing my early-career achievements, teaching contributions, etc. Details are provided below.

Personal awards and recognitions

• 2026 EURASIP Athanasios Papoulis Award “for outstanding contributions to signal processing education through video tutorials, podcasts, and open-access textbooks”.
• Fellow of the International Academy of Artificial Intelligence Sciences (AAIS), appointed in 2026.
• 2026 Highly Ranked Scholar according to ScholarGPT and the most highly ranked researcher in Sweden for the period 2021-2025.
• 2024 Telephone Director H.T. Cedergren’s medal, given to eminent authors in the area of electrical engineering once every five years.
• Fellow of the International Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance (AIIA), appointed in 2024.
• 2022 Tage Erlander’s Prize for natural science and technology for “his visionary and clarifying research on MIMO antenna technology for wireless communications”.
• Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) “for contributions to multi-antenna and multi-cell wireless communications”, elevated in 2022.
• Digital Futures Fellow at the KTH Royal Institute of Technology, selected in 2021.
• Clarivate Highly Cited Researcher for the years 2021-2025.
• 2021 IEEE Communication Society Radio Communications Technical Committee (RCC) Early Achievement Award “for his contribution to radio communications”.
• 2020 IEEE Pierre-Laplace Early Career Technical Achievement Award “for contributions to signal processing for communications and research reproducibility”.
• 2020 Communication Theory Technical Committee (CTTC) Early Achievement Award “for contributions to MIMO communications and promoting wireless research through videos and social media”.
• 2019 EURASIP Early Career Award for “significant contributions to multi-antenna communications and open science”.
• 2016 EURASIP Best PhD Award: The European Signal Processing Association as selected my PhD thesis for this award, which is given at EUSIPCO 2016.
• 2015 Ingvar Carlsson Award: I was selected by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research for a competitive program that provides funding for homecoming postdocs to launch their own independent and creative research careers in Sweden.
• 2014 IEEE ComSoc Outstanding Young Researcher, awarded by the IEEE ComSoc EMEA Region Committee for “promising research activities for the benefit of the society”.
• Exemplary Reviewer in IEEE Wireless Communications Letters (2018), IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (2017), IEEE Transactions on Communications (2014, 2015, 2020, 2022), IEEE Communications Letters (2012-2014).

Best paper awards

• 2025 IEEE Sweden VT-COM-IT Joint Chapter Best Student Journal Paper Award, awarded to Zinat Behdad for the paper “Multi-Static Target Detection and Power Allocation for Integrated Sensing and Communication in Cell-Free Massive MIMO,” published in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.
• 2024 IEEE Communications Society Stephen O. Rice Prize, for the paper “RIS-Aided Wireless Communications: Prototyping, Adaptive Beamforming, and Indoor/Outdoor Field Trials” published in the IEEE Transactions on Communications.
• 2023 IEEE Communications Society Outstanding Paper Award, for the paper “Power Scaling Laws and Near-Field Behaviors of Massive MIMO and Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces” published in the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society.
• 2022 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications, for the paper “Making Cell-Free Massive MIMO Competitive With MMSE Processing and Centralized Implementation” published in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.
• 2019 IEEE SPM Best Column Award, for the paper “Optimal Multiuser Transmit Beamforming: A Difficult Problem with a Simple Solution Structure” published in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine.
• 2019 IEEE Communications Society Fred W. Ellersick Prize, for the paper “Massive MIMO: Ten Myths and One Critical Question” published in the IEEE Communications Magazine.
• 2018 IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award in Wireless Communications, for the paper “Optimal Design of Energy-Efficient Multi-User MIMO Systems: Is Massive MIMO the Answer?” published in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.
• 2018 Young Author Best Paper Award from the IEEE ComSoc/VTS Italy Chapter, awarded to Andrea Pizzo for the paper “Network Deployment for Maximal Energy Efficiency in Uplink with Multislope Path Loss” published in the IEEE Transactions on Green Communications and Networking.
• 2017 Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP), for the paper “Spectral and Energy Efficiency of Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems with Hardware Impairments”.
• 2017 IEEE Sweden VT-COM-IT Joint Chapter Best Student Journal Paper Award, awarded to Jingya Li for the paper “Joint Precoding and Load Balancing Optimization for Energy-Efficient Heterogeneous Networks” published in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications.
• 2015 Best Paper Award at the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), for the paper “Optimal Design of Energy-Efficient HetNets: Joint Precoding and Load Balancing”.
• 2014 Best Paper Award at the IEEE Wireless Communications and Networking Conference (WCNC), for the paper “Designing Multi-User MIMO for Energy Efficiency: When is Massive MIMO the Answer?”.
• 2014 Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing Workshop (SAM), for the paper “Efficient Linear Precoding for Massive MIMO Systems using Truncated Polynomial Expansion”.
• 2011 Best Student Paper Award at the IEEE International Workshop on Computational Advances in Multi-Sensor Adaptive Processing (CAMSAP), for the paper “Computational Framework for Optimal Robust Beamforming in Coordinated Multicell Systems”.
• 2009 Best Paper Award at the International Conference on Wireless Communications and Signal Processing (WCSP), for the paper “On the Principles of Multicell Precoding with Centralized and Distributed Cooperation”.

Industry and Public Interactions

I am actively engaging with the industry to ensure that fundamental research results developed in academia are translated into new engineering solutions. This activity entails joint inventions, consultancy, leadership of the academia-industry research center SweWIN, and advising a funding agency that supports such interactions.

Inventions

I am a co-inventor of 23 granted US patents on wireless communication technologies, particularly covering distributed MIMO, beamforming design, channel estimation, and radio resource management. The rights to these patents were acquired by Ericsson. View the complete list of approved patents. I have filed more pending patent applications together with multiple companies.

Director of Swedish Wireless Innovation Network (SweWIN)

Consultancy

I have taken on multiple consulting assignments, e.g., supporting investment banks in analyzing the telecom industry. The following is my largest assignment:

• Independent expert witness in the court case between Vodafone Hutchison Australia and the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission in the Federal Court of Australia, 2019.

Funding Agency Advising

I am advising the research and innovation program Avancerad Digitalisation, which is an initiative that funds strategically important, small-scale and large-scale projects where research, test environments, and knowledge-sharing are integrated. Half of the program’s budget comes from public funds (through VINNOVA) and the other half from industry and other project partners, such as universities. I have served in the program council for Digital Infrastructure and Communication since its inception in 2014, where I represent Swedish universities and bring in my expertise as a telecom researcher.

Invited Talks and Keynotes

I have delivered more than 100 invited speeches and tutorials at conferences, workshops, universities, etc. In particular, I have given the following keynote speeches during the last five years:

• Plenary speaker at International Conference on Signal Processing and Communications (SPCOM), Bangalore, India, July 2026.
• Keynote speaker at IEEE Sensor Array and Multichannel Signal Processing Workshop (SAM), Shenzhen, China, July 2026.
• Keynote speaker at IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC), September 2025.
• Keynote speaker at International Conference on Applied Research in Electrical Engineering (AREE), Virtual event, February 2025.
• Keynote speaker at the Workshop on Signal Processing for Multi-functional and Intelligent Wireless Systems, London, UK, November 2024.
• Keynote speaker at the NGMA-ETI 2nd QMUL ‘6G’ Workshop, London, UK, July 2024.
• Keynote speaker at the IIIT-Delhi 6G Workshop, Delhi, India, July 2024.
• Keynote speaker at the International Balkan Conference on Communications and Networking (BalkanCom), Ljubljana, Slovenia, June 2024.
• Keynote speaker at the Symposium on Information Theory and Signal Processing in the Benelux (SITB), Delft, The Netherlands, May 2024.
• Plenary speaker at the IEEE International Workshop on Computational Advances in Multi-Sensor Adaptive Processing (CAMSAP), Los Suenos, Costa Rica, December 2023.
• Keynote speaker at the Focus Period Symposium “6G – forming a better future”, Lund, Sweden, November 2023.
• Keynote speaker at the International Symposium on Ubiquitous Networking (UNet), Virtual event, November 2023.
• Keynote speaker in the workshop on Holographic MIMO Communications, IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), Rome, Italy, June 2023.
• Keynote speaker at the International Workshop on Antenna Technology (iWAT), Aalborg, Denmark, May 2023.
• Keynote speaker at the IEEE International RF and Microwave Conference, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, December 2022.
• Keynote speaker at the IEEE International Conference on Smart Applications, Communications and Networking, Palapye, Botswana, November 2022.
• Keynote speaker at the 6GIC-CLICK Workshop on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces, University of Surrey, UK, September 2022.
• Keynote speaker at the 6G Conference, Istanbul, Turkey, September 2022.
• Keynote speaker in the workshop on Electromagnetic Information Theory, IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications, Virtual event, September 2022.
• Keynote speaker at the IEEE/IET International Symposium on Communication Systems, Networks & Digital Signal Processing (CSNDSP), Porto, Portugal, July 2022.
• Keynote speaker at the International Workshop on Future Communications, Virtual event, June 2022.
• Keynote speaker at the Future of Information and Communication Conference (FICC), Virtual event, March 2022.
• Keynote speaker at the International Mobile and Embedded Technology Conference (MECON), Virtual event, March 2022.
• Keynote speaker at the International Conference on Advanced Communication Technologies and Networking (CommNet), December 2021.
• Keynote speaker at the International Workshop on Mathematical Issues in Information Sciences (MIIS), December 2021.
• Keynote speaker at the Future Networks 1st Massive MIMO Workshop, November 2021.