May 2026
Ph.D. student Yuhui Wang joins Nokia Bell Labs as a Generative AI Intern for Summer 2026.
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Junaid Farooq
Associate Professor
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Secure, resilient, and intelligent networks.
I am an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of Michigan-Dearborn working at the intersection of wireless communications, cybersecurity, and AI-driven network management. My research develops secure and resilient NextG networks, cyber-physical systems, and ultra-reliable low-latency communications for mission-critical applications.
NextG NetworksCyber ResilienceZero TrustInternet of ThingsUAV SystemsAI for Networks
Recent updates
News from the lab
Activities
May 2026
Organized the 2nd Workshop on Resilience in Next Generation Networks (NGResNet) at IEEE/IFIP NOMS 2026 in Rome, with a keynote by Dr. Hans-Peter Bernhard.
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May 2026
Co-organizing the 5th IEEE CNS Cyber Resilience Workshop (CRW'26) in Newark, Delaware. Call for papers open, with a submission deadline of June 22, 2026.
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May 2026
Yuhui Wang attended the ceremony recognizing Rackham Predoctoral Fellows in Ann Arbor.
View post → May 2026
Promoted to Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with tenure, approved by the U-M Board of Regents.
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Apr 2026
Yuhui Wang received his Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship certificate from Rackham Dean Dewey Jung, recognizing his research on aerial communication systems.
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Apr 2026
Yuhui Wang and Xingqi Wu received pins at the CECS Doctoral Pinning and Recognition Ceremony, celebrating their advancement to candidacy.
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Apr 2026
Lab members presented their research posters at the CECS Research Poster Competition.
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Mar 2026
Chaired the Dearborn Automation and Intelligent Systems (DAISY) Symposium, featuring a panel on NextG networks and smart manufacturing with Majid Butt, Haneya Naeem Qureshi, and Georges Ayoub. Supported by the UM Bold Challenges Pollination Award.
Read more → Mar 2026
The CyReN Lab and Ph.D. researcher Elahe Delavari featured in UM-Dearborn's Campus in Focus: March Maize-ness.
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Feb 2026
Elahe Delavari participated in the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
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Nov 2025
Hosted Prof. Waheed Bajwa at the University of Michigan-Dearborn for a seminar and discussions with faculty and students.
Read more →Publications
May 2026
Our paper "Delay-Aware Reinforcement Learning for O-RAN Control under Stochastic Reward Feedback" was accepted in IEEE Networking Letters. Congratulations Xingqi!
Read more → Jan 2026
New book published: Cyber Resilience in Next-Generation Networks (Foundations and Trends in Networking).
Read more →Focus areas
My group builds networks that stay secure and keep working under stress, attack, and uncertainty, from the wireless edge to autonomous systems.
NextG Networks & O-RAN
Network slicing, admission control, and multi-agent resource orchestration for 5G and 6G open radio access networks, with a focus on ultra-reliable low-latency communications.
Cyber Resilience & Zero Trust
Proactive and automated security for untrusted infrastructure, including zero trust architectures, cyber risk quantification, and supply chain risk analysis for mission-critical systems.
Autonomous & Aerial Systems
Distributed orchestration of UAV networks for coverage, connectivity, and resilient service delivery in dynamic, infrastructure-challenged, and contested environments.
AI-Driven Network Management
Reinforcement learning, agentic AI, and large language model methods for autonomous management and orchestration of next-generation networks.
Selected recent work
- 2026 Differentiable architecture search for adversarially robust quantum computer visionin Quantum Machine Intelligence, vol. 8, no. 2
- 2026 Dynamic Multi-Modal UAV Control for Optimized Coverage and Backhaul Connectivity in Spatially Unstructured and Dispersed User Environmentsin IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, vol. 25, no. 2, pp. 2320-2334
- 2026 Multi-agent Resource Orchestration Based on D3QN for Network Slicing in 5G Edge-Cloud Networksin IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management, vol. 23, pp. 1766-1781
- 2026 PROMPTGUARD: Zero Trust Prompting for Securing LLM-Driven O-RAN Controlin Proc. NDSS 2026 Workshop on Security and Privacy of Next-Generation Networks (FutureG), San Diego CA
- 2026
Work with me
Prospective students and collaborators interested in NextG networks, cyber resilience, and autonomous systems are welcome to reach out.
Office4901 Evergreen Rd, Institute for Advanced Vehicular Systems (IAVS), Dearborn, MI 48128
Phone+1 (646) 509-3602