Biography

David Akopian is a Professor at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and elected as a Fellow of National Academy of Inventors, USA. His research interests are in human-machine interaction and guidance, including wireless communication, sensing, localization technologies and mobile applications. He founded the Software Communications and Navigation Systems Laboratory at the University of Texas at San Antonio (UTSA) and has directed it for the past 12 years, attracting solid funding for acquiring equipment and supporting students. He extensively collaborates nationally on several current research projects. He served as an associate editor for 5 periodicals, and chaired more than 10 mobile technology conferences. He chaired the Central Texas Chapter of IEEE SMC Society for 8 consecutive years and supported many other initiatives. Dr. Akopian chaired and served in numerous UTSA committees, served as the Electrical and Computer Engineering department’s Graduate Advisor of Record in 2014-2015, and currently serves as International Officer for the College of Engineering at UTSA. His research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, USAF, NAVSEA/ONR, Texas Higher Education Coordinating Board, CPRIT-TX, and SALSI-UTSA/UTHSCSA, among others. He received two UTSA inventor awards.

Prior to joining UTSA, Dr. Akopian was a Senior Research Engineer and Specialist with Nokia Corporation from 1999 to 2003. His responsibilities were in the development of advanced location technologies integrated with mobile devices, exploiting both terrestrial and satellite signals in hybrid solutions. He was also responsible for his team’s joint projects with local academic institutions. He essentially contributed in Nokia’s intellectual property, developed, implemented and tested various advanced solutions. He received two Nokia inventor awards.

In 1998-1999 he served as Assistant Director of the Tampere International Center of Signal Processing, at Tampere University of Technology (TUT), Finland, EU, where he also received his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering in 1997. He also supported collaborative efforts on promoting TUT’s international relations. From 1993 to 1999 he was a member of the teaching and research staff of TUT, focusing on fast algorithms and dedicated computing platforms for various applications.

Dr. Akopian’s research resulted in an extensive number of publications and inventions, including 32 issued and pending patents, three book chapters, 8 edited proceedings, 40 journal papers, and more than 150 invited and refereed conference papers and presentations. His team developed about eight in-house software packages and testbeds. In particular, his MessageSpace system for programmable interactive messaging has supported five health promotion intervention projects in 2010-2016. In 2015-2016, in collaboration with UTHSCSA, his team developed and launched a Quitxt smoking cessation automated interactive messaging system targeting Latino smokers, which supports six months of automated interactive texting with participants. His team is actively pursuing efforts in protecting smart-grid and DoD infrastructures from spoofing and jamming attacks, including monitoring and mitigating data traffic channels and GPS jamming mitigation.

Since 2004, his lab has trained about 90 students, and his students have been employed by Apple (iPhone), Qualcomm, Samsung, Cisco Systems, Amazon (Kindle RF), Freescale, Dell, Motorola, Nokia, Intel, Verizon, Telcordia, CSR, Atheros, Cirrus Logic, General Dynamics, Harris, Southwest Research Institute, Mediatek, etc.