Ali Riza Ekti is a Senior R&D Staff Member and the Group Leader of the Grid Communications and Security Research Group at ORNL. He joined the Grid Communications and Security Research Group at the Electrification and Energy Infrastructures Division of Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Knoxville, TN, USA, as a Senior R&D Staff Member. Starting May 1, 2025, he also serves as the Group Leader of the Grid Communications and Security Research Group. Since December 1, 2022, he has held a joint appointment as an Associate Professor at the University of Tennessee–Bredesen Center. His current research interests include data analytics, statistical signal processing, smart grid anomaly detection and classification, wireless sensor networks, wireless propagation channel modeling, optimization, and machine learning in 5G and beyond systems and the smart grid.
He received the Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Texas A&M University. He worked as an Assistant Professor with the Electrical and Electronics Engineering Department, Balikesir University and held the Group Leader positions for Speech and Natural Language Processing Lab and Communication and Signal Processing Research Laboratory (HISAR) Lab., TÜBİTAK BİLGEM, where he was responsible for research and development activities in the wireless communications and signal processing.