Thomas Hou received his B.E. degree from the City College of New York in 1991, M.S. degree from Columbia University in 1993, and Ph.D. degree from Polytechnic Institute of New York University (formerly known as Polytechnic University) in 1998, all in Electrical Engineering. From 1997 to 2002, Dr. Hou was a Researcher at Fujitsu Laboratories of America, Sunnyvale, CA. Since 2002, he has been with Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University ("Virginia Tech"), the Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Blacksburg, VA, where he is now an Associate Professor.

Prof. Hou's research interests are cross-layer design and optimization for cognitive radio wireless networks, cooperative communications, MIMO-based ad hoc networks, video communications over dynamic ad hoc networks, and algorithm design for sensor networks. He is a recipient of an Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Award (2003) and a National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award (2004) for his research on optimizations and algorithm design for wireless ad hoc and sensor networks. He has published extensively in leading IEEE and ACM journals and top-tier IEEE and ACM conferences and received five best paper awards from IEEE (including IEEE INFOCOM 2008 Best Paper Award and IEEE ICNP 2002 Best Paper Award). He holds five U.S patents.

Prof. Hou is currently serving as an Editor of IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, ACM/Springer Wireless Networks (WINET), and Elsevier Ad Hoc Networks. He was a past Associate Editor of IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. He was Co-Chair of Technical Program Committee (TPC) of the Second International Conference on Cognitive Radio Oriented Wireless Networks and Communications (CROWNCOM 2007), Orlando, FL, August 1-3, 2007. He was Founding Chair of the First IEEE Workshop on Networking Technologies for Software Defined Radio Networks, September 25, 2006, Reston, VA.

Prof. Hou was Co-Chair (with Tony Ephremides) of NSF Workshop on Bridging the Gap between Wireless Networking Technologies and Advances at the Physical Layer, August 27-28, 2007, Reston, VA. He is TPC Co-Chair of IEEE INFOCOM 2009, to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.