Ian F. Akyildiz received his BS, MS, and PhD degrees in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany, in 1978, 1981 and 1984, respectively. He is the Founder and Editor in Chief of the newly established of the ITU (International Telecommunication Union) Journal on Future and Evolving Technologies (ITU-J FET) since August 2020. Currently he is the President of ​​the Truva Inc. based in Atlanta since March 1989. He also serves on the Advisory Board for the newly established research center called Technology Innovation Institute (TII) in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates since June 1, 2020. He is the Ken Byers Chair Professor in Telecommunications Emeritus at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Former Chair of the Telecom Group at the ECE of GaTech and the Director of the Broadband Wireless Networking Laboratory between (1985-2020). He is a Megagrant Research Leader with the Institute for Information Transmission Problems at the Russian Academy of Sciences, in Moscow, Russia, since May 2018. He is a Visiting Distinguished Professor with the SSN College of Engineering in Chennai, India since October 2019 and an Adjunct Professor with Department of Electrical Engineering at University of Iceland since September 2020.

In the last two decades he established many research centers worldwide, e.g.,  at the University of Pretoria, South Africa, Politecnica de Catalunya in Barcelona, Spain, King Abdulaziz University in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, University of Tampere, Finland. He is  the Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of Computer Networks Journal (Elsevier) (1999-2019), the founding Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the Ad Hoc Networks Journal (Elsevier) (2003-2019), the founding Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the Physical Communication (PHYCOM) Journal (Elsevier) (2008-2017), and the founding Editor-in-Chief Emeritus of the Nano Communication Networks (NANOCOMNET) Journal (Elsevier) (2010-2017).  He launched  many conferences and workshops and served as General Chairs and TPC  Chairs for many of them. He is an IEEE Fellow and ACM Fellow and received numerous awards from IEEE and ACM and other professional organizations. He received the Alexander von Humboldt Award to conduct research on TeraHertz  at the University of Erlangen-Nurnberg between 2014-2017.

His current research interests are in 6G/7G Wireless Communication Systems, TeraHertz Communication, Internet of BioNanoThings, Molecular Communication, Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces, Nanonetworks, Internet of Space Things/CUBESATs; Internet of Things in Challenged Environments such as Underwater and Underground. According to Google Scholar as of November 2025, his h-index is 145 and the total number of citations to his papers is 156+K.