The National Science Foundation has granted Yasaman Ghasempour a CAREER Award, part of its Faculty Early Career Development Program that supports junior faculty who exemplify leadership in education and research. The award is the NSF’s most prestigious recognition of early-career academic scientists and engineers and comes with more than $500,000 in research funding over five years.

Ghasempour, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, develops advanced wireless communications and sensing tools that will allow ultra-fast connectivity for future wireless networks. She specializes in systems that operate with radio frequencies above 95 gigahertz, which the U.S. government opened for experimental use starting in 2019.

These terahertz and sub-terahertz frequencies, a frontier for wireless networks beyond 5G, offer plentiful bandwidth for ultra-high-speed data transmission and high-precision sensing. But these new bands pose major challenges for technologies operating in real-world environments, where finely tuned signals must overcome high attenuation and obstruction to reach users on the move. Ghasempour’s work aims at developing agile, adaptable and scalable wireless terahertz networks through fundamentally new approaches to architecture and control.

Her research includes mathematical modeling as well as extensive experimental evaluation, prototype design and hardware implementation. Her teaching pursuits focus on bringing advanced curricula to historically under-represented groups, spurring innovation in 6G wireless network technologies.

Ghasempour joined the Princeton faculty in 2021 after completing her Ph.D. at Rice University, and in her first year she received a teaching commendation from the School of Engineering and Applied Science. In 2020, she won a Paul Baran Young Scholar Award from the Marconi Society.