AraFest’25
September 27 – 28, 2025
Ames, Iowa
The ARA wireless living lab now stands as the first-of-its-kind platform supporting at-scale, high-capacity wireless x-haul mesh networks, heterogeneous wireless access, and LEO satellite communications. ARA offers wireless x-haul communication capacities exceeding 100 Gbps, wireless access capacities up to 3 Gbps, and cell radius reaching up to 10 km. Operating across frequency bands spanning TVWS, mid-band, mmWave, and THz, and offering deep programmability across both access and x-haul platforms, ARA enables transformative wireless research and application development that would be infeasible otherwise.
To grow and strengthen community collaborations in research, education, and innovation and to highlight ARA-enabled advances within major national initiatives (e.g., NSF/USDA AI Institute projects ICICLE and AIIRA, NTIA Innovation Fund project ACCoRD), we are excited to host AraFest’25, the third ARA annual community event. Building on the success of AraFest’24 and the 2023 Public Launch, AraFest’25 will feature keynotes, leadership and technical discussions, hands-on demonstrations, research posters, training workshops, and immersive field tours. AraFest’25 offers participants a unique opportunity to explore the future of open, programmable, interoperable wireless technologies and their real-world applications in domains such as precision agriculture as well as smart and connected communities.
Sept. 27, 2025 (Saturday)
Location: Student Innovation Center (Rooms 2221 and 2206)
8:00 am – 8:30 am: registration & breakfast
8:30 am – 8:45 am: Welcome Remarks (NSF, PAWR Project Office)
- Behrooz Shirazi, Acting Division Director (CISE/CNS), National Science Foundation
- Mari Silbey, Program Director, PAWR Project Office
8:45 am – 9:30 am: ARA Overview
- Hongwei Zhang, ARA PI; Director (Center for Wireless, Communities and Innovation – WiCI), Richardson Professor (ECE), Iowa State University
- Daji Qiao, ARA Co-PI; Professor & Associate Chair (ECE), Iowa State University
9:30 am – 10:30 pm: Featured Community Talks (1)
- “Federated Multi-Objective Learning”, Jia (Kevin) Liu, Associate Professor, Ohio State University
- “Online Digital Network Twin via Neural Radio Radiance Field”, Qiang Liu, Assistant Professor, University of Nebraska – Lincoln
10:30 am – 11:00 am: coffee break
11:00 am – 12:00 am: Featured Community Talks (2)
- “SigCap: A Crowdsourcing Platform for Wireless Broadband Mapping and Analysis”, Muhammad Iqbal C. Rochman, Postdoc, University of Notre Dame
- “Beyond Earth: Rethinking Wireless and Autonomy with AI”, Eduardo Baena, Postdoc, Northeastern University
12:00 am – 12:15 pm: Empowering Education with ARA
- Mohamed Selim, ARA Co-PI; Associate Teaching Professor (ECE), Iowa State University
12:15 pm – 1:30 pm: lunch break
1:30 pm – 2:10 pm: ARA Tutorial
- Sarath Babu, ARA Software Lead, Research Assistant Professor (ECE), Iowa State University
2:10 pm – 4:10 pm: Platform-Focused ARA Use Training (parallel session)
2:10 pm – 4:10 pm: Community Building Work Session (parallel session)
4:10 pm – 4:30 pm: coffee break
4:30 pm – 5:00 pm: Community Collaboration & Arathon (Introduction, Data, and Teaming)
5:00 pm – 6:30 pm: Site Visit
6:30 pm – 8:30 pm: Poster & Reception
- “Synthetic CSI Dataset Generation for O-RAN Slices”, EmadEldin Abdrabou, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech).
- “Semantic Agentic Control for Space and Non-Terrestrial Networks via Model Context Protocol (MCP)”, Eduardo Baena, Northeastern University.
- “Multi-Modal Sensing and Fusion in mmWave Beamforming for Connected Vehicles”, Muhammad Baqer Mollah, University of Houston.
- “TEGRA: A Flexible and Scalable NextGen Mobile Core”, Bilal Saleem, Purdue University.
- “AI-Driven Scheduling for Probabilistic Real-Time Guarantees in Industrial URLLC Networks”, Eman Alqudah, Iowa State University.
- “Hybrid GRU-LSTM Traffic Forecasting for Research and Education Networks”, Mohammad Arafath Uddin Shariff, University of Nebraska-Lincoln.
- “SigCap: A Crowdsourcing Platform for Wireless Broadband Mapping and Analysis” Muhammad Iqbal Rochman, University of Notre Dame.
- “Indoor/Outdoor Spectrum Sharing Enabled by GNSS-based Classifiers”, Hossein Nasiri, University of Notre Dame.
Sept. 28, 2025 (Sunday)
Location: Student Innovation Center (Rooms 2221 and 2206)
8:00 am – 8:30 am: breakfast
8:30 am – 9:00 am: Arathon Q&A
9:00 am – 12:30 pm: Arathon Sprint 1
12:30 pm – 1:30 pm: lunch break
1:30 pm – 4:30 pm: Arathon Sprint 2
4:30 pm – 5:30 pm: Team Presentations
5:30 pm – 6:00 pm: closing
Note: all times are in US Central Time.
Venue
AraFest’25 will be held at the 2221 Student Innovation Center (606 Bissell Rd, Ames, IA 50011)
Fun facts about the Iowa State University campus and the City of Ames can be found here.
Hotels
AraFest’25 participants are strongly encouraged to book hotels ASAP before hotel rooms run out or become very pricy.
Gateway Hotel and Conference Center
2100 Green Hills Drive, Ames, IA
(515)292-8600
Radisson Hotel and Conference Center, Ames
2609 University Blvd, Ames, IA
(515)259-1973
Best Western Plus University Park Inn & Suites
2500 University Blvd, Ames, IA 50010
(515)296-2500
Econo Lodge
2600 SE 16th St, Ames, IA 50010
(515)233-6060
Other great hotels in Ames can be found here.
* Information is for informal reference only. Please check with the individual hotels for the latest information on room rates and cancellation polices.
Travel
Many commercial and commuter airlines serve the Des Moines International Airport (DSM), which is 35 miles away from Ames, Iowa. Private planes use the Ames Municipal Airport. Car rental is available at the Des Moines airport. There are other airports around 1 hour driving from Ames such as Fort Dodge Airport (on-site car rental is not available) and Mason City Airport (on-site car rental is available).
Parking & Transportation
Parking is available at Iowa State for free over the weekend.
| Type | Early Registration (until Sept. 12, 2025) | Regular Registration (until Sept. 26, 2025) |
| Registration Fee | $175 in-person $60 online | $200 in-person $75 online |
| Student/Academic Travel Grant | Full consideration for students in U.S. institutions; full consideration will be given to non-student participants from academia/non-profits, if travel fund permits. | Consideration will be given to U.S. students (and potentially non-student academics/non-profits in U.S.) only if travel fund is available after all the early registrants have been considered. |
(Note: to help best plan the event, registration at your earliest convenience and well before the deadlines is appreciated.)
Waiver/Discount of Registration Fee: to make the event accessible to as many participants as possible, the ARA team is trying its best to secure resources for potentially providing a registration fee waiver/discount to participants who may need it. If the registration fee waiver is critical to your participation, please contact us at e2@arawireless.org.
Student/Academic Travel Grant: a number of travel grants are expected to be made available to students/academics/researchers in U.S. institutions/non-profits, with priority given to students over non-student academics/non-profit-researchers. If you are interested in applying for a travel grant, please submit the following information in a single PDF file via this application form.
- CV
- [Student Only] Personal statement (no more than 2 pages) with approval signature from the student’s advisor/supervisor. It is recommended that the personal statement discuss (1) the applicant’s research accomplishments so far, (2) how the participation in AraFest’25 (e.g., ARA Use Training Session) may help with the applicant’s current and future research, spelling out specific research topics for which ARA can serve as a testbed, and (3) whether or not the participant will be willing to serve as an active user of ARA and share ARA use experience and insight with the broad community for collaborative learning.
Poster & Talk Sessions: We encourage all grant applicants and attendees to submit for the Poster Session and/or Talk Session using this form.
- Poster Session: Showcase your current research and/or how you plan to use ARA. Awards will be given for Best Poster and Honorable Mention.
- Talk Session: Briefly present your research and how you have used—or plan to use—ARA.
Travel grant application deadline: applications will be reviewed and grants will be awarded on a first-come-first-serve basis; participants are invited to submit applications ASAP and by 11:59pm September 12, 2025 US Pacific Time. (Applications may be considered after September 12, but early applications are strongly encouraged.)
Early registration deadline: 11:59pm September 12, 2025 US Pacific Time
Regular registration deadline: 11:59pm September 26, 2025 US Pacific Time
AraFest’25 is made possible by the generous support of the following sponsors. If your organization may be interested in co-sponsoring the event, please contact partner@arawireless.org.
Platinum
To reach out to the ARA team, please email e2@arawireless.org.