Dr. Rehan Ahmed

Assistant Professor and Chairperson, Department of computer and software Engineering

PhD - Electrical Engineering, University of Wisconsin-Madison, USA

  • rehan.ahmed@itu.edu.pk

RESEARCH INTERESTS

Dr Rehan's research has spanned the field of real-time/embedded systems. This field involves careful co-design of hardware and software components for a given set of requirements and constraints. Dr Rehan has researched the design and analysis of these systems, focusing on their reliability and quality of service aspects. Specific topics include thermal constrained scheduling, mixed-critical systems, energy harvesting systems, and thermal security considerations in computing platforms.

Biography

Dr. Rehan Ahmed has been a part of the Computer Engineering Department at Information Technology University, Lahore, since June 2020. He completed his BSc. in Electrical Engineering from UET Lahore in 2007. Following this, he worked at LUMS SSE for one year as a Research Associate. In 2008, he went to University of Wisconsin Madison, USA, and earned his Master and a Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering from there in 2010 and 2015 respectively. His research at UW Madison was on Real-Time Systems. Specifically, he worked on consolidating the timing constraints of the real-time tasks with thermal constraints of the processing platform. Upon finishing his doctorate, Dr. Rehan joined TEC (Link), ETH Zurich, Switzerland as a postdoctoral researcher. As part of this group, Dr. Rehan diversified his research to include energy harvesting systems, mixed-criticality systems, and thermal security considerations, among other sub-fields. From March 2019 to May 2020, Dr. Rehan was an Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Electrical Engineering, GIK Institute.

  • [1]      M. U. Bukhari et al., “Enhanced Area Triboelectric Nanogenerator Utilizing Recycled Single Used Plastic Bubble Wrap and Discarded Sketching Paper Ensuring Circularity of Material,” in 2025 IEEE Conference on Technologies for Sustainability (SusTech), IEEE, 2025, pp. 1–5.
  • [2]      S. Akram, M. Abdullah, K. Nasir, S. Yaqub, R. Ahmed, and R. Hafiz, “FlexEye-Application Specific Quality-scalable ISP Tuning,” Electron. Imaging, vol. 37, pp. 1–6, 2025.
  • [3]      M. U. Bukhari et al., “Harnessing green electricity from food: a split black gram-based triboelectric nanogenerator for a self-powered autonomous lighting system and portable electronics,” ACS Appl. Bio Mater., vol. 7, no. 9, pp. 5939–5947, 2024.
  • [4]      R. Ahmed, S. Draskovic, and L. Thiele, “Stochastic guarantees for adaptive energy harvesting systems,” IEEE Trans. Comput. Des. Integr. Circuits Syst., vol. 41, no. 11, pp. 3614–3625, 2022.
  • [5]      P. Miedl, R. Ahmed, and L. Thiele, “We know what you’re doing! Application detection using thermal data,” Leibniz Trans. Embed. Syst., vol. 7, no. 1, pp. 1–2, 2021.
  • [6]      S. Draskovic, R. Ahmed, P. Huang, and L. Thiele, “Schedulability of probabilistic mixed-criticality systems,” Real-Time Syst., vol. 57, no. 4, pp. 397–442, 2021.
  • [7]      L. Sigrist, R. Ahmed, A. Gomez, and L. Thiele, “Harvesting-aware optimal communication scheme for infrastructure-less sensing,” ACM Trans. Internet Things, vol. 1, no. 4, pp. 1–26, 2020.
  • [8]      B. B. Rehan Ahmed Stefan Draskovic Lukas Sigrist Pratyush Kumar Lothar Thiele, “Optimal Power Management with Guaranteed Minimum Energy Utilization for Solar Energy Harvesting Systems,” ACM Trans. Embed. Comput. Syst., vol. 18, no. 4, 2019.
  • [9]      S. Draskovic, R. Ahmed, C. Lin, and L. Thiele, “A case for atmospheric transmittance: solar energy prediction in wireless sensor nodes,” in 2018 IEEE International Conference on Internet of Things (iThings) and IEEE Green Computing and Communications (GreenCom) and IEEE Cyber, Physical and Social Computing (CPSCom) and IEEE Smart Data (SmartData), IEEE, 2018, pp. 427–434.
  • [10]    G. Giannopoulou, P. Huang, R. Ahmed, D. B. Bartolini, and L. Thiele, “Isolation scheduling on multicores: model and scheduling approaches,” Real-time Syst., vol. 53, no. 4, pp. 614–667, 2017.
  • [11]    R. Ahmed, P. Huang, M. Millen, and L. Thiele, “On the design and application of thermal isolation servers,” ACM Trans. Embed. Comput. Syst., vol. 16, no. 5s, pp. 1–19, 2017.
  • [12]    R. Ahmed, P. Ramanathan, and K. K. Saluja, “Necessary and sufficient conditions for thermal schedulability of periodic real-time tasks under fluid scheduling model,” ACM Trans. Embed. Comput. Syst., vol. 15, no. 3, pp. 1–26, 2016.
  • [13]    P. Huang, G. Giannopoulou, R. Ahmed, D. B. Bartolini, and L. Thiele, “An isolation scheduling model for multicores,” in 2015 IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, IEEE, 2015, pp. 141–152.
  • [14]    R. Ahmed, A. Bansal, B. Kakunoori, P. Ramanathan, and K. K. Saluja, “Thermal extension of the total bandwidth server,” in 2015 28th International Conference on VLSI Design, IEEE, 2015, pp. 47–52.
  • [15]    P. Huang, G. Giannopoulou, R. Ahmed, D. B. Bartolini, and L. Thiele, “An isolation scheduling model for multicores,” in 2015 IEEE Real-Time Systems Symposium, IEEE, 2015, pp. 141–152.
  • [16]    R. Ahmed, P. Ramanathan, and K. K. Saluja, “Temperature minimization using power redistribution in embedded systems,” in 2014 27th International Conference on VLSI Design and 2014 13th International Conference on Embedded Systems, IEEE, 2014, pp. 264–269.
  • [17]    R. Ahmed, P. Ramanathan, and K. K. Saluja, “Necessary and sufficient conditions for thermal schedulability of periodic real-time tasks,” in 2014 26th Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems, IEEE, 2014, pp. 243–252.
  • [18]    R. Ahmed, P. Ramanathan, K. K. Saluja, and C. Yao, “Scheduling aperiodic tasks in next generation embedded real-time systems,” in 2013 26th International Conference on VLSI Design and 2013 12th International Conference on Embedded Systems, IEEE, 2013, pp. 25–30.
  • [19]    R. Ahmed, P. Ramanathan, and K. K. Saluja, “On thermal utilization of periodic task sets in uni-processor systems,” in 2013 IEEE 19th International Conference on Embedded and Real-Time Computing Systems and Applications, IEEE, 2013, pp. 267–276.
  • [20]    A. R. M. Maud, S. Masud, and R. Ahmed, “Architecture level design space exploration of superscalar processor for multimedia applications,” in 2009 International Symposium on Performance Evaluation of Computer & Telecommunication Systems, IEEE, 2009, pp. 21–26.
  • [21]    F. Sheikh, S. Masud, and R. Ahmed, “Superscalar architecture design for high performance DSP operations,” Microprocess. Microsyst., vol. 33, no. 2, pp. 154–160, 2009.
  • [22]    R. Ahmed, F. Sheikh, and S. Masud, “Power aware design of superscalar architecture for high performance DSP operations,” in 2008 Canadian Conference on Electrical and Computer Engineering, IEEE, 2008, pp. 433–438.
  • [23]      R. Ahmed, “3 Overview of Talks 3.1 Stochastic power management in energy harvesting systems,” Wildly Heterog. Post-CMOS Technol. Meet Softw., p. 7.

  • Gerald Holdridge Teaching Excellence Award 2014 at UW Madison
  • Best student paper award at IEEE International Conference on VLSI Design, 2015.
  • Referee services for the following journals/conferences:
    • ACM Transaction on Embedded Computing Systems (TECS)
    • Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing (JPDC)
    • IEEE Design and Test (DTSI)
    • Euromicro Conference on Real-Time Systems (ECRTS)
    • Real-Time Systems Symposium (RTSS)
    • International Conference on VLSI Design (VLSID)

  • 2020: Assistant Professor at ITU
  • 2019 - 2020: Assistant Professor at GIKI
  • 2015 -2019: Postdoctoral Researcher at ETHZ
  • 2009 - 2015: MS, Ph.D student at UW Madison
  • 2007-2008: Research Associate at LUMS
  • 2003 - 2007: BSc. Electrical Engineering student at UET Lahore