Kassas and Lin named IEEE Fellows
Two College of Engineering faculty members have joined the distinguished ranks of Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Fellows.
Electrical and Computer Engineering Professor Zak Kassas and Computer Science and Engineering Professor Zhiqiang Lin were honored with elevation to IEEE Fellow. Kassas was elevated for his contributions to navigation with signals of opportunity, while Lin was commended for contributions to automated vulnerability discovery, code hardening, and monitoring in mobile and systems security.
IEEE Fellow is a distinction reserved for select IEEE members whose extraordinary accomplishments in any of the IEEE fields of interest are deemed fitting for this prestigious grade elevation. More than 30 active Ohio State engineering faculty members are IEEE Fellows, including College of Engineering Dean Ayanna Howard.
Kassas is a world-renowned expert in position, navigation and timing (PNT) in global navigation satellite system-denied environments by exploiting terrestrial and extraterrestrial signals of opportunity (SOPs). He has made breakthroughs that proved SOPs could be exploited for sustained, high-accuracy, real-world PNT, achieving the highest levels of accuracy ever published to date. Kassas and his team were also the first to develop a comprehensive approach to extract accurate PNT information from 4G and 5G signals and a simultaneous tracking and navigation framework to exploit low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite signals. They developed a revolutionary framework for SOPs with unknown signal structure, termed cognitive opportunistic navigation, leading to the first published results of exploiting unknown multi-constellation LEO signals for PNT. Named an Institute of Navigation (ION) Fellow in 2023, Kassas is the author of more than 180 papers and 21 U.S. patents.
He is also the director of the Center for Automated Vehicles Research with Multimodal Assured Navigation (CARMEN+), a U.S. Department of Transportation University Transportation Center (UTC) led by Ohio State that investigates PNT resiliency and accuracy of highly automated transportation systems.
“I am honored to join the esteemed ranks of IEEE Fellows,” said Kassas, the Transportation Research Center, Inc. Endowed Chair in Intelligent Transportation Systems. “I am grateful to my academic advisors, mentors, mentees and collaborators, from whom I had learned a great deal. I am also appreciative of the support of the funding agencies who believed in our vision: Office of Naval Research, National Science Foundation, Air Force Office of Scientific Research, Department of Transportation, Sandia National Laboratories, Aerospace Corporation, among others.”
With more than 150 papers published, Lin’s research focuses on cybersecurity, with an emphasis on using or innovating program analysis to solve security problems. His work covers the entire software stack from firmware to applications in web, mobile and Internet of Things environments. In addition to identifying vulnerabilities, Lin also specializes on hardening the software against attacks. In 2023, he was named a Distinguished Member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).
In 2020, Lin led a team of cybersecurity researchers that discovered a large number of cell phone applications contain hardcoded secrets allowing others to access private data or block content provided by users. He and his colleagues developed an open-source tool, named InputScope, to help developers understand weaknesses in their apps and to demonstrate that the reverse engineering process can be fully automated. Most recently, Lin and his postdoctoral researcher Yue Zhang discovered a decade-old vulnerability in Bluetooth devices, including smartphones, which allows others to track a user’s movement, a significant privacy threat. He is also the faculty director of the Institute for Cybersecurity and Digital Trust.
"Becoming an IEEE Fellow represents not just a personal milestone, but also acknowledges the collective efforts and dedication of my students, colleagues and myself in advancing the field of cybersecurity,” Lin said. “I am deeply grateful for this honor and the opportunity to contribute to our shared body of knowledge."
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor Giorgio Rizzoni, director of the Center for Automotive Research, was also named an IEEE Life Fellow. This recognition is reserved for IEEE members who have truly distinguished themselves through their sustained and lasting contributions to the organization. Rizzoni was first named an IEEE Fellow in 2004 for his leadership in automotive control systems.
IEEE is the world’s leading professional association for advancing technology for humanity. Through its more than 400,000 members in 160 countries, the association is a leading authority in a wide variety of areas ranging from aerospace systems, computers and telecommunications to biomedical engineering, electric power and consumer electronics.
