• Ph.D., Electrical & Computer Engineering, with Additional Concentration in Neuro-Engineering, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign 
• M.S., Electrical Engineering, Tuskegee University
• B.S., Electrical Engineering, Tuskegee University

For More Information

Secure Signals and Systems (SSS) Research Group

Biography

Dr. Cliston Cole received both B.S. and M.S. degrees from Tuskegee University in Electrical Engineering. He also received a Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, working in the Human Speech Recognition group under Prof. Jont Allen. Since 2020, he has been on the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering faculty at Morgan State University (MSU), where he serves as an Assistant Professor.

Dr. Cole’s research focuses on improving the quality of life for humans and protecting cyber-physical systems in networks by developing advanced software and hardware systems for biological and communication applications, such as noise reduction and accelerating hardware for emerging hearing aids. His research spans auditory psychophysics and neuroscience, algorithms and architectures for statistical signal processing and communication systems, emerging hardware for artificial intelligence, and mathematical cybersecurity for protecting information exchanges in networks, which are the fundamental driving forces for developing next-generation communication technologies and security solutions.   

Before joining the electrical and computer faculty at MSU, Dr. Cole was a skilled systems and electronic engineer with Raytheon Technologies and NAVAIR, with experience in signal processing for weapon systems for DoD. In 2023, he was a recipient Summer Fellow for the Air Force Research Laboratory, where his mission was to advance reliable, stable, and sustainable communication networks under adversary attacks by implementing resilient distributed algorithms.

Academic Positions

• Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2020 – present
• Graduate Program Director, Electrical and Computer Engineering, 2022 – present

Other Professional Employment

• Raytheon Technologies, Radar Signal Processing Group, Tucson, Az, 2017-2020
• NAVAIR Weapons Division, Radar Signal Processing Group, China Lake, Ca, 2007 - 2010

Other Professional Activities

• Summer Fellow, AFOSR, SFFP, AFRL-Information Directorate, Rome, NY
• Faculty affiliated, Cybersecurity Assurance and Policy (CAP) Research Center
• Faculty affiliated, Computation, Circuits, Cognition, and Cybernetics (C4) Laboratory

Research Interests

• Human speech recognition: Auditory neuroscience; Speech perception; Audio signal processing; Natural language processing; Speech processing for hearing aid applications
• Advanced hardware systems: Emerging hardware; Accelerating hardware; Software-defined hardware; Quantum-inspired systems; Bio-circuit design for biological systems
• Secure communications: Convex optimization; Advanced resilient distributed algorithms for autonomous dynamical systems; Network vulnerabilities analysis

Research Areas

• Acoustics
• Audio, speech, music and auditory processing
• Neuro-Engineering
• Communications
• Multi-agent systems and robot control
• Network security
• Circuits

Recent Courses Taught

• EEGR 580 – Advanced Cybersecurity
• EEGR 582 – Advanced Cryptography
• EEGR 765 – Advanced Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning
• EEGR 481 – Introduction to Network Security
• EEGR 161 – Introduction to C Programming