Honoring a Profound Impact on WPI, Wireless Technology, and Society

To be the keeper of a legacy is a tremendous honor, and when the legacy is as profound as that of Professor Kaveh Pahlavan, PhD ’79, the honor becomes all the greater. When Pahlavan passed away in the fall of 2024, his family chose to honor him by establishing the Professor Kaveh Pahlavan Endowed Scholarship. His wife, Farzaneh, says, “My husband always said the body goes but your legacy keeps you alive. When he became very sick, I immediately decided to establish a scholarship in his name to honor his tremendous professional accomplishments.” 

A pioneer in indoor wireless communications, Pahlavan joined WPI as an assistant professor of electrical engineering in 1985. He would eventually become a professor of electrical and computer engineering and, finally, computer science.

“Professor Kaveh Pahlavan had a transformative impact on WPI and its students through his pioneering research in wireless communications and indoor geolocation, which elevated WPI’s global reputation in these fields,” says Rick Brown, Weston Hadden Endowed Professor in Electrical Engineering and head of the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “He fostered interdisciplinary collaboration, mentored generations of students, and prepared them for impactful careers in academia, industry, and entrepreneurship. He inspired students to explore new frontiers in wireless networking and related applications. Through his leadership, global collaborations, and dedication to hands-on project-based learning, Professor Pahlavan left a lasting legacy of excellence, innovation, and opportunity at WPI.”

Paving the way for today’s universal Wi-Fi networks, Pahlavan established at WPI the Center for Wireless Information Network Studies (CWINS) Endowed Fund and, with it, the nation’s first university research laboratory in the field. “My father was devoted to his research in the CWINS Lab, where he and his students worked to solve the stunting issue of how to transmit wireless signals around obstacles indoors without losing the signal,” says Pahlavan’s daughter, Nasim Kablan.

Explaining her father’s commitment to WPI, Kablan shares it was her father’s deep understanding of WPI’s challenging academic curriculum that led him back to his alma mater. “As an alumnus, my father decided to teach at WPI because he wanted to be at a rigorous institution that would give him the resources to start a research laboratory and apply his research directly to his students’ education. He did not just want to teach; he wanted to do important work and take his students along for the ride.”

WPI’s Lehr und Kunst model turned out to be the ideal environment for Pahlavan’s work. “At that time, academia was traditionally more theoretical than practice, but WPI provided my father a platform to use his out-of-the-box thinking to develop a career that had meaning for hundreds of graduates and the entire field of wireless communication. With the support and freedom to create his own destiny by following his own vision of what research should look like, my father brought students, faculty, and corporations to work alongside each other to ensure the research led to viable products. He brought this learning into the classroom so students could learn through experiencing the development of technology,” says Kablan.

When asked why she established the Professor Kaveh Pahlavan Endowed Scholarship fund, Farzaneh Pahlavan says, “My husband was truly a mentor at heart. He did not feel ownership of the work he accomplished. For him, it was meant to be owned by anyone who could benefit from it. He wanted every generation of students to continue to build on his research and carry the torch of his learnings. He wanted students to become teachers and entrepreneurs and scientists. He wanted each generation to build on his work and for his work to continue to live on through the work of the younger generations. Knowing how deeply his students mattered to him, I established the Professor Kaveh Pahlavan Endowed Scholarship as part of Beyond These Towers: The Campaign for Worcester Polytechnic Institute in honor of his memory.”

According to former student and mentee Ker Zhang, MS ’90, Pahlavan was fiercely passionate about mentorship. “As when Professor Pahlavan brought me into the wireless field and used research funding to support my education, the Professor Kaveh Pahlavan Endowed Scholarship will inspire the next generation of engineers to carry forward the legacy of innovation and impact that he championed,” says Zhang.

Remembering his dear friend and colleague, Allen Levesque ’59 says, “Kaveh and I enjoyed a more-than-30-year collaboration as co-authors, co-investigators, ECE department colleagues, and good friends. Over the years, I developed an enormous respect for his talents and accomplishments as a teacher, researcher, and consultant to fledgling companies entering the growing industry for wireless services and technology.”

Pahlavan’s daughter says she was proud of the greatness he accomplished, but his genuine humility and lack of ego meant most people did not know how important he was to world history. “Through this scholarship, my family hopes to inspire a new generation of creative-minded scientists to learn about my dad and follow in his footsteps,” says Kablan.