Dr Mohammad Rowshan

Mohammad is a research associate in the school of electrical engineering and telecommunications (EE&T), where he serves as a researcher, co-supervisor, and casual lecturer. He serves as a reviewer of IEEE conferences and journals and a TPC member of conferences. His research interests include coding and information theory, signal processing for communications, and hardware architecture design, though he has been more focused on polar codes and their variants (including code construction, precoding design, and improving their decoders), and Near-ML decoders for short codes in the past. He is interested to work on fundamental problems, explore emerging directions, and learn about other areas.

Qualifications:

He received his B.Eng. (Hons) degree in electrical and electronic engineering from the University of Nottingham in 2015 (ranked 1), his M.Sc. degree in integrated circuit design engineering from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2016, and eventually his Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering (communications technologies) from Monash University in Melbourne, Australia in 2021. During his doctoral studies, he visited the telecommunications circuits laboratory (TCL) at École Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (EPFL) in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2019. He holds a B.Sc. degree in industrial engineering as well.

Teaching and Supervision:

Currently, he is supervising the following HDR students as a co-supervisor:

• Hamish Shaw (Ph.D.), Delay-Doppler Communications
• Xinyi Gu (M.Phil.), Coding Theory

His teaching commitment includes the following course(s):

• TELE9753 Advanced Wireless Communications in Term 1

If you are looking for a supervisor:

• Please note that he cannot hire higher degree by research (HDR) students independently as a main/primary supervisor. If your research interest falls in the field of communications engineering (in particular, signal processing for physical layer), it is recommended to contact his manager, Prof. Jinhong Yuan (j.yuan@unsw.edu.au, you can CC him to m.rowshan@unsw.edu.au as well), the head of the telecommunications group in the school and the director of wireless communications lab (WCL). Please make sure you attach your CV and transcripts to the email. You may indicate your research interests and relevant previous experiences in the email as well. If you are a fit for the position, then Mohammad or another person can probably be on your supervisory team as a secondary supervisor along with Prof. Yuan as the primary supervisor.
• The fields that the researchers in WCL are working on cover theories, algorithms, machine learning models, and hardware architectures for the physical layer of communication systems, such as channel estimation, joint sensing/radar and communication, modulation, signal processing/detection, channel coding, etc. 
• Note that there are three rounds for scholarship application corresponding to three academic terms. For more info about the deadlines, see the key dates page.
• Furthermore, please note that getting a scholarship from UNSW as one of the top Australian universities in engineering (see 2023 Times Ranking by subject: Engineering or past years') and the largest electrical engineering school in the country is quite competitive for international applicants (regardless of applying for MPhil or PhD program) and requires high grades, a degree from a good university in your country and/or potentially quality publications (hope it doesn't discourage you from trying). However, if you are a domestic applicant or a citizen of New Zealand, you can probably secure a scholarship much easier. Nevertheless, you'll never know until you try it. So, send an email with your CV, transcripts, and a cover letter describing your qualities, your purpose for doing PhD or MPhil, your topic of interest, etc.
• Some advice: Take the journey of finding a PhD position seriously. Be patient and careful. The following tips might be helpful for you:
  • Do not contact several professors from the same school/department simultaneously by sending an identical email. That is a red flag (regardless of your qualities and merit) if they find out you have already contacted another academic as well. You should assume there is a high chance that they find it out as they are in contact with each other or sometimes they may recommend a potential student to a colleague, etc. No academic wants to waste his/her time on potential candidates whose eyes are everywhere. They also care about the manner of a potential student.
  • Contact an academic whose research area is the closest to your research interests and experiences. Note that academics also prefer to hire someone who knows about the field and probably has some experience, because such students can get on the track quicker than those who need to learn about the field. There is usually one academic in every department whose research area is the closest to yours. Start with that potential supervisor.
  • Have a look at the recent publications of the potential supervisor to get ideas on the supervisor's research topics. This way you can see if your interests are matched and whether you have a chance or not. Note that academics receive many emails from prospective students all the time. You need to stand out among those emails. By writing an email/cover letter specifically targeting the research works of the potential supervisor and showing that you are a fit, you can have a chance.
  • You need to have a good answer for the typical questions such as: why do you want to do MPhil/PhD? why do want to do it with this specific supervisor? why do you want to join this specific university? why do you want to come to Australia or any other country? etc. You need to be clear about all these questions. First, these questions help you to find the right path for your future. Secondly, these questions are usually asked in interviews. 
  • Some academics may not reply to your emails. This means they either haven't found your case strong to stand a chance for a scholarship or they think you are not a fit in terms of your academic background for the research field. So, after a while, you can move on and contact other potential supervisors. In case they come back to you later, it is okay if you have already contacted another potential supervisor. The choice will be yours as you have behaved professionally.

If you are a researcher in the fields of his expertise:

• You are welcome to contact him to ask any questions related to his published works,
• You can find the MATLAB/Python/C/C++ scripts of his developed algorithms and schemes on GitHub or CodeOcean through the IEEExplore publication pages ("Code Available" button at the top-right corner, or "Code & Datasets" section).
• He is interested to collaborate with the people in the field and contribute effectively by taking part in the work.
• If you are interested to write a review paper, he might have some ideas and contribute to your paper.

If you have come here out of curiosity or for other purposes:

• Thank you for visiting his page,
• If he may know you or you have met before, send an email and say hi. He will be very happy to hear from you,
• He is always looking for new opportunities,

• For more info about him, you can:
  • visit his Linkedin page to know about the awards he has received and his experiences, or
  • visit his Google Scholar profile to know about his publications, or
  • visit his Web of Science page (then click on the "Peer Review" tab) to know about his review works.
• Feel free to get in touch. He usually answers all the received emails.