2024 PTC Emerging Scholar Program Recipients

PTC is pleased to unveil the recipients of the 2024 PTC Emerging Scholar Program; an initiative designed to acknowledge and assist promising scholars in the realm of information and communications technology.

The selection process for these scholars was a challenging one for the PTC Research Committee, given the outstanding quality of the applications received. These individuals now become part of a distinguished group, joining 56 other scholars worldwide who have received this honor since the program’s establishment in 2013.

The following Emerging Scholars will be presenting their research at PTC’24. Learn more about each Emerging Scholar below.

Ahmed Alrawi is a Ph.D. candidate at the Donald P. Bellisario College of Communications at Penn State. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the College of Communications at Al-Mansour University in Baghdad, Iraq, with a major in computer communication engineering. Additionally, he earned another bachelor’s degree in telecommunications before attaining his master’s degree in media studies, both from Bellisario College.

Alrawi’s research interests span two main areas: (1) Surveillance, Privacy, & the Implications of ICTs, and (2) Broadband Platform Policy and Deployment. His research goal is to comprehensively understand the theoretical, methodological, and empirical aspects that shape the adoption, use, and impact of digital platforms and ICTs. Moreover, his research seeks to draw attention to contemporary issues within the communication and media sectors, advocating for appropriate regulations and policies to benefit the public.

Fluent in Arabic, Turkish, and English, Alrawi is also conversant in French. He has received numerous awards, including the Sidney and Helen Friedman Scholarship Endowed Award and the Graduate School Endowment Award, among others.

Henrique Buglia is an electrical engineer and currently a member of the Optical Networks Group (ONG) as a PhD researcher at University College London (UCL) under the supervision of Prof. Polina Bayvel.

His work involves modelling the network physical layer, developing techniques to mitigate and model the nonlinear signal distortion in optical fiber transmission systems, and designing backbone networks, including optimisation and evolutionary algorithms.

His research is jointly funded by Microsoft under the Optics for the Cloud research Alliance and by the UK government.

Prior to joining ONG, Henrique completed his MSc at the State University of Campinas (UNICAMP) in Brazil, working on digital communication, coding theory, lattices and groups. During his BSc at UNICAMP, he also studied communication systems at Telecom Paristech in France, where he spent 1 year fully funded by the Brazilian government.

Lars Gjesvik is a senior researcher in the Research Group for Security and Defence at NUPI, where he also serves as the co-leader of the research center for digitization and cyber security. His research focuses on the intersection of private enterprise and state interests, security challenges, and power politics related to digitalization and emerging technologies.

He recently obtained his doctorate from the University of Oslo (in 2023), where he studied the interaction between private companies and state interests in the digital space, and the role of technology companies in shaping international politics. Gjesvik’s expertise also includes issues related to the global surveillance industry, digital infrastructure such as submarine internet cables and cloud services and cyber security.

In his previous work, Gjesvik has addressed national approaches to cyber security and public-private cooperation, as well as disinformation.

Bulelani Jili is a Meta Research Ph.D. Fellow at Harvard University. His research interests include Africa-China relations; Cybersecurity; ICT development; African Political Economy; Internet Policy; Chinese Business Law; Law and Development; and Privacy Law. He is also a Visiting Fellow at Yale Law School; Fellow at the Atlantic Council; Cybersecurity Fellow at the Belfer Center; and is conducting research with the China, Law, Development project at Oxford University. The project, funded by the European Research Council, is a 5-year, interdisciplinary and multi-sited research project that aims to understand the nature of the order that underlies China’s new globalism. He has also briefed, advised, and worked with leading think tanks, governments, and watchdogs like the American Bar Association, the Atlantic Council, Freedom House, the UK’s Foreign, Commonwealth & Development Office, France’s Ministry for Europe and Foreign Affairs, the US State Department, United Nations, and the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

Patricia Morales (patricia.morales@usm.cl) received the Bachelor degree in Telecommunications and Electronics Engineering from Universidad Central Marta Abreu de Las Villas, Cuba, in 2016. She completed her Ph.D. in Electronic Engineering at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, Chile, in July 2023. Patricia currently serves as a professor at Universidad Técnica Federico Santa María, where she contributes her expertise to the academic community. Her current research interest is in dynamic resource allocation in optical networks, with an emphasis on the appl ication of artificial intelligence techniques.

Ali Nikkhah is a 5th year Ph.D. candidate in Networked Systems at the University of California, Irvine. The issues addressed in his Ph.D. project on internet interconnection policy, which is supported by NSF, have a direct bearing on public policy issues being considered by Congress and FCC. His work has been published both in journals and conferences for networking researchers, including IEEE TNSM and GLOBECOM, and in journals and conferences for network economics and telecommunications law researchers, including Telecommunications Policy and TPRC.

His primary interests lie within the realms of telecommunications policy and data science. He has contributed to AI projects as a data scientist at companies such as Autodesk and Paylocity. In recognition of his research contributions, he was honored with an Honorable Mention for the Meheroo Jussawalla Research Award at the 2023 PTC conference.

Meicen Sun is an assistant professor at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign School of Information Sciences and an affiliated faculty with the MIT FutureTech. Her research examines the political economy of information, the geopolitics of data, and information policy. Her writings have appeared in academic and policy outlets including Foreign Policy Analysis, Harvard Business Review, World Economic Forum, the Asian Development Bank Institute, and The Diplomat among others. She had previously conducted research at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and at the UN Regional Centre for Peace and Disarmament in Africa and served as a Fellow on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on China. Sun holds an AB with honors from Princeton University, an AM with a Certificate in Law from the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology followed by a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University.

Join these Emerging Scholars in their topical sessions on Monday, 22 January 2024 and Tuesday, 23 January 2024 from 14:00-15:30 HST, in MPCC, Nautilus 1 & 2 to learn and discuss cutting-edge industry research.