Md Kamran Chowdhury Shisher

Md Kamran Chowdhury Shisher, a postdoctoral researcher in Purdue University’s Elmore Family School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been awarded the 2025 IEEE William R. Bennett Prize for his paper, “Timely Communications for Remote Inference,” published in IEEE Transactions on Networking.

The William Bennett Prize is presented annually by the IEEE Communications Society to the authors of the best original paper published in *IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking* or *IEEE Transactions on Network and Service Management* over the past three calendar years. The award recognizes papers that are distinguished by their technical content, novelty and potential impact on the field.

Shisher is the first author of the award-winning paper, which was selected through a highly competitive process that reflects the prestige of the recognition. His research focuses on advancing networking technologies that improve the efficiency, reliability and scalability of communication systems.

At its core, the paper explores how to make communication networks smarter and faster when supporting artificial intelligence tasks. In today’s world, many AI applications — such as self-driving cars, smart factories, and health monitoring systems — rely on sensors that send data to remote servers for processing and decision-making. For these applications to work effectively, the timely arrival of data is essential. Shisher’s paper makes two key contributions: first, it provides a method to quantify the impact of data freshness on AI performance, and second, it develops a strategy to ensure information flows through networks in a way that keeps AI decisions accurate and on time.

"I am incredibly honored to receive the prestigious IEEE Communications Society William R. Bennett Prize,” said Shisher. “I hope that our findings will support and inspire future research on deploying AI applications at scale over next-generation networked systems."

The IEEE Communications Society is the leading global organization for professionals in communications technology, with more than 30,000 members worldwide. The William Bennett Prize honors the legacy of William R. Bennett, a pioneer in communications science.

Co-authors of the paper are Yin Sun, Bryghte D. and Patricia M. Godbold Endowed Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Auburn University, who was Shisher’s PhD advisor, and I-Hong Hou, professor of electrical and computer engineering at Texas A&M University. Shisher’s advisors at Purdue are Christopher Brinton, Elmore Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Mung Chiang, Purdue University President and Roscoe H. George Distinguished Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering.