Filippo Malandra

Filippo obtained his B.Sc. and M.Sc. in Telecommunications Engineering from Politecnico di Milano in 2008 and 2011, respectively. After a brief work experience in Italy, in 2013, he decided to enrol in a Ph.D. program in electrical engineering at Polytechnique Montreal, under the supervision of Prof. Brunilde Sansò. During his Ph.D. he worked on a multidisciplinary project on the optimal distibuted control of electric water heaters. He obtained his Ph.D. in 2016 and his thesis was recommended for the best thesis award at Polytechnique Montreal.

From 2017 to 2018, he has been a postdoctoral researcher at Polytechnique Montreal. During this time, he conceived a project on the traffic characterization of Machine-to-machine (M2M) traffic and implemented a network simulator to study the impact of M2M traffic on cellular networks. The outcome of this research, funded by Ericsson, was shared on a website accessible at www.trafficm2modelling.com.

In 2019, he was appointed as an Assistant Professor of Research in the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University at Buffalo (UB), where he founded the Wireless Networks for Smart Systems (WN4SS) Lab with more than 30  undergraduate and graduate students. His main research interests fall within the performance analysis and design of wireless networks to enable smart systems, such as smart grids, smart cities or the Internet of Things. Filippo is the recipient of several awards and PIs of a number of research grants, funded from NSF, US Ignite, and Schmidt Futures. He is leading one of the 7 projects selected as part of the OVERCOME initiative, with the overarching goal of bridging the digital divide in underserved and underrepresented communities. In this project, the goal is to build a private LTE network to provide broadband Internet connectivity in a neighborhood in Buffalo where 70% of the residents lack an affordable and reliable Internet access.