Junaid Farooq
Junaid Farooq
Associate Professor
Electrical & Computer Engineering
Welcome

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.

Recent updates

News from the lab

Activities

May 2026

Ph.D. student Yuhui Wang joins Nokia Bell Labs as a Generative AI Intern for Summer 2026.

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.

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.

May 2026

Yuhui Wang attended the ceremony recognizing Rackham Predoctoral Fellows in Ann Arbor.

May 2026

Promoted to Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering with tenure, approved by the U-M Board of Regents.

Apr 2026

Yuhui Wang received his Rackham Predoctoral Fellowship certificate from Rackham Dean Dewey Jung, recognizing his research on aerial communication systems.

Apr 2026

Yuhui Wang and Xingqi Wu received pins at the CECS Doctoral Pinning and Recognition Ceremony, celebrating their advancement to candidacy.

Apr 2026

Lab members presented their research posters at the CECS Research Poster Competition.

Mar 2026

Co-organized the inaugural Dearborn Automation and Intelligent Systems (DAISY) Symposium at UM-Dearborn with Karishma Patnaik, drawing over 8,000 impressions across the DAISY community. The 2026 theme, NextG Networks and Smart Manufacturing, featured keynotes by Majid Butt (Nokia Bell Labs), Haneya Naeem Qureshi (General Motors), and Georges Ayoub (UM-Dearborn), followed by a cross-industry panel. Supported by the UM Bold Challenges Pollination Award. DAISY will run annually going forward.

Mar 2026

The CyReN Lab and Ph.D. researcher Elahe Delavari featured in UM-Dearborn's Campus in Focus: March Maize-ness.

Feb 2026

Elahe Delavari participated in the Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.

Feb 2026

Invited talk at Grand Valley State University: "Enabling Assured Autonomy: AI-Driven Optimization and Reliability in Next-Generation Networks."

Publications

Sep 2026

Our paper "Collaborative Cloud-Edge Computing via LLM-Guided Constrained Reinforcement Learning" was accepted in IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC 2026), Singapore. Congratulations Xingqi and Yuhui!

Jul 2026

Our paper "Dependency-Aware Task Offloading via Quantum Graph Attention Network-based Deep Reinforcement Learning in Collaborative Edge-Cloud Systems" was accepted in International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN 2026). Congratulations Xingqi and Yuhui!

Jun 2026

Filed U.S. provisional patent application: "Online Detection and Containment of Disruptive User Equipment (UE) in Radio Access Networks." Inventors: X. Wu and J. Farooq (Application No. 64/080,683).

Jun 2026

Our paper "Risk-Aware Resource Orchestration in Multi-Tier 5G Edge-Cloud Networks" was accepted in Intent-Driven Network: Techniques and Applications, Springer Wireless Network Series. Congratulations Xingqi!

May 2026

Our paper "Jamming-Resilient PRB Reservation for Latency-Critical O-RAN Network Slicing" was accepted in IEEE DySPAN 2026 ML-Spec Workshop, Washington D.C., USA. Congratulations Elahe!

May 2026

Our paper "Temporally Encoded Double DQN for Proactive PRB Allocation in O-RAN Enabled Industrial Networks" was accepted in IEEE/IFIP NOMS 2026 Workshop on Resilience in Next Generation Network Management (NGResNet), Rome, Italy. Congratulations Xingqi and Elahe!

May 2026

Our paper "Delay-Aware Reinforcement Learning for O-RAN Control under Stochastic Reward Feedback" was accepted in IEEE Networking Letters. Congratulations Xingqi!

Apr 2026

Our paper "Process-Informed Multi-Agent Reinforcement Learning for Joint Radio-Compute Orchestration in Industrial O-RAN" was accepted in IEEE Networking Letters. Congratulations to Xingqi and Yuhui!

Feb 2026

Our paper "PROMPTGUARD: Zero Trust Prompting for Securing LLM-Driven O-RAN Control" was accepted in Proc. NDSS 2026 Workshop on Security and Privacy of Next-Generation Networks (FutureG), San Diego CA. Congratulations Xingqi and Yuhui!

Feb 2026

Our paper "Dynamic Multi-Modal UAV Control for Optimized Coverage and Backhaul Connectivity in Spatially Unstructured and Dispersed User Environments" was accepted in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing. Congratulations Yuhui!

Jan 2026

New book published: Cyber Resilience in Next-Generation Networks (Foundations and Trends in Networking).

Dec 2025

Our paper "SliceWise: Traffic-Aware Multi-Agent RL with Temporal Encoding for Joint Slice Admission and Resource Orchestration in O-RAN" was accepted in IEEE Networking Letters. Congratulations Xingqi and Yuhui!

All news → Latest update Sep 2026
Research

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.

Explore research and projects →
Publications

Selected recent work

View all publications →

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
Ask AI