Lin CaiView profile
Associate Professor
Lin Cai is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Illinois Institute of Technology, serving as Director of Graduate Affairs. She holds a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Canada (2010). Her research focuses on sustainable wireless communication and networking, particularly in energy harvesting, IoT, and deep reinforcement learning for resource management. Key research projects include energy sustainability in renewable-energy-powered networks, energy-efficient 5G protocols, and radio resource management over unlicensed bands. She has received the NSF CAREER Award (2016-2020), Best Paper Awards, and NSERC Postdoctoral Fellowship. Her work spans theoretical frameworks and practical implementations in HetNets, MIMO, and UAV-based systems. Education: Ph.D., E&CE, University of Waterloo, Canada (2010) Affiliations: Executive Editorial Committee member, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (2021–present); Associate Editor for multiple IEEE journals Teaching: Courses include ECE 407/408 (Computer Networks) and ECE 517 (Modern Wireless Network Protocols) Her research emphasizes cross-layer protocol design, sustainable capacity planning, and topology control. Notable contributions include frameworks for energy sustainable radio resource management and optimization in dense HetNets. She actively contributes to conference organization and technical program committees for IEEE INFOCOM, GLOBECOM, and ICC.





