Alumna Junfei Xie recently received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award to develop an innovative theoretical framework to enable unmanned air vehicles (UAV)-based networked airborne computing.

While at UNT, Xie studied electrical engineering and computer science. She received M.S. and Ph.D. degrees under the guidance of Yan Wan, now professor at the University of Texas at Arlington, and current UNT computer science and engineering department chair Yan Huang. Her research then consisted of developing theoretical and applied results for allowing drones to directly communicate with each other.

Now, at San Diego State University as an assistant professor, she will use the $550,000 five-year award to develop a flying computing cluster that benefits existing UAV applications in addition to enabling new ones.

Findings from this project will have broad applications in next-generation air traffic control, Internet of Things and mobile edge computing, among many others.