Vuran developed love of wireless communications as a child disassembling radios

As a young boy growing up in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, Mehmet Can Vuran would disassemble radios for fun to see what was inside and then put them back together. 

"We were living very close to the airport, so after playing with the radio, I was able to pick up tower communications," he said. "It was fascinating to hear real-life radio operators on a radio I tinkered with."

Today, Vuran teaches wireless communications and is a renowned computing expert in wireless sensor networks. He is the Dale M. Jensen Chair and Professor of Computing in the College of Engineering's School of Computing and a fellow of the National Strategic Research Institute at the University of Nebraska. He also directs the UNL Cyber-Physical Networking Lab, which specializes in wireless networks of systems that are aware of their environment and can rapidly adapt to and change that environment.