Professor and Thomas G. Pine Faculty Fellow

Director, Multimedia & Wireless Networks Research Group

Electrical and Computer Engineering Department
San Diego State University
San Diego, CA 92182-1309 USA
Phone: 619-594-7012 (W); Fax: (619)594-2654
Email: skumar@sdsu.edu

Dr. Sunil Kumar received his B.E. (Electronics Engineering) from National Institute of Technology, Surat (India) in 1988, and the M.E. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science (BITS), Pilani (India) in 1993 and 1997, respectively. From 1997 to 2002, Dr. Kumar was a postdoctoral researcher and adjunct faculty in the Electrical Engineering Department  at the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. 

Currently, Dr. Kumar is a Professor and Thomas G. Pine Faculty Fellow in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at San Diego State University (SDSU), San Diego, California. Prior to this, he served as an Assistant Professor in the Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at Clarkson University, Potsdam, NY (2002 – 2006). He was a Visiting Professor (in 2014) and ASEE Summer Faculty Fellow at the U. S. Air Force Research Laboratory in Rome, NY, (in summer of 2007, 2008 and 2017), where he conducted research in airborne and directional wireless networks.

Dr. Kumar is a recipient of several awards and honors, including the SDSU Alumni Outstanding Faculty Award, President’s Leadership Fund Award for Faculty Excellence, and Distinguished Alumnus Award from his alma mater NIT (Surat, India). He is a senior member of IEEE and has published more than 170 research articles in refereed international journals and conferences, 4 books, and received 5 U.S. patents. He has served on editorial boards of journals, including as an associate editor of IEEE Transactions of Circuits & Systems for Video Technology and a guest editor of special issues. He also serves on the technical program committees of many conferences and has organized special sessions and workshops in various conferences. His research has been supported by the grants/awards from the National Science Foundation, U.S. Air Force Research Laboratory, California Energy Commission, and industry.

Dr. Kumar's research interests include (i) QoS-aware and cross-layer protocols for wireless ad hoc, mesh, airborne, sensor, cognitive radio, and cellular networks, including directional communication and spectrum resource optimization, (ii) Error resilient multimedia compression techniques for wireless transmission, including HEVC and H.264/AVC, and (iii) applications of machine learning techniques in wireless networks.