A master’s student wins the 2024 IEEE ComSoc Sendai Chapter Student Excellent Research Award

　Thang Nguyen, a master's student (M2) supervised and recommended by Professor Anh T. Pham of the Computer Communications Laboratory (CCL), won the IEEE ComSoc Sendai Chapter Student Excellent Research Award 2024. The award targets students in the Tohoku region who have excellent achievements in research areas covered by the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc). Every year, a maximum of three students are selected for this distinguished award(1).

　Founded in 1952 with the formation of IRE's (the Institute of Radio Engineers) Professional Group on Communications Systems (PGCS), IEEE ComSoc (2) has evolved into a diverse group of global industry professionals with a common interest in advancing all communications technologies. Since the Communications Society began operations in January 1972 as an independent Society of The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) (3) with over 8,800 members, ComSoc has become the premier international forum for exchanging ideas on communications technologies and information networking.

　The Student Excellent Research Award requires the candidate to have at least a paper published in a Journal/Transactions or peer-reviewed international conferences sponsored or co-sponsored by IEEE ComSoc ("Portfolio Event" or "Technically Co-Sponsored"). Most previous award winners are PhD students, and Thang is the first master's student from the CCL to win this award.

　Thang's research interests are in communication theory, focusing on signal processing for visible light communications. His study in Japan is funded by a Japanese government scholarship (MonbuKagaku-sho). He won the award thanks to the paper entitled "Joint Design of Probabilistic Constellation Shaping and Precoding for Multi-user VLC Systems," published at the 2024 IEEE Global Communications Conference (GLOBECOM), Cape Town, South Africa (4). In addition to this award, Thang also won a travel grant of 280,000 Yen from the NEC C&C Foundation (5) to attend the conference.

Comment from Thang Nguyen:
"I am deeply honored to receive the IEEE ComSoc Sendai Chapter Student Excellent Research Award 2024. This recognition is a great motivation for me in my research journey. I would like to express my gratitude to my supervisor, Prof. Anh T. Pham, and the collaborator, Prof. Thanh V. Pham (Shizuoka University), for their invaluable guidance and support. I am also grateful to the Japanese government for supporting my study and to the NEC C&C Foundation for providing a generous travel grant, which enabled me to present my work at IEEE GLOBECOM 2024."

(1) https://ieee-jp.org/japancouncil/chapter/adm/support/award/2015-0040.pdf
(2) IEEE ComSoc: IEEE Communications Society
(3) IEEE: The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
(4) IEEE Globecom: https://globecom2024.ieee-globecom.org
(5) The NEC C&C Foundation