Lingja Liu, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Featured Researcher: Linja Liu, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Recent Awards: 2023 NSF grant for the Resilient & Intelligent NextG Systems (RINGS) collaborative project, 2023 DOD grant for groundbreaking FutureG technology research (Mobile dMIMO), and 2023 NTIA's Public Wireless Innovation Fund to develop machine learning-based testing strategies for O-RAN. 

Linja Liu is a professor and Bradley Senior Faculty Fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Director of Wireless@VT. Liu is motivated to pursue work that improves NextG for everyone  because wireless is not only a technology, but also infrastructure. Maintaining network access is important for everyone, especially during times of war and natural disasters. 

Liu is the PI on a recently awarded NSF grant for the Resilient & Intelligent NextG Systems (RINGS) program. Led by NSF,  DoD, and NIST, the program is unique in this field because it is a collaboration with industry and includes companies like Apple, Ericsson, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, Qualcomm, and VMare. The NSF grant will allow Liu to work through crucial problems faced in organically connecting the many complicated facets of 6G - such as using machine learning and artificial intelligence to create a self-driving network, and satellite, drones, high altitude platforms, and terrestrial base stations to enable technology and network architecture.

Liu earned his Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in Electronic Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, and completed his Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.) degree at Texas A&M University in Electrical and Computer Engineering. He was an Associate Professor in the EECS Department at the University of Kansas (KU) before coming to Virginia Tech. Liu’s strong academic background and professorial experience laid the foundation for this oustanding work at Virginia Tech, but Liu names two mentors that truly influenced his perspective and approach towards research; Dr. Jianzhong (Charlie) Zhang from Samsung Research America who taught Liu to work on relevant and meaningful problems that have practical relevance and theoretical significance, and Dr. Michael Medley from US Air Force Research Laboratory, who taught Liu to “listen before you talk” - meaning learning and aquiring a deep understanding of a problem before applying techniques to solve it.

Published papers by Liu can be found at Google Scholar.