Karthikeyan (Karthik) Sundaresan returned to the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech after spending 15 years in the wireless and telecom industry. A proud Georgia Tech ECE alumnus, he received both his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 2003 and 2006, respectively.
Dr. Sundaresan's research interests are broadly in wireless networking and mobile computing, and span both algorithm design as well as system building. He is the recipient of ACM SIGMOBILE’s Rockstar award (2016) for early career contributions to mobile computing and wireless networking, as well as several best paper awards at prestigious ACM and IEEE conferences. He holds over 60 patents, and received business contribution awards for bringing research technology to commercialization at NEC. He also led the spin-out efforts of two innovative, lab-grown research technologies targeting first responder tracking in GPS-denied environments and sustainable product tracking in supply chains. He has participated in various organizational and editorial roles for IEEE and ACM conferences and journals, and served as the program committee co-chair for ACM MobiCom’16. He is a Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors and IEEE, and an ACM Distinguished Scientist.
- Ph.D., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2006
- M.S., Georgia Institute of Technology, 2003
Professor Sundaresan’s research interests span multiple areas of wireless and range from networking and systems to mobile sensing and computing. He enjoys designing theoretically sound algorithms as well as translating them to practical real-world systems. His research particularly targets the intersection of connectivity, computing, control and cognition as it applies to intelligent, networked autonomous mobile systems across various industry and government verticals.
Professor Sundaresan’s teaching interests include foundational and advanced courses in computer and wireless networking, distributed systems, and mobile computing at both undergraduate and graduate levels. He emphasizes practical understanding of network communications, protocols, system design, and scalability challenges. His instruction aims to prepare students for academic, research and development roles by integrating theory with hands-on problem solving in modern computing environments.
- NAI Fellow, 2023
- IEEE Fellow, 2020
- ACM Distinguished Member, 2019
- ACM SIGMOBILE Rockstar Awardee, 2016
- Technology Commercialization Award, NEC, 2015
- 60+ awarded patents; best paper awards at ACM (MobiCom/MobiHoc/CoNEXT) and IEEE (ICNP/IPSN/SECON) conferences
- Technical Program Committee Co-Chair ACM MobiCom, 2016
- A. Madnaik, K. Sundaresan, Frequency‑Shifting RIS for NLoS mmWave Sensing, ISTTCS 2025.
- S.K. Venkateswaran et al., AuraWake…, MAS 2025.
- Y. Li et al., Medusa: Scalable Multi‑View Biometric Sensing…, MobiCom 2025.
- N.C. Matson, Y.T. Lin, K. Sundaresan, Non‑Terrestrial 5G Networking with LEO Satellites, ACM CoNEXT 2025.
- E. Chai, K. Sundaresan, S. Rangarajan, Near real‑time reconstruction using drones, US Patent 12,487,607, 2025.