Prof. Beferull is leading the Center Intelligent Signal Processing and Wireless Networks (WISENET) at University of Agder (UiA).
Baltasar Beferull-Lozano received his MSc in Physics from University of Valencia, Spain, in 1995 (First in Class Honors) and the MSc and PhD degrees in Electrical Engineering from University of Southern California (USC), Los Angeles, in 1999 and 2002, respectively. At USC, he received several awards including the Best PhD Thesis paper Award in 2002 and the Outstanding Academic Achievement Award in 1999.
Prof. Beferull brings extensive research and technology transfer experience from both the US., having worked at USC and AT&T Shannon Labs, (formerly AT&T Bell Labs) and also Europe, having worked at EPFL as Research Associate and at University of Valencia, Spain, as Professor. Since 2015, he is Professor at University of Agder, leading the Center Intelligent Signal Processing and Wireless Networks (WISENET).
He has coordinated or participated as Principal Investigator in more than 20 international Projects in the areas of Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks, Signal Processing, Data Science, Machine Learning, Networked Cyber-Physical Systems, In-Network Collective Intelligence and next-generation AI-driven Wireless Networks, including 10 EU Projects (FP6, FP7, H2020), among others, HYDROBIONETS, SENDORA, WISERNETS, CRUISE, as well as a CONSOLIDER Center (SFF-like National Center of Excellence in Spain) and similar ones in Switzerland and the US. Currently, he is coordinator or Principal Investigator in five large Research Projects funded by the Research Council of Norway, including a FRIPRO TOPPFORSK Grant (most competitive Program for fundamental research). He has co-authored over 200 technical papers in high-quality peer-reviewed international journal and conferences (including several Best paper Awards) with a high-rate of citations, generated 3 U.S. patents, supervised 14 PhD Theses and imparted seminars and postgraduate courses at more than 100 different international institutions. Prof. Beferull has also collaborated intensively with several companies in the field, such as Telenor, ACCIONA, Thales Communications, Telefónica, INDRA, IBM, Deutsche Telekom, National Instruments, Lundin Norway, MHWirth, ABB, NIVA and SINTEF, among others. Prof. Beferull is a Senior Member of the IEEE.
He is an official Evaluator and Expert for European Commission (since 2006), Qatar National Research Fund Program, Qatar Foundation (since 2008) and the US. NSF (since 2008), for both Research Proposals and on-going projects on Information and Communication Technologies, as well as several other Engineering disciplines. He has served as a member of the Technical Program Committees for several top IEEE and ACM International Conferences. Prof. Beferull is also a Senior Area Editor for IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing.
He carries out fundamental and applied research on these topics: a) data science and machine learning, b) in-network signal processing and collective intelligence, c) artificial intelligence for next generation wireless networks and cyber-physical systems. His work is highly interdisciplinary, covering Theory, Algorithms and Testbed implementation for different application scenarios, such as condition-based monitoring of industrial plants and natural resources, ambient intelligence, environmental monitoring, smart water networks, unmanned aerial vehicles, 5G smart wireless networks, energy management, networked collaborative robots, transportation and biological networks, among others.
He has received Best Paper Awards at several international conferences, such as the IEEE International Conference on Distributed Computing in Sensor Systems, 2012, and IEEE Data Science and Learning Conference, 2021. He ranked 1st in the Ramón y Cajal Spanish Program 2005, a highly competitive program for promoting outstanding young investigators. He has also received the TOPPFORSK Grant Award from the Research Council of Norway, 2015 (only recipient in the combined areas of signal processing, machine learning and smart networks), top cross-disciplinary excellence research program for fundamental research in Norway. Several of Prof. Beferull’s published papers have been used as part of the selected mandatory reading list for graduate courses in several US. Universities, such as: Univ. of Michigan, Ann Arbor, USC, Univ. of California, Santa Cruz and Univ. of Massachussets, Amherst.
