UMass Boston

Research Team

Faculty

Michael Rahaim

Dr. Rahaim is an Associate Professor in the Engineering Department at UMass Boston. He received his B.S. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Rensellaer Polytechnic Institute and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees from Boston University. He has prior work experience as an Embedded Software Engineer at Honeywell's FireLite Alarms and is co-founder of the SDR-Boston user group. He formed UCaN Lab in Fall of 2017 when he started at UMass Boston.

Homepage: mikerahaim.com

Current Students

Shabnam Azizi

Shabnam Azizi joined the UCaN Lab in September 2022 and is currently a PhD student in Computational Science with a background in Electrical and Telecommunications Engineering. Her research focuses on Data Analytics, Artificial Intelligence, Mathematics, and Communication Systems, with a particular interest in integrating Generative AI into wireless communication. She combines data analytics, machine learning/ deep learning, mathematics, and hardware-level simulations. She uses SDR and GNU Radio to test her ideas both in simulation and practice. At present, she is working on two main research problems: mobility management and handover optimization, where she applies AI to enhance network reliability, motion detection, and seamless connectivity; and the use of Generative AI in hybrid RF and Optical Wireless Communication (OWC) localization systems, focusing on indoor positioning and localization. Her PhD thesis brings these directions together, aiming to develop AI-driven solutions for mobility management and network optimization, while advancing the role of Generative AI in next-generation wireless communication research.

Kunal Sangurmath

Kunal P Sangurmath joined the UCaN Lab in Summer 2024 and received his Master of Science in Computer Science in 2025 from UMass, Boston. He developed 'gr-owc', a GNU Radio out-of-tree module for optical wireless communications (OWC) that enables real-time experimentation and algorithm prototyping, integrating VOLK (SIMD) acceleration for high-throughput signal processing. Beyond gr-owc, he builds software tools for data collection and visualization to support lab projects. In his off time, he enjoys playing cricket, watching movies, and going on long drives.

Giovani DeOliveira

Giovani joined the UCAN Lab in the summer of 2022 and is currently a senior majoring in electrical engineering. Originally from Brockton, MA, and of Cape Verdean descent, he is helping contribute to a framework of optical wireless research, focusing on characterizing and optimizing optical wireless communication systems to potentially improve performance and enable flexible setups for future research applications. His work in the lab has strengthened his skills in signal processing, circuitry, and coding. In his free time, he enjoys going to the gym, playing basketball, running, reading, and participating in activities that challenge him both mentally and physically.

David Malone

David joined UCaN lab in the spring of 2025 and is a senior majoring in Electrical Engineering. As an undergraduate research fellow, his project focuses on the development of experimental testbeds for wireless and optical communication systems in ultra-dense, dynamic environments. His work specifically examines the role of device mobility in these settings, enabling the testing and analysis of signal characteristics that are critical for advancing next-generation communication networks. Beyond his research, David is passionate about innovation and exploring new ways to bridge engineering with real-world applications. David enjoys reading math/science books, weightlifting, and pursuing hands-on personal engineering projects that allow him to combine creativity with technical skills.

Shea McAuley

Shea joined UCaN lab in Spring 2025 and is a psychology major in her senior year. She is currently working in UCaN lab as an undergraduate research assistant through UMB's college of science and mathematics, and her project is focused on the documentation of the characterization process of front end Optical Wireless hardware.

Austin Trinh

Austin joined the UCaN lab in the spring of 2025. He is a senior undergraduate majoring in Electrical Engineering. Initially, he was studying Computer Science, but his interest in electrical projects grew over time. In his sophomore year, he decided to switch majors. His project focused on developing a Dynamic Testbed framework for ultra-dense radio and Optical Wireless Networks (OWC). Additionally, he collected baseline data and created documentation for future reference by other researchers. While working in the lab, he learned a new coding language (e.g., Bash) and strengthened his understanding of network protocols. In his free time, Austin enjoys reading, working out, and checking movie reviews to decide what to watch in his own time.

Former Students

Alumni of UCaN Lab

Jordan Hendricks

Jordan joined UCaN lab in summer 2023 through the IDS and McNair Fellowship programs. Prior to graduating in 2025, he worked on projects related to data collection for indoor positioning systems, testbed design for multi-node wireless networks, and indoor optical wireless communications.

Jariel Rodriguez

Jariel joined UCaN lab in Spring of 2023 from the UMass Boston IT program. Jariel's work focused on testbed functionality for the lab's multi-node wireless network testbed. In particular, he implemented functionality to remotely set individual Raspberry Pi nodes as Access Points for configuring automated throughput analysis tests in dense wireless environments.

Christopher Onwuchekwa

Christopher joined UCaN Lab in Fall 2022 as part of the Beyond 5G Student Challenge from AFRL and the Wright Brothers Institute. He helped to develop remote access functionality for the lab's SDR testbed, particularly using XMLRPC and ZMQ tools within the GNURadio toolkit for Software Defined Radio.

Lenny Martinez

Lenny joined UCaN lab in summer 2022. His project is focused on the development of a data collection testbed for wireless network performance, and he used testbed to evaluate the impact of data offloading in ultra-dense wireless networks. Lenny served in the United States Marine Corps for 8 years and is an executive board member of the UMass Boston Student Veterans Center, where they provide advice, tutoring and a space where veterans can go be themselves and talk about anything without judgement. In his off time, he enjoys going to the gym, scuba diving, surfing, and snowboarding.

Victoria Planchart

Victoria joined UCaN lab in summer 2022 and worked as an undergraduate research fellow through UMB's college of science and mathematics. Her project focused on the evaluation of an opportunistic relay architecture for ultra-dense wireless networks. Victoria is an International student from Venezuela who is a member of the UMB Casa Lantinx student organization club. In her free time, she enjoys reading thrillers books and watching baseball games.

Ishan Dubey

Ishan joined UCaN lab in the Spring of 2022 as a graduate student in the UMass Boston Computer Science department. He worked on data collection tools for mobility analysis in ultra dense wireless networks, along with data processing and visualization software to observe statistical characteristics of collected data.

Humza Ali

Humza received his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from UMASS Boston in 2022 and is currently employed as an embedded software engineer at Silicon Labs. He joined UCaN lab in the summer of 2021 and was an undergraduate research fellow through UMB's college of science and mathematics. He focused on the development of a data collection testbed for performance analysis of ultra-dense wireless networks.

John Carlo Laude

John received his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering from UMASS Boston in 2021. He joined UCaN lab in the Spring semester of 2020. He also worked at the UMass Boston IT service desk and participates in a variety of cultural activities. John's research project involveed modeling visible light communication systems with the GNU radio software defined radio toolbox in order to create an open source library/repository for other researchers to use.

Augustus Standeven

Augustus received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from UMASS Boston in 2021. He joined UCAN Lab in Spring 2020 as an undergraduate research fellow through UMB's college of science and mathematics.. His project involved modeling visible light communications systems within the GNURadio software defined radio toolbox in order to create an open source library for other researchers to model their own visible light communications systems.

Shagun Varma

Shagun joined UCaN lab in the Spring of 2020 as a graduate student in the UMass Boston Computer Science department. Her project focused on analysis of the diverse and time varying characteristics of wireless devices. This analysis aims to study the device usage and mobility in ultradense wireless networks in order to evaluate accurate values and representations of the realistic systems as compared to the statistical analysis.

Max Potter

Max joined the UCaN Lab team from UMass Boston’s electrical engineering program. Max received a BA in English with a minor in Mathematics from Suffolk University in 2011, before starting an eclectic career spanning medical education, technical writing, and media production. He returned to school to complete a BS in electrical engineering and worked in UCaN lab from Summer 2019 until Summer 2020. His project focused on characterization of various optical wireless front end hardware to understand nonlinearities in the optical conversion.

Myles Toole

Myles joined UCaN Lab from UMass Boston’s electrical engineering program as a Freshman in the Spring semester of 2018. He worked on a variety of projects during his 4 year tenure in UCaN lab, including the development of a testbed based on distributed Raspberry Pi microcontrollers that allows for analysis of Wi-Fi Traffic He also used this testbed to evaluate the broader impacts of data offloading to Optical Wireless Communication cells.

Jasmine Hinkey

Jasmine joined UCaN Lab as a computer science student at UMass Boston. She worked in the lab from Summer 2018 through Fall 2019. Her projects focused on analysis of typical accelerations and orientations of mobile electronic devices, and how these, combined with a device’s currently running applications, can impact the connection to wireless networks.

Jason Nguyen

Jason received his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from UMASS Boston in 2019. He is currently employed as a Field Engineer for Eversource. He was part of UCaN Lab from Spring of 2018 and his work focused on development of a visible light communication (VLC) system with Internet connectivity as well as an open source library for those who are new to optical communication.