UMD Graduate Student Wins Marconi Society Award

A University of Maryland graduate student has won a prestigious young scholar award for his work in information and communications technology.

Nakul Garg, a sixth-year doctoral student in computer science, is slated to receive the 2024 Paul Baran Young Scholar Award from the Marconi Society next month at a ceremony in Bologna, Italy.

The award honors the world’s most innovative young engineers in information and communications technology. This year, from a competitive global pool, Garg was one of only four recipients to receive the award.

“We are honored to recognize this year’s young scholars, who are pushing the boundaries of our field,” says Joseph Kakande, chair of the award’s selection advisory committee. “Their technical excellence, leadership skills, and drive to create a better world for everyone is inspiring.”

Garg’s research focuses on low-power sensing and wireless systems, including radio frequency and acoustic technologies. His vision is to establish a foundation for sustainable ambient intelligence by seamlessly integrating energy efficiency, scalability, and robustness into a novel communication-sensing-computing paradigm.

Nirupam Roy, an assistant professor of computer science and Garg’s adviser, expresses immense pride in Garg’s accomplishments, describing him as “one of the brightest young minds in computing today.”

Garg’s work is bold and ambitious, forging new paths in sustainable computing and embedded intelligence, Roy says, adding that he effortlessly navigates a wide spectrum of topics—from ultra-low-power wireless positioning and battery-free acoustic perception to urban micro-tracking for sustainable food distribution networks.

“It’s captivating to see how he interweaves imagination and innovations with the foundational theories to develop ideas that redefine physical computing,” says Roy, who has an appointment in the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies and is a core faculty member in the Maryland Cybersecurity Center.

Garg has been actively contributing to the iCoSMoS Lab, and his outstanding work there has earned him both a Best Demo and Best Poster award at the ACM International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications, and Services (MobiSys) in 2021 and 2023, respectively.

In addition, Garg’s recent innovations in ultra-low-power perception have been recognized as groundbreaking in the field of sensing and imaging at micro-watt power levels. This research not only received a Best Paper Award at MobiSys 2022 but was also featured in the SIGMOBILE Research Highlights.

Garg has been named a UMD Future Faculty Fellow for 2023–24 and was recently selected for the 2024 Cyber-Physical Systems Rising Stars cohort.

—Story by Melissa Brachfeld, UMIACS communications group