KAUST CTL PhD candidates win third prize at IEEE GLOBECOM’2025 ComSoc four minute thesis (4MT) competition
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Two PhD candidates from the Communication Theory Lab (CTL) received Third Prize at the IEEE Communications Society (ComSoc) Four Minute Thesis (4MT) Competition. The award acknowledges their ability to present research ideas to a broad audience. The competition challenges participants to explain the motivation, methodology, and impact of their work within a strict four-minute limit, focusing on clarity and accessibility.
Xue Zhang, a PhD candidate at KAUST, won Third Prize for her presentation titled “Optimal Pilot Design for Extremely Large Antenna Arrays in 6G and Beyond.” Her work addresses a fundamental challenge in future wireless systems: the design of efficient pilot signals for channel estimation when antenna arrays scale to extremely large dimensions, as envisioned for 6G networks. By optimizing pilot structures, her research aims to reduce training overhead, improve spectral efficiency, and enable reliable communication in next-generation massive MIMO systems.
Jongmin Kim, a dual PhD candidate at KAUST and Korea University, received Third Prize for his presentation title “Computer Vision-Based Beam Pointing Method in Free-Space Optical (FSO)”. His research tackles a key challenge in FSO communications: achieving accurate and reliable beam pointing without relying on bulky or expensive hardware. By leveraging computer vision techniques with a low-cost camera module, his work proposes an efficient beam pointing approach that significantly reduces system cost and size while maintaining comparable pointing accuracy. This approach supports reliable optical links and contributes to the practical deployment of next-generation FSO communication systems.
The IEEE ComSoc 4MT Competition involved a global selection process resulting in 18 finalists. These finalists were invited to the IEEE GLOBECOM’2025 conference (held in Taipei, Taiwan, between December 8 and December 12, 2025) to deliver their four-minute presentations in person. CTL congratulates both Xue Zhang and Jongmin Kim on their Third Prize awards