ELECTRICAL - ELECTRONICS ENGINEERING

Prof.

Elif Uysal

Principal Investigator, Communication Networks Research Group
Fellow, IEEE
Fellow, Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association (AAIA)
Fellow, Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance (AIIA)

Room No

A207

Tel No

+90 (312) 210-2323

E-mail

uelif metu.edu.tr (admin. contact Ms. Ayça Osunluk aycao@metu.edu.tr)

Research Group Web Page

http://cng-eee.metu.edu.tr/

News & Announcements

Graduate students in Communications or Computer Science related areas, who are highly motivated to do a competitive, highly cited thesis in a theoretical or applied area of networking are welcome to contact Prof. Uysal.

NEW Postdoctoral Associate and PhD Openings: Please contact the CNG lab coordinator Ms. Ayca Osunluk (aycao@metu.edu.tr).

The current focus of our research is Semantic-Aware communication and Data Freshness in next generation networks, with applications to IoT, NTN/Satellite IoT, Space Communications, and the evolving 6G standard.

This research program builds on our foundational work on the Age of Information (AoI), a data freshness metric that captures the needs of status update-based communication, of growing importance in remote monitoring/actuation and learning. A short video description of the AoI concept (in Turkish) is here: https://youtu.be/lLoDOk-Zgko

For broad impact of the goal-oriented communication and networking approaches to sustainable cities, we have formed the SUIT (Sustainable Urbanization Through Innovative Technologies) platform, funded by TUBİTAK under the 1004 program. A presentation on SUIT is here. A video description of SUIT (in Turkish) can be found here.

Current Synergistic Activities: Prof. Uysal is currently serving as

Director, SUIT (Sustainable Urbanization Through Innovative Technologies) Research Platform
Chair, METU Parlar Foundation For Education and Research
Member of Advisory Board, IEEE ComSoc Turkey Branch.
Member, IEEE Turkey Awards Committee
Member, 6G Platform.

Education

Ph. D: Stanford University; S.M.: Massachusetts Institute of Technology; B.Sc, METU

Research Interests

Information Freshness and Goal Oriented Communications for Networked Systems, in particular:
- Link and transport layer scheduling for Remote Inference, and other MTC applications, through exploiting freshness (e.g. AoI, QAoI) and other goal-oriented performance metrics (e.g. mean square error)
- The development of novel age-aware or goal-oriented random access protocol and implementation in LoRa/LoRaWAN
- IPR development for massive MTC access, routing and handover in Nonterrestrial Networks (NTN) toward 6G
Energy efficient/energy-neutral communication
- Optimal resource allocation in energy harvesting communication systems
- Implementation of energy harvesting communication systems

Publications

Patents/patent applications:

Nonterrestrial Networks (NTN):

• A. Topbaş Tanyeri, A. Arsal, E. Uysal, E. T. Ceran Arslan, “Bir Uydu Grubunda Veri Aktarım Planlama,” Patent No. 2023/012089, 2024, granted.
• T. Aydın, S. Çıtır, E. Uysal, A. Arsal, E. T. Ceran Arslan, “Aktarım Eşiklerini Dinamik Olarak Ayarlamak İçin Bir Yöntem,” Patent No. 2023/017384, 2024, granted.
• S. Çıtır, E. Uysal, A. Arsal, E. T. Ceran Arslan, “Karasal Olmayan Ağ İçin Dinamik Aktarımsız Alanlar Oluşturma Yöntemi,” Patent No. 2023/017448, 2024, granted.
• A. Topbaş Tanyeri, E. T. Ceran Arslan, E. Uysal, A. Arsal, “NB-IoT Cihazlarına Yönelik Rastgele Erişim Yöntemi,” Patent No. 2023/018829, 2025, granted.
• A. Arsal, E. Uysal, T. Aydın, “Bant Genişliği Parçası Adaptasyonuna Yönelik Bir Yöntem,” Patent No. 2024/009530, 2025, granted.
• S. Çıtır, A. Arsal, E. Uysal, “Bir NTN Ağına Yönelik Bir Haberleşme Yöntemi,” Patent No. 2024/010244, 2025, granted.
• H. E. Akın, A. Arsal, E. Uysal, “WB-S1 Modunda Uydu Veri İşlem Modunu Belirlemeye Yönelik Bir Yöntem,” Patent No. 2024/011817, 2025, granted.
• H. E. Akın, A. Arsal, E. Uysal, “NB-S1 Modunda Uydu Veri İşlem Modunu Belirlemeye Yönelik Bir Yöntem,” Patent No. 2024/011999, 2025, granted.
• A. Arsal, S. Çıtır, E. T. Ceran Arslan, E. Uysal, “Karasal-Olmayan Ağlarda Yüksek İrtifa Platformlarını Kullanan Geçiş Yöntemi ve Bir Sistem,” patent no. 2023/014030, 2023, granted.
• T. Aydın, E. Uysal, E. T. Ceran Arslan, A. Arsal, “Karasal Olmayan Ağlarda Gecikme Farkı Bazlı Grup Aktarım Yöntemi,” application no. 2023/017740, 2023, pending.
• S. Çıtır, A. Arsal, E. T. Ceran Arslan, E. Uysal, “Karasal Olmayan Bir Ağda Küçük Veri İletim Yöntemi,” application no. 2023/019937, 2023, pending.
• S. Çıtır, A. Arsal, E. T. Ceran Arslan, E. Uysal, “NTN Ağında Rastgele Erişim Kaynakları Yönetimi İçin Bir Yöntem ve Bunun Bir Sistemi,” application no. 2024/000702, 2024, pending.

Flow Control

• A. Alioğlu, E. Uysal, M. Shakiba-Herfeh, B. T. Bacınoğlu, “İletim Hızının Ayarlanması İçin Yaşa Duyarlı İleri Hata Düzeltme Temelli Bir Yöntem,” Patent No. 2024/001618, 2025, granted.
• S. Çıtır, “Method and System for Energy-Efficient Sleep-Wake Scheduling and Transmission Control in Wireless Sensor Devices,” application no. 2026/009229, 2026, pending.

LP-WAN and Random-Access

• M. Ahmetoğlu, O. T. Yavaşcan, E. Uysal, “Multiple Mini Slotted Threshold ALOHA – MuMISTA", application no. 2021/013006, USPTO patent granted, 2026.
• O. Gencay, E. Uysal, “LPWAN Tunneling Relay,” PCT patent application no. PCT/TR2023/051024, 2023, pending.

Goal-Oriented Communications:

• A. Li, E. Uysal, “Systems and Methods for Harvesting Self-generated Idle Space in Goal-oriented Communications,” application no. 2026/006400, 2026, pending.

Energy Harvesting

• A. Akman, F. M. Özçelik, E. Uysal, C. E. Kement, “Energy Harvesting Communication System,” patent no. 2013/01138, granted, 2013.

IoT and Smart Grids

• A. Alioğlu, A. Acartürk, E. Uysal, F. Delibalta, G. Yıldırım, K. Firuzi, M. B. Aydar, “Elektrik Şebekelerinin Uç Noktalarında Elektrik Dağıtım Hatlarındaki Arızaları Gerçek Zamanlı Olarak Algılayan IoT Tabanlı Bir Cihaz ve Algoritma Sistemi,” application no. 2024/021894, pending.

Recent papers:

E. Uysal and A. Li, “Goal-Oriented Communications for Interplanetary and Non-Terrestrial Networks,” to appear in IEEE Communications Magazine.
B. Saatcı, S. Rini, E. T. Ceran, and E. Uysal, “Who Speaks When? Contribution Fairness in Federated Learning with Missed Model Updates,” to appear in the 27th IEEE International Workshop on Signal Processing and Artificial Intelligence for Wireless Communications (SPAWC), Athens, Greece, September 7–9, 2026.
A. Pehlivanoğlu, A. Li, E. Uysal, S. Çiftçi, and M. Özdem, “In-Orbit Intelligence or Ground Offloading? Inference Freshness under Intermittent Satellite Connectivity,” to appear in IEEE International Conference on Wireless for Space and Extreme Environments (WiSEE), Leuven, Belgium, September 14–16, 2026.
S. Baghaee, A. Li, S. Balasubramanian, E. Uysal. “Goal-Oriented Bundle Management and Flow Control for Deep-Space Communications via Reinforcement Learning“. to appear in the 77th International Astronautical Congress (IAC), Antalya, Türkiye, October 5–9, 2026.
B. Saatcı, S. Rini, E. T. Ceran, and E. Uysal, “FEDFresh: Contribution Fairness in Federated Learning with Missed Model Updates,” to appear in IEEE Military Communications Conference (MILCOM), National Capital Region, District of Columbia, USA, October 12–16, 2026.
B. Karasakal, A. Li, and E. Uysal, “Age of Information in Time-Varying Multi-Priority Queues,” to appear in IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW), Tempe, Arizona, USA, November 10–13, 2026
S. Chakraborty, A. Li, Y. İnce, S. Baghaee, and E. Uysal, “ASTRA: Asynchronous Age-Aware Satellite Random Access via Mean-Field Control,” to appear in 60th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers, Pacific Grove, California, USA, October 25–28, 2026.
A. Li, Y. Ince, E Uysal. “Taming the Heavy Tail: Age-Optimal Preemption“, IEEE International Symposium on Information Theory (ISIT), Guangzhou, China, June 28 – July 3, 2026.
Y. İnce and E. Uysal, “Random Access with Delayed Feedback: Stability, Delay, and Age of Information,” IEEE International Conference on Communications Workshops (ICC Workshops) 2026, Glasgow, UK, May 24–28 2026.
M. B. Aydar, S. Baghaee, K. Firuzi, E. Uysal, and G. Yıldırım, “GridAI: Edge AI Smart Grid Fault Detection with Goal-Oriented Communication”, in Proceedings of the 24th Annual International Conference on Mobile Systems, Applications and Services Workshops (MobiSys Workshops), Cambridge, UK, June 21–25, 2026, pp. 269–274.

Selected invited presentations:

Keynote Speaker, World Intellectual Property Day Award Ceremony (Havelsan), Ankara June 8, 2026.
Invited talk, MOSC in conj. with WiOpt, Columbus, OH, June 6, 2026.
Panelist, "6G Architecture" Panel, EUCNC, Malaga, Spain, June 4, 2026.
"Goal Oriented Communication for the Scale-up of MTC", CS Distinguished Seminar, Chalmers University, Sweden (https://cng-eee.metu.edu.tr/blog/2023/11/15/prof-uysal-gave-an-online-p…), Nov. 10, 2023.
Native AI as Enabler of Semantic or Goal-Oriented Communication in 6G and Beyond, in Native AI and Semantic Communications Workshop at PIMRC 2023, Toronto, Canada, Sep. 5, 2023.
The Role of Information Freshness and Semantics in 6G, 3rd 6G Summit on Connecting the Unconnected, KAUST, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 30, 2023.
The Role of Information Freshness in Next Generation Communication Systems, Invited Talk, Sabanci University, Sep. 29, 2022.
The Role of Information Freshness and Semantics in Next Generation Networks, Invited Tutorial, Advanced Satellite Multimedia Conference, Graz, Austria, Sep. 7, 2022.
Query Age of Information: An Operational Metric for Semantic Communication, Huawei – IEEE ITSoc Hong Kong Joint Workshop on Semantic Information Theory (Online), May 25, 2022: Slides & Talk Video
Age-aware Random Access, Bilkent University, Dec. 25, 2021.
Update or Wait: Redesigning Networks for Information Freshness, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Automatic Control Dept. Sweden, 2019.
Optimizing Peak Age of Information and Delay Violation Probability in the Finite Blocklength Regime, Information Theory and Applications Workshop, University of California San Diego, Feb. 12, 2019.
Age-optimal Threshold Policies for an Energy Harvesting Sensor, SPAWC 2018 Invited Session on Age of Information (19th IEEE Int. Workshop on Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications), Kalamata, Greece, Jun. 25-28, 2018.
Scheduling Status Updates from a Sensor to Minimize the Age of Information at the Destination, presented at the Foundations of Wireless Networking Workshop at Schloss Dagstuhl, Wadern, Germany, Jul. 3, 2017.
Age-Optimal Status Updating with an Energy Harvesting Sender, Information Theory and Applications Workshop, University of California San Diego, Feb. 13, 2017.
Lazy Schedules for Freshest Data and Optimal Use of Renewable Energy in Networks, Micro and Nano Technology Lab, University of Illinois Urbana Champaign, USA, Sep. 30, 2016.
Energy Harvesting Networks, Northeastern University, Boston, Apr. 23, 2016.
AGELESS: Scheduling Policies with Age as Objective, ITA 2016, Information Theory and Applications Workshop, University of California San Diego, Feb. 5, 2016.
Age of Information: Controlling the Freshness of Status Updates Under Energy Constraints”, Keynote Speech, The Gelenbe Symposium, IEEE Symp. on Computers & Communication, Imperial College, London. Sep. 21, 2015.
When to Update Data, Lab. for Information and Decision Systems, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA, Oct. 2015.

Awards & Grants

INFOCOM2026 Test of Time Paper Award
Selçuk Yaşar Award 2025
IEEE Comsoc N2Women "Stars in Computer Networking and Communications", 2024
ERC Advanced Grant 2024
Fellow, Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance (AIIA), 2024
Fellow, Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association, 2023
IEEE Fellow, 2022
Young Scientist Prize Scholarship, The Science Academy (Turkey), 2014-2016
IBM Faculty Award, 2011
TUBITAK Kariyer Research Grant (2007-2009.)
NSF Foundations of Communication Research Grant (2006-2009.)
First place in the EE Ph.D. Quals at Stanford University, among 144 candidates (1999.)
Stanford Graduate Fellow (1999-2003.)
MIT Vinton Hayes Fellow (1997-1998.)
NATO Science Fellow (1997, scholarship not used)
Ranked 1 in the graduating class of 1997 of the Middle East Technical University
Bulent Kerim Altay Prize, awarded 6 times by METU EE Dept. (1994-1997.)
First place in the nationwide University Entrance Examination (OYS) in Turkey, among 750,000 entrants (1993.)

Courses / Laboratories

EE306: Introduction to Stochastic Processes

Open CourseWare content (including lecture videos and handouts): https://ocw.metu.edu.tr/course/view.php?id=349

You can find EE306 lectures recorded in Spring 2022 on YouTube

EE532: Communication Network Analysis: This is a course that teaches the theoretical underpinnings of the design of communication networks and networking algorithms. Topics include Resource Allocation, Switch Scheduling, Scheduling in Wireless Networks, and Routing. EE532 is one of the required courses of the Communications area M.S. program, alternatively with EE536. A selection of the lectures is available on YouTube. EE531 or equivalent knowledge of discrete stochastic processes is strongly recommended.

ONLINE COURSES: (Open Courseware)

EE230: Probability and Random Variables: An introductory course on probability. Lecture videos recorded live at METU are available on YouTube. Lecture notes available here.

E435: Communications I.

EE531: Probability and Stochastic Processes: A graduate course on probability with emphasis on Discrete Stochastic Processes. Lecture videos recorded by METU GISAM are available on Open Courseware, and on Youtube.

EE590: Seminar. This is for our master's students to polish their presentation skills.

EE690: Graduate Seminars. The seminars are broadcast on YouTube. For the seminar program see https://eee.metu.edu.tr/seminars.

Biography

Elif Uysal is a Professor in the Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the Middle East Technical University (METU), in Ankara, Turkey. She received the Ph.D. degree in EE from Stanford University in 2003, the S.M. degree in EECS from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1999 and the B.S. degree from METU in 1997. From 2003-05 she was a lecturer at MIT, and from 2005-06 she was an Assistant Professor at the Ohio State University (OSU). Since 2006, she has been with METU, and held visiting positions at OSU and MIT during 2014-2016. Her research interests are at the junction of communication and networking theories, with particular application to energy-efficient wireless networking. Dr. Uysal was elected a Fellow of IEEE in 2022 for “pioneering contributions to energy-efficient and low-latency communications”. She is a Fellow of the Asia-Pacific Artificial Intelligence Association, and of the Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance, a recipient of the IEEE/ACM INFOCOM2026 Test of Time Paper Award, Selçuk Yaşar Award (2025), ERC Advanced Grant 2024, and named among IEEE Comsoc N2Women "Stars in Computer Networking and Communications" in 2024. Dr. Uysal received the TUBITAK BIDEB National Pioneer Researcher Grant 2020 and 2025, Young Scientist Award from the Science Academy of Turkey, IBM Faculty Award, the Turkish National Science Foundation Career Award, an NSF Foundations on Communication research grant, the MIT Vinton Hayes Fellowship, and the Stanford Graduate Fellowship. She has been serving as the Chair of the Executive Board and the Chair of the Board of Trustees of the METU Parlar Foundation for Education and Research, and assistant director of METU YTM-MATPUM, since 2022. In 2022, she founded FRESHDATA Technology. She is an inventor on more than 20 patents, with emphasis on Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN).

Academic Service: Dr. Uysal has served on the editorial boards of the IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, and the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication, and as Lead Guest Editor for the IEEE Journal on Special Areas in Information Theory; as co-chair of various conferences including IEEE WiOpt 2026, IEEE ICC 2022 Communication Theory Symposium, general co-chair of the AoI Workshop under IEEE INFOCOM 2021, co-founder in 2023 of the Workshop on Modeling and Optimization for Semantic Communications (MOSC), and later member of the steering board of the workshop. She was TPC Co-Chair in: WiOpt 2021, IEEE SIU 2021, IEEE SIU 2022, the First Workshop on the Age of Information (in conjunction with IEEE INFOCOM 2018); track co-chair for IEEE PIMRC 2019; on the organizing committees of conferences including IEEE SIU 2025, IEEE PIMRC 2025 and on the TPCs of numerous conferences including IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW) 2026, IEEE INFOCOM 2018, IEEE WiOpt 2018, IEEE ISIT 2021, ISIT 2022, IEEE MobiHoc 2017, IEEE ICC 2017, IEEE Globecom 2017.