About Me

I’m Nitish Vikas Deshpande, fifth year Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering at University of California San Diego. I am working as a graduate student researcher at UC San Diego under the supervision of Prof. Robert W. Heath Jr. I transferred my Ph.D. from NC State ECE to UCSD ECE in Jan 2024 after getting a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from NC State in Dec 2023. I completed my B.Tech from Electrical Engineering, Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, India in May 2021.
My research interest is analyzing and designing wireless communication systems, focusing on wideband, large-array, and reconfigurable antenna based MIMO systems. I apply a physically consistent circuit theory approach to model communication systems, bridging the gap between EM theory and information theory.
In summer of 2024 and 2025, I interned in the Modem Systems team in Qualcomm working on channel estimation for the 5G modem. I completed two summer internships at the Radio Systems Research Group of Nokia Bell Labs in 2022 and 2023. For the summer 2023 internship at Nokia Bell Labs, I received the “Outstanding student research” award. For the academic year 2023-2024, our team at NC State received the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship award for the project “Hybrid beamforming using dynamic metasurface antennas for wideband massive MIMO.”

News and Updates

[June 2025- Sept 2025] Summer internship in Modem systems team in Qualcomm focusing on channel estimation for 5G Modem
[June 2025] Conference talk for the paper titled “Frequency-Selective Beamforming with Dynamic Metasurface Antennas,” at ICC 2025 in Montreal, Canada.
[Oct 2025] Conference talk for the paper titled “Frequency‑reconfigurable adhoc networks with dynamic metasurface antennas,” at MILCOM 2025 in Los Angeles, United States.

[Jan 2024] Transferred my PhD from NC State to UCSD and continuing research with Prof. Robert W. Heath Jr.
[June 2024- Sept 2024] Summer internship in Modem systems team in Qualcomm focusing on channel estimation for 5G Modem
[Oct 2024] Student Panelist in Brooklyn 6G Summit
[Nov 2024] Recipient of Shannon Graduate Fellowship for the academic year 2024-25

[March 2023] Conference talk for the paper “Analysis of dense array massive MIMO with practical constraints,” at WSA & SCC 2023 in Braunschweig, Germany.
[Jun 2023- Aug 2023] Summer internship in Radio Systems Reseach group at Nokia Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ. Received the “Outstanding student research award” for the intern project on “Analog beamforming using parasitic reconfigurable antenna array.”
[Sept 2023] For the academic year 2023-2024, our team at NC State received the Qualcomm Innovation Fellowship award for the project “Hybrid beamforming using dynamic metasurface antennas for wideband massive MIMO.”
[Dec 2023] Conference talk for the paper titled “Achievable rate of a SISO system under wideband matching network constraints,” at Globecom 2023 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
[Dec 2023] Graduated with Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from NC State

[Jun 2022 - Aug 2022] Summer internship in Radio Systems Reseach group at Nokia Bell Labs in Murray Hill, NJ. Research project on dense array massive MIMO system modeling using circuit theory
[Nov 2022] Presented a poster on “Nonuniform true time delay precoding in wideband MISO systems” in Asilomar conference on signals, systems, and computers in Pacific Grove, CA.