News

Prof. Joerg Kliewer received a research donation from Nokia Bell Labs through the competitive Nokia University Donations 2026 program. The project, “Cooperative Perception for Multi-Agent Physical AI,” runs from fall 2026 through 2027.

Profs. Arnob Ghosh and Anirudh Sridhar, together with Prof. Anand Sarwate (Rutgers University), organized the inaugural New Jersey Workshop on Machine Learning and Information Theory at NJIT. The one-day event brought together more than 50 students, postdocs, and faculty from NJIT, Rutgers, and Princeton for invited talks and a poster session. A report on the workshop appeared in the June 2026 IEEE Information Theory Society Newsletter.

Congratulations to Dr. Sara Ghasvarianjahromi and Dr. Yusuf Ozkan, who successfully defended their PhD dissertations in April 2026 under the supervision of Prof. Joerg Kliewer and graduated in May 2026.

The Elisha Yegal Bar-Ness Center for Wireless Information Processing (CWiP) has been renamed the Elisha Yegal Bar-Ness Center for Machine Intelligence, Signal Processing, and Communications (MICS) to reflect the growing role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in information and communication systems. Prof. Joerg Kliewer succeeded Prof. Alexander Haimovich as director, and the center welcomed Profs. Arnob Ghosh and Anirudh Sridhar, whose expertise in reinforcement learning and network science strengthens the center. The 2022–2025 Activity Report and the Strategic Vision 2026–2030 are available on the Center Reports page.

Prof. Arnob Ghosh received two new awards from the National Science Foundation, both on making learning-based decision systems safe: “Safety from Weak Feedback: Inverse Constraint Reinforcement Learning for Safe Control and Safe Online Adaptation” (2026–2029), and the collaborative award “Reinforcement Learning with High-Probability Safety Constraints: Theory and Applications” (2026–2029), jointly with The Ohio State University and Washington State University.

Shilpa Mukhopadhyay received a travel award to attend the 2026 IEEE Conference on Decision and Control (CDC). This award recognizes her academic work and supports her participation in the conference.

Shilpa Mukhopadhyay has been selected as the PhD Student of the Month for October 2026. This recognition highlights her dedication and contributions to her research and academic community.

Professor Ani Sridhar'sr invited talks;

• Georgia Tech’s Stochastics Seminar (November 4, 2025).
• Rutgers’ Theoretical Computer Science Seminar (February 18, 2026)
• Structure learning and change-point detection at the International Workshop on Sequential Methodologies (June 3, 2026)

Congratulations to Ani Sridhar and co-PI Joerg Kliewer, both from NJIT’s Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, on receiving a FY27 Faculty Seed Grant.

Inference Attacks on Graph Neural Networks: Information-Theoretic Limits and Diffusion-Based Domain Adaptation

This project investigates privacy vulnerabilities in graph neural networks, examining the limits of inference attacks and exploring approaches to strengthen AI security and privacy.

Congratulations to Professor Arnob Ghosh on receiving two research grants supporting advancements in safe reinforcement learning and intelligent decision-making.

Collaborative Research: Reinforcement Learning with High-Probability Safety Constraints: Theory and Applications

This project develops theoretical foundations and practical methods for reinforcement learning algorithms that maintain safety with high probability.

Safety from Weak Feedback: Inverse Constraint Reinforcement Learning for Safe Control and Safe Online Adaptation

This project explores methods for learning safety constraints from limited feedback to enable safer control and adaptive decision-making in dynamic environments.

Dr. Rami Rashid, a 2024 graduate advised by Prof. Ali Abdi, is now a Sensor Engineer at The MITRE Corporation and had an impressive record of achievements at the center. During his doctoral research, he developed new methods for data communication and signal detection in complex and challenging channels, involving both theoretical studies and field tests.

His work has been recognized with numerous awards, including:

• The Newark College of Engineering (NCE) Outstanding Graduate Student Award (2024)
• A travel award from the National Council of Acoustical Consultants (2024)
• A prize in the ECE Department PhD Stories Contest (2023)
• An NSF internship (2021)

Dr. Joerg Kliewer was elevated to the grade of IEEE Fellow for his contributions to coding for communications and networks. 

Dr. Arnob Ghosh received a Best Paper award at the ACM MobiHoc 2025 conference (among 165 papers) and a NeurIPS 2025 spotlight award (top 3.2% of accepted papers), recognizing his work in reinforcement learning.

Research by Yuan Zhao and Ali Abdi, titled “Explainability of Large Language Models Using the Rational Inattention Theory: A Case Study in Hate-Speech Detection,” was highlighted in an Acoustical Society of America press conference and news release titled AI Content Moderation Takes a Lesson from Economics.

Yuan Zhao was selected to receive financial support to attend and present his research at the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) School in Philadelphia, PA, and the 64th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) in San Diego, CA.

Behrooz Mosallaei was selected to receive financial support to attend and present his research at the Acoustical Society of America (ASA) School in Philadelphia, PA.

Rami Rashid received the Newark College of Engineering (NCE) Outstanding Graduate Student Award in recognition of his outstanding academic performance, research innovation, and service to the department and academic community.