debbah

Prof. Mérouane Debbah

Chief Researcher
AI and Digital Science Research Center

Prof. Mérouane Debbah is Chief Researcher, AI Cross-Center Unit and of the AI and Digital Science Research Center at the Technology Innovation Institute (TII), a leading global research center dedicated to pushing the frontiers of knowledge. He is responsible for carrying out advanced research in AI and Telecommunications. Through his core areas of research across 5G, 6G, Machine Learning, Random Matrix Theory, and Game Theory, he is focused on making the planet safer and pushing the limits of innovation.

Prof. Debbah’s research over the years has spanned fundamental mathematics, algorithms, statistics, information, and communication sciences.

Before assuming his current role, Prof. Debbah was jointly the Director of the Huawei Mathematical and Algorithmic Sciences Lab as well as the Lagrange Mathematical and Computing Research Centre in Paris, France. He has managed eight EU projects and more than 24 national and international projects.

Previously, he was a Full Professor at CentraleSupélec, Gif-sur-Yvette in France. In addition, he held the role of Director of the Alcatel-Lucent Chair on Flexible Radio. This was the first industrial chair in telecommunication in France – established through leveraging close ties between CentraleSupélec and Bell Labs. He started his career at Motorola Labs, Saclay, France.

Research.com, a leading academic research portal that ranks the world’s top scientists across different categories and serves as a global benchmark, placed Prof. Debbah at number 180 on its 2022 list of Top 1,000 Scientists in Electronics and Electrical Engineering. Also, with a H-index of 76 in Electronics and Electrical Engineering, and a H-index of 64 in Computer Science, he ranked number one in France for the former category.

Prof. Debbah was also named a 2022 AI 2,000 Most Influential Scholar in Internet of Things for his outstanding contributions in the field between 2012 and 2021. The AI 2,000 Most Influential Scholar Annual List (https://aminer.cn/ai2000) includes 2,000 of the world’s top research scholars from the fields of artificial intelligence over this decade (2020-2029).

He is also the recipient of the 2022 IEEE Communications Society Outstanding Paper Award for his scientific paper “Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces vs. Relaying: Differences, Similarities, and Performance Comparison.” The work concerns the analysis of Large Intelligent Surfaces, which is a key technology for the next generation 6G system.

Furthermore, he received the ERC Grant MORE (Advanced Mathematical Tools for Complex Network Engineering). He is an IEEE Fellow, a EURASIP Fellow, a WWRF Fellow, a Louis Bachelier Fellow, and a SEE Membre Émérite. He has received more than 20 best paper awards including the SEE Blondel Medal, the IEEE Radio Communications Committee Technical Recognition Award, the IEEE Communications Society Young Author Best Paper Award, and the IEEE Marconi Prize Paper Award.

Prof. Mérouane Debbah holds a PhD in Electrical Engineering from École Normale Supérieure Paris-Saclay, France. He also earned an MSc and a BSc in applied physics from the same institute. He holds more than 30 patents and is a published author of a book, 25 book chapters, 250 journal papers, and 400 conference papers. He has to his credit 47,000 citations and was named Clarivate Analytics Highly Cited Researcher for 2018-2021.