About
Before joining The University of Tulsa as chair of the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, Hazem Refai, Ph.D., was the Williams Chair of Telecommunication and Networking at The University of Oklahoma-Tulsa (OU). Refai was the founder and research director of Wireless and Electromagnetic Compliance and Design Center (WeCad) at OU where research activities focused on developing protocols to evaluate various wireless technologies and their spectrum sharing schemes. One of the WeCad protocols—wireless coexistence—was adapted by American National Standard Institute (ANSI 63.27 standard).
Refai’s research spans on various research subjects: physical and medium access control layers to enhance wireless coexistence, cognitive radios and networks, artificial intelligence and machine learning algorithms in transportation, optical wireless, and neuroscience fMRI and EEG signal processing. His research activities have been funded by various federal (NSF) and state (ODOT, OCAST) agencies as well as industrial consortium of medical manufacturers. Refai has supervised to graduation 22 Ph.D. and 55 M.S. students.
Refai has published more than 245 referred papers of journal articles and national and international conference proceedings.
Awards and Honors
- 2012 US FDA Scholar in Residence
Education
- Ph.D., Engineering, The University of Oklahoma, 1999
- M.S., Electrical and Computer Engineering, The University of Oklahoma, 1993
- B.S., Electrical Engineering, The University of Aleppo, 1987
Research interests and areas of expertise
- RF and optical wireless communication
- Embedded designs and systems
- Transportation data analytics
- System modeling
- Signal processing