Algorithms Expert is First Woman at NJIT to Become IEEE Fellow

Guiling (Grace) Wang, professor and associate dean for research in Ying Wu College of Computing, was recently named an IEEE Fellow, one of the electronic technology industry's highest honors.

She is the first woman to earn the honor among several male recipients at NJIT and only the second current honoree in the computing college. Most recipients are based in Newark College of Engineering, given the IEEE's focus on electrical engineering.

Wang received the award for her work on distributed algorithms. She's focused on making sure the algorithms retain data quality, fault tolerance and security. She also tweaks the code to help ensure long life of physical sensors, such as in vehicle networks.

"I got the notification before Thanksgiving. It gave me a more pleasant Thanksgiving than usual and I am very grateful," said Wang, who joined NJIT in 2006.

Wang obtained a three-year grant for almost $700,000 from the U.S. Federal Highway Administration's Exploratory Advanced Research program

Wang was one of the earliest researchers formulating the problem of mobile sensor deployment and relocation. She also worked on wireless recharging techniques, sensor node reclamation mechanisms and integrated vehicular ad-hoc networks. The latter, emphasizing situations where vehicle networks may not guarantee timely detection of dangerous road conditions or maintain communication under low network density, was nominated for best paper award at the PerCom 2010 conference.

She also explored cryptographic and distributed algorithms that have low resource requirements to protect security and privacy when deploying and accessing sensory data. She currently works on blockchain, deep learning and artificial intelligence.

In 2019, Wang obtained a three-year grant for almost $700,000 from the U.S. Federal Highway Administration's Exploratory Advanced Research program, as one of the final four applicants of 122 submissions nationwide, to study decentralized vehicle credential systems using blockchains.

Wang noted that the award can be especially meaningful to her female colleagues. "I hope female professors, especially junior ones, can gain more visibility, and thus have more collaboration opportunities open to them," she said. "As the associate dean for research, I periodically talk with our junior professors to see how I can help them. I learned from the conversations that some junior female professors missed collaboration opportunities where their expertise fit very well, due to low visibility."

"We are very proud of Dr. Wang’s outstanding accomplishments and her election to the prestigious Fellow rank of the IEEE," said Atam Dhawan, senior vice provost for research. "It is a great honor to Dr. Wang as the first woman at NJIT to receive this coveted recognition, and a matter of pride to all of us as her transdisciplinary expertise in artificial intelligence research is recognized by the scientific community of the largest professional society in electrical and electronics engineering."