WVU’s Valenti named IEEE Fellow

Matthew Valenti 

Matthew Valenti, professor in the Lane Department of Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at West Virginia University, has been named a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers. The IEEE is the world's largest technical professional organization whose mission is to encourage its members to revolutionize technology for the benefit of humanity.

Valenti, a member of the IEEE for 20 years, was selected for his contributions to cooperative diversity and the development of distributed turbo codes. His research focuses on wireless communication networks and the development of protocols and signal coding techniques that enable mobile handsets to cooperatively communicate with a base station.

“Cooperative communications is a kind of crowdsourcing where every participant donates small slices of time from their smartphone,” explained Valenti. “During those times their phone is used to relay the signals of others who might be in poor locations with bad coverage."

Valenti began his career as a faculty member in the Lane Department in 1999 after receiving his doctorate in electrical engineering from Virginia Tech earlier that year. He has received numerous awards throughout his career, including the 2013 WVU Foundation Outstanding Teaching Award, and currently serves as a faculty representative on the WVU Board of Governors, chair for WVU’s Faculty Senate and director of the Center for Identification Technology Research.

Valenti will be recognized for his elevation to Fellow status during the 2018 IEEE International Conference on Communications on May 20-24, in Kansas City, Missouri.

"I am honored to have reached this milestone and to have done so here at WVU,” said Valenti. “I believe this personal recognition by the IEEE, along with WVU’s recent elevation to Research-1 standing by the Carnegie Foundation, attests to how highly regarded WVU is among its peers."

Each year less than one-tenth of one percent of the IEEE’s 400,000 members worldwide are honored as Fellows, the organization’s highest grade of membership.

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