Bio: Ramesh Rao joined the UCSD faculty in 1984, after receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Maryland, College Park. Prior to assuming his current post in 2001, he was Director of UCSD's Center for Wireless Communications. Rao is a senior member of IEEE, was publications editor of the IEEE's Information Theory Society., and sits on the society's Board of Governors. He also guest edited the IEEE Journal of Selected Areas in Communications special issue on 'Multimedia Network Radios,'' in December 1998. Rao has authored over 100 technical papers and contributed two book chapters, and chaired the technical program of the 1997 International Conference on Universal Personal Communications. In April 2004, Rao was appointed the first holder of the QUALCOMM Endowed Chair in Telecommunications

Research: In his capacity as UCSD director of the California insitute for Telecommunications and Information Technology, Professor Rao is also involved on a day-to-day basis with a wide variety of research initiatives, including the development and deployment of sensor networks for civilian as well as homeland security initiatives. He also supervises research on the integration of various wireless standards such as Bluetooth, Wi-Fi (802.11), CDMA and third-generation (3G) wireless networks (CDMA2000, W-CDMA). As a researcher in the wireless field, Rao's contributions include the development of energy-efficient communication techniques to support mobile multimedia users. Rao served on a U.S. Government panel to review the current status of research, development, and applications in wireless communications in the United States, Japan, and Western Europe, with a view towards evaluating the competitive status of U.S. efforts. In April 2004, Rao was appointed the first holder of the QUALCOMM Endowed Chair in Telecommunications.