Asst. Prof. Özlem Tuğfe Demir has been awarded the 2025 IEEE Communications Society Best Young Researcher Award for the Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) Region in recognition of her research activities and contributions to the society. The IEEE ComSoc Young Researcher Award for the EMEA Region recognizes outstanding early-career researchers who have demonstrated exceptional technical contributions and sustained activity within the IEEE Communications Society.
Dr. Tuğfe Demir is an assistant professor in the Electrical and Electronics Engineering department. She received her BS, MS and PhD degrees from Middle East Technical University and held postdoctoral positions at Linköping University and KTH Royal Institute of Technology. Dr. Demir’s research focuses on signal processing and optimization for wireless communications, with emphasis on massive MIMO, cell-free architectures, near-field communications, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces and green mobile networks. She is a co-author of two textbooks and an editor for the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications. Her work aims to develop scalable, energy-efficient and hardware-aware technologies for beyond-5G and 6G systems.
