Bio

Mark F. Flanagan received the B.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electronic Engineering from University College Dublin (UCD), Dublin, Ireland, in 1998 and 2005, respectively. He is currently a Professor in the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at UCD, having been first appointed as SFI Stokes Lecturer in 2008. Prior to this he held postdoctoral research fellowship positions with the University of Zurich, Switzerland, the University of Bologna, Italy, and the University of Edinburgh, U.K. He has published more than 150 papers in peer-reviewed international journals and conferences. His research interests broadly span wireless communications, coding and information theory, and signal processing. He was a recipient of the Consolidator Laureate Award from the Irish Research Council (IRC) in 2018, and the Stokes Lectureship Award from Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) in 2008. In 2014, he was a Visiting Senior Scientist with the Institute of Communications and Navigation, German Aerospace Center, Munich, under a DLR-DAAD Fellowship. He has given invited presentations at venues including TU Vienna, EPFL Lausanne, the University of Zurich, and the Joint Mathematics Meetings of the American Mathematical Society.

Prof. Flanagan is an Editor for IEEE Transactions on Communications. He served in the roles of Editor, Senior Editor and Executive Editor for IEEE Communications Letters during the period Jan 2012 - Dec 2021. He served as TPC Co-Chair for the Communication Theory Symposium at IEEE ICC 2020 and as TPC Co-Chair of the Workshop on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces for Future Wireless Communications at IEEE ICC 2021. He is currently serving as TPC Co-Chair for the Communication Theory Symposium at IEEE Globecom 2022. He is also currently serving as Vice-Chair of the Special Interest Group on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces of the Signal Processing and Computing for Communications (SPCC) Technical Committee of the IEEE Communications Society. He regularly serves on the TPC of top-tier international conferences such as IEEE GLOBECOM and IEEE ICC, and he is a reviewer for many major international journals. He is currently serving as the Secretary of the IEEE Radio Communications Society (RCC). He has been a member of the Steering Committee for the Irish Signals and Systems Conference (ISSC) since 2012, and is currently serving as the General Chair of ISSC 2023. He is also actively involved in national Mathematics Outreach programmes, and is a Director and past Treasurer of the Irish Mathematical Trust (IMT).

Research Interests

• Communication Theory: Error-correcting code design, analysis and implementation, coded modulation, iterative information processing, cooperative communications and relaying.
• Wireless Communications: Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, spatial modulation, full-duplex communication, non-orthogonal multiple-access systems, physical-layer network coding, massive MIMO.
• Signal Processing for Communications: Advanced modulation and detection techniques, equalization, MIMO signal processing, energy harvesting communications.

Current Postgraduate Students

Current Postdoctoral Researchers

Past Postgraduate Students

Past Postdoctoral Researchers

Teaching

• Digital Communications (EEEN40060), University College Dublin, 2022/2023.
• Computer Engineering (EEEN20010), University College Dublin, 2022/2023.

Publications

Editorial Board Memberships

• Associate Editor, IEEE Transactions on Communications.
• Associate Editor, Frontiers in Communications and Networks.
• Associate Editor, Frontiers in Signal Processing.

Current and Recent Conference Responsibilities

• TPC Co-chair, IEEE GLOBECOM 2022 (Communication Theory Symposium)
• TPC Member, IEEE ICC 2022 (Communication Theory, Wireless Communications, and Green Communication Systems and Networks Symposia)
• TPC Member, IEEE GLOBECOM 2021 (Communication Theory, Wireless Communications, and Green Communication Systems and Networks Symposia)
• TPC Co-chair, IEEE ICC 2021 Workshop on Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces for Future Wireless Communications
• TPC Member, IEEE ICC 2021 (Communication Theory, Wireless Communications, and Green Communication Systems and Networks Symposia)
• TPC Member, IEEE WCNC 2021
• TPC Member, IEEE PIMRC 2021
• TPC Member, IEEE ICT 2021
• TPC Co-chair, IEEE ICC 2020 (Communication Theory Symposium).

Selected Invited Presentations

• "Optimization of the Achievable Rate for MIMO Systems Assisted by Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces," delivered to the IEEE Radio Communications Committee (RCC), 8 July 2021.
• "Some New Advances in Emerging Technologies for Beyond-5G Networks," delivered to the LNM Institute of Information Technology, India, 20 February 2020.
• "User-Antenna Selection for Physical-Layer Network Coding," delivered at the University of Bologna, Italy, 9 April 2019.
• "Efficient Evaluation of the Weight Spectral Shape of Nonbinary Protograph LDPC Codes," delivered at Technische Universität Wien, Austria, 18 July 2016.
• "Design of Irregular Generalized LDPC Code Ensembles using Weight Distribution Analysis", delivered at Università Politecnica delle Marche, Italy, 4 July 2013.
• "Stability of Iterative Decoding of Multi-edge Type Doubly-generalized LDPC Codes over the BEC", delivered to the Oberseminar Digitale Kommunikationssysteme, Siegen, Germany, 13 January 2012.
• "Linear-Programming Receivers: Design and Performance", delivered to the Telekommunikationsforum, Technische Universität Wien, Vienna, Austria, 18 November 2011.
• "On the Growth Rate of the Weight Distribution of Doubly-Generalized LDPC Codes," delivered to the Information Processing Group, EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, 12 Novenber 2008.
• "Linear-programming Decoding of Non-binary Linear Codes", delivered to the Applied Algebra Group, University of Zürich, 5 March 2008.
• "On Construction of Girth-8 LDPC Codes from Finite Euclidean Geometries and Finite Multidimensional Lattices", delivered to the Institute for Digital Communications, University of Edinburgh, as part of the international lecture series "Advanced Topics in Signal Processing and Communications", 12 June 2007.

Invited Conference Presentations

• "GLDPC Coded Modulation and its Squared Euclidean Distance Distribution," Second LNT/DLR Workshop on Coding and Modulation, TU Munich, 26 July 2016.
• "Low-Density Lattice Coded Relaying with Joint Iterative Decoding," in First LNT/DLR Workshop on Coding and Modulation, TU Munich, 31 July 2015.
• "On the Growth Rate of the Weight Distribution of Doubly Generalized LDPC Codes," in Special Session on Recent Trends in Coding Theory, Joint Mathematics Meetings of the American Mathematical Society, Washington DC, January 5-8 2009.
• "Unified Design of Communication Receivers: Factor Graphs and Linear Programs", in Special Session on Mathematics as Foundation of Information and Communication Theory and Technology, First International Symposium on Applied Sciences in Biomedical and Communication Technologies, ISABEL 2008, Aalborg University, Denmark, November 24-27 2008.

Selected Industrial Collaborations