I-Hong Hou

I-Hong Hou is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Texas A&M University, part of the College of Engineering. He holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from National Taiwan University (2004), and M.S./Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (2008/2011). His research focuses on wireless networks, cloud/edge computing, and machine learning with notable contributions to real-time systems and network optimization.

Education:

• B.S., Electrical Engineering, National Taiwan University, 2004
• M.S., Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2008
• Ph.D., Computer Science, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2011

Research Highlights: Hou’s work emphasizes Age of Information (AoI), distributed learning, and scheduling algorithms for edge computing. He has pioneered frameworks integrating machine learning with network protocols, such as deep reinforcement learning for restless bandits and second-order optimization for wireless systems. His methods address real-time communication challenges in multi-hop networks and dynamic environments.

Awards:

• Best Paper Awards at ACM MobiHoc (2017, 2020)
• Best Student Paper, WiOpt 2017
• C.W. Gear Outstanding Graduate Student Award, UIUC

Advising & Grants: Advised PhD student Siqi Fan (graduated 2024). His research has been supported by grants exploring edge-cloud reconfiguration, real-time video delivery, and neural Whittle index networks. Recent work includes optimizing freshness of information in multi-user systems and developing threshold-optimal policies for complex decision-making.

Labs/Teams: Leads the Computer Engineering and Systems Group (CESG) at Texas A&M, collaborating on projects blending networking, machine learning, and distributed systems.