IT researchers were distinguished at the 23rd International Symposium on Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications (WPMC) with the Best Student Paper Award. (see more) The winning paper, titled “Automated Joint Access and Backhaul Planning for 5G Millimeter-Wave Small Cell Networks”, was authored by IST graduate student Beatriz Marques, in partnership with IT and under the supervision of Pedro Vieira (IT/ISEL), Paula Queluz (IT/IST) and António Rodrigues (IT/IST). Within the evolution of fifth generation mobile networks (5G), the work focused on key solutions for radio technologies, namely a radio network planning algorithm towards 5G millimeter-wave (mmWave) small cell architectures. Small-cell technology, the backbone of 5G networks, is uniquely capable of handling high data rates for mobile broadband and consumers and, for IoT, high densities of low-speed, low-power devices, making it perfect for the 5G rollout. The theme of this year’s conference was “Bridging wireless and business worlds”. The event was held from October 19-26 in a virtual edition, due to the coronavirus pandemic, and was co-sponsored by Okayama University, the National Institute of Information and Communication Technology (NICT), Yokosuka Research Park (YRP), and CTIF Global Capsule (CGC). Launched in 1998, the WPMC symposium is a global platform which aims at enabling academia-industry-government collaboration in the field of wireless information. It encapsulates the high-end wireless technology and the current market and trends to create future businesses and innovative societies.