ECSN 3.912
Mailstop: EC33

Lakshman Tamil

Education

Ph.D. Electrical Engineering, University of Rhode Island, 1989 M.S. Mathematics, University of Rhode Island, 1989 M. Tech. Microwave and Optical Communications Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Karagpur, 1983 B.E. Electronics and Communications Engineering, Madurai Kamaraj University, 1981

Overview

Dr. Lakshman Tamil is a tenured full Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the director of Quality of Life Technology Laboratory at the University of Texas at Dallas. He is an academic with both corporate and entrepreneurial experience. Tamil pioneered the design and development of multi-terabit switches using photonic-electronic hybrid switching, multi-beam multi-directional antenna for wireless applications including 5G, and optical devices using inverse scattering techniques. He is also an innovator in the design of Artificial Intelligence based software devices for disease monitoring and management, and telemedicine.

Previously, Dr. Tamil was the Founder, CEO and CTO of Yotta Networks Inc., a venture capital supported company that designed and marketed terabit-switching platforms. He also served as a Senior Manager directing research on advanced optical networks at Alcatel’s (now Nokia) Corporate Research Center, Richardson, TX. Here, he led a team of international scientists to design and demonstrate the first all-optical router. He was recognized with an award by Alcatel for his technical leadership. His U.S. patent 6,169,910 was the core asset of the Spike Technologies, Inc. that developed and marketed the early MMDS system, a precursor to the modern Wi-Max. He has been a technology consultant to Raytheon Co., Electrospace Systems Inc., Spike Technologies, Inc., Lighthouse Capital Partners and McKool Smith LLP.

Over the course of his career, he has contributed to more than 160 research publications and 23 patents and has directed 24 doctoral dissertations. He has also served as an associate editor for Radio Science (Journal Sponsored by the American Geophysical Union and the International Radio Science Union) and as a member of the editorial boards of Optical Fiber Technology: Material, Devices and Systems (Elsevier) and Optical Network Magazine (Kluwer Academic Publishers). Some of his latest research contributions are machine learning algorithms for automated detection of breast cancer from mammogram images (automammogram.utdallas.edu), heart arrhythmia detection from wearable ECG devices (autoecg.utdallas.edu), sleep apnea detection from ECG and oximetry, asthma and COPD vulnerability prediction and oral cancer detection from smartphone camera images.

Dr. Tamil is the recipient of the best teaching award of the ECE department in 2022. Dr. Tamil is an elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors (NAI), the OPTICA (Optical Society of America) and the Electromagnetics Academy, an elected member of the International Radio Science Union (URSI) commission B and D, a Senior Member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

Dr. Tamil is also serving now as the President and CEO of HygeiaTel, Inc. a start-up that commercializes some of the innovations of the Quality of Life Technology Laboratory, and as a member of the governing and advisory boards of a few companies.

Research Interests

Quantum Machine Learning,
Telemedicine,
Internet of Things (IoT),
Machine learning and artificial intelligence applications to Medicine and Healthcare.