The latest issue of the National ICT R&D Fund (ICTRDF) newsletter has declared the SysNet lab at the LUMS Computer Science department among the few, best Internet of Things (IoT) initiatives launched in the country. The lab directed by Dr. M. Hamad Alizai, hosts both graduate and undergraduate students from the Computer Science and Electrical Engineering departments to solve some of the most challenging problems in the field of IoT. A diverse set of national and international donors fund the lab such as German DAAD, Higher Education Commission (HEC), and ICTRDF.
Currently the lab is involved in projects related to smart buildings and new IoT information processing paradigms. Specifically, for an internationally funded project, a group of researchers at SysNet are striving to use IoT technology to modernise older buildings in terms of energy efficiency and thermal comfort in accordance with the vision 2025 of the Government of Pakistan. The project is driven by the observation that older buildings in our surrounding will last for decades for providing essential housing infrastructure, for their cultural, architectural, and historic significance, or for complying with economic constraints. Such buildings are the major consumer of energy today and do not provide the desired thermal comfort to the tenants. The project aims at transforming these buildings into a modern living/working place by adding a few pervasive IoT elements such as internet enabled sensors and actuators.
In another project, the researchers at SysNet are developing new computational paradigms for transiently powered IoT. The idea is to use cutting-edge wireless energy technologies to power the next billion IoT devices on the Internet and develop related protocols and operating systems that will run on these energy conscious devices.
SysNet attracts collaborators from all across the globe including peer research groups from USA (NCSU, Houston), Sweden (Chalmers), Germany, (RWTH Aachen), and Italy (Polimi). The lab strives for excellence in academic research and development by publishing research outcome in top ranked journals and conference venues such as ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks, ACM IPSN, and European EWSN. The lab boasts a very strong alumni base with its former director Dr. Affan Syed now a Director of Engineering at PLUMgrid and several of its students now serving in reputed national and international organisations while others pursuing their PhD dreams in renowned universities in the US and Europe.
