Tommaso Melodia
William Lincoln Smith Professor,
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Director,
Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems
Office
- 412 ISEC
- 617.373.4159
Research Focus
Modeling, optimization, and experimental evaluation of wireless networked systems; Networked implantable medical systems; Multimedia sensor networks; Secure tactical cognitive radio networks; Underwater networks; Mobile cloud computing
About
Tommaso Melodia (M’07) received the “Laurea” and Doctorate degrees in telecommunications engineering from the University of Rome “La Sapienza,” Rome, Italy, in 2001 and 2005, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, USA, in 2007.
Between 2007 and 2014 he was an Assistant and then Associate Professor at SUNY Buffalo. In 2014, he joined Northeastern University as an Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. His current research interests are in modeling, optimization, and experimental evaluation of wireless networks, with applications to intra-body networks of implantable devices, tactical cognitive radio networks, multimedia sensor networks, and underwater networks.
Prof. Melodia serves in the editorial boards of the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, IEEE Transactions on Multimedia, and Computer Networks (Elsevier). He received a National Science Foundation CAREER Award, and he coauthored a paper that was recognized as the Fast Breaking Paper in the field of Computer Science by Thomson ISI Essential Science Indicators and a paper that received an Elsevier Top Cited Paper Award.
Honors & Awards
- 2026 Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery
- Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) Distinguished Member
- COE Faculty Fellow
- COE Faculty Research Team Award
- IEEE Fellow
- IEEE Communications Society Distinguished Lecturer
- National Academy of Inventors (NAI) Fellow, 2024
- NSF CAREER Award
- Soren Buus Outstanding Research Award
Research Overview
Modeling, optimization, and experimental evaluation of wireless networked systems; Networked implantable medical systems; Multimedia sensor networks; Secure tactical cognitive radio networks; Underwater networks; Mobile cloud computing
Wireless Networks and Embedded Systems Laboratory
The WINES Lab is designing a new generation of secure, reliable, energy-efficient wireless networked systems with higher intelligence and integration with the physical environment. Focus is on advancing the fundamental understanding of wireless networking. We also design and develop new networked systems, with a cross-layer and cross-disciplinary approach.
Selected Research Projects
- Sharing Spectrum, Services, and Infrastructure in Spectrum Era 4
- – co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Development towards a Community Research Platform for sub-THz Satellite Communication Networks
- – Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- AutoRAN: Automated End-to-End Continuous Testing for Open and Disaggregated Cellular Systems
- – co-Principle Investigator, CHIPS and Science Act
- DigiRAN: High-Fidelity Digital Twins for Interoperability, Security and Performance Testing of Open RAN Systems
- – co-Principle Investigator, CHIPS and Science Act
- Dynamically Adjustable Spectrum Sharing between Ground Communication Networks and Earth Exploration Satellite Systems Above 100 GHz
- – co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Resilient-by-Design Data-Driven NextG Open Radio Access Networks
- – co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Next-Gen Wireless Networks
- – Principle Investigator, CHIPS and Science Act
- Cognitive Distributed Sensing in Congested Radio Frequency Environments
- – co-Principal Investigator, U.S. Army Research Laboratory
- Smart Seizure Prediction System based on AI-enabled Implantable Sensor Networks
- – Principle Investigator, National Science Foundation
- An Open, Programmable Platform to Conquer the 5G and 6G Wireless Spectrum
- – Co-Principle Investigator, National Science Foundation
- NSF AI Institute for Future Edge Networks and Distributed Intelligence (AI-EDGE)
- – Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- RFDataFactory: Principled Dataset Generation, Sharing and Maintenance Tools for the Wireless Community
- – Co-Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
- Colosseum: Opening and Expanding the World’s Largest Wireless Network Emulator to the Wireless Networking Community
- – Principal Investigator; National Science Foundation & Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency
- MRI: SEANet: Development of a Software-Defined Networking Testbed for the Internet of Underwater Things
- – Principal Investigator, National Science Foundation
Research Centers and Institutes
Department Research Areas
Selected Publications
- Cen, Nan, Guan, Zhangyu, Melodia, Tommaso (2021). Compressed Sensing based Low-Power Multi-view Video Coding and Transmission in Wireless Multi-path Multi-hop Networks. IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, ,1-1. 10.1109/TMC.2021.3049797
- F. Restuccia, T. Melodia, PolymoRF: Polymorphic Wireless Receivers Through Physical-Layer Deep Learning, Proceedings of ACM International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing (ACM MobiHoc), 2020
- S. D’Oro, L. Bonati, F. Restuccia, M. Polese, M. Zorzi, T. Melodia, Sl-EDGE: Network Slicing at the Edge, Proceedings of ACM International Symposium on Theory, Algorithmic Foundations, and Protocol Design for Mobile Networks and Mobile Computing (ACM MobiHoc), 2020
- L. Zhang, F. Restuccia, T. Melodia, S. Pudlewski, Jam Sessions: Analysis and Experimental Evaluation of Advanced Jamming Attacks in MIMO Networks, ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking and Computing (MobiHoc), Catania, Italy, 2019
- S. D’Oro, F. Restuccia, A. Talamonti, T. Melodia, The Slice Is Served: Enforcing Radio Access Network Slicing in Virtualized 5G Systems, IEEE Conference on Computer Communications (INFOCOM) Paris, France, 2019
Aug 06, 2026
Northeastern helps lead $15M Army-funded center for next-generation sensing and communications
Josep M. Jornet and Tommaso Melodia, co-director and director of the Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems (INSI) at Northeastern University and faculty in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, are co-principal investigators on a new $15 million research center funded by the Army Research Office to advance secure sensing, imaging and wireless communications.
Aug 04, 2026
New Agentic AI Framework Promises Faster Development of Next Generation Wireless Networks
Researchers at Northeastern University’s Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems developed GENESIS, an agentic AI framework led by College of Engineering Professor Tommaso Melodia that autonomously writes, tests, and debugs code to dramatically accelerate the development of next-generation telecommunications systems like 6G.
May 05, 2026
Free and Fair Internet Access for All
Ali Saeizadeh, PhD’27, is a graduate research assistant in electrical and computer engineering at Northeastern’s Institute of Intelligent Networked Systems, where he builds “digital twin” simulations of 5G and 6G telecommunications networks. His work aims at something ambitious: making free and fair internet access a reality for people around the world. Before completing his degree, he plans to intern at Apple and a smaller tech firm to compare perspectives across an industry he hopes to shape.
Mar 24, 2026
Innovation in the World of Wireless Communication
Pietro Brach del Prever, PhD’27, computer engineering, is conducting research at the Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems. With the support of Northeastern and a drive to push boundaries, Brach del Prever continues to dedicate himself to research that advances wireless communication.
Jan 26, 2026
Innovation Across the Sea: London’s New INS Hub
Northeastern’s Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems opens a new hub in London after its success in Boston and Burlington. Their projects focus on optimizing wireless communications, with a focus on AI.
Jan 22, 2026
Fu and Melodia Selected as ACM Fellows
ECE Distinguished/Khoury Professor Yun Raymond Fu and William Lincoln Smith Professor Tommaso Melodia were named Fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery. Fu for contributions to representation learning, computer vision, face and gesture recognition and Melodia for contributions to open radio access network architectures and AI-native wireless networks.
Dec 17, 2025
Improving Telecommunications for a Better Future
For his master’s thesis, Matteo Bordin, PhD’27, computer engineering, researched telecommunications and 5G networks. Closer examination within this field inspired Bordin to pursue a PhD, as well, where he hopes to develop inventive and impactful research projects that offer promise for a better future.
Dec 04, 2025
Patent for Adapter Enables Use of Open RAN Technologies on Legacy RAN Systems
ECE Associate Research Professor Salvatore D’Oro, Associate Research Scientist Leonardo Bonati, Assistant Research Professor Michele Polese, and William Lincoln Smith Professor Tommaso Melodia were awarded a patent for “Open RAN adapter for use of open RAN technologies on legacy RAN systems.”
Nov 25, 2025
Addressing Backdoor Attacks on Open Radio Access Networks (O-RAN)
Research developed by the Institute for the Wireless Internet of Things on “How to Poison an xApp: Dissecting Backdoor Attacks to Deep Reinforcement Learning in Open Radio Access Networks” was published in Computer Networks.
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.