Dr. Sihua Shao joins Mines as an Assistant Professor with the Department of Electrical Engineering in August 2024. Prior to that, he was an Assistant Professor of Electrical Engineering at New Mexico Tech. He obtained the Ph.D. degree in Electrical Engineering and the Hashimoto Prize for best doctoral dissertation from New Jersey Institute of Technology in 2018. In 2023, he was honored to receive the NSF CRII Award, the NM EPSCoR Mentor Award, and was elevated to IEEE Senior Member. His area of expertise is wireless communication and networking, mainly focusing on reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, integrated sensing and communication, optical wireless communication, backscatter communication, machine learning in communications and networking, and drone-assisted wireless networks. His research, supported by the NSF, NIOSH, and NM EPSCoR, spans various applications including drone-based environmental monitoring, wireless infrastructure via drones, intelligent mine rescue operations, large-scale indoor robot navigation, microgrid security, warehouse automation, and smart healthcare systems.