Hessam Mahdavifar

Associate Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Contact

h.mahdavifar@northeastern.edu
360 Huntington Ave
Boston, MA 02115

Research Focus

Coding and information theory, wireless communications, data privacy and security, privacy-preserving computing and learning

Education

PhD, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, 2012
MS, Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of California San Diego, La Jolla, 2009
BS, Electrical Engineering, Sharif University of Technology, 2007

Honors & Awards

CAREER Award, National Science Foundation, 2020
Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship, 2020
Best Paper Award, IEEE Conference on RFID, 2015
Silver Medal, International Mathematical Olympiad, 2002 and 2003

Research Overview

Coding and information theory, wireless communications, data privacy and security, privacy-preserving computing and learning

Department Research Areas

Selected Publications

M. Soleymani, H. Mahdavifar, and A. S. Avestimehr, “Analog Secret Sharing with Applications to Private Distributed Learning,” IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, vol. 17, pp. 1893-1904, May 2022.
M. Soleymani and H. Mahdavifar, “Analog Subspace Coding: A New Approach to Coding for Non-Coherent Wireless Networks,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 68, pp. 2349-2364, Apr 2022.
N. Aldaghri and H. Mahdavifar, “Physical Layer Secret Key Generation in Static Environments,” IEEE Transactions on Information Forensics and Security, vol.15, pp. 2692-2705, Dec 2020.
H.Mahdavifar, “Polar Coding for Non-Stationary Channels,” IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, vol. 66, pp. 6920-6938, Nov 2020.
M. V. Jamali and H. Mahdavifar, “Uplink Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access over Mixed RF-FSO Systems,” IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, vol.19, pp. 3558-3774, May 2020.

Faculty

Aug 10, 2026

Improving Quantum Computing Reliability and Scalability Through Modular Error Correction

ECE Associate Professor Hessam Mahdavifar and COS/ECE Assistant Professor Ivana Dimitrova were awarded a DOE grant for “Hierarchically Coupled Quantum LDPC Codes for Modular Quantum Computing.”

Faculty

Sep 23, 2025

2025 Stanford University Annual Assessment of Author Citations

The following COE professors are among the top scientists worldwide selected by Stanford University representing the top 2% of the most-cited scientists with single-year impact in various disciplines. The selection is based on the top 100,000 by c-score (with and without self-citations) or a percentile rank of 2% or above.