AI-Powered Connected Future

Associate Professor Francesco Restuccia Receives Presidential Early Career Award

09/21/2026

Francesco Restuccia, professor of electrical and computer engineering, has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE), one of the federal government’s highest honors for early-career researchers. He was nominated by the U.S. Army Research Office, and the award includes $1 million for a five-year project. Restuccia will develop mathematical frameworks that help AI and wireless systems recognize not just randomness but also the gaps in their own knowledge. The goal is more reliable systems, such as autonomous drones operating in environments they weren’t trained on.

INSI Director Tommaso Melodia and Associate Director Josep Jornet Help Launch $15M National Center for Secure Sensing and Communications

08/04/2026

Northeastern’s INSI has joined CLASSIC, a $15 million, five-year Department of Defense-funded research center led by Rice University. INSI Director Tommaso Melodia and Associate Director Josep Miquel Jornet are serving as Co-Principal Investigators, representing Northeastern’s leadership in wireless systems research nationally. The center unites researchers from seven institutions and eight industry partners to advance Extremely Large-Scale Antenna Arrays (ELSAAs) for more resilient, secure wireless communications, sensing, and imaging.

PhD Student Haoling Li Earns Prestigious IEEE MTT-S Graduate Fellowship

06/17/2026

Haoling Li, a PhD candidate at Northeastern advised by INSI’s Professor Najme Ebrahimi, has been awarded the Graduate Fellowship from the Microwave Theory and Technology Society (MTT-S) of IEEE, making him only the second Northeastern student ever to receive the honor, and the first since 2012. Both Li and Ebrahimi are members of the Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems (INSI). His award-winning research bridges millimeter-wave communications and quantum computing hardware, applying direct digital-to-physical conversion techniques, used in energy-efficient, scalable transmitter designs, to cryogenic pulse-synthesis circuits that control superconducting qubits. The fellowship includes $6,000 and travel funding, presented at the IEEE MTT-S International Microwave Symposium in Boston this past June.

Northeastern University, SoftBank Corp., Keysight, and zTouch Networks Demonstrate LTM-powered Autonomous Agentic AI-RAN at MWC Barcelona 2026

02/26/2026

Northeastern University’s Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems (INSI), SoftBank Corp. (SoftBank), Keysight Technologies, and zTouch Networks are demonstrating Autonomous Agentic AI-RAN (AgentRAN) at Mobile World Congress (MWC) Barcelona 2026. AgentRAN is a first-of-its-kind system that coordinates a hierarchy of AI agents to translate high-level operator intents into real-time, autonomous 5G and 6G network configurations and services.

Northeastern University Launches Open6G+AI: Toward an Open-Source Ecosystem to Accelerate AI-Powered End-to-End 6G Wireless Networks

02/05/2026

NSF-funded initiative creates “Community of Communities” across leading open-source projects to build comprehensive AI-RAN development platform

BOSTON, MA – Northeastern University’s Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems (INSI) announces Open6G+AI, a groundbreaking open-source ecosystem and architecture designed to accelerate innovation in AI-enabled Radio Access Networks (AI-RAN). Supported by a National Science Foundation grant (TI-2449452), the project addresses critical fragmentation in the open-source wireless research community by creating an integrated platform for end-to-end AI-RAN development and testing.

New London Tech Hub At Northeastern Wants To Make AI Technology Faster, More Reliable

01/25/2026

After the Boston hub’s success, the new London arm of the Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems opens the door to Europe and boosts AI research with new partnerships, according to director Tommaso Melodia of Northeastern University.