Prof. Dr. Anna Förster
Short biography
Born in Sofia, Bulgaria, 13.04.1979
Married, 1 son
1993 - 1994 Deutsches Gymnasium "Prof. K. Galabov" in Sofia, Bulgaria
1998 - 2000 Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria
2000-2004 MSc in Computer Science and Aerospace Engineering, Free University of Berlin, Germany
2004 - 2005 IT Consultant with McKinsey & Company, Berlin, Germany
2005 - 2009 PhD in Computer Science, University of Lugano, Switzerland
2009 - 2010 Postdoc, University of Lugano, Switzerland
2010 - 2014 Researcher, University of Applied Sciences of Southern Switzerland, Lugano, Switzerland
since 2015 - Professor at the University of Bremen
Member of IEEE, IEEE Communication Society, ACM, Gesellschaft für Informatik (GI) and VDE.
Director of the Bremen Spatial Cognition Center (https://bscc.spatial-cognition.de/)
Board member of the Technologiezentrum Informatik (https://www.uni-bremen.de/tzi/)
Board member of the Zentrum für Multimedia in der Lehre (
https://www.uni-bremen.de/zmml)
Selected awards:
- Best paper award at IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference 2021
- Berninghausen award for excellence in teaching, 2019
Selected papers:
[1] G. Kimutai, A. Ngenzi, S. R. Ngoga, and A. Forster, “Offloading an Energy-Efficient IoT Solution to the Edge: A Practical Solution for Developing Countries,” in 2021 IEEE Global Humanitarian Technology Conference (GHTC), Oct. 2021, pp. 265–272. doi: 10.1109/GHTC53159.2021.9612420.
[2] A. Könsgen and A. Förster, “Current state and future challenges in deep space communication: A survey,” It - Inf. Technol., vol. 63, no. 4, pp. 219–234, Sep. 2021, doi: 10.1515/itit-2021-0002.
[3] C. A. Boano et al., “IoTBench: Towards a benchmark for low-power wireless networking,” in 2018 IEEE workshop on benchmarking cyber-physical networks and systems (CPSBench), 2018, pp. 36–41. doi: 10.1109/CPSBench.2018.00013.
[4] F. Cellina, A. Förster, D. Rivola, L. Pampuri, R. Rudel, and A. E. Rizzoli, “Using smartphones to profile mobility patterns in a living lab for the transition to e-mobility,” in International symposium on environmental software systems, 2013, pp. 154–163.
[5] J. Dede et al., “Simulating Opportunistic Networks: Survey and Future Directions,” IEEE Commun. Surv. Tutor., vol. PP, no. 99, pp. 1–1, 2017, doi: 10.1109/COMST.2017.2782182.
[6] V. Kuppusamy, U. M. Thanthrige, A. Udugama, and A. Förster, “Evaluating Forwarding Protocols in Opportunistic Networks: Trends, Advances, Challenges and Best Practices,” Future Internet, vol. 11, no. 5, p. 113, May 2019, doi: 10.3390/fi11050113.
[7] A. Förster and A. L. Murphy, “Froms: A failure tolerant and mobility enabled multicast routing paradigm with reinforcement learning for WSNs,” Ad Hoc Netw., vol. 9, no. 5, pp. 940–965, 2011.
[8] J. L. E. K. Fendji, C. T. Kenmogne, D. J. Fotsa-Mbogne, and A. Förster, “Improving Farmers’ Revenue in Crop Rotation Systems with Plot Adjacency Constraints in Organic Farms with Nutrient Amendments,” Appl. Sci., vol. 11, no. 15, Art. no. 15, Jan. 2021, doi: 10.3390/app11156775.
[9] A. Forster, Introduction to wireless sensor networks. IEEE Wiley, 2016.
[10] A. Förster, T. Karunathilake, J. Dede, and A. Udugama, “Benchmarking data dissemination protocols for opportunistic networks,” in Proceedings of the Workshop on Benchmarking Cyber-Physical Systems and Internet of Things, New York, NY, USA, May 2021, pp. 12–19. doi: 10.1145/3458473.3458819.
[11] Y. Mehmood et al., “M2M Potentials in logistics and transportation industry,” Logist. Res., vol. 9, no. 1, p. 15, 2016.
[12] K. Qayyum, I. Zaman, and A. Förster, “H2O Sense: a WSN-based monitoring system for fish tanks,” SN Appl. Sci., vol. 2, no. 10, p. 1643, Sep. 2020, doi: 10.1007/s42452-020-03328-3.
[13] D. W. Sambo, A. Forster, B. O. Yenke, I. Sarr, B. Gueye, and P. Dayang, “Wireless underground sensor networks path loss model for precision agriculture (WUSN-PLM),” IEEE Sens. J., vol. 20, no. 10, pp. 5298–5313, 2020.
[14] D. Témoa, A. Förster, S. Doka Yamigno, and others, “A reinforcement learning based intercell interference coordination in LTE networks,” Future Internet, vol. 11, no. 1, p. 19, 2019.
[15] A. Udugama et al., “My smartphone tattles: Considering popularity of messages in opportunistic data dissemination,” Future Internet, vol. 11, no. 2, p. 29, 2019.
[16] A. Udugama, A. Förster, J. Dede, and V. Kuppusamy, “Simulating Opportunistic Networks with OMNeT++,” in Recent Advances in Network Simulation: The OMNeT++ Environment and its Ecosystem, A. Virdis and M. Kirsche, Eds. Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2019, pp. 425–449. doi: 10.1007/978-3-030-12842-5_14.
[17] D. Vasconcelos et al., “Counting Mosquitoes in the Wild: An Internet of Things Approach,” in Proceedings of the Conference on Information Technology for Social Good, New York, NY, USA, Sep. 2021, pp. 43–48. doi: 10.1145/3462203.3475914.
[18] D. Wohwe Sambo, B. O. Yenke, A. Förster, and P. Dayang, “Optimized clustering algorithms for large wireless sensor networks: A review,” Sensors, vol. 19, no. 2, p. 322, 2019.
[19] I. Zaman, M. Gellhaar, J. Dede, H. Koehler, and A. Foerster, “Design and evaluation of MoleNet for wireless underground sensor networks,” in 2016 IEEE 41st conference on local computer networks workshops (LCN workshops), 2016, pp. 145–147. doi: 10.1109/LCN.2016.040.
Research areas
My main research interests lie in self-organising and autonomous sensor, opportunistic networks and underground sensor networks. I apply various artificial intelligence techniques, like machine learning and swarm intelligence, to various aspects of wireless communication protocols and applications. One important aspect of my research are practical applications, which contribute to the global achievement of the Sustainable Development Goals. Such applications include decision agriculture, environmental monitoring, safety monitoring, health applications, and many more. Furthermore, I am very interested in usability of internet of things applications to increase their impact and usefulness.